Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist March 2019 | Page 57

BOOK REVIEW
INDIA AND EU
AN INSIDER’S VIEW
Author: Ambassador Bhaswati Mukherjee
T
his book is a narrative about Europe meeting India.
The relationship goes back millennia. Burdened with
the colonial baggage of 190 years of British rule in
India, it is a complex journey. There is a surprising paucity
of scholarship on the Indian side regarding this journey and
how it is continuing in this millennium. The book is an eff ort
to address this void and to analyze and address the multiple
challenges facing the relationship in the context of a rapidly
changing global scenario.
EU-India relations offi cially date back to the early 1960s.
Contrary to popular perception within the EU, which was
encouraged by the UK, India never looked at its relations
with the EU through the prism of its bilateral relationship
with its former colonizer, the United Kingdom. India’s
engagement with Europe remains a separate and important
pillar of its foreign policy. This is shaping India’s approach
to EU after Brexit.
Emerging out of unipolarity and in accordance with
European expectations, India and the EU should have become
important poles in an emerging multi-polar world. Multi-
polarity is based on the classical European political theory
of balance of power.
The diff ering positions between India and EU on multi-
polarity as well as on ‘new rule-based multilateralism’ are
a challenge. There is a total absence of consensus on the
defi nition of multi-polarity versus balance of power.
The new challenges facing the EU today are linked to the
tectonic events that unfolded in the last two decades of the
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 7 • Issue 3 • March 2019, Noida • 57