Domestic Politics & Indian Foreign Policy: India-China ties, 1952-62

What is the relationship between Indian domestic politics and foreign policy? While this dynamic has been substantially studied in the western context, this subject remains underexamined in the case of India. This paper argues for understanding domestic political dynamics and its relationship with foreign policy by investigating parliamentary records. This paper examines the case study of India-China bilateral ties from 1952 to 1962 and makes use of a newly created, unique dataset of key parliamentary records. The key findings from these records include a correlation between the state of India-China ties and the nature of questions and debates being raised in the parliament, insights into intra-party views on foreign policy, highlights the role of select parliamentarians, and raises questions about the relationship between party ideology and foreign policy. This qualitative work is an initial foray into examining domestic politics and foreign policy using parliamentary data and there is greater data to be unearthed using parliamentary records.