Anglo Nostalgia: The Politics of Emotion in a Fractured West by Edoardo Campanella & Marta Dassu

Author:Edoardo Campanella & Marta Dassu [Campanella, Edoardo & Dassu, Marta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780190068936
Google: iaCgDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:31:19.512551+00:00

The view from the rest of the Anglosphere: India as a test case

As Britons contemplate a post-EU identity with a global reach, it would be instructive for them to look carefully at their prospective partners and ask the question: do they share a fascination with the Anglosphere (particularly those that are not part of its core)? And to what extent do they share the broader worldview that led the British to opt for Brexit? The fundamental challenge is that the United Kingdom would no longer be the dominant player in any possible configuration of the Anglosphere—even one not including the United States. Looking forward, there are demographic, cultural, strategic, economic, and diplomatic issues that complicate the pursuit of Anglosphere-based partnerships. And perceptions outside Britain reflect all these issues. India, in particular, seems bent on creating its own “sphere”, and behaves as a proudly independent actor on the world stage—the demographer Joel Kotkin, for instance, identifies an “Indosphere” as distinct from the Anglosphere, and a potential rival to the “Sinosphere”.30

What is certain is that India does not want to run the risk of being subordinate to Britain again. When in 1931, sixteen years before the end of the British Raj, Gandhi was asked: “How far would you cut India off from Empire?” His response was: “From the Empire, entirely; from the British nation not at all, if I want India to gain and not to grieve.” He then added: “But it must be a partnership on equal terms.”31 Unfortunately, at the time, Britain was not ready for the “equal partnership” Gandhi sought. Now, especially in a post-Brexit environment, the British might be ready to move in that direction. But for India the offer probably comes too late. While Brexiteers are stuck in a glorious past, the Indians are projected into a bright future. The leverage that Britain had back in the 1930s has almost entirely evaporated.

There are at least two structural reasons for the unique role that India will probably play in the future: first, as a country it is neither racially nor historically Anglo-Saxon; second, its sheer size means that any Anglosphere would struggle to absorb a country whose population is four times the size of all the other members put together. As recently argued by the Indian journalist Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, a number of additional issues emerge when looking at India through the prism of the Anglosphere.32 First, as shown by different editions of the World Value Survey, in terms of driving values, Indians are closer to Catholic Europeans and Latin Americans than they are to the more liberal English-speaking world.33 Moreover, India has officially been a socialist economy for much of its independent history, and has only embraced a more favourable view of the market in the past two decades. Even today, India’s trade policy is filled with protectionism (and it remains an obstructive participant in the world trading system).34

The current status of English as a common language is also somewhat problematic. English is not an official language

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