Recent media reports suggest the intriguing possibility that ‘non-alignment’ is likely gaining currency once again as the core tenet of India’s foreign policy. Life is taking full circle after almost 6 or 7 years ago when the former United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice exhorted Indian pundits to purge from their thinking the last trace of the doctrine of ‘non-alignment’ associated with the world of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. She sought that Indians should instead trust the United States’ determination to make their country a truly global player. Thus, in the period that followed, Chanakya (circa 3rd century BC) who is credited with authorship of the ancient Indian political treatise called Arthasatra, was brought out of the woodwork to replace Nehru and Indira Gandhi as the new game in town in New Delhi. The ‘Hindu Machiavelli’ who was forgotten for some two millennia as an archaic past if little relevance to the modern-day world, provided the ‘civilisational alibi’ for the Indian establishment to bring about a paradigm shift in its foreign policy – under the garb of ‘national interests’ – attuned to its ‘unipolar predicament’ in the post-Cold War era.