Indian Strategic Thought

The debate about India's strategic thought starts from post-independence phase and thereafter different policy initiatives and approach are deciphered to look for the template of that approach. The major debate therefore hinges on India's independence and the policy framework and relations thereafter. There are two inherent flaws in the whole discourse. Firstly, India as such was a civilization and therefore before independence it was cited as the Indian sub-continent. India as a concept was there since times immemorial and it was known in Hindi as Bharatvashra which means the whole Indian sub-continent, spanning from southern parts of Tibet to eastern parts of Myanmar and the far reaches of Iran. The second aspect is that in comparison to many other languages Sanskrit was a language practiced and known by few and limited to certain elite sections of the society. As a result of which the different aspects of democracy, republic and social transformation was neither deciphered nor discussed in the international relations as well as security studies. In comparison to English, Sanskrit was a very comprehensive language with grammar, which has all the ingredients and had addressed challenges which the society might face in future.

The Indian strategic thought was seen as starting from Kautilya which has been the much celebrated thinker but even in the Kautilya Arthsastra the aspect with regard to strategy and warfighting are discussed very later in the book. Therefore, it was felt that Kautilya and the different aspects that he had talked about governance, administration, qualities of the king, taxes and protection of the state were normal treatises. However, when one goes through the texts and compares it with the works of other strategic thinker such as Clausewitz, Sun Tzu and many others. There is are remarkable similarities in certain aspects. However, while thinker like Sun Tzu and Clausewitz did get their due in strategic discourses, Kautilya and the ancient Indian text did not get the due recognition. The problem can be attributed to lack of synergy and cooperation between international studies and political science scholars in India and the learned men who knew ancient Sanskrit texts.

The core attention to India strategic thought was drawn by Tanham who in his Rand study has elaborated that Indian lacks strategic thought. Given the fact that it was coming from a known scholar and an American think tank the conclusive debates were not promoted and also everyone subscribed to the thought of a vacuum in India's strategic thinking. The project aims to decipher and understand Indian strategic thinking from ancient times to the present day. It also dispels the myth that Indian strategic thought was non-existent. The project is aimed to contextualize and understand ancient Indian texts related to the subject.