Does India have a strategic culture? Yes, it is slowly beginning to develop one

Over two decades ago George K Tanham, a RAND researcher from the US, stirred a hornet’s nest by obliquely pronouncing that India lacked a strategic culture to support its emerging geopolitical ambitions.In his monograph `Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay’, he argued that India’s values, cultural diversity , recent historical legacy and non-alignment as a state policy , stymied the proliferation of strategic thought and could result in sub-optimal responses to challenges faced on multiple fronts, particularly in areas related to national security .

Written primarily as a policy primer for a US political leadership that was tentatively looking at scaling up relations with India, it faced considerable flak from Indian strategic thinkers like K Subrahmanyam, who blasted it for its myopic and jaundiced view of higher national security decision making.

While George Tanham used the elite as a benchmark for evaluating strategic culture, it is time to evaluate strategic culture from a common citizen’s perspec tive. With higher levels of education, a rising middle class that is becoming increasingly aware of its rights, the proliferation of social media and multiple tools for knowledge, national interest is gradually seeping into the consciousness of the common citizen.

Today , good articles on national security elicit diverse and nuanced responses from a wide cross-section of readers, something that was absent during the years when Subrahmanyam wrote extensively . Fingerprinting a young and evolving nation’s strategic culture at a time when Tanham did was bound to result in a skewed analysis. It is when a large chunk of citizens become active stakeholders in charting the course of their nation’s history that the study of strategic culture assumes significance.

Does education play a pivotal role in the development of a strategic culture? If the answer is in the affirmative, the next step is to identify how and when this development takes place and whether `strategic culture is a focussed by-product of a rigid education system, or whet her it is the natural flowering of ideas, thoughts and writing that emerge from a liberal and broad-based system.

Nations where primary and secondary education revolve aro und ideology , theology, excessive ly structured syllabi and distor ted history have seen the develop ment of strategic cultures that are rigid and run the risk of being consumed by change, or destroy ed from within. Soviet Russia and Pakistan are extreme ex amples of such manifestations.

The Indian education system was stuck for years in a colonial trap that alternated between rote and an obsession with `white collar possibilities’. It was only a few of the elite who were exposed to multi-disciplinary education that is so necessary for the creation of a robust strategic cul ture. As a result, Indian strategic culture in the post-Independence era did not reflect the culture of the majority and suffered from the infirmities of few ideas.

I do not acknowledge that con temporary Western strategic cul ture, typified by Pax Americana or Pax Britannica, are ideal ones However their longevity was and is a result of a robust multi-disci plinary education system that focussed on the spirit of enquiry innovation and reflection.

What of contemporary Chi nese strategic culture? Rising from the ashes of centuries of colonial exploitation and rigid communist influences, contem porary Chinese strategic cultu re would have met the same fate as Soviet strategic culture but for the vision of Deng Xiaoping.Retaining much of the rigidity of the existing system, Deng complemented that framework with ideas that emerged from Chinese intellectuals, econo mists, scientists and historians educated in the West to create a hybrid strategic culture that has emerged as a strong challenger to the West.

We must adopt a bottomsup multidisciplinary approach from the lowest rungs of educa tion to the highest pillars of our strategic edifice to develop a strategic culture that is not only robust and flexible, but widely inclusive. Just as China in the last decade has shown clear signs of emergence as an assertive nation with revisionist aspira tions, India in its seventh decade as an independent nation-state is poised to shape its own strategic culture in its image. We would do well to look at education as a key driver of strategic culture.

Taken from : The Times of India, Jaipur
Written by : Arjun Subramaniam
The writer is a faculty member at the National Defence College New Delhi

The Past of Caste

Ancient India did not sanctify it, caste discrimination is more recent than we think

The tragic death of Rohith Vemula has again brought to forefront of public imagination the painful reality of caste discrimination in Indian society. Notwithstanding the noise generated be relentless pursuit of politics, evidence clearly indicates that the Scheduled Castes as a group do face terrible prejudice in India.

Understandably, many non-Westernized Indians would be loath to accept the ‘atrocity literature’ churned out by the Western academics/NGOs. After all, among the most oppressed minorities in the civilized world are the African-Americans and the European Romas, as evidenced by various detailed studies.

However, the hypocrisy of Western academics media NGOs cannot be an excuse for Indians not to confront their own failings. The present birth-based caste system and caste system and its attendant societal discrimination is a blot on India and completely against the conceptualization of our ancient culture.

There are some who claim that the present caste system is sanctified by our ancient scriptures. Not true. B R Ambedkar, in his scholarly book `Who were the Shudras?’, had used Indian scriptures and texts to prove that in ancient times India had widely respected Shudra rulers as well, and the oppressive scriptural verses, justifying discrimination and a caste system based on birth, were interpolated into the texts later.

In the Bhagwad Gita, Lord Krishna clearly enunciates that He created the four varnas based on guna (attributes) and karma; birth is NOT mentioned.mentioned. Rishis, or sages, were accorded the highest status in ancient India, and two of our greatest epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, were composed by Rishis who were not born Brahmins.

Valmiki was born a Shudra and Krishna Dwaipayana (also known as Ved Vyas) was born to a fisherwoman. Satyakam Jabali, believed to have composed the celebrated Jabali Upanishad, was born to an unwed Shudra mother and his father’s name was unknown. According to the Valmiki Ramayana, Jabali was an officiating priest and adviser to the Ayodhya royalty during Lord Ram’s period.

Arvind Sharma, professor of comparative religion at McGill University, states that caste rigidity and discrimination emerged in the Smriti period (from after the birth of Jesus Christ and extending up to 1200 CE) and was challenged in the medieval period by the bhakti movement led by many non-upper caste saints. At the time even powerful empires emerged that were led by Shudra rulers, for example the Kakatiyas. Then, the birth-based caste system became rigid once again around the British colonial period. It has remained so, ever since.

Scientific evidence provided by genetic research corroborates the ancient scriptural absence of a birth-based caste system. Banning of inter-marriage in pursuance of `caste purity’ is a fundamental marker of this birth-based caste system.Various scientific papers published in journals such as the American Journal of Human Genetics, Nature and the National Academy of Sciences Journal, have established that inter-breeding among different genetic groups in India was extremely common for thousands of years until it stopped around 0 CE to 400 CE (intriguingly, this is in sync with the period when Sharma says caste discrimination arose for the first time in recorded history).

The inference is obvious. The present birth-based caste system ­ a distorted merger of jati (one’s birth-community) and varna (one’s nature based on guna and karma) ­ emerged roughly between 1,600 to 2,000 years ago. It did not exist earlier. Note that the word `caste’ itself is a Portuguese creation, derived from the Portuguese Spanish `casta’ meaning breed or race.

The founding fathers of the Indian republic were, thankfully , aware of the pernicious effects of the birth-based caste system on Indian society . The Indian Constitution had bold objectives. But, as is obvious today , while government policies such as reservations have made a difference, they have not been good enough.

The work of Dalit scholar Chandra Bhan Prasad shows that the post-1991 economic reforms programme has seminally addressed this issue. According to the 200607 All-India MSME Census, approximately 14% of the total enterprises in the country are owned by SCST entrepreneurs, and they generate nearly 8 million jobs! The figure is probably much higher today .

There are many who claim that the reservations policy has ignored the upper caste poor and rural landless. This may hold some truth. But this is also largely due to the absence of enough education facilities and jobs, which leads to rationing of the few opportunities that do exist.

Post-1991 reforms have no doubt brought down these shortfalls, but they have not gone far enough. Many argue that reformist policies will not just help the Dalits, but also the rural and urban upper-caste poor.

So, as Prasad has pointed out repeatedly, more economic reforms and urbanisation will go much further in mitigating caste discrimination and poverty in general, compared to government policies. However, caste discrimination must be opposed and fought against by all Indians, for the sake of the soul of our nation.

Annihilating the birth-based caste system is a battle we must all engage in at a societal level. We will honour our ancient culture with this fight. More importantly , we will end something that is just plain wrong.

Taken from : The Times of India, Jaipur
Written by : Amish Tripathi
The writer is a best-selling author