| Strategically
yours, India The Pioneer/February 6, 1999 Review of Jaswant Singh's book Defending India by Shubha Singh Few Indian politicians have any understanding of what the term strategic affairs really means. To the majority of politicians and bureaucrats, strategic culture implies something to do with defence and military matters. Defending India by Jaswant Singh is a valuable book for it is the first time that a serving politician (who incidentally is now in a position to rectify some of the ills that he describes) has written with such a clear grasp about India’s security culture, or rather the abysmal lack of one. Defending India is a bit of plain-speaking by Jaswant Singh, telling the reader why Indians are so woolly-headed about their own security interests. Some of what Jaswant Singh says has been documented in various reports, but what he has done is to put them in perspective in a larger framework. India’s political-bureaucratic class, with a very few notable exceptions who can be counted on the fingers of one’s hands, is woefully ignorant of the concept of strategic analysis and planning. And national security is related to defence and military related planning alone. A stark example of this kind of thinking was the convoluted process through which the proposal for a National Security Council was buffeted around for the best part of the decade, stoutly opposed by the official establishment. Even now, with an NSC duly constituted, there is little real knowledge within official circles of what the body is expected to do. The liberalisation and progressive decontrol of the Indian economy, and its integration with the global economy makes it even more imperative that the political class understands the vast variety of pressures on national security. There has been no tradition of strategic thinking in India and Jaswant Singh has an explanation for why this has happened. He says: “As a constituent of strategic culture, a sense of history, or a recording of it, evaluating and assessing it, and then utilising it as an input in decision-making has not been there. This absence of a written historical account of India can be variously explained: on account of a lack of unity, there being no one India; that the Indian tradition is more oral; that religious texts, in any event, have always had greater merit. No matter what the causes, the consequence of this absence (of a sense of history) has significantly affected the development of India’s strategic thought. For this sense of history is an integral part of military science. That is why as already observed, whereas ancient Indian texts on every conceivable subject abound — on art and dance and drama, most abundantly on philosophy — there are none, other than Kautilya, that have detailed the military science of India. There is another factor: of geography, of a sense of territory. Indian nationhood, being largely cultural and civilizational, and Indian being supremely contented with what was theirs feared no loss of it, for it — the civilizational — was as unconquerable as is the spirit. Thus, both are absent: a territorial consciousness, and a strategic sense about the protection of the territory of residence.” Jaswant Singh believes that it was only during the British reign that a sense of territory, its survey, settlement, and mapping came recognisably to India. And after Independence it faded again, as the “older cultural verities” surfaced instead. The principal security challenge to India has historically been and still remains the imposition and maintenance of internal order, he says. It still takes up the major part of the existing security related planning in the Government. Jaswant Singh’s critical appraisal of the early years after Independence may disturb those steeped in Nehruvian thought, but it is not a blind criticism of that period. Jawaharlal Nehru’s idealism, commitment to internationalism and belief in British instilled concept of fair-play, led to him laying too great an emphasis on the United Nations. But the Security Council was never meant to be a debating arena. It runs on hard realpolitik — a fact that Nehru failed to take into account. But the author also adds that the early management of the country’s foreign relations was inspired: It was marked by the sustaining strength of a philosophical and conceptual base; it was identifiable too by finesse and a certain adeptness. But that world has now altered beyond recognition. From the strategic perspective, the author moves on to the state of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. An ex-army officer himself, Jaswant Singh believes that the Congress party’s ambivalence towards the defence forces was the result of its pre-Independence view of the army as an imperialistic force. The Gandhi-topi, khadi dhoti-kurta clad Congresswala found little to relate to in the starched drills and brass of the army. “Condescending distrust’’ was truly the prism through which the Congress leadership saw the higher echelons of the anglicised defence forces. In the early days, the pacifism of Gandhi and the creed of non-violence influenced Indian foreign policy. According to Jaswant Singh, “India deluded itself into thinking that simply because it bore no enmity against another, therefore, none harboured any designs against it either. Naive credulity replaced statecraft.’’ The ambivalence was accentuated with Nehru’s idealism, and emphasised by the series of military coups and takeovers around the world, all of which ensured that the defence forces were kept in their separate space. The prejudice merely allowed the defence forces to continue in the military tradition inherited from the British, while allowing the civilian bureaucracy to take charge and decide on their requirements and the funds available to them. In his first public pronouncement after taking over as the External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh had listed economic security and energy security as the two most important non-military threats that India is likely to face in the coming years. His statement did not attract much attention because to the general Indian perception, both public and official, it is the military threat which is the most important. In Defending India, he has stressed the need for greater focus on economic policy, energy security, environment, food and water as areas which impinge on the nation’s security and well-being. Energy is security; deficiencies in this critical strategic sector compromise national security. The major issues in the Indian energy sector are the absence of an integrated long-term energy policy; an unsustainable energy mix and a lack of rational energy pricing and acute scarcity of developmental capital. Jaswant Singh brings out the total disregard of the Central Asian region, despite its importance to India over the ages. Within a few decades India lost all touch with the region, and the only route to this part of the extended neighbourhood was via Moscow. Even now, Central Asia with its huge gas reserves attracts only some sporadic attention at the best of times. Jaswant Singh says: “It is axiomatic that unless India gives some definition to its vital national interests it will fail to even conceptualise its strategic frontiers. This has been at the root of India’s past mistakes.’’ The nuclear tests in May last resulted in the addition of a chapter titled ‘Postscript to the book’ which deals with India’s nuclear policy under the Vajpayee Government. The basic tenet of which is: The country’s national security, in a world of nuclear proliferation lies either in global disarmament or in exercise of the principle of equal and legitimate security for all. Jaswant Singh adds that the challenge to Indian statecraft remains that of reconciling India’s security imperatives with valid international concerns in regard to nuclear weapons. Jaswant Singh is among that almost extinct species in India - a thinking politician. Now as External Affairs Minister, he has the opportunity to initiate the process of creating strategic awareness in some vital sections of Governmental planning. |