• This study draws on India’s living traditions of Shaastra and Shastra—understandings on theory and practice, on ethics and interests, and on soft and hard power—to distil and expand upon the core precepts of strategic thought.

Abstract

As India’s power is rising, the country is becoming more self-aware, with more willingness to explicitly reclaim and “own” the civilisational roots of its strategic thought. From international quarters too, interest in understanding India’s grand strategy is growing. Especially in the context of a deepening transatlantic rift and further divisions within the “West”, many state and nonstate actors are seeking to strengthen their partnerships with India. A focus on the indigenous sources of Indian strategic thought is therefore timely.

This paper offers a deep dive into the foundational philosophy, practice, and potential of Indian strategic thought. This analysis serves as a resource for those hoping to negotiate effectively with the world’s largest democracy. It also offers a useful guide for policymakers and engaged citizens within the country: a reminder of their ancient wisdom on questions of power and leadership, some of which has practical relevance for the existential problems that the world faces today.

 world faces today.

The literal meanings of the Sanskrit words Shaastra (शास्त्र) and Shastra (शस्त्र) are text (or science) and weaponry (or instruments), respectively. [1] This paper takes the two words at face value and further interprets them in the broader sense of theory and practice.

National (security, economic, and foreign policy) strategy requires careful consideration of both concepts. While Neeti (नीति) has a variety of meanings, one straightforward interpretation of the term is strategy and statecraft.[2] 

This study draws on India’s living traditions of Shaastra and Shastra—understandings on theory and practice, on ethics and interests, and on soft and hard power—to distil and expand upon the core precepts of strategic thought.

A focus on the indigenous sources of Indian strategic thought is timely. As India’s power is rising, the country is becoming more self-aware. With this comes a willingness to explicitly reclaim and “own” the civilisational roots of its strategic thought. Similarly, from international quarters, there is increasing interest in understanding India’s grand strategy. 

Many state and non-state actors are seeking to strengthen their partnerships with India amid a deepening transatlantic rift and further divisions within the “West”. This analysis serves as a resource for anyone hoping to negotiate effectively with the world’s largest democracy. It also offers a guide for policymakers and engaged citizens within the country: a reminder of their ancient wisdom on questions of power and leadership, some of which has practical relevance for the world’s existential problems.

The argument proceeds in three parts. The first section presents the academic and policy context and makes the case for such an analysis to fill important gaps in the literature. The second section draws on primary sources and distils key tenets of Indian strategic thought, highlighting the sophistication of each concept, and the richness of Indian strategic thought as a whole. The paper closes with a third section that discusses the disciplinary and policy implications of the analysis.

Context

In an article published in 1929, Herbert Gowen identified a yawning gulf in political theory—namely, the absence of Indian political thought in available scholarship. Trying to find an explanation for this bizarre and blatant omission, he wrote:

“The omission of India from consideration by most writers on political science would probably be defended by the general statement that India is a land of philosophers rather than of practical politicians. It may be affirmed with some plausibility that throughout the long history of the peninsula (so far as that history is to be recovered, mainly by the contributions of foreigners) Realpolitik has generally been subordinated to mysticism; that the people who think in terms of kalpas instead of dynasties, whose ideal it has been to retire to the jungles and there, by a kind of self-hypnotism, sever the nexus between the visible world (conceived as maya) and the eternal soul, could not conceivably be interested in questions of political administration.”[3]

Unfortunately, Gowen has largely remained a lone voice over the decades. Barring a variety of interesting commentaries on Kautilya’s Arthashastra (which Gowen himself had pioneered), the omission persisted, as did the explanations that external observers sought for it. For instance, in an agenda-setting essay published in a US-based journal in 1992, George Tanham identified the following as “an essential characteristic of Indian strategy”:

“…Indians have not been great strategic thinkers or developers of strategy, although they have been profound thinkers in many other fields. Nature provided them with a natural strategic area, the subcontinent, but geographical subdivisions and cultural factors leading to political disunity hindered Indians from developing strategies for it. Their culture, with its cyclical concept of time and its view of life as unfathomable and hence unpredictable, did not lead Indians to see the need for strategy, and even if they had, they would have been unlikely to proceed because, if in their minds the future is unknown and unknowable, why plan?”[4]

Admittedly, certain self-perceptions of Indians, within and outside the country, did not help to correct Tanham’s crude essentialism.[5] Many, too often, allowed themselves to be pigeon holed into a “spiritualism” box; presenting themselves as renouncers and moralists, they played to Western stereotypes.[6] Ironically, the acceptance of its role-allocation as a pacifist country, committed to Gandhian Ahimsa and steeped in the ancient practices of Yoga, was in itself—at least partly—a strategic choice: after all, the importance of soft power is not to be underestimated. Reality, however, is also reflexive, and the acceptance of decontextualised typecasts came at a cost.[7] India would often end up buying into the primarily Western framing of its foreign policy debates,[8] and the originality and richness of its own strategic traditions was sidelined, internally and externally.

Some serious rebuttals involved identifying the growing realist elements in India’s foreign policy in the 1990s. Pioneering work in this direction was conducted by C. Raja Mohan.[9] Ambassador Shivshankar Menon also hit back hard: “There have been those, like George Tanham, who deny that India has a strategic culture. My view is that this is an impossibility for a self-conscious (sic) culture and civilisation such as ours, with our heritage and sense of our own importance and role. Just as saying one is apolitical is itself a political choice, saying that India has no strategic culture is only to say that it is different from the strategic cultures one is used to.”[10] 

But the West heard what it wanted to hear. India, too, did not systematically claim and assert its strategic heritage. Even today, the central theoretical frame remains a Western one. Few courses in political theory, international relations, or strategic studies—in India or abroad—incorporate primary sources from ancient India (or secondary sources studying them) as part of the curriculum. Meanwhile, the embrace of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Clausewitz (and occasionally Sun Tzu) continues. In research institutions abroad, which claim to work “on and with the Global South,” recognition of India’s pre-colonial political thought remains scarce. 

When pushed by this author, during her decade-long experience as head of a research institute in Germany, the best that most India “experts” were able to do was to refer to the “Indian Machiavelli”—an excusable misnomer perhaps in 1929 when Gowen was writing and India was still under British rule, but somewhat ludicrous in this age of India’s rise, and the fact that the Arthashastra predates The Prince by almost two thousand years.

The purpose of this paper is to remind India and the world of the deep roots of the country’s strategic traditions. This matters at several levels.

First, a recognition of India’s indigenous strategic culture is necessary for finally putting the record straight: India did not start thinking strategically simply as a reaction to British rule, or post-independence, or post-1990s reform. Its strategic thought has a history that predates the emergence of Western states; its foundations are civilisational. Second, an awareness of Indian strategic thought is indispensable for anyone hoping to negotiate effectively with this remarkable powerhouse; in the absence of this knowledge, India’s partners will remain trapped in unhelpful tropes  about the country’s “difficult” bargaining behaviour.[11] Third, scholarship on this subject will be a vital instrument for analysts, and policy insiders, too, in the systematisation and further development of India’s strategic policy. The historical layers and diverse facets of its strategic thought deserve to be documented. And any such record must include not only the relatively well-studied aspects of Indian political thought from colonial and post-colonial times, but deep-rooted ideas that form the very psyche—a mentalité—of this ancient culture.

Fourth, as IR theory seeks to escape its Western cage, the arguments presented in this paper can serve as a key ingredient for a bigger intellectual project: the development of a non-Western theory of International Relations, which goes beyond the token reference to Sinic texts and bulldozes its way into the creation of a state-centric, anthropocentric, unethical, and violent international system. Instead, by mainstreaming Indian strategic thought, the world will have in its hands a remarkable resource for building theory that is neither naïvely idealistic nor ruthlessly materialistic. Using this evolving theory provides an opportunity to build a world that has clear red-lines (rather than constant moral slippage), is ready for conflict when needed (in a manner that is precise and circumspect), appreciates the rights of the individual across species, and cares for both people and planet.

Concepts

From a vast menu that analysts of Indian strategic thought could choose from, Kautilya’s Arthashastra[12] translates most readily into the Western imagination as an exposition on strategy and has thus also received the most scholarly attention.[13] However, if one accepts that strategic thought need not be based solely on Western boilerplates, then there are several other texts to choose from—not just arcane treatises like the Manusmriti and the Dharmasutras, but also a variety of Subhashitani (quotable wisdom) from the Panchatantra, Bhartrihari’s Neetishatakam, and other beautiful compositions in prose and poetry. 

Even more than all these texts, there is one that is a particularly strong candidate as a primary source for Indian strategic thought: the Mahabharat.[14]

The Mahabharat—one of India’s two great epics—comprises 100,000 verses. Unlike the Arthashastra, this is not a “textbook” of dry teachings; rather, it is a lively and dramatic narration of the politics of succession, containing within it a variety of stories within stories, histories, parables, myths, and legends. It resembles the Ramayan—India’s other great epic—in being a part of the country’s living traditions. And yet, unlike the Ramayan, which contains representations of the ideal (Bhagwaan Shri Ram is Maryaada Purushottam—the ideal man, Maa Sita is the ideal wife and mother, Lakshman is the ideal brother),[15] the Mahabharat deals with a messier reality. Its heroes, while admired and loved to this day, have many human flaws, while its villains reveal virtuous traits. Even Lord Krishna—the great divinity in the text, and not just a minor god from the Hindu canon but a reincarnation (an avataar) of Vishnu[16] himself—resorts to lies and deceptions. 

Renowned Mahabharat scholar, V. S. Sukthankar thus rightly describes him as “a paradox, a riddle, to say the least,”[17] and Bimal Prasad Matilal’s classic essay on the deity describes him as “a devious diplomat”.[18] The Ramayan teaches us of ethical standards which we can, at best, hope to aspire to; the Mahabharat, in contrast, walks with us on many treacherous paths and shows us how they may be navigated to our strategic advantage as well as moral redemption. While seldom losing sight of the ideal, the Mahabharat lives in the real world.

The first striking observation, if one engages with many Indians on the Mahabharat, is the enthusiasm and vigour with which any questions and debates on the text are greeted. The Mahabharat, despite its extraordinary length and prolixity, is not an elite affair. Even if few have read the original, they know versions of it from the stories they would have heard in childhood, have clear views on the characters (whom they would have gotten to know through various televised versions), and gladly share their understandings of the various moral and practical lessons of the epic. The Mahabharat is deeply embedded in the popular imagination. This is a useful quality for a primary source on strategic thought: explicit and implicit references to the text in strategic narratives have domestic resonance. This matters for the sustainability of policy, and doubly so in a democracy.

In terms of content, the core of the plot is about a great and terrible war between two factions of the same family. This fratricidal war represents the eternal battle between good and evil, Dharma and Adharma. The epic teaches us about the laws of war and war strategy, not only as theory but also through many memorable stories that illustrate the precepts and tactics in action. It is perhaps not surprising that in common parlance, the word ‘Mahabharat’ is used as a synonym for war.

That said, the Mahabharat is much more than a treatise on war.[19] Of its 18 Parvs,[20] five are focused on the 18 days of ferocious battle in the Dharmakhshetra (the battlefield of Dharma) that Kurukshetra is; the remaining 13 books deal with the politics of peace. They explore a wide range of issues, including statecraft, leadership, ethics, negotiations, and good governance. It is true that the possibility of war is seldom far away in the 13 books, and there is extensive discussion on strategies to preserve peace, avoid war, prepare for war, acquire weapons (and establish rules for their use), build alliances, deal with the terrible consequences of war, and secure a just and stable peace. That the shadow of war is present through much of the text, even as it deliberates the material and spiritual ways in which the tragedy of the human condition can be transcended, qualifies it even further as a resource for the troubling and uncertain times that we live in today.

The remainder of this section outlines key concepts from the Mahabharat that serve as foundational principles for the making of Indian strategic thought.

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First published on ORF site and Here eSamskriti.com has obtained permission from ORF to share.

Also read

1. War and Non-violence in the Bhagavad Gita

2. Did Ahimsa get India freedom

3. Why Asceticism led to the Weakening of Bharat

4. Did India lack a strategic thinking approach post Independence

5. Dharma in Foreign Policy

6. What is Ahimsa

Author Bio 

Dr. Amrita Narlikar’s research expertise lies in the areas of international negotiation, World Trade Organization, multilateralism, and India’s foreign policy & strategic thought. To read her full bio click

The author thanks Dr Aruna Narlikar for several inspiring, thoughtful, multilingual discussions on these concepts. She also thanks an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions.