Description
Both an advocate and challenger, India’s engagement with the global order ranges between idiosyncrasy and instrumentality, and it represents an outlier on both ideational and empirical terms. As a major actor in outer space, this trend is reflected in India’s space program and its approach to the international politics of outer space. If India has leveraged its space program for neighbourhood diplomacy through the South Asia satellite (2017), then the Indian Anti-satellite test (2019) represented a new era for power projection in outer space. Both these events embodied the conscious choice of application of space technologies by a rising power for strategic goals. Through an in-depth case study of these two historical episodes, the paper identifies key drivers and situates them with both the global and domestic topical developments. It then forwards analytical propositions that contests conventional frameworks and broadens and widens the understanding on rising powers, international security, and outer space – an imperative of our times.
