Cosmopolitan elites: Indian diplomats and the social hierarchies of global order

Cosmopolitan Elites narrates the birth, everyday life, and fracturing of a Western-dominated global order from its margins. It examines diplomats of the elite Indian Foreign Service, many of whom were present at the founding of this order, set out to remake it in the name of a radically anti-colonial global subaltern, but often ended up seeking status within its hierarchies through social mimicry of its most powerful actors. This is a book about the struggles of belonging: it revisits what it takes to be a recognized member of international society and asks what the experience of historically marginalized actors inside the diplomatic club can tell us about the evident woes of global order today. In interrogating how Indian diplomats learned to live under a Westernized world order, it also offers a sociologically grounded reading on what might happen in spaces like India as the world transitions past Western domination. An awkward balancing act animates the order-making of India’s cosmopolitan diplomats: despite a genuine desire to strive towards a postcolonial world founded on diversity and difference. India’s cosmopolitans have sought to leverage their cultural capital to find social parity in a politically unequal world. Cosmopolitanism operates inside this balancing act not as an international ethic upholding an equal, tolerant, or liberal global order, but rather as an elite aesthetic which presumes cultural compliance, diplomatic accommodation, and social assimilation into Western mores.