More ‘mind space' for India in the American imagination

The Hindu

15-06-2025

Why is there no 'Schwarzman Scholars' programme for India? Why does a country of 1.4 billion people — an ancient civilisation, a dynamic economy, a nuclear power, and a key player in the Indo-Pacific — still appear marginal in the priorities of elite American institutions? The answer lies not merely in policy lag but in perception, psychology, and deeply embedded narratives that continue to shape the West's engagement with Asia.
The Schwarzman Scholars programme
The 'Schwarzman Scholars' programme, launched in 2016 and based at Beijing's Tsinghua University, was explicitly modelled after the Rhodes Scholarship (founded in 1902). Its mission is ambitious: to cultivate a future generation of global leaders, deeply familiar with China's systems, strategic worldview, and societal aspirations. That no such equivalent programme exists for India is not an accident. It is the culmination of decades of lopsided intellectual investment — one that privileges China as essential, and views India, at best, as peripheral.
This imbalance was presciently explored by Harold R. Isaacs in his seminal work, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (1958). Isaacs uncovered the psychological residue — 'scratches', as he termed them — left on American consciousness by media, education, missionary engagement, and diplomatic narratives. China loomed large in this imagination: revolutionary, mystical, dangerous, promising. India, by contrast, was filtered through colonial British lenses: remote, spiritual, chaotic, and, ultimately, less urgent.
Even today, those scratches endure. India is often misunderstood, misrepresented, or, more often, simply missing in the frameworks that shape western elite understanding. The Cold War's bipolar logic left India unmoored in American strategic thinking. China was a site of ideological competition, and later, a partner in global capitalism. India, non-aligned and self-reliant, never fit the template. Its democracy attracted rhetorical admiration, but its strategic ambivalence dampened deeper interest.
This selective seduction continued into the 21st century. China masterfully framed its rise as an opportunity — and the West was psychologically prepared to believe it. Scholars such as Australian sinologist Stephen FitzGerald described in the 1980s how the West 'wanted China to succeed' — economically, politically, even ideologically. China offered a compelling, seductive narrative of transformation: poverty to prosperity, isolation to globalisation, authoritarian control with capitalist efficiency. Western business leaders, academics and policymakers were drawn in. Programmes such as Schwarzman were not just reflections of China's pull —they were symptoms of the West's emotional and intellectual readiness to be seduced.
India never orchestrated such seduction. It emerged from colonialism with a focus on sovereignty and self-reliance. It rebuffed bloc politics, avoided entanglements, and developed slowly and unevenly. Its strengths — pluralistic democracy, entrepreneurial diaspora, and cultural richness — did not easily translate into strategic urgency or narrative coherence for the West. While the Chinese state invested heavily in soft power — through Confucius Institutes, think tanks, cultural exchanges, and university partnerships — India's outreach was modest, sporadic, and often bureaucratically constrained.
The problem with India-focused research
Even within American academia, the difference is stark. China Studies enjoys robust institutional support across top universities. With a few exceptions, India-focused research, by contrast, is fragmented, often subsumed under South Asian or Postcolonial Studies, with an emphasis on religion, anthropology, or classical languages. These are critical fields, but do not capture the lure of a civilisational state and a modern India that is shaping global technology, space innovation, climate policy, and strategic affairs. India appears in headlines, but rarely in syllabi.
The consequences are serious. Future American leaders, whether in diplomacy, business, or policy, are not being trained to understand India in its full complexity. The persistence of reductive frameworks, such as the old hyphenation of 'India-Pakistan', continues to distort strategic thinking. U.S. President Donald Trump's repetitive remarks about mediating between India and Pakistan are not just personal gaffes. They reflect institutional inertia, a failure to update mental maps to match geopolitical reality.
And here lies a paradox: just as India's importance is rising, its visibility in American intellectual and philanthropic circuits remains limited. The absence of a flagship fellowship akin to Schwarzman is both a symbol and a cause of this gap. Such a programme would not just serve India's interests; it would meet a growing demand among global youth for deeper engagement with the world's largest democracy — its challenges, innovations, contradictions, and aspirations.
But for such a fellowship to succeed, India must first invest in the institutional foundation. Tsinghua University, where Schwarzman is housed, is not just a campus. It is a a brand, a node of state-backed ambition with global recognition. India has institutions of excellence — the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, and emerging liberal arts universities such as Ashoka and Krea — but none as yet combine academic prestige, international pull, policy connectivity, and philanthropic momentum at the scale required.
This must change. India needs a globally oriented, strategically empowered academic platform that can host and nurture the next generation of world leaders — Indian and foreign — who understand India not just as a subject of study but as a site of leadership. Creating such an institution will require government will, private capital, academic autonomy, and long-term vision.
Narrative matters
India also needs to project its narrative with much more feeling and conviction. The Chinese have always felt they are a 'chosen' people. The world, from Napoleon, has felt the same. India is the Cinderella in this story. Strategic restraint and ambiguity has served Indian diplomacy in many arenas, but silence can be mistaken for absence and risk-aversion for reticence and a lack of confidence. Narrative matters. Global leadership today is as much about shaping perceptions as it is about GDP or military muscle. That means calling out outdated framing, investing in storytelling, and claiming intellectual space with confidence. The refrain of a rising GDP lifting all boats, of International Yoga Days, will not just do. Every few blocks in an American city you will find a yoga studio and an Indian restaurant. But does that change the power scene for India?
Ultimately, the battle for influence is not only fought in the corridors of power or in street corners, but is also shaped in classrooms, fellowships, research centres, and campus conversations. If India wants to be understood on its own terms, and not just as a counterweight to China or a bystander in someone else's story, it must be present in the places where ideas are formed and futures imagined.
The scratches on our minds can be healed, but not with silence. They require vision, voice, and a story compelling enough to inspire the next generation of global leaders. A Schwarzman-style fellowship in India would not just be a corrective. It would be a declaration that India is no longer content to be studied at a distance. It wants to be known, on its own terms.
Nirupama Rao is a former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the United States