A practitioners view of Indian foreign policy

At a time when India's external image has acquired a degree of robustness and resonance, a book on India's foreign policy written by someone who plays a role in shaping it must be considered a valuable addition to the existing literature on the subject.

- RUP NARAYAN DAS

This is the second book by S Jaishankar on foreign policy, after the The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World, published in 2020. The title of the book, Why Bharat Matters, is suggestive of India's ascendency in the world viewed through the prism of the current foreign policy establishment. Dr Jaishankar justifies the use of the word Bharat in the title of this book by interspersing snippets from the Mahabharata and Ramayana in various chapters that capture the complexity of statecraft and realpolitik. Such references are included separately in various chapters instead of being interspersed in the text so as not to interrupt the flow of the author's argument on how India's traditional knowledge and wisdom have impacted the strategic culture of the country's foreign policy.