Indias engagement with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO towards alternative narratives

Abstract

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), formally established in 2001, is said to provide an important structured platform to engage with a diverse, dynamic and complex region like Central Asia. Presently having eight members, half of the states of this organisation (i.e. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), fall within this region. This thesis begins with a critical/skeptical gaze on the region-regime interaction in Central Asia. The Theoretical International Relations (IR) reveals that whereas the mainstream ideas (Realist, Liberal and Constructivist) and practices (originating from such ideas), overwhelm the manifold histories, experiences and cultural realities of Central Asia by imposing a state-centric vision, the Global International Relations agendas, if incorporated, can reimagine the contours of this region on a more emancipatory, citizen/people-friendly scale. Led by the Great Powers active in Central Asia, as the regime Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in sync with the small Central Asian Republics, is in addition guided by a number of Eurocentric and Homegrown hierarchies, the nonWestern/Global IR vision would also liberate it and reposition its agenda in the multiple realities of its time, space and place. This transformation is in particular, desired because the SCO, although in practices and in the discursive space is Western, geographically it is located in the non-West. newline