SASNET Seminar with Tushar Joshi: "Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Behaviour: The BJP and RSS Influence on India’s Foreign Policy Towards China (2014–2024)"

Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Behaviour: The BJP and RSS Influence on India’s Foreign Policy Towards China (2014–2024)

This paper examines how India’s strategic culture, shaped by the ideological worldviews of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological affiliate, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has influenced India’s foreign policy towards China between 2014 and 2024. The research question guiding this study examines - how have BJP and RSS narratives reshaped India’s strategic culture, and how has this influenced India’s policy responses to China in the security and economic domains?

Drawing on document analysis of BJP election manifestos and the RSS’s weekly publication Organiser, along with elite interviews with BJP and RSS officials, the paper explores how ideas of civilizational identity, national sovereignty, and self-reliance have informed foreign policy discourse. It traces how these ideational shifts shaped India’s posture in security confrontations like the 2017 Doklam clash and 2020 Galwan standoffs, and in its economic approach to China, particularly in framing India's growing bilateral trade deficit against China as a strategic vulnerability.

By centering ideological narratives within the study of strategic culture, this paper contributes to Foreign Policy Analysis by illustrating how domestic worldviews influence elite perceptions and foreign policy behaviour, particularly in emerging powers facing sustained geopolitical competition with regional rivals.