India's dilemma in the Arab spring

How can India’s reactions to the Arab Spring be explained? Why did India react differently to the Libyan and Syrian cases? How do India’s responses justify its aspiration to take an active role in an emerging multilateral international order? This paper attempts to answer these questions by analyzing India’s major interests in the MENA region. India’s voting behavior vis-à-vis the UN resolutions during its Security Council tenure offers a critical empirical baseline supporting this analysis. The paper highlights that India’s traditional foreign policy based on the non-alignment and non-interventionist principles have been driven by its economy, energy and diaspora-related interests towards the MENA region. The Arab Spring created a dilemma for India in its foreign policy making and a partial deviation from the traditional foreign policy approach, especially in multilateral platforms. Despite these challenges, this paper argues that India successfully resisted the wave of the Arab Spring.