ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to the endeavour by showing that the integration of historical perspectives with international relations (IR) can help illuminate how India emerged as an international actor in multilateral arenas. The chapter shows that this emergence entailed a certain relation to international norms and the international system. It focuses on the Eurocentrism of categories on the one hand, whilst adopting what could be described as Eurocentric social science conceptions elsewhere. The chapter describes India’s involvement at the United Nations Conference on International Organisation, or the San Francisco Conference as it was commonly called. It provides the tools that mainstream IR, as a discipline, provides for the study of sovereignty, along with their limits. The chapter also provides the importance of studying international society from a historical perspective. Nationalist Indians were not the only group that attempted to promote and advertise their cause, thus setting up a normative battlefield at San Francisco from the fringes.
