India’s Involvement in the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions

This chapter analyzes India’s involvement in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions—field deployments of military, police, and civilian personnel usually mandated by the UN Security Council to preserve the peace. Since the 1950s, New Delhi has provided more than 290,000 military and police personnel across more than 50 such missions, making India one of the largest contributors, in a world where interests, coalitions, and material incentives shift—and where the contours of peace and security are continually renegotiated. This chapter reads these contributions as part of India’s desired identity as a global power with a moral capacity to lead, consistent with Vishwa Guru (world teacher) and Vishwa Bandhu (friend of the world). These Sanskritic concepts were taken up in modern Hindi and India’s political discourse that have gained further momentum since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) reelection in 2019. This chapter argues that UN peacekeeping is a norm-rich arena in which India performs, and seeks recognition for, these roles while preserving its strategic autonomy. It borrows from constructivism, a theory of International Relations (IR) which posits that state behavior is shaped by socially constructed identities, norms, and shared expectations. In addition to outlining the benefits of engagement in UN peacekeeping for India’s identity-in-the-making as a global power—including professionalization of the armed forces, stronger diplomatic networks, and influence—this chapter also considers the accompanying challenges, such as perceptions of soft hegemony, expectation-resource gaps, and reputational exposure from misconduct.