Context

• Despite being home to 1.4 billion people, a vibrant democracy, and a critical player in global geopolitics, India remains underrepresented in the intellectual and philanthropic imagination of elite American institutions.
• The conspicuous absence of an India-focused equivalent to the prestigious Schwarzman Scholars programme reveals not only a policy gap but a deeper malaise, a psychological and narrative void that has long shaped Western engagement with Asia.
• Therefore, it is important to explore the roots of this imbalance, its enduring consequences, and the case for a transformative India-centred academic initiative.

The Schwarzman Paradigm and India’s Exclusion

• The Schwarzman Scholars programme, launched in 2016 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, was modelled on the century-old Rhodes Scholarship.
• Its mission is to cultivate future global leaders familiar with China’s political systems, strategic culture, and worldview.
• Its very existence is emblematic of the West’s intellectual and emotional investment in China.
• That no such high-profile fellowship exists for India is not incidental, it reflects decades of uneven academic and narrative investments, where China has consistently been seen as essential, while India has remained peripheral.
• This asymmetry is not new. Harold R. Isaacs’s 1958 work, Scratches on Our Minds, documented the psychological patterns that influenced American perceptions of Asia.
• China, in American imagination, emerged as complex, revolutionary, dangerous, and fascinating.
• India, by contrast, was filtered through colonial British lenses, chaotic, spiritual, passive.
• These scratches have never been fully erased and India remains either misrepresented or simply invisible in Western frameworks that determine academic attention, philanthropic focus, and strategic partnerships.

The West’s Readiness to Believe in China and A Stark Contrast in Academia

• The West’s Readiness to Believe in China
  • China’s narrative of ascension was not only aggressive, it was emotionally calibrated for Western audiences.
  • From economic transformation to global integration, China told a seductive story.
  • Western sinologists like Stephen FitzGerald have noted how the West wanted China to succeed.
  • The state played its role with finesse: building Confucius Institutes, nurturing think tanks, and engaging universities to generate soft power.
  • India, in contrast, never cultivated such seduction. Emerging from colonial rule with a doctrine of sovereignty, self-reliance, and non-alignment, India avoided ideological entanglements.
  • Its pluralistic democracy, thriving diaspora, and cultural richness, while impressive, lacked narrative cohesion.
  • Worse, its bureaucratic approach to cultural diplomacy has been sporadic and often uninspiring, missing the emotional and strategic depth that China has mastered.
• A Stark Contrast in Academia
  • The disparity is particularly stark in American academia.
  • China Studies enjoys robust institutional support at top-tier universities, with generous funding, clear strategic relevance, and interdisciplinary scholarship.
  • India, by contrast, is often relegated to narrow regional or anthropological frames, under South Asian or Postcolonial studies.
  • These scholarly approaches, while important, fail to capture India’s contemporary dynamism in technology, space, innovation, climate policy, and strategic affairs.
  • This academic marginalisation has real consequences. Future American leaders are not being trained to understand India, its ambitions, or its complexities.
  • Misguided strategic assumptions, such as the persistent hyphenation of India-Pakistan in U.S. foreign policy, are symptomatic of this intellectual vacuum.
  • Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated offers to mediate in the Kashmir issue are not mere personal eccentricities but signal deeper institutional gaps in understanding India’s geopolitical reality.

The Case for a Flagship India Fellowship

• A Schwarzman-style fellowship for India is not merely symbolic. It would serve three critical purposes:
  • Institutionalize India’s growing importance in the global imagination.
  • Train global leaders with a nuanced understanding of India’s systems, challenges, and aspirations.
  • Correct the existing narrative asymmetry that has kept India at the margins of elite intellectual and policy platforms.
• But for this to succeed, India must first invest in its own institutional infrastructure.
• While institutions like the IITs, IIMs, and emerging liberal arts universities such as Ashoka and Krea show promise, none yet possess the global prestige, philanthropic capital, and policy connectivity required to anchor such an ambitious programme.
• Building this ecosystem will require a partnership between the state, private sector, and academic leadership, underpinned by long-term vision and global ambition. 

The Importance of Narrative: Narrative is Strategy

• At the heart of this issue lies the challenge of narrative. China’s rise was accompanied by a story that was both strategic and seductive.
• India’s silence, or strategic restraint, has too often been misread as absence or ambivalence.
• In a world where power is as much about perception as it is about capacity, India needs to rethink how it tells its story.
• This requires more than just economic data and soft-power clichés like International Yoga Day.
• While India’s presence in American cities through yoga studios and Indian cuisine is visible, it has not translated into strategic or intellectual power.
• What is missing is a coherent, confident narrative, one that frames India as a leader, not just a counterweight to China.

Conclusion

• The absence of an India-focused fellowship like Schwarzman is both a consequence and a cause of India’s underrepresentation in elite global discourse.
• If India wishes to be seen and understood on its own terms, it must build platforms that train, attract, and empower the next generation of global thinkers and leaders.
• The battle for influence is not fought only in parliaments or boardrooms, but in classrooms, research centres, and campus conversations.
• To shape the world’s future, India must first shape how the world imagines it and this means not only healing the scratches on Western minds but ensuring that India becomes a presence in the places where ideas are born and leadership is cultivated.