Evolution of Indian Strategic Thought-1

[svinayak]

India's appearance of lack or absence of strategic thinking or cluelessness is India's strategy for dealing with stronger or bigger powers.

To understand this read my favorite story of the Brahmin and the Tiger from the prespective of the jackal.

Over the weeks will show how it was implemented after 1857 and got us here.

This is also based on how the colonial powers understood Indian society over 200 years. The major powers have built their global empires on the back of Indian colonial experience. So India has unique advantage in knowing the details of these power structures and global empires.

[ramana]

Please watch the crucial third part of the Panchatantra as rendered by Ben Kingsley.

It is the essence of strategic cluelessness.



it worked mostly but failed in 1962

[ramana]

http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/essays/i ... policy-fog

The world is coming to India, and it will need to know where New Delhi stands.

Another Tanaham wannabe. He wants India to be US Gungadin after all they hae done to reduce him to that state.

They have to understand the Theory of Mind.

In other words how does India think?

And using Macaulayised minds of Indian Gungadins doesn't help as they are same as Western minds.

[ramana]

1857 established the British as the dominant force in the Indian sub-continent. After that there were no major military attempts to overthrow the British. Yet 90 years later there was no more empire no more Great Britain. Only United Kingdom is left, which has no geographical connotation.
Yes WWII bankrupted them, US moves forced their hand etc. But India's freedom movement still had its role for without it none of the above would have mattered for they would have still held on like the other European colonials who refused to give up till late 90s.


So how did this happen with 'clueless' Indians who don't appear to have a strategy?

[Prem]

Indians are not clueless but glueless, PSec-Xhongi,RNIs have been bitting the Dore and Lore which binds Indian.
Once they gel, Brahmand is the limit.

[ramana]

2009: The Year of the Guru_ From Outlook India

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?250522

heritage: arthashastra
Year Of The Guru
It’s hundred years since the discovery of Chanakya’s great work from a manuscript
Sugata Srinivasaraju

Against Amnesia

* This is the centenary year of the publication of Kautilya’s Arthashastra
* The manuscript is in a cupboard in the director’s office at the Oriental Research Institute, Mysore
* Its pathbreaking discovery, and publication, by Shamashastry altered our view of ancient Indian history
* The institute is still not clear how the centenary should be celebrated
* Shamashastry’s family fears the event may go unnoticed

***


The Oriental Research Institute (ORI), set up in 1891 by the then Maharaja of Mysore, is a magnificent heritage building, blending architectural styles such as Gothic, Corinthian and Romanesque, and housing nearly 60,000 palm-leaf manuscripts from antiquity.


[Until it was identified from a manuscript by Shamashastry, Chanakya’s opus was know only from references.]



What brought fame to the institute, however, was the discovery among them of Kautilya’s Arthashastra some 100 years ago. A manuscript of the treatise on politics and governance, believed to have been written circa 4th century BC, was found and identified by Rudrapatna Shamashastry, a refined scholar of Sanskrit who was the librarian and later the curator of the institute.




Dr. R. ShamaShastry

Shamashastry came across the work in a heap of manuscripts he was going through. This was in 1905. But it was 1909 by the time he transcribed, edited and published the Sanskrit edition, making the current year the centenary of his landmark publication. He then painstakingly rendered the work into English, publishing it to astounding ovation in 1915, by which time excerpts had already made appearances in journals like Indian Antiquity and Mysore Review, preparing Indologists across the world for the watershed appearance of the English edition.

All the fame of the work and its discovery, however, do not seem to have inspired enough enthusiasm for careful preservation. Instead of a safe or a weatherproof glass case, the manuscript is brought out for viewing, after much persuasion, from an unlocked steel cupboard in the director’s office. A wrapping of red cloth, and a spray of preservative citronyl oil, is all the protection the manuscript gets. Prof Jaganath, an expert in manuscriptology at the ORI, puts it all in perspective. “Don’t expect an autograph of Chanakya on these palm leaves,” he says. “This is perhaps only a recopy of a recopy made some 500-600 years ago. It was with a pandit in Tanjore, who handed it over to the institute not knowing what was written on it. Other such recopies were found elsewhere in India, but that was later, after our discovery.” He explains that manuscript is in Sanskrit, but written out in the Grantha script, not Devanagiri. Since the Tamil script couldn’t accommodate certain sounds from Sanskrit, Grantha was created to allow for the representation of those sounds in a script accessible to those who know Tamil.

At ‘Asutosh’, the house of Shamashastry in the Chamundipuram locality of Mysore, there’s no electricity supply, but his portrait is illuminated by torchlight and brought down enthusiastically by his great grandson to be photographed. And the daughter-in-law explains that the house is named for the legendary Sir Asutosh Mookerjee of Calcutta University, who “encouraged my father-in-law a great deal and also visited our house when it was built”. Family members bring out reprints of Shamashastry’s other books and ask, “Do you think the university or the government will celebrate the centenary year?”



Nursery: The Oriental Research Institute, Mysore

Their uncertainty is at odds with the magnitude of Shamashastry’s discovery and the subsequent publication of Kautilya’s work. Dr H.P. Devaki, director of the ORI, says, “The publication of Arthashastra not only gave a huge fillip to Sanskrit studies, but significantly altered our understanding of ancient India. A lot of course correction happened in history after this was published. And since it touched upon subjects like law, politics, economics, trade, governance, diplomacy, war, weaponry, natural calamities, the vices and virtues of rulers, it also naturally attracted a lot of general interest.” Even the genius and skulduggery of its author Kautilya—who was also known as Vishnugupta or by the patronymic Chanakya—was in the realm of myth before the discovery of the manuscript. It was well-known that Chanakya overthrew the Nanda dynasty and installed Chandragupta Maurya on the throne circa 321 BC, but scholars knew of him and his magnum opus only from references in other classical texts by people like Dandi, Bana, Vishnusarma, Mallinathasuri, or the Greek Megasthenes. Not until Shamashastry’s labours of transcription and translation did it come to light that the original work was in 15 adhikarnas (or books) and a total of 150 chapters.


The manuscript is presrved using citronyl oil

F.W. Thomas, then the librarian of the India Office Library in London, had this to say about the work at the time of its English publication: “I can testify to the great value of the work, which sheds more light upon the realities of ancient India, especially as concerns administration, law, trade, war and peace, than any text we possess....” Vincent Smith, the author of the History of Ancient India, in the preface to the second edition of his book, makes this acknowledgement in 1913: “The description of the Maurya empire and administration...has been revised with special regard to the discovery and partial publication by Mr R. Shamashastry of the ancient treatise on the art of government, ascribed to Chanakya or Kautilya, the minister of Chandragupta Maurya.” Several such revisions of history writing followed. Indologist J.F. Fleet, who wrote an introduction to the English edition, was generous in his praise of Shamashastry: “We are, and shall always remain, under a great obligation to him for a most important addition to our means of studying the general history of ancient India.”

The fame of Arthashastra and Shamashastry was so widespread that Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the then maharaja of Mysore, had a strange encounter in Germany. At a party, he apparently ran into the vice-chancellor of a German university and introduced himself, whereupon he was asked if he was from the land of Shamashastry. M.S. Srinivas, Shamashastry’s son, now in his eighties, says, “The maharaja was so overwhelmed that on his return to Mysore, he invited my father and felicitated him. He also had the large-heartedness to say, ‘In Mysore, I’m the king and you are my subject, but in the rest of the world, I’m known only through you.’” Accolades followed. In August 1919, the Oriental University, Washington DC, conferred a honorary doctorate on Shamashastry. Calcutta University followed suit in 1921; the same year, he was admitted to the Royal Asiatic Society and won the Campbell Memorial gold medal.



Legend & legacy: Shamashastry's son M.S. Srinivas at the family home

There is also a record of Rabindranath Tagore complimenting Shamashastry. In 1927, Mahatma Gandhi met him in Nandi Hills. Prof A.V. Narasimha Murthy, a retired professor of ancient history, paraphrases the conversation, as recorded by Mahadev Desai, the Mahatma’s secretary: “Shastry told Gandhiji, ‘Sir, in the ancient days, there used to be guides like Patanjali, Hemachandra, Vidyaranya and others. Rulers today don’t have such an advantage. You should lead the country towards morality.’ Gandhiji smiled and said, ‘Who will bell the cat? My orientation is slightly different; the minds of our people have to be rectified first.’”

Asked how the ORI proposes to celebrate the centenary year of the publication of Arthashastra, Devaki says, “We should do something and we will certainly do something, but then I am stepping down as director soon. My successor will make all the plans.” But Prof Jaganath says the best way to commemorate the event is to study properly the several commentaries that have been written on the Arthashastra after the 12th century. The manuscript discovered by Shamashastry also carried a commentary on a small part by a writer named Bhattasvamin.

The Mysore University, under whose jurisdiction the ORI comes, was given a Rs 100-crore grant in the 2008 Union budget. Perhaps it should set aside a small sum to commemorate the discovery of this great work. At present, it is only the Kautilya Circle, a roundabout on Radhakrishnan Avenue, that serves as a reminder of Mysore’s great tryst with classical discovery.

[ramana]

X-post....

A Mountain Strike Corps is not the Only Option - Raja Menon, The Hindu

In the history of Indian strategic thought, the decision to create a mountain strike corps against China will remain a landmark. While the file on the subject has apparently been circulating for a while, the absence of open discussion on so momentous a decision is deeply disappointing. Some commentators are of the view that the Chinese incursion in the Depsang plains swung the decision decisively in favour of the strike corps. If so, it doesn’t make much sense, for, where is Depsang and where is Panagarh — the headquarters of the mountain strike corps?

What irks a strategic commentator about this decision is the question whether our reaction is wiser, more mature and better institutionalised than it was in 1962. At that time, the Prime Minister had “instructed” the army to “throw out” the Chinese following which Brigadier Dalvi’s mountain brigade made its fateful advance across Namka Chu. The big question today is — what were our options? Did we examine more than one option and select the best one? Presumably, it is to guarantee that we go through an intellectual process that we now have a Chiefs of Staff Committee, an Integrated Staff, a National Security Council and Adviser, and the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). Did they actually look at alternatives, or was it a straightforward case of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for a mountain strike corps?

The first step

The first thought that strikes a strategic thinker is whether any non-military options were first examined. This is an inevitable first step in the long and tortuous process that leads up to military action. The Depsang incident, it will be remembered, took place in a part of the country which, before 1954, was always shown as un-demarcated or undefined. What, for instance, were the arguments in the CCS for and against the Johnson-Ardagh Line and the Macartney line? Those who are unfamiliar with these names can take a look at Wikipedia. It is the essence to understanding a possible settlement of the boundary dispute. The fact is that while our case in Arunachal Pradesh is strong and undisputed, the situation is not quite similar in the west where the recent intrusion took place. Admittedly, the political numbers simply don’t permit the government to commit itself to a grand bargain with China on territory. The Chinese are in a similar position. {I am not sure if the Chinese are in a similar political situation. But, certainly, they have a law that awards only capital punishment to anybody who barters away Chinese land. Like a mandatory deat punishment for Blasphemy in Islam. Chinese leaders always have this law in the back of their minds while dealing with other countries} But if the border problem hinges for a solution on a strong, domestic government, it is indeed better for both countries to postpone the solution to the next generation — as the Chinese suggest. So how did we come to the conclusion that the Chinese may force the border issue now , leading us to raise a mountain strike corps?

It has been argued that China is a continental power with a huge land army. It is making amends by funding its Navy strongly, to change the balance. But its army reforms have converted its land forces into a large armoured and air mobile force capable of rapid redeployment.

Under these conditions, to raise an infantry heavy mountain strike corps has obvious disadvantages. First, it would be geographically confined to one or two axes of movement and capable of being blunted. Secondly, whatever we may do on land, we will remain an asymmetric power vis-à-vis the huge People’s Liberation Army (PLA), whose defence budget is thrice ours. Thirdly, a strike corps in the mountains denies us the time and place of a counter offensive, because it is geographically limited. These arguments should have come up during the process of examining options. If they didn’t, it is tragic and shows little improvement from the confusion and bluster of 1962 preceding the disaster.

Infantry heavy

The Indian Army is a fine institution and no one grudges it any funding. But it is also one of the most infantry heavy armies in the world. Its armour-to-infantry ratio is badly skewed, it is not air mobile, its manoeuvre capability is poor and Rs.60,000 crore would have addressed all these deficiencies and more. Instead, with the strike corps it will become even more infantry heavy and Rs.60,000 crore will have been wasted in barely addressing the tremendous disparity with the PLA’s mobility, numbers and manoeuvre capability. It must be remembered that we are addressing mountain warfare, where high altitude acclimatisation is a necessity for soldiers before being deployed. So the mountain strike corps would already be at high altitudes with little possibility of being redeployed without huge air mobility. All this should have been apparent to the Army Aviation Corps whose leaders seem bereft of strategic thinking, having flown light helicopters all their lives. Stopping the advancing Chinese in the mountains strung out through the valleys should have required specialised ground support aircraft like the A-10 Warthog, another strategic choice which was probably ignored by the army aviation branch. By not examining non-army options we seem to be repeating the mistakes of 1962 when the Sino-Indian war became a purely army-to-army affair for reasons that have still not been established.

Strengths & weaknesses

We are not privy to the notings in the file preceding the decision to raise a mountain strike corps, but it would certainly appear that the border issue appears to have been treated purely as an army problem for which only the army can find a solution, with the other arms of the government contributing nothing. Most of all, we appear not to have assessed the Chinese weakness and strengths. Their strength is the huge logistic network that they have built up in Tibet. By creating a one axis strike corps, we have played into their strengths. The Chinese weakness lies in the Indian Ocean, a fact that even Beijing will readily concede. The clash between their political system and economic prosperity requires resources and, increasingly, the Chinese resource pool is Africa, which generates massive sea lines of communication (SLOC) through the Indian Ocean. Today, they are merely SLOCs; tomorrow they will be the Chinese Jugular. Beijing’s paranoia about the Indian Ocean is therefore understandable but the threat according to its strategic commentators comes only from the U.S. Sixty thousand crore spent on strengthening the Indian Navy’s SLOC interdiction capability would have given us a stranglehold on the Chinese routes through the Indian Ocean. The Himalayan border, the entire border, could have been held hostage by our strength in the Indian Ocean with an investment of Rs.60,000 crore.

No one minimises the pinpricks that the Chinese are capable of but what we are looking for is an asymmetric capability to balance the Chinese four-fold advantage in GDP over India. Finding the solution requires all arms of the government to debate where our scarce resources should go. A geographically limited one axis offensive will not destabilise the PLA, but a flotilla of nuclear submarines and a three carrier air group in the Indian Ocean can economically cripple mainland China.

(Raja Menon retired as Rear Admiral in the Indian Navy)

[ramana]

Interesting observation in this article:

http://www.fairobserver.com/article/cur ... fghanistan

....
No country enjoys greater soft power in Afghanistan than India. Opinion polls consistently indicate that Afghans perceive India more favorably than any other country. Indian influence permeates various aspects of the daily lives of Afghans. Bollywood movies, Hindi songs, and Indian soap operas are broadcast frequently on Afghan television channels. Tens of thousands of Afghans visit India every year for education, medical care, and tourism.

....Despite the favorable historical context, an inauspicious augury of events has taken over India’s aspirations in Afghanistan. Since the Istanbul conference in 2009, India’s concerns about the premature political accommodation of the Taliban before neutralizing them militarily have been categorically dismissed by the West. Over the last 18 months in particular, India has been systematically excluded from participating in major international forums that seek to chart a roadmap for Afghanistan’s political transition and talks with the Taliban.

The various Afghan peace processes today threaten to undermine India’s interests in Afghanistan. There is no country in the region other than India that would lose more from a return of the Taliban to Kabul. The hard lessons from the Indian Airlines Flight IC 814’s hijacking in 1999, and the haven provided in Afghanistan to anti-Indian terrorist groups during the Taliban regime are not lost on New Delhi. During the last 11 years, India has relied overwhelmingly on the US presence in Afghanistan for its regional security interests. India is therefore most vulnerable to the drawdown of US military forces from Afghanistan.

The Challenges

Given Afghanistan’s strategic importance for India, New Delhi’s response to every major challenge outlined above reeks of cluelessness.

First, as the US orchestrates a face-saving drawdown of its military presence from Afghanistan, New Delhi dithers over the responsibility to recognize its interests, articulate them and pursue them aggressively. It fails to convey its interests and concerns both to its allies and to its adversaries.

Second, New Delhi remains reluctant to openly voice its opposition to the peace processes despite their negative implications for India’s security interests. In May 2011, on his visit to Kabul, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “wished Afghanistan well” in the process of national reconciliation, adding that India would “respect your choices.”

...
And third, in spite of Afghanistan’s strategic importance, India’s domestic media is passive on Afghanistan. Reporting on Afghanistan within Indian media remains minimal and the analysis on Afghanistan’s political evolution is mostly cursory. India’s commentary on Afghanistan thus fails to become a reference point for the western analysts and media who seek to understand regional narratives on Afghanistan. Instead, the regional narratives about Afghanistan are dominated by the commentary in Pakistan that remains superior both in quantity and in the sophistication of its analysis. Despite this, there is little in the way of incentives or initiative from New Delhi to change this situation.

Undermining India’s Credibility

Several notable contradictions merit further attention. After every major attack launched by the Taliban against Indians and Indian assets in Afghanistan, New Delhi “hails” the solidarity and the strength of its relationship with Kabul and rewards it additional hundreds of millions of dollars. New Delhi seeks to play a greater role in the development of the Afghan National Security Forces, but chooses instead to genuflect to regional sensitivities. It signs a strategic agreement with Afghanistan, but subsequently decides to scale down its economic footprint in Afghanistan. It wins the bid to invest in the lucrative mining sector in Afghanistan, but refrains from operationalizing the mining activities in the short term. It remains legitimately paranoid about the completion of US military withdrawal in 2014, but fails to calibrate its independent response to the security vacuum that would result from the drawdown.

Such contradictions undermine India’s credibility as a serious partner, and also raise fundamental questions about its ability to realize strategic outcomes in its own backyard.

And here’s the irony: New Delhi enjoys enough leverage both within Afghanistan and globally to realize the outcomes that it seeks. It maintains longstanding friendships with elites from every major ethnic group in Afghanistan. Its cultural-economic profile and regional standing can win over most naysayers within Afghanistan, albeit temporarily. Geopolitically and economically, India's importance to the United States has never been greater. Its global reputation has not scaled such heights before. And, within pockets of the Indian government and in certain non-government organizations, significant expertise exists on Afghanistan.

If lack of expertise, resources, networks, or influence do not explain India’s reluctance in Afghanistan, what does? According to a retired government official, two issues plague foreign policy formulation in India. First, the strengthening of regional parties and weakening of the center hinders the conceptualization and articulation of national interests in India. At present, the foreign policy formation has become federalized, catering mostly to the concerns of regional parties. For instance, Sri Lanka is mostly a concern of the political parties in Tamil Nadu; Afghanistan is of concern only to the policymakers in New Delhi. The second problem is that foreign policy formulation requires a strong domestic context, which is missing in India. The current economic model in India has created strains within the society. Large segments of the population feel increasingly disenfranchised, and thus fail to take ownership of the system. The current model, as a consequence, is unable to mobilize the talents and the expertise of the Indian population into strengthening the domestic polity, and thereby enhancing India’s role in the international sphere.

While these problems are fundamental to the working of the Indian polity and would require long-term solutions, a few areas where India could immediately take action in Afghanistan are fairly obvious. For a start, New Delhi needs to define its interests and articulate them. It should, with its Afghan partners, develop a coherent vision about the kind of Afghanistan that would enable Afghans realize their potential and identify with India’s geopolitical aspirations.

....
In not urgently developing a strategy to respond to the changing dynamics in Afghanistan, New Delhi risks betraying not just the Afghans who are yearning to move past their darkest days, but also the democratic values that India stands for. That Afghanistan is at risk of further disorder after 2014 places a greater, rather than a lesser, responsibility on India to use its power assertively to halt and slow down the regressive trends. This should be a matter of top priority for India. If India desires to be respected as a great power, it must act like one. Afghanistan is a litmus test of its power. Realizing this may be a good starting point.

In other words if India doesn't act as he (and the interests he represents) wants to, India is letting the world down!!!!

How does a power with legitimate interests act when it is willfully kept out by the super power to suit their interests?

It gives it enought rope to hang itself and its interests.


Kabul Embassy attack was an attack on the sovereign terrotory by terrorists from TSP with US turning a blind eye. India did not even react then.

[Prem]

Interesting observation in this article:

http://www.fairobserver.com/article/cur ... fghanistan

In other words if India doesn't act as he (and the interests he represents) wants to, India is letting the world down!!!!How does a power with legitimate interests act when it is willfully kept out by the super power to suit their interests?It gives it enough rope to hang itself and its interests.
Kabul Embassy attack was an attack on the sovereign territory by terrorists from TSP with US turning a blind eye. India did not even react then.

Its not him but the company he keeps now. Afghan hatred for Poaqs should be to Kill Poaq at the very first sight.

[ramana]

Another great one joins the immortals:

Soldier, Scholar, Institution builder Air Cdre. Jasjit Singh, RIP

Air Commodore (retired) Jasjit Singh, who passed away on Sunday, August 4, in Gurgaon will be long-remembered as a pioneer of Indian defence and security studies. A decorated fighter pilot awarded the Vir Chakra in the 1971 Bangladesh war, Singh commanded Number 17 Squadron (MiG-21) and later served as Director Operations in Air Headquarters. A keen researcher, noted for his scholarly aptitude and many service papers, he joined the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in the early 1980s. At the time, the late K. Subrahmanyam was IDSA director and Singh was soon elevated to deputy director.

In 1987, Singh was appointed IDSA director, despite the military being an institutional subaltern in the Indian matrix, and this was enabled by the faith Subrahmanyam reposed in his deputy. From 1987 to 2001, Jasjit Singh led the IDSA and nurtured a large number of researchers and analysts who now constitute the Indian strategic and security studies community. During his IDSA tenure, Singh made a major contribution to Indian thinking apropos the nuclear issue, modernisation of the military, reviewing the defence budget, air-power and naval issues, internal security challenges, the end of the Cold War, and more. A prolific writer, his articles and books, singly authored and edited, are numerous. His most recent edited volume, China's India War 1962: Looking Back to See the Future, was released a few weeks ago.

The IDSA, under Subrahmanyam and Jasjit, made a significant contribution to the shaping of India's nuclear discourse at a time when the country was ostracised and under severe international sanctions. The Sapru House, where the IDSA was then located, was the venue of intense deliberations and analysts, academics and media personnel were regular visitors.

Having joined the IDSA as a researcher in the late 1980s when Air Commodore Singh had taken over, I have personal recall of this period. Our interlocutors included the late Madhavrao Scindia and Rajesh Pilot and some current luminaries in the political spectrum.

The US-led war for Kuwait in early 1991 saw Jasjit meticulously following the military operations and providing some of the most rigorous battlefield analyses derived from visual imagery — a first for Indian print-media. India's nuclear tests of May 1998 and the Kargil War of 1999 again saw Singh publishing two definitive edited volumes in a relatively short period — and they still remain the more authoritative books on the subjects.

Post the IDSA tenure, Jasjit was editorial advisor for defence and strategic affairs for The Indian Express, and then moved on to found the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), which he headed till his untimely demise. The first of the three service think-tanks — the other two being the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) and the National Maritime Foundation (NMF) — under Jasjit's rigorous stewardship, CAPS has notched up an enviable track-record and has published almost 70 volumes/ monographs in the last decade, of which a third have been either authored or edited by Air Commodore Singh. One of the books he laboured over was the biography of the Marshal of the Indian Air Force, Arjan Singh, now into its second edition.

Jasjit's most significant contribution was in the abiding chink of India's national security — the management of higher defence. In early 1998, when the NDA government assumed charge, a task force led by the late K.C. Pant was set up to review policy challenges and recommend long overdue structural changes. As the member-secretary, Jasjit Singh laboured for months and produced a comprehensive document that sensitised the political establishment as to what had to be done to remedy the situation.

The Kargil War followed, and subsequently the NDA government initiated some more committees and task forces — but regrettably, there has been no tangible change to the existing national security lattice right down to UPA 2. In my last few interactions with Jasjit, he spoke passionately about the many areas that still needed to be addressed by him as an analyst — and fretted that he did not have enough time. This, despite working diligently for as much as 16 hours, every day.

A committed air warrior to the end, Jasjit had his own reservations about some issues like the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). But, to his credit, he was one of the early votaries of enhancing India's maritime and naval capabilities.

Awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2006, Air Commodore Jasjit Singh served the country as soldier, scholar and institution-builder, and surmounted many challenges — both personal and professional — with commendable commitment and stoicism.

The writer, a retired commodore, served as deputy director of IDSA from 1996 to 2004

[RoyG]

[RoyG]

[ramana]

I would like to start the discussion on the roles and responsibilities of the National Security Adviser in Indian context.

For starters we need to catalog the achievements and failures of the past three NSAs:Brajesh Mishra, MK Narayanan and the current incumbent SS Menon.

I would like to have their biodata and background to put things in perspective.

I would like to numerate the short (five years), medium(ten years) and long term(>25 years) threats to India.

Next I would like to discuss what should be the powers of the NSA in order to meet future threats.

[ramana]

Bios of the NSAs:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brajesh_Mishra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._N._Dixit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._K._Narayanan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shivshankar_Menon

[ramana]

X_post....

quote="sum"
Even the NSA taking a swipe at Modi?

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, unlike "his imitators and those who would reclaim his legacy", worked tirelessly and successfully for communal harmony in the midst of the horrors of partition, National Security Advisor (NSA) Shivshankar Menon said Tuesday.

Delivering the annual Sardar Patel memorial lecture organised by All India Radio, he recalled that Patel spoke extempore in Amritsar in September 1947 asking people to restore calm and prevent revenge killing of Muslims trying to go to Pakistan. "Following his dialogue with community leaders and the speech, no further attacks occurred on Muslim refugees in Amritsar," he said.

"Unlike present-day Kautilyas and Machiavellis trying to claim him as their own, Patel's was realism tempered by principle and integrity," the NSA said.

What Gandhiji was for our moral compass, Patel was for our national security calculus, he said.

"I still hope those who are so quick to claim Patel's mantle but who fail to do him justice and actually diminish and distort him will learn this lesson," he said.

Menon also took a swipe at the group of strategic affairs experts who asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not to talk to Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif.

"When 40 self-styled experts and some political groups say do not talk to Pakistan until ideal conditions exist and all terrorism stops, it betrays a lack of self-confidence," he said.

"That is precisely what terrorists and their sponsors in the Pakistani establishment want, for us not to talk to those in Pakistan who might differ from them. Our Pakistan policy still faces the dilemmas that Patel's generation faced: how to prevent enemies of India from having their way. Patel's answer was clear...fight your enemies at a time and place of your choosing but do not make innocents, the people, victims of your policy," Menon said.

He said that is what the governments under A B Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh had done.

/quote

This man is a politician through and through, and part of the current process that has caused so many problems.

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/10/16/a ... 46441.html

I think the good NSA has also to reset both his compasses: moral and national security.

True there appears to be a dichotomy in TSP ruling setup between the TSPA which runs the terrorists and the TSP politicians who are the face for US public consumption so US govt can channel funds to keep the TSPA terror apparatus alive and on IV drip.

Chanakaya or Kautliya niti says when there is dichotomy one should engage one of the two parties to gain advantage. However the caveat is the party being engaged should be capable of taking the goat by the horns and put it back in the pen.

Misfortunately TSP politicians of any hue are incapable of putting the TSPA kabila guards back in the pen as the US & China directly support the military goons and undercut the political authority.

Last time Badmash tried after the Kargil defeat, Mushy staged a coup and the first people to recognize him in power were the Shumb-Nishumb of modern yuga: US and PRC respectively.


As such engaging the TSP politicians is an exercise in futility and 40 experts cant be wrong. Menonji engaging powerless Paki politicans is a futile gesture to appease the US.

More over Menonji is guilty of Type 0 error:

Solving the wrong problem precisely.

For this ignores the suffering that common Indians face from TSP terrorism. One has to have empathy if not sympathy for our own, when one cant prevent the terror emanting from the Pakis. This is precisely counter to Saradr Patel's advice he quotes. Its the people who are suffering from the Paki terror that he as NSA is sworn to protect. and he has not protected.

Hence my humble suggestion to reset both the compasses.

Anyway Menon has shown why an IFS cadre person is not the right choice for the NSA position in the current times.
Doubt if next NSA will be from IFS cadre for he has shown the limitations of the service background. They are good for treaties with drafting errors.

Note I am not differentiating between people and Indian Army as the Indian Army is from the Indian people.

In other words MMS and SSM's idealism is neither grounded in principles or integrity.

[ramana]

Looking back at the secretive Chemical weapons development by India it looks like it was not well thought out wrt to strategy, deployment and overall defence posture. It was more like 'we can do it and lets do it.'

Reason is except for an inner circle of scientists and political leaders no one even in Armed Forces knew the development and even worse the weapons were more like Kalidasa mode of extreme short range like mortar shells.

[ramana]

Kudremukh!!!

http://southasiamonitor.org/detail.php? ... g&nid=6220

'Patel, India and the World' : Lecture by Shivshankar Menon, India's National Security Advisor
Updated:Oct 16, 2013

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Dear Friends,

It is no easy task to speak in memory of the man who literally created the Indian Union as we know it. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was a giant in more senses than one. He re-united an India riven by the British after Partition and Independence, when that task seemed almost impossible to his contemporaries; he created and set standards for party organisation that everyone claims and strives for but no-one has achieved since; he laid the foundations for a modern Indian civil service under democracy; and, unlike his imitators and those who would claim his legacy, he worked tirelessly and successfully for communal harmony in the midst of the horrors of Partition.

Let me recount one incident from 1947. At Amritsar on 30 September 1947, when refugees were being killed in both India and Pakistan, Patel spoke extempore to the public to restore calm and prevent revenge killings of Muslim refugees trying to go to Pakistan. In one of the greatest speeches of his life he said:

"Here, in this same city, the blood of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims mingled in the bloodbath of Jallianwala Bagh. I am grieved to think that things have come to such a pass that no Muslim can go about in Amritsar and no Hindu or Sikh can even think of living in Lahore. The butchery of innocent and defenseless men, women and children does not behove brave men... I am quite certain that India's interest lies in getting all her men and women across the border and sending out all Muslims from East Punjab. I have come to you with a specific appeal. Pledge the safety of Muslim refugees crossing the city. Any obstacles or hindrances will only worsen the plight of our refugees who are already performing prodigious feats of endurance. If we have to fight, we must fight clean. Such a fight must await an appropriate time and conditions and you must be watchful in choosing your ground. To fight against the refugees is no fight at all. No laws of humanity or war among honorable men permit the murder of people who have sought shelter and protection. Let there be truce for three months in which both sides can exchange their refugees. This sort of truce is permitted even by laws of war. Let us take the initiative in breaking this vicious circle of attacks and counter-attacks. Hold your hands for a week and see what happens. Make way for the refugees with your own force of volunteers and let them deliver the refugees safely at our frontier."

Following his dialogue with community leaders and his speech, no further attacks occurred against Muslim refugees in Amritsar, and a wider peace and order was re-established soon over the entire area.

This is vintage Patel, showing courage and bravery in the face of high and hostile emotions, using reason, self-interest and realpolitik in his argument, and achieving the impossible. Most of all, for me, his integrity shines through, his intellectual honesty, no false promises and no emotion other than patriotism, one man in a position of authority standing for what he considers right, against the tide of popular feeling. No wonder that when he died on 15 December 1950 in Mumbai, in a gesture never repeated before or after, 1500 civil servants gathered at his Delhi home, 1 Aurangzeb Road, to pledge to work for the nation as he had done.

It was the same integrity and clarity that Patel displayed in his understanding of the world and India’s place in it. He was clear that it is primarily our internal strength that we must rely on to navigate the complex international situation. In retrospect his support for total non-cooperation with the British when WWII broke out unless they promised full independence to India after the war was the correct choice. (This was when Socialists and Communists were confused by the Nazi-Soviet pact and Subhash Bose wanted an alliance with Japan.) In 1942 Patel organised and sustained what the then Viceroy called “the most serious rebellion since 1857”. He was prescient in his opposition to taking the Kashmir issue to the UN, in his views on responses to the Chinese PLA taking Tibet, on liberating Goa by force, and on Hyderabad. Over time we have come to realise the wisdom of what he said and, in effect, we have followed his advice, albeit sometimes late.

In each of these instances Patel was a realist, who understood the balance of forces and placed little reliance on international understanding and institutions. But unlike present day Kautilyas or Machiavellis trying to claim him as their own, Patel’s was a realism tempered by principle and integrity. He had confidence in ourselves, and the ambition to try, all based on a strong patriotism, (not chauvinism).

Preparing for this lecture I could not but wonder whether we still display these characteristics today in our dealings with the world. Of course Patel was a rarity even in his own time, a time that seems in retrospect to be a time of giants, of great leaders of vision and capability. It may be worth seeing how Patel would react to and deal with today’s world. Let us consider why and how India deals with the world today and try and answer this question if we can.


Why

The main reason we deal with the world is because the world is essential to our quest to transform India. In history India has flourished and her people have been most prosperous when she was most open and linked to the rest of the world. You have only to think of the periods of great Indian achievement in the economy, science and culture -- the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Cholas, and the Mughals. Each of their realms was intimately connected with the rest of the world, not just in trade but in the spread of ideas, religion and science. (The opposite case also proves the proposition. Under the British Empire India’s links with the world were progressively whittled down to a supplier of raw materials and coolie labour, India was de-industrialised, and the result was fifty years of zero growth from 1900 onwards, mass hunger, famine, disease and poverty. In two hundred years one of the most advanced and prosperous societies on earth had been made into one of its poorest and most backward societies.)

After independence as well India has grown most rapidly since she opened up to the outside world again after 1991. India has been a major beneficiary of the open, interdependent world economy of the two decades before the world economic crisis of 2007-8. The role of foreign markets, capital and technology in enabling us to develop India is growing. We are not members of effective regional integration and market arrangements. Our interest is therefore in keeping the international economic system open, without protectionist distortions, while democratizing international decision making.

We now measure ourselves against international standards and benchmarks in an ever growing number of areas. Our diplomats had to be world class from the beginning since they dealt with the best the world put forward. And they did so successfully, against great odds. The economy, particularly firms and services, had to measure up to world standards if they were to compete abroad after 1991. We now need to do so in governance, particularly in spheres that directly affect the common man, like policing.

In today’s world there is no going back to absolute self-reliance, to autarchy or disengaging from the world. They are simply not in India’s interest. India may be unique, but exceptionalism in foreign policy has its limits. It is limited by our ever growing linkages with the world, politically, economically, socially and in terms of security. From a little over 18% of our GDP being linked to the external sector in 1991, we are now at over 40%, and rising. As the effects on our economy of the world economic crisis from 2008 showed, we are not and cannot be decoupled from the world. Terrorism and cyber security recognize no national frontiers.

How

There is of course a vast difference between the world Patel knew and what we now see. The bipolar world with two overwhelmingly powerful superpowers, of European superiority and colonial mastery, is now history, long gone, unlamented and changed much for the better. Today we are in a world of many powers, and power itself is more evenly distributed through the international system, though still “lumpy”. Last year more than half the growth in the world economy came from emerging economies like India and China. We have seen the limits of traditional military force and power in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

India too is different from Patel’s time. We have industrialised, though not as quickly and extensively as all of us may wish. We are self sufficient in food, and widespread famines are a thing of the past. The average Indian, who lived for 26 years when Patel passed away now lives for 65 years. And India has an international voice and presence derived from our economic significance and willingness to accumulate and use the instruments of state power in the army, nuclear weapons and other areas. We have gathered experience and expertise, and we have active media and public involvement in policy which was absent in the forties and fifties.

But with all these achievements and improvements in our strength do we display the confidence and ambition that Patel did? I am afraid that not all of us do.

When forty self styled experts and some political groups say do not talk to Pakistan until ideal conditions exist and all terrorism stops it betrays a lack of self confidence. That is precisely what the terrorists and their sponsors in the Pakistani establishment want, for us not to talk to those in Pakistan who might differ from them. Our Pakistan policy still faces the dilemmas that Patel’s generation faced: of how to prevent the enemies of India from having their way. Patel’s answer was clear, as you saw from his Amritsar speech: fight your enemies at a time and place of your choosing but do not make innocents, the people, (or refugees in that specific case), victims of your policy. And use real politik to influence the behaviour of your friends and enemies. That is precisely what successive Indian governments under Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh have done. Not talking does not change the behaviour of our enemies. In fact it hands them a success that only encourages them. At the very least talking to the saner elements in Pakistan could encourage them to stand for the right policies and could create confusion among our enemies.

Today, in effect, we follow Patel’s prescription against taking the Kashmir issue to the UN and have been successful in preventing international meddling in what is our internal affair. As for Pakistan, she is committed, albeit reluctantly, since the Simla Agreement of 1972 to deal with us bilaterally on all issues, as was Patel’s preference, and we will hold her to that. Our enemies in Pakistan have thrown every possible sort of barbarous terrorist act at us since the eighties. They are today suffering from the monster they nurtured. Precisely these have been the years when India has made the most progress in transforming herself. I daresay that Patel would have been proud of those achievements.

In the unfinished business that remains in our dealings with our neighbours that Patel expressed his views on -- (whether it is the China boundary, Kashmir, Pakistan or our people abroad) -- we can now engage the world from a much stronger position than in Patel’s day. That was his core message, that it was from strength that one had to negotiate, not just talk, about the issues. But at the same time, as his own example shows, he did not wait for ideal situations and conditions in order to engage. We can do no better than follow Patel’s own example in this, doing as Patel did.

The matter of our dealings with China is more complex. You must all be aware of Patel’s letter to Nehru of 7 November 1950. It bears re-reading in full today. The letter is worth reading again for the clear headed appraisal that it makes of the situation and for the series of practical steps that it suggests in response to the Chinese PLA entering Tibet. It is his practical suggestions for domestic responses that are as valid today as they were then, even as the international situation has changed and events have moved on. What Patel sought was a review of our long term defence needs; “political and administrative steps .... to strengthen our northern and northeastern frontiers; measures of internal security in the border areas; improvement of communications in these areas and with frontier outposts; and (a strengthening of the) policing and intelligence of frontier posts”. Notice that these are all designed to strengthen India. This is indeed still our agenda. It is in precisely these areas that we have made progress in the last decade, more, I dare say, than in any single decade before this one. One and a half months after writing this letter Patel passed away. The discussion on these issues that was to take place with Nehru never did. One of the fascinating ‘what if’ questions in our history is the course that events would have taken with China if we had acted with sufficient vigour on Patel’s suggestions when they were made.

The China border has been relatively peaceful after 1962 for a reason, that we are careful to maintain an equilibrium (or prevent the emergence of a significant imbalance) and a political context in which neither side finds the costs of changing the status quo attractive. For a decade and a half after 1962 both sides were internally preoccupied and gradually attempted to build border management capacity well within the Line of Actual Control, without changing the actual situation on the ground. During Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s 1988 visit to China we agreed to maintain the status quo on the border, to negotiate a solution to the boundary question, and not to allow the unsettled boundary question to prevent the development of other relations and exchanges. In 1993 the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement committed both countries to maintaining the status quo on the LAC and to the principle of mutual and equal security. We have also made progress in our discussions on a boundary settlement by agreeing the Guiding Principles and Political Parameters for such a settlement in 2005.

Since 1988 we have built a broader relationship with China. China is our largest trading partner in goods, over 10,000 Indians study in China, and we work together on international issues like climate change where we have similar interests. Today both India and China have a different position in the international community, and have a multi-faceted bilateral relationship which includes elements of competition and cooperation. There are certainly issues between us, as there will be between two neighbours who are growing and changing so rapidly. We try to maintain the dynamic equilibrium in the relationship needed for peace, stability and predictability. So far, we have both managed to do so successfully.

In terms of our overall security, which Patel dealt with as independent India’s first Home Minister, we face a complex set of challenges, most of them internal and many of them undreamt of in Patel’s time. We are better off in the sense that the threats Patel’s generation faced were of an existential nature. Until the mid-sixties it could still be respectably asked in the world whether India would break up or continue to exist as a united state. We of our generation are fortunate that the India that Patel and his generation built is strong enough that we do not face such questions anymore. What we do face are threats to our interests (not to our existence as a state and nation), in new domains such as cyber-space, and a world of growing uncertainty. We are learning how to counter terrorism. We may have improved our food security beyond the imaginings of that generation, but we now have to worry about our energy security, water security and resource availability for a population with growing needs and aspirations.

In one area that was only incipient in Patel’s time, that of nuclear weapons, we have actually greatly improved our situation. During the seventies, eighties and nineties we faced explicit or implicit nuclear threats on several occasions designed to change our foreign policy course. Fortunately our leaders at the time were strong willed and refused to be deflected. Since we tested and declared our nuclear weapons in 1998, we have not faced any such threats of nuclear blackmail.

In areas of security that were not conceived in his time Patel is a useful example of how to approach these problems, of open-mindedness, and of the mindsets that we need to cultivate and encourage. Take cyber security for instance. So many of us now use smart-phones, laptops and computers which are connected to the internet. We know that these are attacked, either for the purpose of disabling them or of stealing data or, in more serious cases, for espionage, to damage critical infrastructure like pipelines, or for terrorist financing, communications and recruitment. The answer is not to build walls and forts and hide behind them. In these domains where technology changes so rapidly and gives the offense new advantages every day, and where the speed of attack is almost the speed of light, there is little distinction between offense and defence. Of course we defend and build our walls in India. But, we also look for offensive solutions to deter attack and raise the costs to an attacker, or to guarantee retribution.

Conclusion

For me the most important lesson that we can learn from Sardar Patel is that we must dare to be ambitious, confident and try for the best outcomes for India. What Gandhiji was for our moral compass, Patel was for our national security calculus. And these are not contradictory for Patel was a good Gandhian.

I still hope that those who are so quick to claim Patel’s mantle but who fail to do him justice and actually diminish and distort him will learn this lesson. India’s policies abroad cannot be decided by emotion or sentiment, no matter how noble or appealing, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty abroad. And most important they should share his faith in India, in Indians and in our capabilities which have brought us so far since Patel’s time.

Farsighted Indian administrations have drawn the right conclusions and followed such a policy, whether under Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Atal Behari Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh. And that is the attitude that we must carry forward. It has brought us this far with success, measured in terms of outcomes and results, not the passing daily mood or headline or tweet.

If we are to transform India, a realist or ‘Patelist’ engagement with the rest of the world is what we must implement; engaging the world from strength while recognizing reality for what it is, foreswearing hubris and belligerence. India’s integrity, strengthening and transformation require nothing less. We need some of Patel’s realist policy and ambition if we are to succeed in our historic task and transform India.

Thank you.

[ramana]

X-Post...

But it has always been India, a status quo power, that wishes to live in peace, while Pakistan, craving Kashmir, uses every means at its disposal to alter the status quo. ……………………..

It would help if Pakistan’s government—facing home-grown terrorists even as it exports terror to its neighbors—showed a little more willingness to join the quest for peace. The moment the Pakistani establishment genuinely disavows terrorism as an instrument of state policy, the prospect of peace will dawn on the subcontinent. Alas, that prospect is not yet even a glimmer on the horizon.

Web Link below:

The Terrorist next Door[/quote]


Why is India the "status Quo" power wishing goodwill for all those who wish ill of India? Is this another of the pre-Independence mind set?
Is this still valid when we have faced strife since before Indepenence?

We need to debate this idea of India is a Status Quo power.
Its not in its interests to be a status quo power for that tempts others into mistaking it.
Also what does status quo mean? What are the limits of this statusquoism?

[harbans]

The utmost strategic piece of land for India today is Tibet and then Nepal. That realization is yet to dawn our so called experts as yet. Still reeling under some Nehruvian fantasy theories that forms reams of paperwork and intellectuals pouring into the semantics. I know of a paper forwarded for a national award given to me by a Prof to comment on. I saw that it was 40-50 pages, and had a huge amount of mathematical work, it had a lot of references, written in immaculate style, in immaculate paper and looking at it i returned it to the Prof and said, well it's not really my field, i don't see how i can be considered fit to comment on it. He said no read the first few para's carefully. I did and said i would throw the paper into the dustbin. The Prof smiled and said absolutely right. The paper at the start paragraphs clearly indicated production of free energy in complete violation to the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. Once we knew his basic assumption was flawed, skipping most of the math part, it was easy to locate why the energy he was producing was not free and hence the entire paper not worth wiping one's behind. So the Prof gave a big zero and sent it back to the selection team which included the Research head. And he wrote to the Prof why he did so, that many experts have praised the paper so much, it's presentation, technicality, and the potential. (In fact the person had in principle already got a grant of 50 L from somewhere). The Prof rang the head and told him bluntly, if you think there is any merit in the paper, you too need to go back to school.

Indian Stategic Foreign Policy is exactly like that. We have people who will drop names, technicalities, geostrategic orbits, compulsions, quote from a 4 volume thesis by some one who promoted Communism or some other idiocy. Anyone who has not gone through those 4 volumes is a jerk and has no understanding. Well, one need not. Just challenge the basic assumptions and you'll get to know what exactly they are barking on. The volumes of our FP is written on the basis of a few idiotic assumptions. Most of them are drawing room kind chitter chatter and meant for a 5 second attention span class that wants to discuss geo politics over a shot of whisky. So Stable Pakistan is good for India is a nod nod and a few reams of technicalities and policies based on that presented. Sounds geo strategically and politically the correct stance. Cannot change neighbors has again become staple diet and several reams of policy have been formed based on that flawed assumption. There are many such idiot cliches made assumptions and each should be exposed, trashed and publicized.

[Pranav]

The utmost strategic piece of land for India today is Tibet and then Nepal. That realization is yet to dawn our so called experts as yet.

Why dream of Tibet when you are already a slave of west oligarchic system.

[harbans]

To understand why Tibet is so important one has to: (My assumptions in Red)

1. Ask what this country really wants to be? An Islamic State or a Dharmic State. (A Secular state as is the present will in 40 years be inevitably an Islamic one)

2. A Dharmic State and a Sharia State cannot coexist.

3. If a Dharmic State cannot coexist with a Sharia, what chances of a 2nd partition occurring? Inevitable?

4. If a 2nd Partition occurs what areas do we lose?

5. By losing those areas what are our secondary hinterland losses? (Uttaranchal, Nepal, Bhutan, NE, Sikkim, Bodh Gaya?)

6. If we cannot avoid mainland India losses in a 2nd partition, how can we prevent loss of major Dharmic sthals?

Tibet and Nepal give us massive strategic leverage and a platform to hold the hinterland losses. It gives us a hold from which we can control water resources. It gives us a hold from which we can launch punitive action against Islamist regimes that may emerge in a 2nd partition. We can box the entity from the North, South, West while retaining full control of Dharmic sthals in the North. At a future point of time, with complete discrediting of Islamist doctrine we can look forward to reintegrating the lost lands.

If we don't evolve to that strategic thinking, we are doomed and deserve to drown in the Indian ocean. We don't need to call ourselves a civilization at all.

[Pranav]

To understand why Tibet is so important one has to: (My assumptions in Red)

1. Ask what this country really wants to be? An Islamic State or a Dharmic State. (A Secular state as is the present will in 40 years be inevitably an Islamic one)

2. A Dharmic State and a Sharia State cannot coexist.

3. If a Dharmic State cannot coexist with a Sharia, what chances of a 2nd partition occurring? Inevitable?

4. If a 2nd Partition occurs what areas do we lose?

5. By losing those areas what are our secondary hinterland losses? (Uttaranchal, Nepal, Bhutan, NE, Sikkim, Bodh Gaya?)

6. If we cannot avoid mainland India losses in a 2nd partition, how can we prevent loss of major Dharmic sthals?

Tibet and Nepal give us massive strategic leverage and a platform to hold the hinterland losses. It gives us a hold from which we can control water resources. It gives us a hold from which we can launch punitive action against Islamist regimes that may emerge in a 2nd partition. We can box the entity from the North, South, West while retaining full control of Dharmic sthals in the North. At a future point of time, with complete discrediting of Islamist doctrine we can look forward to reintegrating the lost lands.

If we don't evolve to that strategic thinking, we are doomed and deserve to drown in the Indian ocean. We don't need to call ourselves a civilization at all.

Does it make sense for a man afflicted with terminal cancer to spend his last week on earth lusting for a pot of gold coins? Tibet is the least of our worries, trust me.

[harbans]

Does it make sense for a man afflicted with terminal cancer to spend his last week on earth lusting for a pot of gold coins?

You are free to assume that India is afflicted with Terminal cancer. There are many who feel that it can be fought. Read again or clarify what you want to say without ambiguity.

[Pranav]

Does it make sense for a man afflicted with terminal cancer to spend his last week on earth lusting for a pot of gold coins?

You are free to assume that India is afflicted with Terminal cancer. There are many who feel that it can be fought. Read again or clarify what you want to say without ambiguity.

So many things, where to start? Rajiv Malhotra's "Breaking India" has a fair collection of facts about the deep undermining from inside, in all critical areas including government, politics, media, academia, "religious" activity etc. But Rajiv M tells only part of the story. If you will vote in 2014, the fact that you will be pressing a button on a machine with foreign installed software, which has not been verified on Indian soil, should emphasize to you your status as a slave. Your government exists only at the pleasure of foreign masters. It could be gone tomorrow if, for example, the Italians decided to reveal who "the family" is that is the beneficiary of the Agusta-Westland deal. And it is not the Chinese who are your slave-masters. That is why it is so ludicrous to see slaves dreaming about Tibet, while ignoring the massive shackles that are already firmly on their ankles.

[harbans]

Evolution of Indian Strategic thought has little to do with your fixation on EVMs. Please take that logic elsewhere. You even have a thread for that.

[ramana]

Actually both of you need to move elsewhere from this thread.

[harbans]

Ramana what is out of context in considering Tibet and Nepal as strategic to Indian thought? Or Indian Strategic thought expanding/ reevolving to include it in it's sphere?

[ramana]

Thats not the problem. Bringing dharmic and religious state of the future Indian nation state is.

[harbans]

Thanks Ramana Ji, i got a 'Dharmic' State simply because to consider Nepal and Tibet/ Bhutan Strategic to our future strategic interests, we must take inspiration from a common Dharmic past. I doubt that inspiration will be engendered from the way Secularism is being defined in India in the present context, it has not happened and we have no conviction in even defending what is ours at our Northern borders. I referred to the Prof because even strategic experts become mired in the nuances of technicality of which many are based on rank stupid assumptions and axioms. The need to focus on what assumptions and axioms our strategic thought is working on rather than technicality of nuances so many experts dole out, is also what i wanted to stress.

[ramana]

You can say all that without putting the Dharmic context which will automatically color the DIE mind.

BTW India needs to watch the KSA drama as it unfolds. The raison de etre for KSA is gradually going away : the West need for a consolidated state controlling the oil wells of KSA and their control over the Islam's two sites.

If the Syrian spring turns to a winter of disaster then one can expect a blowback just like the fall of Moscow to the October revolution and with it there will be discontent spread all around.

[Pranav]

Evolution of Indian Strategic thought has little to do with your fixation on EVMs. Please take that logic elsewhere. You even have a thread for that.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Anyway, carry on.

[ramana]

What you learn form Chanakya is the need for both short term and long view. The short term helps achieve the long view.
All the kuta neeti stuff folks bolivate on is for the short term. His greater achievement is the idea of one India instead of the many janapadas, which finally got implemented and furthered by subsequent kings and ultimately by Sardar Patel.

[ramana]

jaswant singh has released a new book on the mistakes in indian foreign policy
http://www.flipkart.com/india-risk-mist ... cd2e880f58

India at Risk : Mistakes Misadventures and Misconceptions of Security Policy

Experience over sixty-six years of independence reveals that India has failed when confronted with challenges to national security, external or internal. The challenges have been comprehensive but the response consistently amateurish.

Why, asks Jaswant Singh. Is it on account of conceptual fault lines or fractures in governance? Both, says Jaswant Singh, ably laying bare the challenges, responses and the consequences of failing to reach the goal of credible defence and security in independent India.

Having directly handled the responsibility of managing a whole series of security-related challenges, Jaswant Singh provides a uniquely informed and illuminating analysis of the major challenges that India has faced over the last sixty-six years: the conflicts, the issues and the consequences that remain with us today. How does it look in the first quarter of the 21st century?

[ramana]

What you learn form Chanakya is the need for both short term and long view. The short term helps achieve the long view.
All the kuta neeti stuff folks bolivate on is for the short term. His greater achievement is the idea of one India instead of the many janapadas, which finally got implemented and furthered by subsequent kings and ultimately by Sardar Patel.

I get the Daily Chanakya Quote and similar stuff on my phone. However these quotes in isolation don't give the overall strategy that Chanakya is renowned for. The quotes are more like Badde Niti or Sumati Shatakam, Vemana poems or folklore.


But then strategy devoid of the mission statement or values statement looks like kuta niti!!! And that is the Macaulayite opinion on Chanakya.




So one has to define the core objective of the nation. This is also the mission statement and everything stems from that.

[Atri]

My pranams to sri. Bipinchandra Pal on his birth anniversary..

here is an article on his book "nationality and empire" by your's truly.. Read each and every word, folks.. cannot highlight any one such sentence. what a visionary.. All this in 1923 - 10 years after end of qing dynasty in china.

Bipinchandra Pal on India and Clash of Civilizations (1923)

Thoughts of BipinChandra Pal from "Nationality and Empire" published in 1923 - Guys, this book is delight to read... highly recommended...

"This Pan-European combination [that we now call the West] will be a very serious menace to the non-European world. It will be bound to come into serious conflict with both Pan-Islamism and Pan-Mongolianism [metaphor for Expansionist China]. If Europe can settle her internal jealousies betimes, she will be able to dominate easily both the Islamic and the Mongolian world. Nothing will prevent in that case the parceling out of the Muslim lands on the one side, and of China on the other. But that is not very likely. It will take, at least, as long a time for the European chancelleries to forget their past jealousies and present rivalries, as it will take for China, now that she has awakened from the sleep of ages, to put her own house in order and organize her leviathan strength to hold her own against the entire world.

"The same thing is likely to happen in the Islamic world also; and the fall of Turkey in Europe will hasten this combination. It will not be an organized confederacy like that of China and Japan, but a far more dangerous, because more subtle, combination of the hearts of countless hordes who hold nothing so dear, neither land nor life, as their religion. And the real strength of this Pan- Islamic outburst will come from Egypt and India [which then included present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh], where it will be safe from the crushing weight of the Pan-European confederacy. England will not allow her European confederates to interfere with her own domestic affairs; such interference would break up the confederation at once. She will have to settle this Pan-Islamic problem, so far as it may affect her own dominions, herself."

Then describing where the danger for India will come from, Pal writes under the title "Our Real Danger". "And it is just here that our safety from this possible Pan-European combination also lies. Because of the British connection, India will have nothing to fear from any possible combination of the European powers. The same is also true of Egypt, though perhaps in a lesser degree. Our real menace will come not from Europe but from Asia, not from Pan-Europeanism but from Pan-Islamism and Pan-Mongolianism. These dangers are, however, common, both to India and Egypt and Great Britain. To provide against it, Great Britain will have to find and work out a satisfactory and permanent settlement of the Indian and the Egyptian problem, and we, on our part, will have also to come to some rational compromise with her. British statesmanship must recognize the urgent and absolute need of fully satisfying the demands of Indian and Egyptian nationalism, and India and Egypt will have to frankly accept the British connection - which is different from British subjection - as a necessary condition of their national life and freedom. To wantonly seek to break up this connection, while it will only hurt Great Britain, may positively kill every chance and possibility of either Indian or Egyptian nationalism ever realizing itself."

Predicting and pleading the need for the alliance of the West and India, Pal writes under the sub-head "Our True Safety": "Indian nationalism in any case, has, I think, really no fear of being permanently opposed or crippled by Great Britain. On the contrary, the british connection can alone offer its effective protection against both the Pan-Islamic and the Pan-Mongolianism menace. As long as we had to consider Great Britain alone or any other European Power for the matter of that, while thinking of the future of Indian nationalism, the problem was comparatively simple and easy. But now we have to think if China on the one hand, and of the new Pan-Islamic danger on the other. The 60 millions of Mohammedans in India, if inspired with Pan-Islamic aspirations, joined to the Islamic principalities and powers that stand both to our West and our northwest, may easily put an end to all our nationalist aspirations, almost at any moment, if the present British connection be severed.

"The four-hundred millions of the Chinese empire can, not only gain an easy footing in India, but once that footing is gained, they are the only people under the sun who can hold us down by sheer superior physical force. There are no other people who can do this. This awakening of China is, therefore, a very serious menace - in the present condition of our country, without an organized and trained army and a powerful navy of our own - to the maintenance of any isolated, though sovereign, independence of the Indian people. Even if we are able to gain it, we shall never be able to keep it, in the face of this Pan-Islamic and Pan-Mongolian menace. And when one considers these terrible possibilities of the world situation as it is slowly evolving before one's eyes, one is forced to recognize the absolute need of keeping up the British connection in the interest of Indian nationalism itself, for the very simple and sufficient reason that there is absolutely much greater chance of this nationalism fully realizing itself with rather than without this connection."

[syele]

The key deficiency of Bipan Chandra Pal's generation of ideologues was their lack of trust in the identity and strength of native Indian society. This whole generation got sold on impotency of native Indian population. Bipin Chandra Pal himself had some mental collapse in Britain and moved away from his 'extremist' phase and even nationalism after Curson Wyllie's assassination.

Not all 60 million Mohammedans of India and 400 hundred millions of Chinese could fight and not all 400 million native Indians were helpless civilians.

[harbans]

The key lies in identifying the rallying point/ native meta ethic system behind the Indian narrative. That was never established with conviction. When it is the rally will start.

[ramana]

One strand of thinking of the freedom struggle generation articulated by Bipin Chandra Pal:

/...Predicting and pleading the need for the alliance of the West and India, Pal writes under the sub-head "Our True Safety": "Indian nationalism in any case, has, I think, really no fear of being permanently opposed or crippled by Great Britain. On the contrary, the british connection can alone offer its effective protection against both the Pan-Islamic and the Pan-Mongolianism menace. As long as we had to consider Great Britain alone or any other European Power for the matter of that, while thinking of the future of Indian nationalism, the problem was comparatively simple and easy....

After WWI eclipse of Great Britain supplanted by US and the collapse of the FSU we can see how Congress the repository of the freedom struggle now kowtows to US in all areas even where US is acting against Indian interests.

My conclusion is being divorced from the Hindu epics or due to diffidence in asserting their nationalism is a major flaw of that generation that persists even now.


Having said this what is the primary objective of a nation?

[Atri]

Sheldon rightly pointed out the the problem occurred from the nehruvian model of development. The situation is getting worse day by day and a day will come when there will not be any pūrva -pakṣa. I remember a Sanskrit verse अशक्ता गृहनिर्माणे शक्तास्तु गृहभञ्जने। (It is easier to destroy a house than to build it up.) very cogently, he notes that Nehruvian policies made sure that classical culture is equated to elite brahminical culture. For a truly progressive politics, there requires a vibrant "classisism" in the society. in BRF terms and in dharmarthik domains, this translates to a genuinely pro-indic deep-state which is lacked in India.

sad indeed..

[ramana]

Lets have a few simple definitions.

Nation is a group of people with a common identity:racial, ethnic, language, civilizational values.
State or rashtra rajya is a civic structure where the nation stays.

So a nation or rashtra is eternal while a state or rajya is transitory. However Westphalian construct of nation-states has artifically fixed the state boundaries and allows alteration to suit the convienence of the P-5.

The primary objective of any nation is to seek a rashtra or state and preserve it. Every thin follows from that.

Maha Vishnu through Rama says as written by Valmiki, the adi kavi

Ramayana quotes Shri Ram telling Laxman "Janani Janma Bhoomishcha Swargadapi Gariyasi",

Here the land of birth is held sacred and is the state that needs to be defended.
In Udyogaprav, Sahadeva says that one should fight for ones kingdom.
Once the idea of the rasthra (territory, religion, culture, economic, political, society) is to be formed and defended in all its forms strategy becomes easy and tactics easier.
One problem is there is confusion in Indian elites minds about universalism. Its easy for Hindus to think of vasudeva kutumbam. But the universalism that the West seeks to spread is not the universalism that India understands.