India supplied COVID vaccines and medicines to 77 countries — including those actively spreading anti-India narratives. That’s not foreign policy naivety. That’s Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in action.
Dr. Anshuman Behera presents a rigorous, policy-grounded lecture on Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — not as a feel-good slogan but as the civilisational value that structurally shapes India’s foreign and domestic policy. His argument challenges the Western binary: the belief that ancient wisdom is antithetical to modernity is itself a Western construct. India’s tradition deals in totality, not binaries — and the idea that the whole world is one family is simultaneously a philosophical claim, a diplomatic doctrine, and an operational framework.
The evidence is concrete: road construction in Afghanistan, subsidised rice to Bangladesh (even as anti-India slogans dominate its streets), 1,000 ambulances gifted before the regime change. People say this is national interest. Dr. Behera invites closer examination — because the pattern consistently extends beyond strategic calculation into genuine civilisational responsibility. India’s COVID response, he argues, cannot be explained by pure realpolitik. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam remains the most accurate explanatory variable.

About the speaker:
Dr. Anshuman Behera Associate professor, National Institute of Advance Studies, Bangaluru. His areas of interest include political conflicts and political violence in South Asia. He also works on the social processes of development and conflict. A major focus of his research now is on the Maoist insurgency and identity conflicts in India, religious radicalization in South Asia and people’s movement and conflicts over natural resource distribution. He is very much interested to collaborate on the issues of countering violent extremism and social conflicts.