Amongst the two-dozen chapters of a textbook entitled the Unique Quintessence of International Relations (Ghoshal et al. 2000), designed to cater for students preparing for the competitive entry examinations of the largest national-civil service in the world (that of India) are a fairly predictable list of themes from the corpus of international relations: the nature and functioning of the nation-state system, the Cold War, the Third World in International Relations and so on.