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Provincialising International Relations through a reading of dharma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2021

Giorgio Shani Open the ORCID record for Giorgio Shani [Opens in a new window]  and
Navnita Chadha Behera Open the ORCID record for Navnita Chadha Behera [Opens in a new window]
Giorgio Shani*
Affiliation:
Politics and International Relations, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
Navnita Chadha Behera
Affiliation:
International Relations at the University of Delhi, India
*
*Corresponding author. Email: gshani@icu.ac.jp
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Abstract

This article will attempt to ‘provincialise’ (Chakrabarty, 2000) the ‘secular cosmology’ of International Relations (IR) through an examination of the relational cosmology of dharma. We argue that IR is grounded in ‘secularised’ Judaeo-Christian assumptions concerning time, relations between self and other, order, and the sovereign state that set the epistemic limits of the discipline. These assumptions will be ‘provincialised’ through an engagement with dharma based on a reading of The Mahābharāta, one of the oldest recorded texts in the world. We argue that the concept of dharma offers a mode of understanding the multidimensionality of human existence without negating any of its varied, contradictory expressions. By deconstructing notions of self and other, dharma illustrates how all beings are related to one another in a moral, social, and cosmic order premised on human agency, which flows from ‘inside-out’ rather than ‘outside-in’ and that is governed by a heterogenous understanding of time. This order places limits on the state's exercise of power in a given territory by making the state responsible for creating social conditions that would enable all beings to realise their potential, thus qualifying the principle of state sovereignty that remains the foundation of the ‘secular cosmology of IR’.

Keywords

CosmologyRelationalityPostwestern IRReligionIndia
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 48 , Special Issue 5: Pluriversal Relationality , December 2022 , pp. 837 - 856
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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Footnotes

‡

Giorgio Shani and Navnita Chadha Behera are joint corresponding authors. Contact details: gshani@icu.ac.jp and navnita@iriis.in

References

1 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 6, 4, emphasis in original.

2 Tamara Trownsell, Amaya Querejazu Escobari, Giorgio Shani, Navnita Chadha Behera, Jarrad Reddekop, and Arlene Tickner, ‘Recrafting International Relations through relationality’, E-International Relations, available at: {https://www.e-ir.info/2019/01/08/recrafting-international-relations-through-relationality/} accessed 8 January 2019.

3 See Bentley Allan, Scientific Cosmology and International Orders (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Milja Kurki, International Relations and Relational Cosmology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020).

4 This is implicit in the work of Dr B. R. Ambedkar, the dalit leader and principal framer of India's constitution, who regarded the reassertion of caste hierarchy in the Mansusmriti as a ‘counter-revolution’. See B. R. Amdedkar, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India, available at: {http://drambedkar.co.in/wp-content/uploads/books/category1/6revolutionandcounterrevolution.pdf} accessed 10 September 2020.

5 Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 5.

6 The concept of ‘epistemic privilege’ as applied to (Judaeo-)Christian cosmology is discussed below with reference to the work of Walter Mignolo.

7 See Shani, Giorgio, ‘Towards a Hindu Rashtra: Hindutva, religion, and nationalism in India’, Religion, State and Society, 49:3 (2021), pp. 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: {https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2021.1947731}.

8 As Ashis Nandy reminds us, ‘modern colonialism won its great victories not so much through its military and technological prowess as through its ability to create secular hierarchies incompatible with the traditional order’. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 9.

9 See Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 37–42.

10 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985); William Bain, Political Theology of International Order (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020); Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. and intro. C. B. Macpherson (London, UK: Penguin, 1985).

11 Kurki, International Relations and Relational Cosmology, p. 28, emphasis in original. Cosmology includes both ontological and epistemological propositions. For the relationship between ontology and cosmology, see Blaney, David and Tickner, Arlene, ‘Worlding, ontological politics and the possibility of a decolonial IR’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 45:3 (2017), pp. 293–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 5).

12 For an analysis of the impact of scientific cosmologies on IR, see Allan, Scientific Cosmology and International Orders.

13 The reference is to Geertz. ‘Believing with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance, he himself has spun, we take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning.’ Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1973), p. 5.

14 Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (2nd edn, Ann Arbour, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), p. 432.

15 Kurki, International Relations and Relational Cosmology, pp. 26–7.

16 Ibid., p. 44.

17 Peter Coles, Cosmology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 6.

18 Allan, Scientific Cosmologies, p. 5.

19 Morgenthau in Allan, Scientific Cosmologies, p. 1, emphasis added.

20 Kurki, International Relations and Relational Cosmology, p. 45.

21 See Mavelli, Luca and Petito, Fabio, ‘The postsecular in International Relations: An overview’, Review of International Studies, 38:5 (2012), pp. 931–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 36.

23 Emirbayer, Mustafa, ‘Manifesto for a relational sociology’, American Journal of Sociology, 103:2 (1997), pp. 281–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 282).

24 For a succinct recent summary of the ‘relational turn’ highlighting both Anglophone and Sinophone scholarship in IR, see Nordin, Astrid H. M., Smith, Graham M., Bunskoek, Raoul, Huang, Chiung-chiu, Hwang, Yih-jye (Jay), Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus, Kavalski, Emilian, Ling, L. H. M. (posthumously), Martindale, Leigh, Nakamura, Mari, Nexon, Daniel, Premack, Laura, Qin, Yaqing, Shih, Chih-yu, Tyfield, David, Williams, Emma, and Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32:5 (2019), pp. 570–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 For an account of this position within the constructivist tradition, see Jackson, Patrick T. and Nexon, Dan, ‘Relations before states: Substance, process, and the study of world politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:3 (1999), pp. 291–332CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the feminist tradition, see Stern, Maria and Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Feminist fatigue(s): Reflections on feminism and familiar fables of militarisation’, Review of International Studies, 35:3 (2009), pp. 611–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a seminal account that has influenced the development of actor-network theory in IR, see Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005). Finally, for a decolonial approach of relationality, see Robbie Shilliam, The Black Pacific (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2015).

26 Jackson and Nexon, ‘Relations before states’.

27 See McCourt, David M., ‘Practice theory and relationalism as the new constructivism’, International Studies Quarterly, 60:3 (2016), pp. 475–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 See Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

29 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 1–17. For a critique of network thinking, see Coward, Martin, ‘Against network thinking: A critique of pathological sovereignty’, European Journal of International Relations, 24:2 (2017), pp. 440–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See inter alia L. H. M. Ling, The Dao of World Politics: Towards a Post-Westphalian, Worldist IR (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014); Yaqing Qin, A Relational Theory of World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Emilian Kavalski, The Guanxi of Relational International Theory (New York, NY: Routledge 2018); Nordin et al., ‘Towards global relational theorizing’; Young, Kim, ‘Tao and dharma’, Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, 75 (2015), pp. 319–20Google Scholar; Shahi, Deepshika and Ascione, Gennaro, ‘Rethinking the absence of post-Western International Relations theory in India: “Advaitic monism” as an alternative epistemological resource’, European Journal of International Relations, 22:2 (2016), pp. 313–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 T. N. Madan, Images of the World: Essays on Religion, Secularism and Culture (New Delhi, India: Oxford, 2006), p. 213.

32 Indology refers to the Western study of Indian society and its philosophical systems, often based on a literal reading of Brahaminical texts, which accompanied the colonisation of South Asia. See Ronald Inden, Imagining India (London, UK: C. Hurst & Co, 2000) for a critical review.

33 The word ‘Hindu’ was coined perhaps for the first time by the invading Arabs in c. eighth century ad, and then it was clearly a geographical description of those who lived beyond the river Sindhu or Indus, and carried with it no religious connotation. Chaturvedi Badrinath, Dharma, India and The World Order: Twenty-One Essays (Edinburgh, UK: Saint Andrew Press, 1993), pp. 49–50. Benoy Kumar Sarkar also notes that Hindus were familiar with the term Sanatana Dharma, denoting eternal law, though the term Hinduism was an expression given by the outsiders. Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Chinese Religion through Hindu Eyes (New Delhi, India: Asian Educational Services, 1988 [orig. pub. 1916]), p. 14.

34 van der Veer, Peter, ‘Hindus: A superior race’, Nations and Nationalism, 5:3 (1999), pp. 419–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 420).

35 Indeed, India's first President, Dr S. Radhakrishnan wrote that being Hindu means accepting dharma. S. Radhakrishnan, ‘The Hindu dharma’, International Journal of Ethics, 33:1 (October 1922), p. 4.

36 Rgveda (7. 75. 1); (3.61.7); (1.105.12), as cited by Young, Tao and Dharma, pp. 319–20. Also see, Patrick Olivelle, ‘The semantic history of dharma: The middle and late Vedic periods’, in Patrick Olivelle (ed.), Dharma: Studies in its Semantic, Cultural and Religious History (New Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass, 2009), p. 69. The Vedas, it may be noted, have been divided into four styles of texts: the Samhitās (mantras and benedictions;, the Brāhmaṇas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices, and symbolic-sacrifices); the Aranyakas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices); and the Upaniṣhads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy, and spirituality).

37 Adam Bowles, Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007), p. 84.

38 Drawing upon Paul Horsch and Joel Brereton's work, Patrick Olivelle notes that the term dharma figures in Rgveda (1800–1100 bce) only 67 times; in Yajur Veda (1100–800 bce) only 22 times, and in Atharvaveda (1000–800 bce) only 13 times. Olivelle (ed.), Semantic History, p. 69.

39 For example, in Taittirīya Samhitā 1.7.7.1 and Vājasaneyi Samhitā 9.5d and 18.30, the form dhárman is employed that is cited in the same form in the latter's brāhmaṇa, Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 5.1.4.4, while for the same formula, Kāthaka Samhitā 13.14 and Maitrāyaṇīya Samhitā 1.11.1 employ the form dhárma. Elsewhere the two forms exist side by side in the same formula, as in Vājasaneyi Samhitā 15.6 and Satapatha Brāhmaṇa 8.5.3.3 As cited in Bowles, Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India, p. 88.

40 Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 5.3.3.9 refers to the special relationship between Varuna (the lord of dharma with dharmapati wherein Varuna makes the king the lord (páti) of dharma, so people come to him in matters of law (dhárma upayánti). As cited in Bowles, Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India, pp. 92–3.

41 The Mahānārāyana Upaniṣhad, for example, describes dharma as pratiṣthā, the ‘support’ of the entire world (viśvasya jagatah). In the Śrautasūtras, the term dharma implies ‘rule’ or ‘ritual rule’. As cited in Bowles, Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India, p. 105.

42 Rupert Gethin, ‘He who sees dhamma sees dhammas: Dhamma in early Buddhism’, in Olivelle (ed.), Dharma, p. 110.

43 The Jain notion of dharma has been developed in treatises such as the Tattvārthasūtra of Umāsvāti and the Pravacanasāra of Kundakunda (150–350 ce). See Olle Qvarnström, ‘Dharma in Jainism: A prelinimary survey’, in Olivelle (ed.), Dharma, p. 178.

44 The Mahabharata is attributed to the Sage Ved Vyās, which means ‘the one who classified the Vedas’.

45 Chaturvedi Badrinath, The Mahābharāta: An Inquiry in the Human Condition (New Delhi, India: Orient Longman, 2006). All English translations of Sanskrit shalokas of the Mahābharāta used in this article are drawn from this source, unless stated otherwise.

46 Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 109.

47 Śānti parva, 109.10. For the English translation, see Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 85.

48 Daya Krishna, Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia (New Delhi, India: Sage, 2012), p. 17.

49 Śānti parva, 160.10. As translated by Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 107.

50 Chaturvedi Badrinath, Dharma: Hinduism and Religions in India (Gurgaon, India: Penguin, 2019), p. 10.

51 Anuśāsana parva, 142.28. As translated by Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 165.

52 Śānti parva, 309.16. As translated by Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 94.

53 Bhāgvata-purāna, VI.I.40. According to Medhātithi (ninth century ad), any custom or oractice that is not based on the teachings of Vedas is to be discarded as not-dharma. See Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of the Indian Philosophy, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 7.

54 Radhakrishnan, The Hindu Way of Life, pp. 92, 127; Eastern Religions and Western Thought, pp. 355–82; Sri Aurobindo, Essays on Gita, pp. 465–6.

55 Badrinath offers a detailed exposition of the three contending theories of ‘divine will’, the ‘racial’, and the ‘economic’ regarding the origins of varna and how The Mahābharāta dismissed them all. Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, pp. 370–3.

56 Śānti parva, 284.122, as translated by Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 385.

57 Vana-parva, 313.108, as translated by Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 377. Also see Anushāsana-parva, 143.50; Ashvamedhika-parva, 116.8.

58 Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 370.

59 This is more pronounced in the Buddhist conception of dharmas as dhamma that holds that every human being can attain nirvana.

60 Madan cites J. Krishnamurti, who wrote: ‘when one achieves such a state of dharmic existence or moral perfection’, which he termed as ‘choiceless awareness – contexts are dissolved, specificities disappear, dualities are transcended, and what survives is a seamless moral sensibility’. Madan, Images of the World, pp. 214–15.

61 Badrinath, Dharma, India and The World Order, p. 56.

62 Kimberly Hutchings, Time and World Politics: Thinking the Present (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 5.

63 Benjamin famously made a distinction between ‘homogenous, empty time’ that was filled by a succession of events leading to the victory of the present and ‘messianic time’, which represents the ‘narrow gate, through which the Messiah could enter’. Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the philosophy of history’, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. and intro. Hannah Arendt (New York, NY: Schocken Books 2007), pp. 254, 261.

64 Hutchings, Time and World Politics, p. 49.

65 This is illustrated in the Jewish New Year, the Rosh Hashanah, when the ‘drama of the enthronement of God is played out in three acts: coronation, commemoration, redemption’. Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. and preface David Ratmoko (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 14.

66 See Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, ch. 1, pp. 2–31.

67 Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 111, emphasis in original.

68 Löwith credits Hegel with ‘the secularisation of the Christian faith’. See Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago, IL and London, UK: University of Chicago Press, 1949).

69 See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. Hugh Barr Nisbet (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975). For a recent appraisal of Hegel's continued importance in IR, see Charlotte Epstein, Thomas Lindemann, and Ole Jacob Sending, ‘Special Issue on misrecognition in world politics: Revisiting Hegel’, Review of International Studies, 44:5 (December 2018), pp. 787–943.

70 Hutchings, Time and World Politics, p. 55.

71 For an excellent exposition of these different conceptions, see Hari Shankar Prasad (ed.), Time in Indian Philosophy: A Collection of Essays (New Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications, 1992).

72 Prasad (ed.), Time in Indian Philosophy, p. 3.

73 Ibid., pp. 2, 9.

74 Nyaya-Vaisesika and Jainism maintain two kinds of time, one of which is absolute and substantive (mahakala, paramarthakala, dravyakala, and niscayakala) and other is empirical division of time (khandakala, vyavaharakala, samaya) based on specific movements of physical bodies like the earth. Samkya-yoga's approach is phenomenological as in, it treats time as an explanatory principle to account for change, while the Mimamsakas admit substantive reality of time, but as an adjunct for action. Advaita-Vedanta considers time, change and causality to be epistemologically grounded in ‘Absolute Dynamic Reality (=Brahman), which in turn is achieved by maintaining different levels of reality: appearance (maya) and Reality. Prasad (ed.), Time in Indian Philosophy, pp. 10–15.

75 Śānti parva, 238.19. For the English translation, see, Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 525.

76 Coward, Harold, ‘Time in Hinduism’, Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, 12 (1999), pp. 22–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 22).

77 The view that the Hindu notion of time is cyclical is widely prevalent among scholars of comparative religion, Indologists, Hindu religion, and historians. See inter alia Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co., 1968) and Ainslee T. Embree (ed.), The Hindu Tradition (New York, NY: Modern Library, 1966). For a contrarian view, see Arvind Sharma, ‘The notion of cyclical time in Hinduism’, in Prasad (ed.), Time in Indian Philosophy, pp. 203–12.

78 Panikkar, Raimundo, ‘Towards a typology of time and temporality in the ancient Indian tradition’, Philosophy East and West, 24:2 (1974), pp. 161–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 162).

79 Prasad (ed.), Time in Indian Philosophy, p. 5.

80 Śānti parva, 181.12. For the English translation, see Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 563. Also Anushāsana-parva, 10.24.

81 Raimundo Panikkar, ‘Time and history in the tradition of India: Kala and Karma’, in Prasad (ed.), Time in Indian Philosophy, pp. 21–46 (p. 32).

82 Hutchings, Time and World Politics.

83 Jahn, Beate, ‘Barbarian thoughts: Imperialism in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill’, Review of International Studies, 31:3 (2005), pp. 599–618CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 See Aakash Singh Rathore and Rimina Mohapatra (eds), Hegel's India: A Reinterpretation, with Texts (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017).

85 See contributions by Morgan Brigg, Mary Graham, and Martin Weber; Anna Querejazu; Jarrad Reddekop; Chih-yu Shih, and Tamara Trownsell.

86 See Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, pp. 47–71.

87 Ibid., p. 66.

88 Walter D. Mignolo, ‘Coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking’, in Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar (eds)Globalization and the Decolonial Option (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2010) pp. 1–22 (p. 2).

89 See Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, intro. Talcott Parsons (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993), pp. 166–206.

90 Booth, Ken, ‘Security and emancipation’, Review of International Studies, 17:4 (1991), pp. 313–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 See Giorgio Shani, Religion, Identity and Human Security (London, UK: Routledge 2014), pp. 62–86.

92 Taylor, A Secular Age.

93 Ibid., p. 542. Significantly, Taylor provides an internal account of the transformation and emergence of the secular West, which makes no sustained reference to the role that colonialism played in the erection and strengthening of boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other’.

94 Ibid., p. 38.

95 Ibid., p. 135.

96 Ibid., p. 561.

97 Ibid., p. 300.

98 Ibid., p. 552.

99 See R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993) for the seminal formulation of this argument.

100 Taylor is clearly influenced by Hegel but limits his argument to Latin Christendom.

101 Buddhism and the Charvaka tradition (the materialist) denied that there existed any such entity as atman, or a permanent self, a centre of consciousness, which survived death. Badrinath, Dharma, India and The World Order, p. 164.

102 Ibid.

103 Ibid., pp. 91, 164.

104 Ibid., p. 91; see also Young, Tao and Dharma, pp. 324–8.

105 Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, pp. 195–6.

106 Behera, Navnita Chadha, ‘One world, many worlds: Globalization, de-globalization and knowledge production’, International Affairs, 97:5 (2021), pp. 1579–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: {https://doi 10.1093/ia/iiab119}.

107 Of particular importance is the conceptual innovation of ‘race’ through which humanity is segregated into hierarchical social categories. See Jahn, ‘Barbarian thoughts’, pp. 599–618.

108 Bain, Political Theology of International Order, p. 8.

109 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1977).

110 Bain, Political Theology of International Order, p. 7.

111 Ibid., p. 8.

112 Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, ed. George Schwab (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008 [ori. pub. 1938]).

113 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 227.

114 Ibid., p. 134.

115 Blaney, David L., ‘Theodicy and International Political Economy’, Critical Studies on Security, 4:3 (2016), pp. 312–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (p. 318).

116 Indian philosophical systems are ‘almost entirely non-theistic, or atheistic’, and, the key dividing line between the ‘astika and nastika’, schools is based on whether, or not, they accept Vedas as the primary source of all knowledge. The nastika school of Lokayata, Jainism, and Buddhism were nirishvara, godless. Among the ‘astika’, Mimamsa remained atheistic all throughout. Chaturvedi Badrinath, Dharma: Hinduism and Religions in India (Gurgaon, India: Penguin, 2019), pp. 20–4.

117 Krishna, cited in Navnita Chadha Behera, ‘Geopolitical calculus or civilizational ethos: Alternative trajectories for South Asia's future’, in Another South Asia, ed. Dev Nath Pathak (New Delhi, India: Primus, 2018), p. 61.

118 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

119 Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, p. 6.

120 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Sovereignty, God, State and Self (New York, NY: Basic Books), p. 105.

121 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 220.

122 Ibid., p.144, emphasis in original.

123 Anuśāsana-parva, 212.40. For the English translation, see, Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 429.

124 Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 423.

125 Śānti parva, 71.26. For the English translation, see Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 424.

126 Anushāsana-parva, 212.40.

127 Śānti parva, 90.5. For the English translation, see Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 461.

128 Śānti parva, 15.30. For the English translation, see ibid., p. 423.

129 Vana-parva, 26.11–16. For the English translation, see ibid., p. 464.

130 Badrinath, The Mahābharāta, p. 425.

131 Śānti parva, 63.27; 63.29. For the English translation, see ibid., pp. 423–4.

132 Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York, NY and London, UK: Routledge).

133 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

134 Ibid., p. 163.

135 Badrinath, Dharma, India and The World Order, p. 115.