India’s security perceptions are incorrect. Consequently, the structure of our defence policy is unsound. We are informed that the task of national security involves preservation of the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. That may indeed be one of the tasks but it is certainly not a complete or even a satisfactory enunciation. There are many other ramifications and they need to be examined. Our concern should not be limited to the simplistic ‘spend more-spend less’ debate. The defence budget is, after all, only a necessary instrument. Questioning its size is more an expression of our concern with the direction and thrust of our defence policy, even with the management of the policy implicit in it, than merely with its accountancy aspects.These are purely managerial concern and involved with them are the two, often conflicting, aspects of ‘efficiency’ as the civilians see it, and ‘effectiveness’ as the military would demand.

We need to test our self-enunciated task on the anvil of actual achievements. When independent India’s history does get to be written objectively and when the criteria for the preservation of our territorial integrity are applied, these facts will emerge. In the late 40’s we lost a large part of our territory in Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan. In the late 50’s we acquiesced in the annexation of Tibet and in Aksai-chin accepted, the bitting off of the plateau. In the 60’s we lost even larger parts of Ladakh to China and suffered a military reverse at its hands in Arunachal. Our Kutch and Punjab operations of 65 were not the best demonstrations of how to preserve our territorial Integrity. In the 70’s we allowed the Indian Ocean to become the preserve of superpowers and accepted yet another incursion on our sub-continent this time by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Only time will tell what the eighties hold in store. One conclusion is nevertheless in order. Our policy can hardly be considered to have been an unqualified success. Why has that been so?

Because we have never formulated an integrated, perspective vision of our security concerns, the commonly expressed Defence Ministry viewpoint – preserving as inviolate the frontiers of the nation and its sovereignty is limited, both in vision and application. The maintenance of external sovereignty is treated as a foreign policy function. Now we must accept that a military act by a sovereign state is the putting into effect of an act of diplomacy. It is an extension of our national and diplomatic will. The purely military aspect of a nation’s security is, therefore, an integral component of a much larger concern. Even internally, the task is much more than a mere physical safeguarding of our boundaries. Our concern is with the nation’s security. Therefore, unless we are clear in our minds as to what it is that we aspire to ‘secure’ and how, no formulation will enable us to put forward a comprehensive security doctrine. And, unless we do that, we will not be clear about why we arm and the way we ought to go about it.

Our central concern is with the preservation of the Indian nation. Until we are clear about the core value of our nationhood and are able not only to articulate them but obtain a national commitment to them, we would not even know what it is that we attempt to defend. These core values may well be destroyed if the nation is subjected to alien rule, in any form, but certainly they are not preserved only by maintaining as physically Our central concern is with the preservation of the Indian nation. Until we are clear about the core value of our nationhood and are able not only to articulate them but obtain a national commitment to them, we would not even know what it is that we attempt to defend. These core values may well be destroyed if the nation is subjected to alien rule, in any form, but certainly they are not preserved only by maintaining as physically

The protection of the Indian nation involves preservation of almost a civilization concept, an ethos, an ancient history, an evolved philosophy and, equally important (though perhaps somewhat perverted by now, but precisely because of that, of vital concern to us), a value system. We would not even be making a beginning towards a rightful effort at national security unless we comprehended its myriad challenges. The Indian nation is one of the most complex and difficult nation-states to be bound by the narrow confines of the commonly understood meaning of that word. Naturally, therefore, our conceptualization of our security concerns has also to be exceptional.

These concerns must take into account a composite of the social, the psychological, the economic and the diplomatic. One could well argue that all the se could amount to nothing and in the words of a distinguished soldier be like a “cheque drawn on a bankrupt account”, if there were no military power to back it. That might be well so. On the other hand, no matter how much military muscle there is, unless there is a clear enough understanding of and commitment to the preservation of our core values, the military arm by itself will achieve nothing. So let us recognize that all attempts at reducing national security concerns to only the military angle are fraught with unlimited danger.

Our internal policy, our attempts at the eradication of appalling poverty, through the exciting instrument of a participatory form of government, our attempts at the creation of sane, civilized, liberal and accommodative social and political order, are parts of the central core of this concern. Unless these are not accepted, we would fail to achieve that absolutely vital aspect of nationhood, a feeling of belonging of being part of a collective effort.

This is the crucial point; the internal factor is all important. Then would irrefutably follow that any government that arrogates to itself all national security concerns and does not take into account the building up and creation of a “national will”, must without any doubt whatsoever fail in its task. It is not a question of looking back through our long history – an account of 1962 will suffice. The sad picture of His Late Imperial Majesty Shahenshah Arymehar Raza Pehlavi of Iran comes to mind. Also, the illustration of the severance of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, as seen from the latter’s viewpoint, would demonstrate tellingly the point I am attempting to make.