Kautilya and Non-Western IR Theory by Deepshikha Shahi

Author:Deepshikha Shahi
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030017286
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

As Eurocentric IR unreservedly approves the entrance of non-Eurocentric worldviews in an endeavor to procure a ‘Global ’ angle, the ancient Indian text of Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra is likely to gain greater momentum as an alternative source of inquiry, especially among those IR scholars who are attracted toward the prospects of conceptualizing IR from Indian and/or Global (read non-Western or post-Western ) standpoints. 22 However, the conventional intellectual portrayal of Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra as a narrow document of realpolitik is bound to reproduce the same orthodox diverged doctrinal approach toward realpolitik and moralpolitik that characterizes Eurocentric IR: that is, the diverged doctrinal approach wherein the rationalist theories of realpolitik (e.g. Classical Realism and Neorealism ) remain in strict opposition to the reflectivist theories of moralpolitik (e.g. Critical International Theory , Feminism , Postmodernism etc.). While the divergences between rationalist and reflectivist theories persist as a reverberation of ‘realpolitik vs. moralpolitik ’, it is Alexander Wendt ’s Social Constructivism that draws stimulus from Roy Bhaskar ’s ‘Critical Realism’ in order to transform this rationalist -reflectivist debate in Eurocentric IR. The next chapter explores how Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra—as located somewhere between the rationalist -realpolitik and reflectivist -moralpolitik of Aśoka ’s Mauryan Empire —not only imbibes the gist of Alexander Wendt ’s Social Constructivism , but also sets alight an alternative non-Western eclectic theory of IR.

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