India and Latin America

The chapter focuses on India’s relations with Latin America, i.e. Hispanic America and Brazil through three phases: distant acquaintance (late 1940s to early 1960s, or the Nehruvian years), rhetorical solidarity (the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, or the years of nonaligned revisionism), and strategic engagement (mid-1990s onwards, coinciding with India’s emergence as a power with system-shaping potential). It also includes three brief case studies of Latin American decisions that had an inimical impact on India’s interests: Argentina favouring Pakistan’s position on Kashmir in the UNSC; Ecuador nearly recognising a ‘state’ seceding from India; and Brazil favouring expansion of BRICS even at the cost of IBSA. It concludes that India’s relations with Latin America, and especially Brazil, have acquired heft only when propelled by systemic circumstances. Thus, Kenneth Waltz’s emphasis on systemic structure as an explanation of state behaviour also applies to India’s relations with the countries of Latin America.