This research paper investigates the evolving defense cooperation between India and Japan in the context of the strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly considering China’s rise. The existing literature recognizes China’s increasing influence as a significant factor in India-Japanese security cooperation, but tends to overlook the dynamics behind India’s shifting stance. The study reveals that India initially hesitated to actively engage in anti-China security cooperation with Japan until the mid-2010s, but later adopted a more proactive partnership. An analysis of policy documents, political speeches, and government records attributes India’s initial reluctance to its commitment to non-alignment and strategic autonomy, its desire to balance relations with both China and Japan, and its domestic political priorities favoring economic development over military expansion or strategic alliances. However, growing concerns over China’s assertiveness, military modernization, a change in political leadership, and the Quad’s development as a regional security platform have prompted India’s attitude shift. The research’s recommendations not only offer a roadmap for India, Japan, and other Indo-Pacific countries with deep economic ties to China, but also help combat China’s military threats to contribute to regional stability and security, address common challenges, and foster a peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.

This chapter investigates the complex relationship of sustainability with the tourism sector in India and such related challenges and strategies for integrating these practices. The concept of growth in India is very rapid for tourism development; though this is economically rewarding, it has therefore led to tremendous environmental and social problems, particularly in the ecologically sensitive areas. The chapter will scrutinize a range of important legislative instruments along with policy documents to evaluate how far these have been successful in promoting the cause of sustainability. This chapter helps find out the barriers toward the implementation of sustainable tourism practices through the case studies and conveyed literature. It provides suggestions so that the tourism practices can be aligned with Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 8. Insights presented in the chapter will add up to making the tourism sector development in India sustainable and resilient in the long run so that benefits for all—environment and local communities—from it.

The study explores the strategic affairs of BRICS member states with a special reference to India's geopolitical and economic stature with neighboring countries and regional blocs. The chapter examines the existing research and practical policy implications where India leverages BRICS for its advancing regional cooperation and interest. In this way regional ambitions, maritime security concerns, trade disputes, and diplomatic relations will be explored in the chapter. The study aims to evaluate how BRICS impacts India's geopolitical relations with South Asia, with a special reference to the maritime strategies in the Indian Ocean in view of China's increased assertiveness. The chapter would follow a qualitative methodology, aided by primary sources like BRICS communiqués and official statements of the Indian government, aided by scholarly articles and expert analyses.

What is called “International Relations theory” today is not a science of the international but a provincial theology of Europe, secularized and universalized as global knowledge. Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism—these are not mere analytical tools, but conceptual residues of a specific historical experience: that of Latin Christendom grappling with its own theological crisis. When these theories are uncritically applied to non-Western contexts, they illuminate some dynamics but systematically misdescribe others, leaving residual variance unexplained. India–Japan relations, we show, are not an anomaly to these theories but a mirror reflecting their epistemic limitations. We do not abandon their insights but relocate them, showing that under specified scope conditions—early institutionalization, normatively costly cooperation, and trust-persistence—they fall short. We argue that the problem lies not with the world but with the conceptual apparatus we use to describe it. Civilizations are not variations on a universal template—they are distinct ways of being in the world. India and Japan engage each other not through abstract ideas of power or liberal values, but through shared memories, affective trust, and experiential continuity. We propose, therefore, not a new theory, but a shift: from theorizing the world as Europe once experienced it, to letting civilizations describe themselves. Only then does IR become global.

This chapter is not a critique of failures; it is a reflection on why those failures persist despite repeated attempts. International climate governance has not lacked diplomacy, nor has it suffered from ignorance of science or absence of public concern. What it lacks, we argue, is intelligibility across worlds. The frameworks imposed in the name of global cooperation presume a world populated by rational actors, seeking utility, governed by secular institutions, and pursuing infinite growth. But such assumptions do not travel well. They do not describe most human communities; they describe a particular cultural experience made universal. Drawing on comparative insights and case studies, we show how this epistemological imposition produces alienation, not alignment; mistrust, not participation. Compliance becomes performative. To move beyond this impasse, climate governance must be reimagined—not as a global consensus on Western terms, but as a dialogue between diverse lifeworlds. Without plural epistemologies, transformation remains a metaphor.