author(s)
Vivek Kumar Hind

abstract
This paper examines India’s participation in the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, a pivotal moment in shaping the post-World War II global economic order. Drawing on recent historiographical reappraisals of the conference and specialized scholarship on India’s economic history, the study situates India’s engagement at the intersection of national aspirations, imperial entanglements, and global transformations. It argues that India’s presence at Bretton Woods marked a formative stage in the development of its relationship with international economic institutions. Through an analysis of India’s evolving role within the British Empire, the emergence of developmentalist thinking within anti-colonial nationalism, the articulation of Indian objectives at the conference, and the domestic interpretation of its outcomes, the paper offers a nuanced account of India’s early encounter with global financial governance an encounter that would shape its ambivalent position in the international economic order for decades to come.