At a time when Indian parliamentarians cannot find words in the English dictionary to express their ninda at the US-led war in Iraq, it may be distinctly out of place to write about India's new pragmatic foreign policy. C. Raja Mohan's Crossing the Rubicon is not, however, about moments of legislative cacophony and confusion. Instead, Mohan argues, there are radical fresh trends, visible over the last decade or so, that are now shaping India's engagement with the outside world. And these new features, as the title suggests, display the same chutzpah that history witnessed when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C.

CROSSING THE RUBICON: THE SHAPING OF INDIA'S NEW FOREIGN POLICY By C. Raja Mohan Viking Price: Rs 450 Pages: 321

What are the characteristics of India's "journey from the uncertainties of the early 1990s to a more self-assured diplomatic posture" by the turn of the century? According to Mohan, five great transitions took place in the '90s that the philosophically inclined could describe as an epistemological rupture in India's foreign policy. First, there was a move away from the national consensus on building a socialist society to a new agreement on constructing a capitalist order. The second dramatic shift, not surprisingly, was the fresh emphasis on economics. The shedding of Third Worldism and the assertion of national self-interest was the third major change. Related to the rejection of India's role as the permanent dissenter was the giving up of the anti-western mode of thinking, which had become a touchstone of India's international relations. It was a "return to the West".

Finally, of course, was the real tectonic shift that forms the central basis for Crossing the Rubicon: the movement from idealism to pragmatism. Mohan argues that idealism defined India's foreign policy because of the experience of the freedom movement. Successive generations of the country's

RETURN TO THE WEST: A.B. Vajpayee with US President Bush (left)

elite internalised this idealism, which had to be unlearned as the country confronted the brutal and anarchic world order of the '90s. India had to shed its ideological baggage and move from its past emphasis on the "power of argument" to a new stress on the "argument of power".

But are these changes as irrevocable as Caesar's crossing centuries ago? On that score, Mohan is more guarded. He recognises the challenges from within, which he presents as the struggle for the soul of India, symbolised by the "war of ideas" between N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys and K.S. Sudershan of the RSS. And, of course, it is quite clear whose side Mohan will take in this battle.

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