ABSTRACT
There is no Indian school of IR and any assessment of Indian scholars’ contribution to IR theory depends upon what counts as ‘IR theory’. This chapter starts with a critical overview of the state of the art of IR discipline in India by analysing disciplinary, pedagogical and discursive reasons to explain its poor conceptualization. This assessment is, however, predicated upon a very narrow disciplinary vision of IR, which for analytical purposes is termed as traditional IR. The next section analyses scholarly endeavours emanating from development studies, postcolonialism and feminism that lie outside the disciplinary core of (Indian) IR to reflect on issues being debated within the post-positivist domain of the ‘mainstream’ IR. To the extent these debates are yet to be owned by Indian IR and these intellectuals acknowledged as part of its scholarly community, it may be termed as new IR. To end, the chapter argues for creating alternative sites of knowledge creation in IR by devising different set of tools and exploring a new repertoire of resources that have, thus far, been de-legitimized or rendered irrelevant for knowledge production in IR.
