India’s Military Diplomacy: Legacy of International Peacekeeping

India‘s expansive tradition of sending its troops in large numbers to international peacekeeping operations under the aegis of the United Nations has been rightly described as a paradox. The contradictions between India‘s role as a regional belligerent and an international peacekeeper, its substantive participation in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping from its very inception and its ambivalence about post- Cold War peace operations have been identified by scholars.As the demand for international peacekeeping surged after the Cold War, India once again became a major contributor for international peacekeeping. As of early 2014, India is the third largest contributor of troops (after Bangladesh and Pakistan) at around 7,848 personnel, out of which nearly a thousand are police, including a women‘s unit.Yet, India‘s participation in international peacekeeping has not got the intellectual and policy attention, either in India or abroad, that it deserves.This paper is an attempt to look at India‘s participation in peace operations from a broader strategic perspective, assess some of the new challenges confronting India in this domain and the prospects for integrating India‘s peacekeeping into a more effective national security strategy.