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May 14, 2026
The Unfinished Quest
India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi
Summary
From a Distinguished International Relations Scholar comes The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford UP, 2024), an important book that looks at India's search for major power status. It is an unfinished quest with a long and winding road ahead. This is not to say that India's ambitions in world politics for greater peer recognition and institutional position is unattainable; but its current political class, bureaucratic elites, and intelligentsia must reorient India's statecraft. In this accessible and incisive book Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status, T.V. Paul charts India's cumbersome path toward higher regional and global status, covering both the successes and failures it has experienced since the modern nation's founding in 1947. Paul focuses on the key motivations driving Indian leaders to enhance India's global status and power, but also on the many constraints that have hindered its progress. Paul's analysis of India's quest for status also sheds important light on the current geostrategic situation and serves as a new framework for understanding the China-India rivalry, as well as India's relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater.
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Sasikumar Sundaram
Dr Sasikumar S. Sundaram is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of International Politics at City, University of London, Chair of the Global South Caucus of the International Studies Association (ISA) (2026-2028). He is author of book Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape International Order (Columbia University Press, 2026)
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