ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an historical overview of India's policy responses towards the humanitarian intervention practice or norm before 2001 and the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm between 2001 and 2010. It presents some historical context and establishes a sort of 'baseline' – an understanding of India's position on the R2P norm – just before it took up its seat on the Council. The chapter examines the Cold War era, with particular focus on India's direct involvement the crises in East Pakistan in 1971 and in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s. It considers how India reacted to the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s, with special attention to the 1999 Kosovo crisis. The chapter explores how India responded to the R2P norm after the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty delivered its 2001 report. References to the various identity discourses are scattered throughout, and by the end a determination is made regarding which were the most influential were shaping factors.
