Explaining India’s Approach to Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

India has been alleged for adopting a reluctant approach to the doctrine of responsibility to protect (R2P). In light of this allegation, this article explains India’s approach to R2P and attempts to answer why India has adopted a cautious and reluctant approach. To give a comprehensive picture and provide a compelling account of India’s cautiousness and reluctance, this article uses an eclectic approach. The systemic and domestic variables, along with normative and materialistic factors, have been taken simultaneously into account. It points out that India’s approach to R2P is shaped by a set of six variables—historical legacies, especially India’s colonial experience and its applications for its attitude towards the principles of non-intervention and state sovereignty; domestic compulsions such as failure of India to deliver inclusive and equitable development and ensuring human rights and citizen’s dignity in remote areas; the intentions of the great powers; security concerns like insurgency in various parts, including Kashmir; its approach to the doctrine per se; and unintended consequences of conflict escalation and its implication for India—have been a linchpin in shaping India’s approach. It demonstrates how these factors have cumulatively shaped India to neither vote in favor of intervention nor stand up with the governments that fail to protect their citizens, and thus fall in fulfilling their obligations under the first principle of the doctrine of R2P.