Kautilya and Non-Western IR Theory

The ancient Indian text of  Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra  comes forth as a valuable non-Western resource for understanding contemporary International Relations (IR). However,  Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra  largely suffers from the problem of ‘presentism’, whereby present-day assumptions of the dominant theoretical models of Classical Realism and Neorealism are read back into it, thereby disrupting open reflections on  Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra  which could retrieve its ‘alternative assumptions’ and ‘unconventional traits’. This book attempts to enable  Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra  to break free from the problem of presentism – it does so by juxtaposing the elements of continuity and change that showed up at different junctures of the life-history of both ‘ Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra ’ and ‘Eurocentric IR’. The overall exploratory venture leads to a Kautilyan non-Western eclectic theory of IR – a theory which moderately assimilates miscellaneousresearch traditions of Eurocentric IR, and, in addition, delivers a few innovative features that could potentially uplift not only Indian IR, but also Global IR.