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Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 309

Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia

This book challenges the view, common among Western scholars, that precolonial India lacked a tradition of military philosophy. It traces the evolution of theories of warfare in India from the dawn of civilization, focusing on the debate between Dharmayuddha (Just War) and Kutayuddha (Unjust War) within Hindu philosophy. This debate centers around four questions: What is war? What justifies it? How should it be waged? And what are its potential repercussions? This body of literature provides evidence of the historical evolution of strategic thought in the Indian subcontinent that has heretofore been neglected by modern historians. Further, it provides a counterpoint to scholarship in political science that engages solely with Western theories in its analysis of independent India's philosophy of warfare. Ultimately, a better understanding of the legacy of ancient India's strategic theorizing will enable more accurate analysis of modern India's military and nuclear policies.

The Eyewitness
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 382

The Eyewitness

Over the last three decades, Tripura, the smallest of North East Indian states surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh, was caught in the vortex of highly patterned militant violence, deadly ethnic conflicts, and planned destruction of thousand year old harmonious and peaceful coexistence of tribal and non-tribal people of the state. Since the day the TNV took to arms, the surfeit of tribal insurgencies in Tripura is marked by brutal civilian massacres, abduction of innocent citizens, ambushes on security forces, large scale extortions and a ruthless ethnic cleansing perpetrated on unarmed non-tribals by the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the All Tripura Tiger Force-two banned unde...

Manthan
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 229

Manthan

This book establishes the relevance of war as an instrument of state policy, and the necessity of armed forces to protect and promote national interests. It then traces India's warring traditions and the enviable professionalism of the Indian armed forces. Reflecting on their post-independence military ventures it analyses why, despite five wars, India's vexed territorial and border disputes have remained unresolved. Later chapters critically dilate on a range of weighty issues related to the armed forces such as their apolitical nature, India's strategic culture, state of the civil-military relations, absence of a defence policy, ad hoc defence planning et al, and how these have acted as set back forces for the Services. One of the chapters debates the pros and cons of a coup in India and yet another one exhorts the armed forces to introspect. The book closes with a set of assertions that would keep the armed forces ready and relevant to match the national aspirations of rising India.

India and Counterinsurgency
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 470

India and Counterinsurgency

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2009-05-07
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  • Publisher: Routledge

This edited volume focuses on India's experiences waging counterinsurgency campaigns since its independence in 1947. Filling a clear gap in the literature, the book traces and assess the origins, evolution and current state of India's counterinsurgency strategies and capabilities, focusing on key counterinsurgency campaigns waged by India within and outside its territory. It also analyzes the development of Indian doctrine on counterinsurgency, and locates this within the overall ebb and flow of India's defense and security policies. The central argument is that counterinsurgency has been an integral part of India's overall security policy and can thereby impart much to political and militar...

US Pivot toward India after 9/11
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 269

US Pivot toward India after 9/11

The book is a very timely and important work on US foreign policy toward India since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The author traces the trajectory of closer Indo-US relations during the Bush and Obama administrations. The author applies a qualitative methodological approach to describe these changes and explain the factors that explain the strengthened bilateral relationship, especially after decades of irritable relations between the two "estranged democracies." The book compares two factors – (a) the 9/11 attacks; (b) global structural changes after the Cold War – to assess which of these factors best explains closer Indo-US relations over the last two decades. The author's argument see...

Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 249

Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2013-09-11
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  • Publisher: Routledge

The rhetoric of armed social welfare has become prominent in military and counterinsurgency circuits with profound consequences for the meanings of democracy, citizenship, and humanitarianism in conflict zones. By focusing on the border district of Kargil, the site of India and Pakistan’s fourth war in 1999, this book analyses how humanitarian policies of healing and heart warfare infused the logic of democracy and militarism in the post-war period. Compassion became a strategy to contain political dissension, regulate citizenship, and normalize the extensive militarization of Kargil’s social and political order. The book uses the power of ethnography to foreground people’s complex sub...

Government of Peace
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 253

Government of Peace

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2016-03-03
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  • Publisher: Routledge

Government of Peace addresses a major question in world politics today: how does post-colonial democracy produce a form of governance that copes with conflicts, insurgencies, revolts, and acute dissents? The contributors view social governance as a crucial component in answering this question and their narratives of governance aim to show how certain appropriate governing modes make social conflicts more manageable or at least also occasions for development. They show how government often expands to cope with acute conflicts; money is made more readily available; the transfer of resources acquires frantic pace; and so society becomes more attuned to a money-centric, modern life. Yet this sty...

India's Near East
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 304

India's Near East

Celebrated as a theatre of geo-economic connectivity typified by the ‘Act East’ policy, India’s near east is key not only to its great-power rivalry with China, which first boiled over in the 1962 war, but to the idea(s) of India itself. It is also one of the most intricately partitioned lands anywhere on Earth. Rent by communal and class violence, the region has birthed extreme forms of religious and ethnic nationalisms and communist movements. The Indian state’s survival instinct and pursuit of regional hegemony have only accentuated such extremes. This book scripts a new history of India’s eastward-looking diplomacy and statecraft. Narrated against the backdrop of separatist resistance within India’s own northeastern states, as well as rivalry with Beijing and Islamabad in Myanmar and Bangladesh, it offers a simple but compelling argument. The aspirations of ‘Act East’ mask an uncomfortable truth: India privileges political stability over economic opportunity in this region. In his chronicle of a state’s struggle to overcome war, displacement and interventionism, Avinash Paliwal lays bare the limits of independent India’s influence in its near east.

Unconventional Warfare in South Asia
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 218

Unconventional Warfare in South Asia

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2016-02-17
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  • Publisher: Routledge

India is the world's tenth largest economy and possesses the world's fourth largest military. The subcontinent houses about one-fifth of the world's population and its inhabitants are divided into various tribes, clans and ethnic groups following four great religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. Framing the debate using case studies from across the region as well as China, Afghanistan and Burma and using a wealth of primary and secondary sources this incisive volume takes a closer look at the organization and doctrines of the 'shadow armies' and the government forces which fight the former. Arranged in a thematic manner, each chapter critically asks; Why stateless marginal groups rebel? How do states attempt to suppress them? What are the consequences in the aftermath of the conflict especially in relation to conflict resolution and peace building? Unconventional Warfare in South Asia is a welcomed addition to the growing field of interest on civil wars and insurgencies in South Asia. An indispensable read which will allow us to better understand whether South Asia is witnessing a 'New War' and whether the twenty-first century belongs to the insurgents.

A Military History of India since 1972
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 488

A Military History of India since 1972

A Military History of India since 1972 is a definitive work of military history that gives the Indian military its rightful place as a key contributor to Indian democracy. Arjun Subramaniam offers an engaging narrative that combines superb storytelling with the academic rigor of deep research and analysis. It is a comprehensive account of India’s resolute, responsible, and restrained use of force as an instrument of statecraft and how the military has played an essential role in securing the country’s democratic tradition along with its rise as an economic and demographic power. This book is also about how the Indian nation-state and its armed forces have coped with the changing contours...