India’ Aspirations to Become a Permanent Member of UNSC: Indian strategic interest in the Council seat has also been shaped by its history of interacting with the Security Council. In the early years of its independence during its armed conflict with Pakistan on Kashmir, India paid the price for being “idealistic” to take the Kashmir issue to the UN wherein it had to battle hard realpolitik of Cold war years leading to UN interventions over the Kashmir dispute. To prevent this negative outcome ever again, the Indian presence at the Security Council, it is hoped will ensure Indian interests are not sacrificed at the altar of great power politics. Most importantly, it will stall any possible intervention by China, a permanent member at the behest of its ally Pakistan.
Indian interests in the Security Council also flow from the larger, many foreign policy debates in India on whether it will be a status quo power that accepts liberal norms and positions itself as a “responsible stakeholder’ in the international system or a revisionist power that seeks to redefine the norms of international engagement. Many pundits agree that India would be moderately revisionist that seeks to adjust international norms and frameworks that suits its global vision, without seeking to overthrow the current international system. India has always seen itself as a champion, a ‘moralistic force’ of the so called Third World, the developing states. Former Secretary General Kofi Annan has been quoted as saying that India has been one of the most significant votaries of shaping the UN agenda on behalf of the developing world.
At his speech in New Delhi, Annan stated: “Indians have better understood than many other peoples that the goals of the ‘larger freedom’ that which include development, security and human rights are not alternatives. They have been single-mindedly pursuing larger freedom through pluralist democracy.”