What is a vishwaguru? Indian civilizational pedagogy as a transformative global imperative

• Published in: International affairs (London) 2023-03, Vol.99 (2), p.433-455
• Main Author: de Estrada, Kate Sullivan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 19th century; Acknowledgment; Closure; Diaspora; Discourse; Dominance; Foreign policy; International relations; Liberalism; Nationalism; Rules; Social exclusion; Teachers; Teaching; Transformation
• ISSN: 0020-5850; 1468-2346
• DOI: 10.1093/ia/iiac318

This article examines India's quest to become vishwaguru or ‘world teacher’, aiming to transform unequal global hierarchies. As western states recognize India as a democratic partner, this endorses the vishwaguru project of the contemporary Hindu nationalist rule, with consequences for the international liberal order. Abstract Ambitions for India to enact the role of vishwaguru or ‘world teacher’ are a conspicuous feature of foreign policy discourse under contemporary Hindu nationalist rule in India. This discourse, and India's foreign-policy practice, engage the international realm with a puzzling intensity given Hindu nationalism's inward-looking and exclusionary emphasis on majoritarian cultural unity. In this article, I leverage International Relations scholarship on social closure, international order and recognition struggles to examine the historical lineages and recent articulations of nineteenth-century religious reformist ideas about India's world mission and spiritual superiority. I argue that different Indian civilizational imaginaries across time produce a pedagogical imperative, aimed at the transformation of global social hierarchies. Centred on a quest to assert social superiority and remake the terms of recognition, any given vishwaguru project nonetheless relies on international recognition. The recent domestic and diasporic appeal of Hindu nationalist foreign policy stems from how it appears to intervene to rectify the longstanding misrecognition of India. In this context, western liberal states' instrumental recognition of India as a democratic partner and defender of liberal order in the face of a ‘China challenge’ works to endorse and bolster the vishwaguru project of India's current domestic political moment.