Transforming India’s External Security: Using its Ancient Strategic Culture

Gp Capt Rajesh R Chaudhary

The book is about Civil-Military cohesion and India’s ancient strategic culture. It analyses the security architecture of India dealing with external security with an aim to enhance its effectiveness. Civil–Military relations is an important aspect which affects the external security of the country. The approach to understanding Civil–Military relations has generally utilised Western theoretical constructs. The book follows a different approach. It utilises India’s ancient strategic culture to understand India’s inherent strengths and weaknesses.

India is an ancient civilisation with a great strategic culture which spans many millennia. While the structure of the military may be what India inherited from the British, but the ethos of soldiering is what has evolved from the Vedic and the Epic periods. The book analyses the deficiencies in India’s present security architecture and suggests a structure which amalgamates the past and the present. It utilises Civil–Military cohesion to suggest an external security architecture, which provides a comprehensive, whole of nation approach to national security. This structure based on Civil–Military integration provides an option not only for the present but also for the timeless lessons that India’s past teaches us.

Gp Capt Rajesh R Chaudhary is a serving officer of the Indian Air Force. He was commissioned in the Flying Branch of the IAF as a Navigator. He has extensively flown strategic and tactical airlift aircraft in all their operational roles including disaster relief, and the aerial refueller aircraft of the IAF. He has served in several training and operational bases besides Air Headquarters and held various command and staff appointments. A post-graduate from the Defence Services Staff College, he is presently a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi. He is involved in research on national security, Civil-Military relations and Higher Defence Organisation of India.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Abbreviations

1. Introduction to Civil-Military Relations in Indian Context
2. Brief History of India’s Military Prowess before British Rule: Lessons for the Present
3. India’s Strategic Culture
4. Exploring India’s Higher DefenceOrganisation and Civil-Military Relations
5. Analysing India’s National Security Architecture Dealing with External Security
6. Transforming Ministry of Defence to Ministry of External Security

Index