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Domestic Foundations of India’s Security Policy

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India’s Strategic Future

Abstract

A country’s security policy evolves by way of a constant dialogue between domestic and external factors. This is particularly so for a democratic and heterogeneous nation such as India that exists within ‘turbulent frontiers’. 1 The nature of the dialogue and the rules that govern it will change with time and it is impossible in a chapter such as this to convey the picture in its full complexity. What I will seek to do instead is describe a number of paradigms that provide the framework within which the dialogue on security policy has been conducted at various times since India became independent. I will then draw on these paradigms to see how security policy might unfold in future2

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Notes

  1. The phrase belongs to John S. Galbraith and is quoted by Ashley J. Tellis. See Tellis’ paper, ‘Securing the Barrack: the Logic, Structure and Objectives of India’s Naval Expansion’, in R. Bruce (Ed.), The Modern Indian Navy and the Indian Ocean, Perth, 1989, p. 7.

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  2. While I have placed predominant paradigms in specific time frames, in reality the edges were far more blurred than suggested here, with some elements of a particular structure of beliefs persisting long after the predominant paradigm had disappeared.

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  3. Pran Chopra, ‘Security, Sovereignty, and India-Sri Lanka Relations’ in S. Kumar (Ed.) Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy 1987/1988, New Delhi, 1988, p. 107.

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  4. Tellis, op. cit., pp. 7–12.

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  5. Quoted in O. P. Singh, Strategic Sikkim, New Delhi, 1985, p. 37.

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  6. Under the accord, Sri Lanka undertook that ‘Trincomalee or any other ports in Sri Lanka will not be made available for military use by any country in any manner prejudicial to India’s interest’ [Emphasis added]. Quoted in V. Suryanarayan, ‘India-Sri Lanka Accord and the prospects for security in South Asia’, in K. P. Misra and V. D. Chopra (Eds.), South Asia-Pacific Region Emerging Trends, New Delhi, 1988, p. 132.

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  7. J. Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, New Delhi, 1961, p. 128.

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  8. Quoted in P. Gupte, India: The Challenge of Change, London, 1989, p. 317.

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  9. Nehru, op. cit., p. 3 and p. 23.

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  12. S. Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation, Berkeley, 1971, pp. 71–2.

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  13. Quoted from B. Warriawalla, in Illustrated Weekly of India, 11–17 June, 1989.

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  14. Cohen, The Indian Army, p. 190.

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  15. Nehru, op. cit., p. 456: ‘We did not accept it [Pakistan] at any time on the basis of the two nation theory.’

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  16. For a contemporary expression of this view see Jasjit Singh, ‘Indian Ocean and Indian Security’, in S. Kumar (Ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy, 1987/88, New Delhi, 1988, p. 133.

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  17. These views were expounded originally by Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt. See R. C. Dutt, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, London, 1956, and D. Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, London, 1901.

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  18. Evidence of Admiral Nayyer to the United States Global Strategy Council Forum, p. 38 (transcript prepared in Washington and dated 9 October, 1989).

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  19. V. S. Arunachalam, ‘Defence, Technology and Development: an Indian Experience’, conference on Implications of the New Technology for Australian Regional Security, SDSC, Canberra, November, 1989, p. 2.

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  20. The armed forces from time to time complain about this diversity and maintain it is inefficient. Indian Defence Review Research Team, ‘Weapons and Equipment State: are we getting our money’s worth’, Indian Defence Review, July, 1988, p. 141.

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  21. D. Norman (Ed.), Nehru: The First Sixty Years, Vol. 1, London, 1965, p. 55.

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  22. Nehru, op. cit., p. 58.

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  23. Ibid.

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  24. Noor A. Hussain, ‘India’s Regional Policy: Strategic and Security Dimensions’, in S. Cohen (Ed.), The Security of South Asia, American and Asian perspectives, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, c. 1987, p. 31.

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  25. See Giri Deshinkar’s report of his visit to China as a member if an Indian delegation, Times of India, 13 December, 1989.

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  26. Vertzberger, op. cit., p. xvi.

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  27. The decline of Congress in this period has been documented inter alia by L. &S. Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State, Chicago, 1987; R. Jeffrey, What’s Happening to India?, London, 1986; and F. Frankel, India’s Political Economy, 1947–1977, Princeton, 1978.

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  28. RavindraNath in the Indian Express, 9 April, 1982.

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  29. The Janata Government also attempted to remove English as the basic language of the officer corps and to suppress British traditions. See Maj. K. C. Praval, The Indian Army After Independence, New Delhi, 1987, p. 604.

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  30. Economic and Political Weekly, XVIII, 9 April, 1983, No. 15, p. 558.

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  31. R. Thomas, Indian Security Policy, Princeton, 1986, p. 7.

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  32. Cohen, The Indian Army, p. 196.

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  33. See Sinha writing in the Indian Defence Review, January, 1987, p. 32.

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  34. Ibid.

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  35. Rudolph and Rudolph, op. cit., p. 87.

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  36. Sinha, op. cit., p. 32.

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  37. See Frankel, op. cit. pp. 523–8, for the situation in 1974.

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  38. In the district of Meerut alone a total of 2.3 million persons are either ex-servicemen or associated with servicemen through family. Lt. Colonel Shyam Singh, ‘Peasant Agitation and Internal Security’, Indian Defence Review, July, 1988, p. 134.

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  39. Jeffrey, op. cit., p. 30 refers to the benefits of returning ex-jawans in the Punjab. The returning soldier factor may have contributed considerably to the ‘green revolution’ in the Indian North-West, the region in which the agricultural revolution has been most successful.

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  40. C. Lenneberg, ‘Sharad Joshi and the Farmers: The Middle Peasant Lives’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 61, Fall 1988, No. 3, p. 451.

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  41. Singh, op. cit., p. 134.

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  42. Ibid.

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  43. Indian Defence Review Research Team, Indian Defence Review, July, 1988, p. 40.

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  44. See for example Maj. Gen. E. Habibulla, The Sinews of Indian Defence, New Delhi, 1981, p. 213.

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  45. When General Sundarji took over as Army Chief of Staff, he wrote a letter to all his officers. The letter dealt fundamentally with issues relating to the poor morale in the forces. Many officers evidently felt that the letter failed to come to grips with the basic issues. See Indian Defence Review, July, 1986, p. 217, anonymous letter referring to the Sundarji letter.

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  46. These problems have not been lost on governments. Under the Fourth Pay Commission, pay and pensions have been improved considerably. Ex-military have been inducted into the 500,000-strong paramilitary forces. The crack National security Guard was formed in part for this purpose in 1985. See J. Masselos, ‘India: a power on the move’, Current Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 64, March, 1988, No. 10, p. 26, for this last point.

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  47. L. &S. Rudolph, op. cit., p. 1.

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  49. Jeffrey, op. cit., p. 157.

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  50. Patriot, 15 August, 1981.

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  51. Report of a speech by Mrs Gandhi at Lucknow, Statesman, 21 December, 1981.

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  52. P. Galbraith, ‘Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Containing the Threat’, report to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Washington, 1988, p. 2.

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  53. Report on a public interest advertisement on Doordarshan TV, Times of India, 22 July, 1989.

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  54. Tewari saw it as the media’s role to create this new self-image. Illustrated Weekly of India, 28 May, 1989.

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  55. Leo Rose, ‘India’s Regional Policy: Non Military Dimensions’ in S. Cohen, The Security of South Asia, p. 4.

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  56. Pran Chopra maintains that the growing feeling on the part of Indian Tamils prompted New Delhi to shift its thinking from the view that the ethnic problem was Sri Lanka’s alone to one in which India had a say. Chopra, op. cit., p. 1ll.

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  57. Quoted in Defense and Foreign Affairs, December, 1988, p. 17.

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  58. Foreign Broadcasting Information Service, South-East Asia Report, No. 1044, 4 September, 1981, p. 188; Times of India, 24 February, 1982. See also Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Westview Press, Boulder, Colarado, 1987, p. 135.

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  59. Y. K. Malik and D. K. Vajpeyi, ‘The Rise of Hindu Militancy: India’s Secular Democracy at Risk’, Asian Survey, Vol. xxix, March 1989, No. 3, p. 318.

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  60. Tata Services Limited, Statistical Outline of India, 1988–89, Bombay, 1988, p. 67.

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  61. Thomas, op. cit., p. 39.

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  62. The Hindu, 9 April, 1982.

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  63. Tata Services, op. cit.

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  64. B. Wariavwalla, op.cit., p. 17; Malik and Vajpeyi, op. cit., p. 320; Jeffrey, op. cit., p. 157.

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  65. Malik and Vajpeyi, Ibid., p. 321; Cohen, The Indian Army, p. 191.

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  66. Malik and Vajpeyi, Ibid, p. 320.

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  67. Ibid, pp. 320–1.

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  68. Statement by former Foreign Secretary, Eric Gonzalves, at a conference on South Asia, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, 8 December, 1989.

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  69. Sarah Sargent, Australian Financial Review, 4 December, 1989.

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  70. For example, he appointed India’s first Muslim Home Minister.

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  71. S. Gupta and P. Guha, ‘Heading for a Crisis’, India Today, 28 February, 1989.

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  72. Deshinkar, op. cit.

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  73. Editorial, Times of India, 14 December, 1989.

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  74. Bhabani Sen Gupta, Illustrated Weekly of India, XXIV, No. 3, 21 January, 1989, p. 120.

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  75. India Today, 31 August, 1990, pp. 33–4.

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  76. In 1977, when Mrs Gandhi was ousted, she received a solid vote from the South, as did Rajiv in the 1989 election.

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  77. The Congress (I) recently sponsored its own consecration ceremony at Ayodhya using a leading religious figure as proxy, with the objective of embarrassing the NF government. See Sunday, 20–26 May, 1990 and India Today, 31 May, 1990.

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  78. There are already indications that this is occurring with respect to intercommunal unrest in Kashmir. See a report in The Canberra Times, 30 January, 1990. Dr Robin Jeffrey pointed out on the ABC Program AsiaPacific on 10 February, 1990, that in the context of the deteriorating Kashmir dispute Iran had offered moral support to Pakistan and that India had in turn sought a statement of support from the Soviet Union, which itself has problems with its Muslim minority. Iran did, in fact,cancel a scheduled visit by the Indian Foreign Minister in response to the situation in Kahsmir.

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  79. Canberra Times, 30 January, 1990.

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  80. The Singh government recently banned the sale of petrol on Sundays in an attempt to reduce the rapid rise in the consumption of petroleum products that has accompanied India’s economic growth and contributed significantly to the balance of payments problem.

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  81. Gupta and Guha report that the falling value of the rupee alone contributed a Rs14 bn. rise in defence spending in 1988–89. Gupta and Guha, op. cit. Between 1986–87 and 1988–89, India’s foreign exchange reserves (excluding gold and SDRs) fell from Rs 76.45 bn. to Rs 62.8 bn, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, submission to Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Enquiry into Relations with India, June, 1989, Annex B.

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  82. The armed services, paramilitary, defence, space and nuclear industries together employ approximately 2 million people, which is almost one quarter of those employed in the formal factory sector and 8% of those employed in the total formal sector. Figures derived from Thomas, Indian Security Policy, pp. 224–5 and Tata Services, op. cit., p. 81 and p. 135.

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  83. See Amin Gupta, ‘India’s Mixed Performance’, Defense and Diplomacy, Vol. 7, May, 1989, No. 5, pp. 44–52.

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  84. See D.P. Chaudhri, Recent Trends in the Indian Economy, Working Paper No. 88/2, NCDS, Canberra, 1988, Table 2, p. 4.

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  85. Within these sectors, some sub-sectors such as machine tools and electronics have performed exceptionally well. See for example,Annual Reportof the Department of Electronics, as reported in the Times of India, 23 May, 1990. The electronics sector grew by 31% and exports of electronics by 63% in 1989. In the past two years exports of engineering products have doubled. See India Today, 15 August, 1990, p. 42.

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  86. Chaudhri, op. cit., p. 1.

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  87. See Economist Intelligence Unit, India, Nepal Country Report, No. 2, 1989 (quarterly, London), p. 23 for the requirements of the energy sector. The same publication (p. 27) points out that India also faces a ‘crisis’ in road transport in the next decade.

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  88. The 1990 Budget lowered company tax from 50% to 40%. There is no evidence to date that the government is seeking to reverse the liberalis~ tion measures introduced in 1985. If anything, liberalisation will continue at a steady rather than a dramatic pace. See Asiaweek, 25 May, 1990.

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  89. World Bank, India: Recent Developments and Medium-Term Issues, Vol. l, 1988, p. ii.

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  90. For a further exposition of the argument that Indian defence expenditure is not overly burdensome, seeR. Thomas in R. Bruce (Ed.), op. cit., pp. 103–5.

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  91. The ISS Strategic Balance 1988/89 reports a rate of expenditure for Pakistan of 6.5% for 1986 (p. 226). In reality the rate would be higher because a significant amount of Pakistan’s expenditure is not reported. The same document reports China as having a rate of 2.6% for the same year; but again, this would be a serious underestimation. India’s defence spending is also under-reported, but is on the whole more transparent than Pakistan’s or China’s. Ravi Rikhye estimates that India’s rate of expenditure could be as high as 5% of GNP. See ‘Indian Defence Budget: Fact and Fantasy’, Economic and Political Weekly, April 29, 1989, p. 907.

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  92. See James Clad, ‘Power amid Poverty’, Far Eastern Econonic Review, 7 June 1990, pp. 47–51 and R.G. Matthews, ‘The Development of India’s Defence-Industrial Base’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 12, December, 1989, No. 4, pp. 405–29.

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  93. For example, statement of Minister of State for Defence Ramanna, as in Clad, Ibid., p. 47.

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  94. Interestingly, the growth in the private sector continues apace, notwithstanding the problems relating to macroeconomic management and the performance of the public sector. See ‘Bulls on the Rampage’, India Today, 15 August, 1990, pp. 93–4 and ‘The Stock Market Boom’, Frontline, 18–31 August, 1990, p. 109.

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  95. See Hormuz P. Mama, ‘India’s New Tactical Missiles’, International Defence Review, No. 7, 1989, pp. 963–4.

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  96. In the defence industries, India is already developing an interesting relationship with the US. Former Defence Minister Pant, during a visit to the US in 1989, showed interest in acquiring a number of technologies in relation to India’s Light Combat Aircraft project. The project will involve extensive US assistance in the areas of avionics and engine design. The US reportedly reacted positively to Pant’s request for assistance with high-strength fibre technology. It also reportedly reacted positively to his request for sophisticated underwater technology and a number of other technologies. See Sandananda Mukherjee in Jane’s Defence Weekly, 28 October, 1989, p. 912. See also Mohammed Ayoob, ‘India in South Asia: the Quest for Regional Predominance’, in World Policy Journal, Vol. VII, Winter, 1989–90, No. l, p. 113

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  97. Many Indians who migrate to the US retain close links with India. Many more receive their advanced education in the US and then return to India. Such links are of considerable value in the development of India’s more sophisticated technologies. For example, Abdul Kalam, who was in charge of the Agni rocket program, and five other scientists spent some time studying at NASA. See an article by John Fialka in the Wall Street Journal, 6 July, 1989. An example of the significance of this type of interchange may be seen in the report of the National Science Foundation, Indian Scientific Strengths: Selected Opportunities for IndoUS Cooperation, Washington DC, 1987. The report advocated closer links in a number of important areas in science and technology. Its members included a number of US Indians prominent in scientific and business circles. There are currently over 400,000 skilled Indians living abroad. Of these, 20% are highly skilled scientists. Reported in a recent study of the Centre for Planning Research and Action, New Delhi.

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  98. The heart of the Indian Air Force is comprised of MiG 2ls and MiG 29s These aircraft are still being manufactured under licence from the Soviet Union, with Soviet assistance. Similarly, the Indian Navy is still acquiring Soviet Kilo class submarines, which will constitute the bulk of the Indian submarine force. A high level Indo-Soviet joint defence group recently undertook a comprehensive review of the security environment in the region and decided on steps further to expand cooperation in the field of defence. Source - Pacific Defence Reporter, May, 1990, p. 31.

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Gordon, S. (1992). Domestic Foundations of India’s Security Policy. In: Babbage, R., Gordon, S. (eds) India’s Strategic Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21885-1_2

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