The external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, for some reason, dislikes “polemics”. Derived from the Greek word for war, polemos, and defined by Oxford Dictionary as “a strong verbal or written attack” and as the “practice of engaging in fierce discussion”, he has time and again attacked those he claims indulge in it. Because over the last 25 years, no other policy analyst or commentator has so consistently, relentlessly, substantively, and harshly criticized the country’s extant foreign and national security policies, and questioned the quality and credibility of India’s nuclear arsenal and related deterrence strategy — a particular bugaboo with Jaishankar — and fleshed out hardline alternatives to existing policies in some six-odd books and innumerable writings, I presume, his diatribes are directed at me! Whence this response.
Curiously, Jaishankar’s father, the late K. Subrahmanyham (KS), whose views he often indirectly invokes, and alludes to, if only to validate his own “realist” take on the world, appreciated — even if he did not wholly accept — my approach, that Jaishankar derides. KS and I agreed on almost nothing but our exchanges in the first National Security Advisory Board, in the drafting of the nuclear doctrine, in various conferences at home and abroad, and in one-on-ones in his offices in IDSA, and elsewhere, involved unresolved argumentation without ever lapsing into opinion-mongering which, alas, passes for strategic thinking within the portals of government, the military, and in the press and media — something Subrahmanyam readily agreed was the case.
It may be interesting to juxtapose Jaishankar’s abhorrence of hawkish policy polemics against his father’s more catholic (with small c!) attitude to it. Consider the ‘blurb review’ Subrahmanyam wrote for my 724 page 2002 tome — Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy (with a second edition in 2005) published on the book jacket. This is what he said in toto: “This is a monumental effort at interpreting the evolution of Indian national security perspective since Independence. Bharat Karnad has painstakingly researched into American and British secret documents recently declassified and released to the public. His comprehensive study encompasses the numerous shortcomings and failures in the decisionmaking structure and processes of political leadership, bureaucracy, and armed forces leadership over the last half a century. He has been able to unearth many hitherto publicly unknown facts in respect of the country’s nuclear policy and weapon acquisition process. He advocates a ‘hawkish’ policy. His advocacy based on vast research and logically coherent within his preferred framework of values and perceptions. There is a lot to learn from this book and a lot to contest. It is a very valuable, timely, and provocative contribution to the national security debate of a kind and quality not hitherto attempted.” He was gone by the time my later books were published, but I venture to say they would have met with, albeit, his grudging approval.
On Dec 15, 2024, Jaishankar, released a magazine — India’s World, apparently a “platform” for his alter ego in the Press and media, C. Raja Mohan — langotia yaar from their time together at the Jawaharlal Nehru University — an institution best known for producing ideological and other chameleons with a certain kind of talent but absolutely no convictions!
Jaishankar lauded the new periodical as “an additional forum for debate and argumentation in our country” and expressly as a vehicle to “change”, as he put it, the “Track 1-Track 2, government-think tank, official-academic” “dynamic” to promote “realism” through “our public space discourse” that should neither be “theological [nor] polemical.” Then, in his very next breath, as it were, he undercut the need for any such forum, with a startling declaration that “Track 1” — meaning the MEA habited by foreign service careerists like himself, “has been consistently ahead of Track 2 when it comes to diplomacy, foreign policy, and keeping up with the world. In fact, if you look at many of the big ideas, much of the advocacy of change, I would say really it’s interesting that Track 1 has outpaced Track 2” in the “last 25 years”! ( For his remarks, refer https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/38804/Remarks+by+External+Affairs+Minister+Dr+S+Jaishankar+at+the+Launch+of+Indias+World+Magazine )
This must come as news to many, even as his paens to Track 1 display not only lack of humility but an exaggerated view of careerist infallibility — something the intellectually more gifted Subrahmanyam never betrayed.
I can understand and even empathise with the self-congratulatory tone but only if it is deserved! The Minister’s claims of Track 1 being “ahead” of the curve is maintainable only if by “Track 2” Jaishankar means the host of academics who act like echo chambers for the government and a welter of thinktanks, including those funded by the three armed services that are into event management (‘Raisina Dialogue’, anyone?) and who consider their brief as bounden duty to prop up the line the MEA, defence ministry, the military services, or whoever is paying their bills, is putting out, and whose research activity amounts to imitating the government-funded IDSA in embroidering the policy of the day of the regime, ministry, or patron armed service.
IDSA, it may be recalled was led for a long while by Subrahmanyam. Whatever he may have intended for it, this thinktank has evolved into something ineffably sad led mostly by a string of retired diplomats with little intellectual leanings. The quality of IDSA’s body of “research” is so unoriginal it disrespects the man whose name the institution now bears — Manohar Parrikar. Parrikar, the only defence minister to-date of the Indian republic who, as an IIT-trained engineer had a problem solving mindset, and in the face of political pulls and bureaucratic pushes within the defence ministry, settled unflinchingly on the right track. He tended to military hardware choices based on cost-benefit calculations (like more Su-30 MKIs, not new aircraft — Rafale), and preferred basic changes in the defence procurement policy framework that would have given the lead role to the more efficient, productive, and effective private sector defence industry in defence production. Unfortunately, Parrikar was found unsuitable and shunted back to Panjim, and far from following up on his innovative policy tracks, these were ditched, and the defence ministry babus recovered their generalist “know nothing, take the easy way out” decisionmaking turf. They succeeded in miring the atmanirbharta (arms self-sufficiency) programme, for instance, in the ‘Make in India’-‘Made in India’ confusion at the centre of it. Sure, if Track 2 is what this lot of thinktanks and academics is about, then Jaishankar is right — where’s the need for them?
Jaishankar’s claims about “Track 1” is preposterous nonsense, however, once, the Centre for Policy hoves into view. Unlike the sarkari/semi-sarkari “thinktanks”, CPR is the only one of its kind that took its role seriously as a source of alternative policy ideas and tacked to an independent policy wind, and was recognised worldwide for producing first rate policy research, offering alternative policy templates and advice to ministries and departments of government over the years. How many people know, for instance, that at the December 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, a CPR faculty member, now a young international law Don at Oxford University, was hired by the Danish government for its summit secretariat and channeled inside dope to the Indian delegation to help hone its tactics and shape its positions? Or, that CPR did the original work on river waters and the Farrakka Barrage? And that its faculty pretty much shaped the country’s environment laws? MEA has been particularly reluctant to give credit to CPR’s work in the foreign policy field, even though the 2012 ‘Nonalignment 2.0’ Report (https://cprindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/NonAlignment-2.pdf ) saw Manmohan Singh’s 2nd NSA, MK Narayanan, sing its praises at its release. Written under the then Centre’s President, Bhanu Pratap Mehta’s guidance it, in fact, forms the unacknowledged general policy framework of the Modi government, and is the basis for Jaishankar’s crowing about Track 1 being miles ahead of Track 2.
If CPR’s ‘Nonalignment 2.0’ was geared for the MEA mainstream, alternate thinking on national security-dominated foreign and military policies and calculus, was found in my many books. (This aspect is elaborated by third parties in several chapters, including by Manmohan Singh’s NSA, Shivshankar Menon in Kanti Bajpai, ed., How Realist is India’s National Security Policy? published by Routledge in 2023) The ideas and concepts in the books and my writings were transmitted and entered the government, ministerial, and military thought circles and policy streams through various routes — interactions with political leaders (in my case, direct contacts and communications with the late Jaswant Singh and KC Pant), seminars and conferences here at home and abroad, and interactions with senior officers of the armed services and paramilitaries via lectures at higher training institutions, formation “study weeks”, and conferences called by theatre commanders, and the Strategic Nuclear Orientation Course (SNOC) I was tasked to conceive and conducted for Brigadier rank officers and equivalent and above for many years. SNOC, incidentally, reflected the then chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee and CNS Admiral Arun Prakash’s singular conviction that the armed services needed, what he called “ginger groups”, within them that “thought outside the box” and challenged the mainstream views especially on strategic issues. The present state of strategic understanding of nuclear security and deterrence in the military generally can be gauged from the fact that the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, run by the army, that was supposed to carry on with the course dropped it some years back resulting in the armed services having no worthwhile knowledge of nuclear warfare and deterrence. The Strategic Forces Command does not count because it is manned by officers on rotational postings.
Indeed, the 2008 Indian-US nuclear deal that Jaishankar believes is the crowning glory at least of his career and is being projected as the peak achievement of the recently deceased Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and as opening the doors for the Modi regime’s bettering of relations with the US, was also CPR’s “finest hour”. Providing realtime, technically proficient, analysis and warnings in op-eds and other media interfaces about the pitfalls for the country in this deal and its various provisions, a few stellar nuclear stalwarts — former chairman of the atomic energy commission PK Iyengar, ex-director of BARC, Trombay, AN Prasad, President of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, A Gopalakrishnan, alongwith this analyst, almost derailed Jaishankar’s handiwork — the N-deal. (For these prophetic essays that are still relevant, see Iyengar, Prasad,Gopalakrishnan, Karnad, Strategic Sellout: Indian-US Nuclear Deal, Pentagon Press, 2009).
While the late Manmohan Singh was perfectly correct in seeking a rapprochement with the United States as a pathway to India’s economic prosperity, he did not dictate the contents of the deal nor how it was to be negotiated. That was left to the tender mercies of the “professional” — Jaishankar, as Joint Secretary (Americas) in MEA, the lead Indian negotiator. Rather than stick immovably to core principles protective of national security and the national interest — as, say, the Chinese negotiators invariably did in key negotiations with the US government, starting with the Nixon Administration in the 1970s, that obtained for China massive investment flows and manufacturing wherewithal to set it up as the premier trading nation it is today, and advanced military and aviation production tech from the US that has turned the PLA into a modern entity, Jaishankar compromised and compromised some more at the negotiating table and ended up stripping India of its sovereign security imperative to conduct thermonuclear tests.
When some 20 years from now the official documents of these talks will be declassified on the 30-year schedule of the US National Archives, it will be become plain just how much Jaishankar’s lack of appreciation of the nuclear military angle and his willingness to surrender the country’s strategic security — something the American negotiators sensed, and ruthlessly capitalised on, resulted in advancing America’s longstanding nonproliferation goal of gutting the Indian nuclear weapons programme. By then many of us will have been long gone, and Jaishankar’s heinous role in thus strategically hobbling India will have faded into history.
Had Jaishankar played hardball, the US would have relented because there were many powerful ‘long view’ elements in the Pentagon and the White House even then, for instance, who were pleading to have India in America’s corner in the coming clash against China in Asia. But then the country had Jaishankar, who is partial to a policy tilt US-wards as the steward at MEA, as was Subrahmanyam. And when is a father’s son in the same business not influenced by the paterfamilias?
Worse, from India’s point of view, another former generalist diplomat, Natwar Singh, as the Minister of State in MEA, far from reining in Jaishankar’s negotiating bias and tendencies, pushed Manmohan Singh to accept the final document that the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s team had managed to get out of Jaishankar. The last time I met the late Natwar Singh, some time before he passed away, he regreted his “haste” in seeking the nuclear deal, which I took as a confession that he had erred in bolstering the negotiating process and its end product. Conclusion: Jaishankar did his job reprehensibly, seemingly unmindful of the ramifications of signing away the nuclear testing option and was thus complicit in India’s nuclear and strategic reduction.
To clarify the record some more, Manmohan S was not convinced by Natwar’s case for Jaishankar’s draft agreement, and sought clearance from the then chairman, atomic energy commission, the lily livered Anil Kakodkar, whom Natwar coerced into acquiescing in the deal. By then the political situation, thanks to CPR’s public campaign against it, had heated up in Delhi with uneasy coalition partners making noises against it. It led to the Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi asking Manmohan Singh to hold off on signing it. It is at this juncture that Manmohan Singh took ownership, saying essentially that he had negotiated in good faith and now that an accord was ready he could not back down from it, and offered his resignation. It was a power play Sonia G could not resist and the N-deal went through.
Kakodkar could offer no worthwhile defence when his senior colleagues such as Iyengar accused him of perfidious behaviour in accepting the deal. Slack-jawed, he, in turn, passed the buck to the still more disreputable R Chidambaram, whom he succeeded as the bossman in Trombay. Going against every evidence including the data produced by Director, Field Testing at Pokhran, Dr. K Santhanam, Chidambram farcically declared the fizzled 1998 S-1 thermonuclear test a great success and, further, that India never needed to test again! This last was apparently the scientific premise and the green signal for Jaishankar’s compromises that resulted in a ban on India’s resuming nuclear tests written into the N-deal text that has kept this country’s weapons technology frozen and capped at the basic low yield fission weapons level Washington wanted it at that a puny Pakistan is at— the better for the US to play off the two squabbling South Asian states. FYI, Chidambaram is Jaishankar’s uncle! Wheels within wheels! It shoved the Indian weapons programme into the well of despond it is presently wallowing in, even as Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is marching ahead with an intercontinental ballistic missile and cruise missile tech the Chinese have helpfully provided Islamabad via the North Korean route.
By the way, all my books and writings in such severely realist vein, is what has got under Jaishankar’s skin, getting him to issue a warning against me for rubbishing the Indian nuclear weapons inventory and the country’s manifestly flawed deterrent posture. This I readily I admit, I do, because unlike him, I do not care for the country and its people, its government and military, to remain deluded about India being up to scratch on the thermonuclear front vis a vis China just so Jaishankar escapes his responsibility for crafting an accord massively damaging of vital national security interests.
Over the last 35-odd years, I have made the case for vigorously proactive foreign and military policies, expansive geopolitics (based on a collective security architecture in Asia to ringfence China, having Israel and Japan at the two ends, the Southeast Asian countries as the vulnerable underbelly poviding a fighting frontage on the South China Sea, and India as the pivot able to switch forces and resources east and to the west articulated in my 1994 book — Future Imperilled: India’s Security in the 1990s and Beyond), which the MEA has accepted as its plan form. And I have advocated in these books an LAC-deployed nuclear posture involving not only the resumption of open-ended thermonuclear testing which a properly primed Washington would happily accommodate because of the strategic necessity to shore up its Asian partnerships, but also the jettisoning of the No First Use principle exclusively against China to counter PLA’s manifest comprehensive conventional military superiority. It may not prevent the territorial creep by the PLA but it will deter China from escalating the hostilities that may occur. My stress has been on a singleminded focus on China as the primary threat, the realisation of a strictly reciprocal “eye for an eye”-China strategy inclusive of equipping China’s neighbours with nuclear missiles as a belated response to Beijing’s nuclear missile arming Pakistan — a recommendation that a gutless Indian government has, some 25 years after I first made it in NSAB, watered down to transferring conventional Brahmos cruise missiles to Philippines, Vietnam, et al.
These books also argued just why relying on the US is foolish and foolhardy — a point amply proved by the Trump Presidency the first time around that will be hammered in again come January 20, 2025 when he reoccupies the White House, cementing America’s record as an inconstant friend and partner, not one to be trusted in any manner, for any reason, certainly not with India’s strategic security or even for military high-tech. It is something other Asian states are beginning to acknowledge but the Modi-Jaishankar foreign policy blithely ignores. Consider just this: If the China behemoth is what America fears, why does it stop India from testing to get high yield Hydrogen Bombs to match China’s and thus somewhat neutralise Chinese strategic power? Wouldn’t that help the US cause as well? Do such actions inspire confidence in the US as friend and quasi-ally?
And yet, here we have Jaishankar trumpeting his supposed foreign policy successes in terms of depending on the very same US for India’s security, technology advancement, and access to its market for Indian talent, exports and economic wellbeing. This when the new avatar of Trump promises even greater stringency in tariffing all trade out of business, erecting walls to keep out foreigners, including the likely outcome of the MAGA clash with Vivek Ramaswsami-Elon Musk over an open green card regime that Indians have monopolised, and which will likely end, terminating the H1B visa joyride the Indian government has been witlessly promoting at the expense of improving the job prospects for the youth at home so they don’t have to seek a future abroad. Recall too that Trump shut down the US collaboration to develop the Indian Kaveri jet engine. But he will be overjoyed to sell anything the Indian military wants, but not the “know how and know why” to make India a competing seller of military goods. Oh, no! But Modi, Jaishankar and MEA, like the Bourbons in France remember nothing and learned nothing, and are positioning India to run into the new Trump Administration’s buzzsaw. With what results will become clear soon enough.
Jaishankar does not think any advocacy over the years for a “hawkish”, more nationalist, less compromising, stance should be the template for India’s foreign and military policy, plans and posture. Rather he is animated by the potential and possibilities promised by diplomacy and diplomatic methods, reflected in his flexible attitude to bartering away vital national interests.
Let us, in this context of clashing polemics, peruse Jaishankar’s other points made at the magazine function. He has propounded India as “Vishwabandhu” — a concept he settled on after Modi had strained everyone’s credulity with the vaporous notion of India as “Vishwaguru”. Except, vishwabandhu is a mirror image of the Nehruvian nonalignment — the same old, same old, especially because that’s how the Western policy audience it is targeted at, perceives it. Like in the 1950s, India has feet in both camps — US-West and Russia-China, and expects to gain from it. But Jaishankar insists it “signifies” something new — a “realism, which is contemporary [and] ambitious”. Is the nation’s terminal ambition then to remain content with managing this “feet in both camps” posture? Seemingly so, because he went on to describe this posture management policy as somehow ending in India becoming “a leading power”! Even this low level ambition may be beyond India’s reach but he, perhaps, believes in magic because reality is more unforgiving. “Positioning” India in this a manner, according to him, will result in the country having “the most friends, the least problems, the best relationships, the minimal baggage”. This “optimal” positioning, he suggests, is best in a “global landscape” that’s “become very volatile,…very turbulent, …very uncertain.”
Meaning, in troubled times he wants India to jump on to the American bandwagon as NATO countries and many Asian states have long done and chosen to continue to do, but are now questioning their wisdom in doing so, with many of them trying to take corrective measures. Such as an all-European armed force and nuclear deterrent. Jaishankar doesn’t reckon that by climbing on to Washington’s lap Modi will have to do what leaders in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Singapore, Manila, Jakarta routinely do — kiss the US President’s….. That is where this kind of thinking will get India. All the fancy diplomatic traipsing around Jaishankar has done with the incoming Trump’s NSA, Mike Walz, will avail of little if the Modi regime refuses to dance to Trump’s tune.
The fact is the Vishwabandhu stuff is sustainable only for so long as the three major players — the US, Russia and China play along, and massage New Delhi’s conceit about India being above the fray and too important to alienate. What happens if the US sanctions India more frontally for its energy trade with Russia, or for buying more Russian hardware at the expense of counterpart American offers, and if China and the US reach a modus vivendi — the G2 conceived during Barrack Obama’s tenure to run the world, leaving India economically high and dry, and military-wise up a creek because one of the main tenets of keeping Washington humoured is, as Modi and Jaishankar have discovered, buying more of their high-value military hardware and weapons and surveillance platforms? Will THIS lead to “Viksit Bharat” that Jaishankar explained “means India’s rise”?
Still more problematic is his contention that amidst “uncertainty”, “predictability …and stability” are needed “more than anything else.” Actually, for a riser like India what is requried is for it to be disruptive like hell, to “move fast, break things” as Elon Musk is advising Trump to do. Instead, Jaishankar hopes to get the country over this hump with the same antique remedy, a “mixture of offense, of defense, of hedging, of prudence, of joining in rebalancing, of participating in globalization, or to be more accurate, re-globalization, hopefully on different terms, of taking advantage of interdependence, …accelerating multipolarity and of utilizing for our benefit fully the impact of technology.” In short, to carry on doing what New Delhi has been doing — fiddling on the margins as the statist Modi has done in not overhauling the economic system at home and proving himself the last true prop for the Nehruvian socialist state as I argued in my 2018 book Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition — a thesis now backed by his one time economic adviser Surjit Bhalla! (See Bhalla’s Dec 8 Indian Express op-ed — “When dreams of Viksit Bharat stumble over Nehruvian impulses”, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/when-dreams-of-viksit-bharat-stumble-over-nehruvian-impulses-9709073/) So laggardly have been Modi’s economic, land, and labour reforms, Vietnam has raced ahead in replacing China in the global supply chain as the preferred source of quality manufactured goods, including mobile telephones, for the US and the West, even as India is scratching around, too late as always to do anything much or to benefit hugely from it.
But here’s Jaishankar articulating his geopolitics as a “world in concentric circles. So you have a neighborhood, first, you can say, a SAGAR in the oceans, the Act East and Indo-Pacific to the East, the Gulf and the whole Link West and the IMEC to the West, leading all the way up to Eurasia and to Europe.” Except, very little of any of this has actually taken off. Because, for one, the “neighbourhood first” is a disaster with MEA and Indian intel having no inkling, leave alone initiating prompt actions to preempt the ouster of Sheikh Hasina from Dhaka, or to prevent the turn of events in Kathmandu. With Pakistan army returning to Bangladesh and Nepal closing in with Beijing, our South Asia policy is in tatters — the rethink by Colombo and Male proving small consolation. Because the Indo-Pacific is contested primarily by the US and China, India is out in the cold as New Delhi has neither made bold to take forceful steps to undermine Chinese buildup east and west of the Malacca Strait nor is prepared to tie in more fully militarily with at least some of the Quad countries. And because, IMEC, I2U2, etc are still a gleam in the eye compared to Chinese BRI’s expanded footprint.
The second larger circle is “the world stage” where, with not much evidence by way of support, he Jaishankar claims India is “a player of consequence, a player to whom others turn to” before proceeding to mislabel India’s trademark risk averse policy as “bashful”, and to talk of “a multi-vector foreign policy” without anywhere mentioning that the single most powerful vector in a big country’s foreign policy quiver — distantly deployable hard military power, is missing in India. Because the Indian armed services, mirroring the government’s prejudces and reticence, never prioritised acquiring such capability. Without it, the country is minus an expeditionary forces muscle and is unable to make a splash as argued at length in my 2015 book — Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet).
But then Jaishankar shrinks our ambitions and horizons and sets us all straight by saying, without much ceremony, that India under Modi’s watch and during his time at the steering wheel, seeks nothing more than to become a “middle and upper middle power”. Almost as if India is a bright lower class Indian seeking a H1B visa hoping eventually to make good under the American sun! With this small goal in mind, he states, that “We need to focus and play regional contradictions to our benefit,…create sets of balances whose aggregate actually favors India’s rise” before rounding in on “a grand strategy” that he promises, will make the country a “leading power one day”. That “one day”, however, is seemingly so far away, he feels it necessary to amplify that his “plan [is not] for today or tomorrow, but for the next generation, maybe even beyond that” and that the BJP regime “is actually planning …., trying to expand its footprint [but] lightly”. He thereafter proceeds to console such countrymen as are by now thoroughly discombobulated by his verbal diarrhea as they have long taken Modi’s rhetoric of far grander results faster a bit more seriously than they should have done, by saying what his regime is attempting is only “a beginning, and beginnings, at the end of the day, are the start of processes.” So, there is is a process to contend with as well once the beginnings are done with. Oh, Boy!
Next, Jaishankar pitches in with some diplomatic backpedalling, referencing what he calls “a multi-generational foreign policy… a mix”, by his account, “of the old and new, the issues that we have historically confronted, many of them [that] have not gone away.” so, yea, insecure borders, terrorism, yadda, yadda, so what is new?
Further, he talks of the foreign policy laying “much greater stress on economic diplomacy” than in the past 10 years. And he regurgitates what the PM has been bellowing from the rooftops for a while now about making India central to the global supply chain by “rerouting”. Except, as already pointed out, such rerouting is limited by the Modi government’s seeming incapacity to create a business-friendly ecosystem more than in words, which the existing system of regulatory controls won’t permit because the babudom is in no hurry to speed the country’s progress if it cuts into their power, and because Modi is unwilling radically to transform it. So India is destined to trudge along, while Asian states like Vietnam and Malaysia with more nimble regimes steal a march.
He then muddles into an area that’s obviously beyond his ken by suggesting that the country leapfrog the grimy smokestack industrial stage, and step smartly into the “the digital era” — a bill of goods last sold by the former University of Chicago economist, Raghuram Rajan, who was imported as economic adviser to the PM and preached ridiculously that India need only specialise in software and financial services while relying on Chinese and other manufacturers for its material needs! Jaishankar finally alights on the “global workplace” to enlarge which, he says, has been the one point agenda of the Modi government over the last decade, with every passing leader from the West being pigeonholed for more H1B visas and equivalents for trained Indian manpower to use as an unemployment pressure valve. Really enthusiastic now, he next reels out statistics pertaining to the export of skilled talent “growing in leaps and bounds [and] of some 33-34 million Indian nationals and persons of Indian origin working abroad” before assuring everyone in the audience that “these numbers are going to go up dramatically in the coming years [and] going to see an explosion in mobility because there will be a demand for talent coupled with very sharp demographic deficits in different parts of the world.” And that’s a change this government is eagerly awaiting.
For most self-respecting countries, it’d be a matter of the greatest national shame for its prime minister and foreign minister to proclaim to the world that its economy and systems are so weak and rotten, the country simply cannot afford to have the local engineering, scientific and managerial talent stay at home and make good. For Modi and Jaishankar, however, it is an accomplishment to boast about!
And all the promised goodies, moreover, that are supposed to deliver prosperity to India are external and likely realised in the country’s “tomorrows” — India-Middle East Economic Corridor, the International North-South Transport Corridor, the trilateral highway ending up, in the minister’s words, “somewhere in the Gulf of Tonkin”. “When you put all these connectivity initiatives in place” Jaishankar purred, they [will] take years…, maybe a decade to realize” all of which is something to look forward to because “a lot of this connectivity is going to run through India”. This to say don’t expect any results anytime soon.
And he paints the international scene without “fixed point collaborations” as allowing India to be a member of QUAD one day, member of BRICS the next, and participate in SCO on the third day and simultaneously “lead the Global South” and “be present at G7 meetings.” It calls, he says, “for a different kind of flexibility and nimbleness” that will require India to be a first responder in the extended neighbourhood [and] part of an international response whenever such a thing is warranted.”
By way of summation, he talks of “open architecture, more multiple choices, but much deeper involvement, many more complex decisions” and no guarantee of success (it will be “very hard to predict how it’s going to go”) but India, Jaishankar says, will avoid getting into “the kind of defensive crouch into which we had, for a variety of reasons, got into”. Pray, how is the country to escape its “defensive crouch” if the Indian military, by its own devising and the government’s assistance, is reduced to a near nullity? Ah, yes, import arms– this Jaishankar does not recommend. But then he has found no role for the Indian military in regional and international relations for him to expatiate on in this or earlier speeches! Such is the pixilated reality Jaishankar is selling to Indians.
Having made it his business to think small, and to make India a dependency palpably shrinking, in the process, India’s ambitions to a middle power, and otherwise conceiving of every possible way and some to make the country a peonish secondary power surviving on the lifeline the West, the Gulf countries, or whoever else throws it as India sinks under the weight of its unemployed millions by offering a few lucky Indians jobs in their countries, Jaishankar, our minister for external affairs, asks us all “to think big, to think long, but to think smart.”
OK, then!!!
I am frustrated and all tired out, as many others may be, by the small-time ambitions and plans and matching strategy and policies for this country that Jaishankar constantly, mind-numbingly, and endlessly verbalises. If any of it makes any sense to anybody, I am happy to be tutored in the intricacies of the current foreign policy because I, for one, can’t make head or tail of it, other than to point out that what the country may be getting into is a real national security pickle.
Security Wise 
Professor,
It is clear from your diatribe that you will not be objective when it comes to the Subramanyams. Just because JS did not mention the military dimension does not mean it’s not happening. India has increased the number of Military attaches and is definitely playing an active military role in diplomacy. Regarding relations with the U.S., it makes sense for India to play nice to the U.S. in spite of its shenanigans – India is not a great power yet, and it makes no sense to antagonise it – just deal with it. Regarding land laws, and labor, there is a difference in making policy and implementing it. Easy to talk but harder to implement.
On the issue of Ātmanirbharta, there is an issue of bureaucratic sabotage and this needs to be addressed. Also, more defence funding is required – India can afford this. In terms of deterrence against China, India needs to focus on conventional deterrence first, which it is doing. Its rocket force is becoming formidable. EW/Sateliite capabilities are improving. More needs to be done, and for this more spending is required. On the nuclear front too, things are not as bad as you make them out to be. India’s nuclear triad is better developed and nuclear weapons numbers are increasing with low CEP delivery systems.
IDSA Is a Sarkari org and this is a reflection of Indian culture – I get the same feeling about ORF, but at least the quality of its analyses is better. Indian culture also reflects in its private sector which is mediocre. It’s better to send the brightest outside so that they can send back money once they succeed outside. My view is that the Indian government has decided that this is the easier path than depend on the ability of Indians to excel in India. India will be powerful at a macro level, but the micro issues will take decades or a century to address.
Overall, India is handling its relations with great and middle powers quite well. So whatever you say about JS, there are enough people who actually think he’s doing a good job. Both inside and outside India. However, the Indian bureaucracy is a. Nightmare and more needs to be done to tackle it. It probably makes sense to ignore the polemics.
Amit@ – There is a cost for India to pay for the Modi govt not discerning the space between keeping the US engaged and sovereign security imperatives — a space the country has paid much too high a price to acquire.
Professor, the U.S. is the only country which has the capabilities India needs. That the U.S. plays games and tries to contain India is a reality it has to deal with. After all, the U.S. will not make the same mistake it did with China again and aid the rise of another peer competitor. India is unlucky that way. But it makes no sense to antagonize the U.S. as India rises. In spite of US behavior, India has managed its strategic autonomy reasonably well. And my bet is that it will continue to do so – and Russia and China could play a big part in that. India will never trust China, but it will leverage Russia and China to manage the U.S. it will also use Japan, France, Australia and Israel but those countries don’t carry much heft. This is at the macro level. At the micro level India is riddled with problems that no one can solve for decades!
Amit@ — The Indian govt (PVN Rao onwards) has believed in making concessions rather than using the evolving landscape. Sure, we are mainly to blame for the mess we created for ourselves. What stopped India from reverse-engg the MiG-21 to prevent and preempt armament imports thereafter? The core problem is our partiality to incrementalism rather than risking a big dive, radical system transformation. Because there’s no such thing as partially pregnant that’s where we get stranded. Modi was well placed in 2014 with his popular mandate to impose a genuine system change as he had promised but he chickened out.
Re: Your earlier post: Having read the Ramayana you misrepresent the characters! Why shelter Jaishankar under the shield of the “Subrahmanyams”? Have made known my huge respect for KS times without number. But Jaishankar and Chidambaram are quite different entities — they willingly and readily compromised national security, and should be held responsible for the N-deal fiasco. The latter should be drummed out from the Tata Chair at BARC he soils by occupying it. Jaishankar is too clever and facile to be easily corralled. But I am doing my bit to hold his feet to the fire, as it were.
Professor, Mr. Modi is definitely incrementalist. But when he tried to go big bang with land reforms and labor laws, the country resisted. From what I’m learning, there is an element of the deep state involved here which prevents these kinds of reforms.
On the issue of atmanirbharta also, it’s likely there are bureaucrats who are in the pockets of the deep state and are slowing change – the Kaveri fiasco is criminal! In terms of reverse engineering, I just think India is mediocre. The system does not allow for free thinking and risk taking. It’s not meritocratic. There is immense corruption too. Even a state like Karnataka, which is supposedly the hotbed of innovation, is developing so pathetically. The air in Delhi is not breathable! So what do you do?
On the nuclear deal, you maybe right, but one goof in your career does not mean goofing all the time. India has been incrementalist, but has managed to change as well. For dramatic change, you need someone who has done that before – the brain has to be wired like that for it to work like that – it’s too risky for a country like India otherwise. Is there anyone amongst the Chief Ministers who could be like that? Only another person can drive change like that. Until then, it I’m afraid it will be incremental.
Amit@ — “but one goof in your career does not mean goofing all the time”. If it was a goof, what a goof and,considering the N-deal’s consequences, inexcusable.
I suppose the reason why Jaishankar dislikes polemics or military aspects of International Relations is because he belongs to a generation of military officers and diplomats who served in or advised the disastrous Indian Peace Keeping Force(IPKF) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Serving as the political adviser to the IPKF during the rising onslaught of LTTE and its leader Prabhakaran , he just might have learned the wrong set of lessons from it which made him reticent to military power and a general dislike for the military as a whole.Hence him championing peaceful means or diplomatic means in scenarios where there is clear scope for military power for example the Sino-Indian Border Issue/Standoff.
@BharatKarnad
An eye-opening post sir(as always) on Jaishankar and thank you for unravelling him
professor the problem is that the 2 books that you have mentioned in this post (strategic sellout and future imperilled) are not available anywhere tired of searching for them on book stores and online websites but still really interested in reading your essay on “India’s weak geopolitics and what to do about it” can you post a summary of it or if possible then the entire 70pages essay here or at any other platform
Regards
Aditya@ — The summary of the security architecture detailed in my chpter is right there in the body of the text. Pay attention!
Bharat for Bharat rest is a smokescreen for..
Email from Gautam Sen:
Gautam Sen
Tue, 31 Dec at 10:34 am
Read your long article with great interest although I had reservations on some of your inferences. My source of information on the Indo-US nuclear accord was my friend, Ronen Sen (ex-ambassador to Russia). Just a comment on the ubiquitous C. Raja Mohan, in whom I lost all confidence after I read an article of his opining that the US invaded Iraq to bring democracy.
This post offers a compelling reflection on the contrast between S. Jaishankar’s disdain for polemics and his late father K. Subrahmanyam’s more open approach to debate.
The author’s insightful critique of India’s nuclear policy, backed by meticulous research, underscores the importance of robust, even contentious, discussions in shaping national security strategy. A thought-provoking perspective on intellectual engagement.
Email from Dr V Siddhartha
V Siddhartha
Tue, 31 Dec at 7:17 pm
My dear Bharat:
The threshold of Gregorian 2025 — with not more than half-a-decade left to go — is not the time to take issue with you with any of the above — considerable provocations though you so copiously provide!
On this: “Jaishankar finally alights on the “global workplace” to enlarge which, he says, has been the one point agenda of the Modi government over the last decade, with every passing leader from the West being pigeonholed for more H1B visas and equivalents for trained Indian manpower to use as an unemployment pressure valve. Really enthusiastic now, he next reels out statistics pertaining to the export of skilled talent “growing in leaps and bounds [and] of some 33-34 million Indian nationals and persons of Indian origin working abroad” before assuring everyone in the audience that “these numbers are going to go up dramatically in the coming years [and] going to see an explosion in mobility because there will be a demand for talent coupled with very sharp demographic deficits in different parts of the world.” And that’s a change this government is eagerly awaiting.”
I thought you might like what I have just sent to IIT, Madras (from where I graduated in 1965 as its second B.Tech batch ) :
“Re: 2025 Distinguished Alumni and Young Alumni Achiever Awardees”
How can those who contribute to the technological prowess of another country (the U.S.) which has used, and continues to use, that prowess consistently and egregiously against India’s interests, possibly be anointed with the appellation “distinguished”?
Or does IIT Madras now see itself as an “offshore campus” of “U.S. Universities Inc.” ?
Dr. V. Siddhartha
B.Tech., Mech Engg. Roll No. 97/60
Former Secretary, Science Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister of India (please note!)
The following points may be considered:-
1. There is immense poverty in India – with 57% Indians having to be provided ‘free food’ etc (Prime Minister’s speech in a Jharkhand election rally.
2. There is immense unemployment in India coupled with a highly unsatisfied aspirational youth.
3. India is saddled with political leaders who are world class in winning elections (Modi, Amit Shah, Nadda et al) but have no plan for national development but have a single minded focus and plan for retention of power. Hence ‘Anti-Muslim hatred’ ‘Anti Pakistan rhetoric, no friend in our neighbour hood (after fall of Sheikh Hasina) etc.
4. All nationally important aspects and policies are delegated to Jaishanker and Amit Doval. This is not in and of itself bad if such luminaries had worthwhile plans.
5. For development of all aspects of national power we need peace for say 25 years.
6. As correctly pointed out in this article, the US has a track record of being undependable. And as pointed out, if the US truly sees China as its prime adversary, it should not have other than superficial opposition to India conducting thermonuclear tests.
You immortalise yourself with this Professor. Your language though it makes the readers enjoy- I noticed even in Strategic Sellout that it was far more caustic as compared to other three contributors – but it would make anybody in power take a serious umbrage.
Probably that’s why you have been barred from appearing in any newspaper. Otherwise you were a regular in The Indian Express and The Asian Age. Ironically it makes one feel that The Hindu will jump at it, but since you haven’t spared Congress either in the past, there are no takers there as well.
Your provocative ideas sometimes make me search more sources to get a balanced view, but rest assured, I would like to read your stories to my grown up grandchildren. Don’t even know whether they will understand because just like old art will never reappear, there will be no one like you either. The future belongs to Chetan Bhagats.
In that case I’ll read and reread them for my own enjoyment. And I’ll be there when US documents are declassified 20 years hence to see how history asseses Jaishankar. Rest I wouldn’t say anything on the content. Chotta munh badi baat. Sometimes you have to rely on others’ hard earned wisdom. Afterall they haven’t greyed their hair in the sun.
To somebody like me with average intellect, Jaishankar seems very erudite and since we are getting our grub everything seems to be going on fine. It’s only when you read someone with higher grasp that you understand where the malice is hidden.
This is probably my second comment on this Post Dr Karnad. The way you exposed JNU chameleon C Raja Mohan is quite funny and commendable. I am not able to write this comment properly because i am laughing out loud on the langotia yaar – JNU stuff.My Shat Shat Naman to you.
Wishing you a long healthy life and a Happy New Year
@BharatKarnad
“PK Iyengar, ex-director of BARC, Trombay, AN Prasad, President of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, A Gopalakrishnan, alongwith this analyst, almost derailed Jaishankar’s handiwork” then what went wrong after that professor if you guys were nearly successful in derailing it they signed the deal sadly
would love to know the main culprit in this whole setup
also a happy new year to you and your family professor
Aditya@ — Please read the post
Mr. Karnad you make too much out of 2008 US-India nuclear civilian deal. It’s nothing but an overhyped agreement. Till date no US civilian nuclear reactor is functional in India. Besides which country in the world has used Nuclear weapons after the Yankees experimented with them in 1945?
Nuclear weapons have lost their relevance. Biological warfare is the new kid on the block as successfully demonstrated by China in 2019-2020.
It’s easy to preach from a moral high ground impractical theories like nuclear arming Vietnam when Chinese investment there is worth billions.
Readers here aren’t aware of your wife being one of the top corporate executives in the country, which allows you the luxury of your thoughts without applying logic.
chamaar ke@ — why impractical? Did anybody warn Beijing their brazen proliferation of nuclear missiles/tech to Pakistan, with US complicity, was “impractical”? Incidentally, China historically-speaking respects countries that are predatory or strictly reciprocal, and believe in “an eye for an eye”!
Nuclear weapons — irrelevant? Go tell it to the poor Ukrainians who gave up their Soviet-era arsenal.
Absence of “logic”? Where (especially as I pride myself on being both well informed and logical)?
You must be hallucinating about the Chinese investment in $billions? It is actually a trickle ($2.5 billion) compared to what China takes out annually with unbalanced trade — the last time I checked, it was $ 85.1 billion in 2024, an increase from the year before of $83.36 billion. The reason why I have all along advocated building a domestic base for manufacture of electronic components and of base chemicals (to serve the pharma industry) — the two major import sectors. It is something GOI is only now waking up to doing.
There’s no excuse not to be better informed.
FYI, yes, my wife was a “top corporate exec” — she retired over a year ago. And yes it affords me “the luxury” of my thoughts. But my sustained policy criticism has been the norm from when I began writing after taking up residence in Delhi end-1979 when neither of us had much of a bank balance to speak of!
Pakistan seeked nuclear weapons from China and it obliged. Has Vietnam ever sought nuclear weapons from India?
China is an economic superpower but militarily they are total dud. The last time their army fought a war with India (one night stand) they used sticks and stones. They are perpetually bullying Taiwan without ever daring to attack the island.
Even if Ukraine had nuclear weapons they wouldn’t have dare to use it. Just like Putin. He keeps threatening to use them but also cannot. No nation in the world can afford to use nukes. You fire one and ten will rain down on you ensuring total annihilation of the first user of nukes.
You got me all wrong here. I meant Chinese investment in Vietnam not in India.
You should enjoy your days in peace. Nothing will ever change in India. An IAS officer once told me that government is a tenant, we bureaucrats are the landlords.
Chamaar@ — You should be careful about what you don’t know. What do you think the 2003 agreement for nuclear cooperation with Vietnam was about? You seem to have bought into American publicity about the Chinese mil as dud, etc. And your IAS friend may have taken that phrase about landord, etc from from my 2018 book — Staggering Forward!!
Any army without continuous combat experience is dud. Chinese army is totally inefficient and hasn’t been in any war since 1979. I don’t need to read any Yankee stories for it. Facts are for there for everyone to see.
The day Xi dares to send his joke of an army to take over Taiwan. West will hit China with such sanctions that the already crippled Chinese economy will collapse totally.
IAS lobby in India is very powerful and they remain in the pockets of the Western Intelligence in lieu of wine, women and wealth not to mention green cards and scholarships for their kids and grandchildren.
You can keep raising the topic forever yet nothing will change regarding their behavior.
hatsoff sir…brutal truth nothing else
Email from Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (ret), former 15 Corps commander and Secretary to the Indian Army
Wed, 1 Jan 2025 at 7:55 pm
Bharat Sir,
This is Ata Hasnain. Went through your essay and will need to go through it once more to get the narrative right.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh is proving a tricky ball which we are finding difficult to negotiate. Can we have a few views from you on how we need to approach that nation to come out with some self respect.
Warm regards and a Happy 2025.
Ata Hasnain
Dear General Hasnain,
Good to hear from you. And Warmest Good Wishes to you and yours for the New Year!
Self-interest is almost as important as self-respect! This thought contextualises my two paisas worth that follows.
I refer to the recent interview by the Bangladesh Army Chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, which you have, no doubt, already perused. (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-important-neighbour-want-ties-based-on-fairness-bangladesh-army-chief-101735725612202.html) It is a relief that he renounces any Bonapartist tendencies in himself and categorically rejects his army “pok[ing] its nose in politics”.
General Wakar made some other important points that are worth noting, which afford us tremendous openings.
In the main, h stated that (1) India and Bangladesh are inter-dependent (2) India’s “strategic interests” would not be imperilled, but (3) a “balance” would be struck with a reachout to China — the source, Wakar emphasised, of low priced armaments for the military.
My takeaway: Several correct conclusions need to be drawn. Far from holding India’s strategic interests and interdependence hostage, he is inviting the Indian government to (A) actually deepen the mutual stake in each other by binding the two countries together more intensively and extensively, economically, socially, culturally and in every other way; time to invest, for instance, in more east-west connectivity infrastructure, and encourage Indian corporations to channel investments, set up factories to tie that country into the Indian supply chain, and otherwise economically to mesh Bangladeshi economy with the Indian economy, (B) advise the Indian media to temper its rhetoric and coverage of the supposed “excesses” against the Hindu minority, etc., (C) transfer subsidised arms in bulk to Bangladesh and fast, including small arms and ammo, artillery, speedy patrol craft for coastal waters surveillance, corvettes for the brown water role and, perhaps, even a refitted old frigate from the Indian Navy’s inventory and, especially, the Tejas Mk 1A for the Bangladesh Air Force, with attached training regimes.
Armaments are the glue to cement relations — a fact of international life MEA and GOI generally have been slow to appreciate. The more arms we offload to that country the better, I reckon, for India’s relations with the Bangladeshi military leadership, who will always have a decisive role in that nation’s life, unfortunate though this might be. In any case, this opportunity should under no circumstances be missed to fully replace China as the main arms supplier, and for India to emerge as the Quarter-Master to the Bangladesh Army.
More elaborate security cooperation can be explored once the trust of the Generals in Dhaka is secured.
Hope you find the above of some use.
warm regards,
Bharat
Dr Karnad, since you’ve roamed the highest corridors of power since the 1990s if not earlier, here are some questions:
1> Is India forever at the mercy of individuals rather that institutions? i.e., MMS or Parrikar or Iyengar come along and good stuff happens in various areas once in a while, then things go back to mediocrity? Is Charlie Munger right in saying that India has imbibed the worst of democratic institutions (citing Posco case as example)?
2> Even top-performing ministers like Gadkari have openly expressed frustration at the babus. He openly offered babus to stay at home and earn full pay rather than come to work and create roadblocks. Is babudom so entrenched and fossilized that it is now well nigh impossible to reform? I suspect, and you have pointed out, that babus rather than netas are the prime culprits when it comes to instituting major reforms.
3> I feel the state vs centre politics also plays a major role in pushing forward major reforms (case in point: farm laws). There are progressive leaders at various levels in key states (Fadnavis in Mah, PTR in TN) but even they are stymied by babus in Delhi as well as by fractious centre-state relations. How have other Western states dealt with this issue?
Phalady@ — you raise deep and interesting issues, requiring a tome to explore — an enterprise some scholar should undertake. But my next book that I am writing deals with some of these issues.
There is no doubt, as you note, that the apparatus of state is thoroughly bureaucratised, its functioning gummed up by “rules of business” and regulations and procedures so dense, cross-cutting, and incomprehensible, a lowly section officer — what to speak of higher ups, in a ministry can bring a topdown initiative, to a stuttering halt with a single adverse file noting or referencing some adverse precedent or the other. That said, strong-willed persons heading the various agencies and departments of government backed strongly by the top leader can, in fact, bend the system, even reshape the system. The prime example being the nuclear visionary and first administrator of the Indian nuclear energy programme and world-class physicist, Dr Homi J Bhabha. His success was owed to his closeness to Nehru whom he had known from the mid-1930s and called “bhai”. He set up an entirely new department of atomic energy working to rules different from those applying to every other institution, including as few are aware, the Secretary, DAE, being authorised to write his own annual allocation! No intrusive financial oversight by Delhi or anyone else, that has stymied many great ideas in government at all levels
The colonial civil service system that Nehru wanted to overturn was retained because the first Home Minister, Sardar Patel, insisted on it as a practical measure. Unfortunately, the early years of the republic when the ICS was cowed, was the right time to transform colonial governance into a nationalist one. This was not done and the bureaucracy — the main structural retardant has emerged as the cross the nation and the people have been carrying ever since. Written into the Constitution, moreover, is Article 311 that virtually protects government officials from accountability for even sustained acts of malfeasance! That explains the rampant corruption and compromises with foreign powers.
But the bureaucracy can be tamed and Modi, elected to power with the popular mandate in 2014, was in a position to force a radical overhaul of the system, and the antique set of procedures and processes of government. But alack and alas, he turned out to be a “statist” relying, ironically, on Nehru’s “socialist state” to deliver on his promises which, of course, hasn’t happened. This aspect is tackled in my 2018 book — Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition (Penguin-Viking).
@Prof Karnad.
Always a pleasure to read your critical articles.
But first and foremost I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Indian nuclear problem and its glaring deficiency in thermonuclear weapons area was not 1998 or post Indo-US nuclear issue.
(There is an amazing article called “Indian Nuclear Muddle” that you can lookup online which chronicles the stupid logic of Indian Nuclear weapons program)
Rather it takes root in late 1960s and the times following the 1974 Pokhran I test. If India had serious intentions of being a nuclear megapower, then it would have continued to gain on its incremental nuclear success achieved so early. On the contrary what did we do? We slept on it.
All the way until 1998, when the international pressure nearly caused India to capitulate, we refrained from testing, despite China furiously progressing on this front. I have no explanation for this abysmal nature of not helping oneself despite having the means to do so. Perhaps you have lived through the times and you can explain it for us more.
So the 1998 shot was more symbolic rather than being any serious effort at self arming. So do you really think that a country that was so docile that it slept on hard earned nuclear capability some 25 years back would have suddenly come alive and started testing progressively more refined designs after 1998 thermonuclear dud? Or anyone post 2000 would have dared to start testing again?
Yes Chidambaram was a wretched liar, unless he somehow outsmarted Americans, Russians and Chinese into succeeding the very first time in TN Realm ( The chance of which of course is close to zero, hence making him an unconscionable liar.)
Yes 1998 thermonuclear test was a dud and needs retesting.
Yes that US or China or even Russia woulnd’t want a thermonuclear India to emerge.
But is it right blaming it all on sidekick career politicians like Jaishanker or Natwar Singh or even the Indo US nuclear deal?
I think that is unfair. The roots of this Self-debilitating nature comes from complete lack of willpower of Indian political setup [at highest levels] which in-turn stems from the collective docile nature of Indian population.
What do you think?
Itanium@ — Agree with everything you say! But re: “But first and foremost I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Indian nuclear problem and its glaring deficiency in thermonuclear weapons area was not 1998 or post Indo-US nuclear issue. Rather it takes root in late 1960s and the times following the 1974 Pokhran I test. If India had serious intentions of being a nuclear megapower, then it would have continued to gain on its incremental nuclear success achieved so early. On the contrary what did we do? We slept on it.”
Exactly. And I took some 720-odd pages in my (2002, revised ed 2005) book, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security’ widely acknowledged as the most authentic, authoritative, and comprehensive treatment of the subject, to track down the people involved, events and developments that threw light — for the very first time — on just how and why it all happened the way it did.
I can’t keep repeating the theses explored and elaborated at great length and with much evidence in my books, every time I upload a blog post or an op-ed. That’s impracticable — you’d agree. Get yourself Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, and you may be startled by many of its findings and with how things actually panned out, or did not, strategically, in the nuclear/thermonuclear realm for the country.
Yes Prof @Karnad.
“Nuclear Weapons and Indian security” – I have paid 6000Rs to get hold of the rare copy and continue to read the book – perhaps it should go to print once again to make it more accessible, it is important to spread the message.
Right as you are on strategic front, you still tend to significantly underestimate Indian fission capabilities. I am willing to trust that the miniature fission device of Pokhran II can be scaled up to at least 100kt – which if you really think dark can be monstrous in terms of radiation fallout.
But it really beats me to think about the kind of human psychology in play within Indian leadership where it paid dearly to get what it wants (a nuclear weapon state status in 1974 – defacto), but then refused to take the full merchandise (Follow on testing and refinements and full gamut of nuclear weaponry).
I mean there must be some very perverse human nature in play here which thinks crossing the nuclear threshold and getting the nuclear weapon insures it against all forms of nuclear threats (which it does) – but yet at the same time thinks there is unacceptable cost to pay in going forward and testing more refined designs.
Perhaps again only you are qualified to shine light on this illogic.
Please read the last two chapters carefully. What I question is not the efficacy of fission weapons, but the imponderable — the psychological edge China has gained in any potential N-crisis with an all thermonuclear strategic force with a large component of megaton-yield weapons. Deterrence as I have long said, is “a mind game”. (I ought to have patented this phrase because it has been flogged by many, including K Subrahmanyam!) The reason for my advocacy of tested and proven high-yield fusion weapons to gain at least “notional parity” with China.
@Prof Karnad.
I am yet to read the last two chapters, but I am not disagreeing one bit on India’s need to field thermonuclear weapons and to test more; especially now that we have tested Agni 5 Divyastra – Whose speedy deployment or not will be true test of India’s trust in its TN warhead designs.
But I guess my main point here was that it has decidedly been futile for making case for starting TN testing for decades now. Perhaps its more meaningful to work on a post mortem thesis on – “How not to screw up a nuclear weapons program for a big country”
But I continue to differ from you in that a 40kt to 100kt damage that India can inflict is not completely void of political value.
At least our moth ridden setup with its silly logic did deliver on something! So some credit must be due here. And you and I should be able to sleep without constant Chinese nightmares.
Sleep well (and hope the PLA rocket forces don’t ever test the psych edge-function they hold!)
Agni 5 gives me sound sleep at night. No doubt about that!
“Track II” Diplomacy is all fraud! It allows the transgressor to get away with past misdeeds…. without any fear of retributions. Diplomacy has to be realistic and focussed on deal-making for mutual benefits. Other Countries’ problems should be ignored, as there is nothing called “gratefulness” in international dealings for Past Favours or support rendered.
@BharatKarnad
Professor what would be your reply to those people who say that we don’t need a physical round of testing in todays world where supercomputers and simulations can correct that dud device the s1 device of 1998
Saw a social media post were a guy raised the same thing that it is time for another pokhran3 majority of the comments were naive and suggesting that supercomputer computers and other simulations could fix it
can you clear this misconception of these ignorant people
Regards
Too much work — endless repition! Those interested will have to read my book — Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security!
sir cost is Rs 9205.00 …its not possible to buy on that price..
Sir why u are not connecting to RSS or some nationalistic think tank…without right connection ur idea is not resonating to high echelons of the govt
I must admit that I have not read your books this I am not familiar with your ideas. I am also not a big fan of Jaishankar as a FM, simply for the reason that he belongs to a community of bureaucrats who are responsible for where India is today – the famous nuclear deal including, which till today I also thought was a big victory for India.
Modi’s biggest problem has been his over reliance on the bureaucrats, with no skin in the game (just learnt this term while reading Naseem Nicholas Taleb) and no interest in transformation. As a citizen, I can see many great things happening but the potential of India as visualised at the start of the reforms has not been realised.
Criticism apart, what are your five key recommendations for the Government on security, foreign policy and economy as on today.
Gajinder@ — “over reliance on the bureaucrats, with no skin in the game”. Precisely so, and analysed at length in my 2018 Penguin book– Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition.
Sir, I’ve almost memorised this article by now. I’ve read all your books. I have immense regard for you because of sheer quality of your output. But a few things are bothering me.
1.You are so anti-US, so I was thinking, were you prejudiced against during your California years because I’ve observed certain snobbery exists amongst US citizens ?
2. You have dealt with so many people in power including KS, almost nobody implemented your hardline-smart hardpower viewpoint. Was it considered too risky and impractical or may be not conducive to Indian age old values ?
3. While US, Russia and China can attempt and benefit from disruption and breaking things because they are world powers, won’t India cut its own toes if it attempted to copy them ?
4. If India conducts nuclear tests now and walks in the opposite direction to the world as nobody is doing ii, harsh sanctions will be clamped on the country notwithstanding your claim that things will return to normal because western economies are profitably hooked into Indian market, won’t India turn a pauper like Russia, even worst than Russia because Russia after all has huge hydrocarbon and other mineral resources other than defence production houses ? And won’t Indian indigenous programs like aircraft, engines, ships, virtually everything will fall back by decades leaving country even more vulnerable, if you recall Tejas delay in large measure is attributed to sanctions imposed in the wake of Pokhran II nuclear tests ?
5. Modi govt is generally accused of being partial to privatization but you are accusing it of a socialist slant, though I’ve yet to read Surjit Bhalla’s article, may be I’ll find my answer there.
6. Modi had tried to reform bureaucracy with an iron hand, I remember forcible voluntary retirement of scores of shady income tax officials. Is the bureaucracy problem so entrenched and widespread, and has so become part of Indian culture owing to malfeasant Indian character developed over the course of centuries that no one or two good samaritans can reform it ? You cannot do without bureaucracy either, so is it a bone in the throat that you can neither spit out nor swallow ? It is easy saying you had absolute majority than actually coming to grips with it.
7. The world is already sitting on a powder keg with quite a few countries having acquired nuclear weapons and you go almost against the entire world by proposing to proliferate to Vietnam, Thailand and Phillipines. Arming of Pakistan, North Korea and Iran happened by Socialist countries which have their own history of Gulag and what not whereas India is a responsible democracy. With environmental degradation set to engulf the entire world in not so distant future not sparing even Russia and China, is it not anachronistic to propose nuclear proliferation ?
8. US dissuading India from carrying out nuclear tests does not make it an enemy of India because US has that policy towards the entire world. Why would US promote India to acquire even more destructive weapons even if that is to seek balance with China ? If India is so concerned about China, India like Europe can station US fusion weapons here temporarily till the Chinese threat diffuses.
9. Modi and company have learned from what the free rein to electronic and print media did to Manmohan Singh government in the closing years. Some anti-Modi journalism still exists but in a refined language, in fact now the tempo is slowly catching wind and even the likes of Chetan Bhagat have begun to flutter. Don’t you think if you refine your language somewhat like what your fellow contributors did in Strategic Sellout, you will begin to appear in the mass media and that will benefit the nation ? But probably then you will no longer be quintessential you..
10. I don’t see any sky falling on India in Trump 2 as you suggest in the article, in fact, the relations will further sweeten up.
11. You accuse Jaishankar of boarding two boats simultaneously US-West and Russia-China which will get India nowhere. But not so long ago, China vociferously complained that India was playing game with both Russia and US and in the process drawing benefits and the best of technology from both nations.
Gagandeep@ — ‘Am far from anti-US, thoroughly enjoyed my time in California, all my best friends are Americans, I visit there often. Indeed, my American friends think I am “too American” in my strategic advocacy! I credit my undergrad and graduate school days at Univ of California for three things: (1) an Edmund Burke-an conservative disdain for socialism and the Nanny State, (2) foreign and military policies based on hard power to pursue the national interest in extremis, if necessary, and (3) an offensive-preemptive attitude and strategic habit of mind by studying under some of the pioneers of strategic thought — Bernard Brodie, Michael Intrilligator at UCLA, and in seminars with masters in the business, such as Albert Wohlstetter.
All the rest you mention relate to judgement calls by the government and military. The points you raise almost mimic the risk-averse thinking of the Indian government that I have been railing against in my books and writings, and about India needing to hew to a higher standard of behaviour than that followed by all rising powers in history. If you sort of represent the informed Indian reflecting the sarkari biases, one can readily see why India will never be other than what it is — a middling power of little real consequence, something like what Jaishankar wants it to become!
good evening sir….wats ur assessment on Mr dhruv jaishankar views on indian foreign policy sir?
Jaishankar’s son. Haven’t read much by him
I’m a free bird Sir with no real Godfather in government or opposition. I just said what I had in mind. Still if you felt that I unwittingly towed the Sarkari line, let me ask you another set of questions. I have seen the likes of Vinod Mehta openly lampooning the Prime Minister in the columns of Times of India. Was it because press enjoyed complete freedom then or was it because Manmohan Singh had grown into too weak a Prime Minister that everybody took for a joy ride ? Why go far ? You yourself left nothing unsaid about MMS as I’m fresh from a reading of Strategic Sellout, a compilation of your pieces then in the Indian Express and The Asian Age.
It leads to another corollary in the present context. Modi has enjoyed complete clampdown on the press in the past in the wake of formidable majority in the parliament. It was no less apparent from the Sunday TOI oped page that saw writers like Aakar Patel who couldn’t hide their aversion for the govt having had their wings clipped, Shobha Dey had too big a stature to be completely done away with so had her frequency hit, Swapan Dasgupta provided government defence and was made a permanent fixture. But what is a sure sign of Modi giving way now is that even less endowed writers like Chetan Bhagat that would earlier advise the government in subdued tones, have begun to dare to gently upset the applecart. Is it because Modi has mellowed down with age or does it portend still bigger things, I mean an onerous change that is due for the next general election after a status quo of a decade and a half ?
And where shall it leave Bharat Karnad, our favourite author? Shall we see him back in the limelight writing for the top notch papers and roaming in the corridors of power again, or having burned his bridges with everybody he will continue to kick up the fuss from the margins? And where does it leave us ? Having already hitched our horses to him, shall we have the doors closed on us even before we have taken off, with not even credibility coming our way?
Let’s not divert to weaklings like us. There are bigger personalities galore. Parvin Sawhney has firmly established his credentials with two masterful studies on Chinese military, if not for his bias towards the Indian political dispensation of the day as some might question, nobody can take the credit away for deep understanding of Chinese military organisation, Chinese military complex and Chinese military capabilities. And he has been wise enough to endear himself to Rahul Gandhi. Shall we see Parvin Sawhney charter greater personal success story and occupy prime positions in CPR or National Security Advisory Board and giving orientation sessions to Brigadier level officers? In that case shall his prepositions to hold a dialogue on Kashmir (“The ball is now in India’s court”) – the good old Dileep Padgaonkar had virtually called for giving the state on platter – pushed under the carpet?
And why talk of individuals at all ?.What shall be Congress’ attitude towards the press? Having learned the hard way from BJP shall it pay it back in its own coin with fresh set of faces adorning the oped pages of dailies or the good old days of MMS come back again? And after all, all this might just turn out to be a reverie trail, Modi Charisma may still hold out one more time but for that to come about Modi has to have one last flexing of his muscles and clamp down on papers one more time, this time doubly hard.
It is the risk averse mindset, I have always believed, is the bane of Indian foreign and mil policies, that’s seeping into the popular sentiment I reacted to.
Not holding my breath about being featured in the mainstream Press!
About those others you mention, have no ideas.
.
@Gagandeep, if you think Praveen Sawhney is a great analyst, I can only say ‘Maya Jaal me mat phaso!’
i had written it as a sarcasm. His study of China is good, but I don’t agree with all his viewpoints.
Excellent article professor! I sympathize with your frustration. Being an Indian Engineering PhD student in the West I cannot help but to share your concerns and frustrations. You have rightly pointed out that its shameful that the current administration touts the H1Bs for Indians abroad as some sort of policy achievement. This is how Manhattan institute’s Issue brief talks about high skilled immigration in cold blood, “Immigrant visa caps have implications not only for economic growth but also in the context of power competition between the U.S. and China—every high-skilled Chinese immigrant who comes to the U.S. is one fewer high-skilled worker in China, thus reducing their tax base, innovation, and future population while increasing America’s.” Even after technology export controls by US on NVDIA GPUs to China, the Chinese were able to surprise everyone with their release of newest version of GPT like AI called ‘Deepseek’. This new model outperformed most advanced versions of American AI models while being trained on inferior versions of NVDIA GPUs ! They have made all the parameter weights opensource putting a question mark to the American AI dominance. One can only marvel at such tenacity at display from the Chinese, but on the other hand one cannot help but feel gloomy looking at how shamefully Indians act satisfied at the successes of Indians abroad, as if they had any role in it !
Link for the Manhattan Institute brief : https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/reducing-visa-waste-model-legislation-to-promote-high-skilled-immigration.pdf
Lokayata@ — Thank you for the study. With the Musk-Ramaswamy duo taking control, one can expect precisely the kind of sieves/filters the US Congress will legislate to denude the Third World of STEM talent.
Professor, let’s not overplay the talent argument. The reason this pool is called talent is because America offers a meritocratic set up where one can achieve good things. The same ‘talent’ in India will produce nothing – while individual Indians are quite capable, the Indian system is mediocre. Better to send these people abroad so that they can earn good money and send it back. Also, it’s the multi nationals who are building rd&e centers in India and paying them well. India benefits a lot through western practices. All these twisted arguments that the H1B program is meant to denude developing world talent are just that – twisted!
Just to be clear: Indians in America dont send $ back. It is the poor laborers/services workers in the Gulf region who upkeep the Indian economy with their remittances. $125 billion in 2023-24.
this is the list of remittances by country in 2017. US is number 2. This is according to Wikipedia. According to Statista, in 2021, the U.S. was still #2. According to Perplexity, now the U.S. is nbr 1.
1UAE13.826 billion
2United States11.715 billion
3Saudi Arabia11.239 billion
4Kuwait4.587 billion
5Qatar4.143 billion
6United Kingdom3.941 1 billion
7Oman3.250 billion
8Nepal3.016 billion
9Canada2.877 billion
10Australia1.944 billion
The point is the Indian diaspora does well abroad. The U.S. is especially where they have established a good name (increasingly Australia too) – this is as much because of the U.S. meritocratic system as the people that succeed. There is no drain on India because of this. India has too many such people to feel the loss. The main problem is the Indian system itself, which is hard for anyone to improve. It’s improving, but it will take its own sweet time. And it’s puerile to think that the 70K odd Indians that get an H1B every year is a deliberate US strategy to deprive India of brains. It’s laughable!
You must be a smug NRI, or not very bright. Are you familiar with statistics? From what strata of society, are people moving out? Read the history of any developed country. Societal progress was caused by literally <0.1% of population, yes that very bleeding edge of 'human capital' fleeing the Indian nation since past two generations. Yes, Solow merely stumbled upon what our ancients had already codified. Economic development or growth = Capital (bania) X technology (brahmin) X labor (merchant + skilled craftsmen). Now quantify the cost of losing your <0.1% 'brahmins', genius. Surprise! It is orders of magnitude higher than $10bn or $100bn of $1tn remittance. The country literally will stop growing without innovation. No amount of capital can substitute for it. And will the next generation of diaspora send remittance too? Can you not differentiate tactical from strategic, from the land of Brihaspati, Kautilya and Bhaskara?
@BharatKarmad
What a brutal reply sir hats off jaishankar bhakts won’t like it but who cares for them truth is always bitter for such ignorant people
anyway sir I think chidambaram is the only person who still says that the device worked.He is a pathetic liar no doubt about that but why would he lie to the Indian public again and again so shamelessly.What does he and kakodkar get from propagating spreading these lies everywhere.Is it ego issue or I am the greatest of all time feeling what exactly do they gain by doing this
https://www.newindianexpress.com/amp/story/opinions/columns/v-sudarshan/2009/Sep/27/chidambarams-dud-blows-up-strategic-deterrent-89766.html
this article too exposed him way back
Also looking forward to your new title this year
Regards
@BharatKarnad
professor just in coming news
R Chidambaram passed away at 88 in bombay
@BharatKarnad
professor what a coincidence here you are criticizing chidambaram in this post I had posted a comment today asking you what kind of a person is chidambaram
and just now a news is incoming that he passed away in mumbai
@BharatKarnad During your time in CPR, did Yamini and Mani Shankar Aiyar and the Congress try to influence your and CPR’s work since Yamini was the head and daughter of Mani?
Apparently, you are no conversant with my writings
@BharatKarnad I didn’t understand what you meant. Can you please explain what you meant?
No
@BharatKarnad When you talk about remittances, what about Indians living in America who send money to their loved ones in India? My friend and cousin live in America and they still have their Indian citizenship even after working there for years, they send money to their parents in India. Are these not remittances for you?
Indians in the US, once they get a greencard are desperate only to get their parents, siblings, etc into America.
@BharatKarnad But that doesn’t mean that the money sent by Indians in America to their loved ones in India isn’t remittances.
@Ganesh, you are right…the professor is wrong. You can google the data by country. Remittances from the U.S. have been in the top two for many years.
That’s missing the point, no?
Sir is talking about talented indian in USA…those are sending money they are lower level or middle level talent or some went with some average USA master degree and do some menial job and sent money to india..but crème de la crème are eager to abandon their home country INDIA and their children becomes ABCD(American Born Confused Desi)
no value addition to host INDIA in comparision to USA although they have gained their knowledge with heavily subsidized IITs and IIMs.
@Kumar My friend who lives in America has a degree from a National Institute of Technology [NIT] which is just one level below the Indian Institute of Technology [IIT]. He’s been working in America for the past 19 years and still has his Indian citizenship and still sends money to his parents in India.
Sir what is your advice for someone who seeks a career in writing. You picked a theme much early in your career that had originality and then devoted your entire life to it. You were also lucky to have good formal education and guides. So though you haven’t sold big, you always carry a certain confidence about yourself and have experienced complete sublimation of emotions through your writings. As about money you had a wife who is a big shot (I don’t know about your parentage and inheritance) so you could travel abroad at will and anyway have never written for money. I always look up to you but I haven’t been able to refine my expression to the same standard. For example, I had planned my last comment as a sarcasm but it didn’t work out that way.
Among my contemporaries, Chetan Bhagat is sitting on 50 million dollars by writing for Indian audience that comes by way of saying in IELTS 4 to 7 band bracket. Though I don’t find my calling in his kind of books, but he is a role model for many in the sense that he daily runs 8 km, keeps travelling around the world, has appeared on Time magazine’s cover and is a celebrity.
I had also seen myself as a novelist but I no longer read fiction. Authors other than you that interest me are William Dalrymple, V. S. Naipaul (his travelogues ! ) and Salman Rushdie. I am currently much into William Dalrymple.
So what should I write on. I want to publish a book this year.
Writing is a very personal business. You shouldn’t ask for pointers from anyone.
india us to deepen civil nuclear deal . Does that mean we will import reactors from usa ??
Hope to God not!
@BharatKarnad
professor can’t we trash this deal it might be a radical solution but we can give so many reasons
is there any realist scenario ??
India just needs to resume testing to void the N-deal. This the Modi govt won’t do, and the Manmohan Singh govt didn’t do.
@BharatKarnad
Professor if exceptions are made for India(chances are very low and most probably will not happen) that we can test whenever we want and still the cooperation will continue
then will you still be against this deal?
No exceptions will be conceded. India has to initiate testing and chances are, as I have argued, that the US will have to swallow it. Because India is central to the US policy of containing China.
Professor, regarding radical thinking and the possibility of having such a leader, for all its imperfections, the American democratic system allows for it more than the Indian system. A maverick like Trump got elected in spite of republican and democrat opposition in 2016. Such a situation will likely never arise in the Indian system as parties call the shots, and there is no party which will nominate such a person to be PM. Also, India is a lot more diverse – so it’s hard for anyone to be a maverick acceptable to a majority, at least nationally (maybe you can have mavericks at the state level). Additionally, I just don’t see many obvious examples of radical restructuring even in business. That is not the culture, whereas there are many people who have made radical business changes in the U.S. and succeeded. So you have people with experience. In India such experience is likely very limited (maybe during independence there were some). So to expect India to change radically, unless there are external factors which force change, is to expect too much. We should accept this reality to be less disappointed.
Professor what is your opinion on BRICS having its own currency. It will hit monopoly of dollar and prevent America from living like a parasite in Putin’s words on rest of the world. Right now while Russia and China are keen on that India is not. Jai Shankar’s comments on the issue showed appeasement of US, the same risk-averse strategy (that most of India’s trade is in dollars). He might have been intimidated by Trump’s threat to put 100% tariff on BRICS nations. Though I’m not an expert on economics, but don’t you think BRICS currency will help India in the long run and Rupee too after having a fall against dollar, recover in the end.
Also want to know your views regarding Parvin Sawhney’s claim that Chinese online currency Renminby will overtake dollar in the world in a decade. China is already raising Asian Development Bank as a counter to US dominated World Bank. All of Asia (minus India), Africa and Europe will be connected through BRI and digital road (using Chinese 5G). Suppose somebody has to order a container in Thailand, he will make online Renminby payment through ADB network and container will be delivered via BRI at his doorstep.
Thus most of the world will be divided into two halves, one led by USA and other more dominant with China, and one half will not have much left to do with the other simply because they will have different digital infrastructure and banking network. India which has unwittingly chosen to ally with US and use its 5G infrastructure will be isolated because no country in its vicinity will be using that.
So don’t you think India in its misplaced wish to be a rival and counterweight to China, will suffer mightily in the long run by not joining BRI and Huawei 5G ? (AI, Internet of Things and all coming advanced technologies in the world will be based on digital network and divide the world into two blocks)
An alternative international currency of exchange floated by BRICS is possible but, in practical terms, is still a far off thing. The interim step of trade in local currencies is something India is already into by getting the rupee-rouble trade on track. Given that China is India’s prime and only credible adversary, it is best to avoid the renminbi trap facilitated by Huawei telecom hardware, etc..
sir ,why in ur opinion , usa is not an adversary to india in the long term?..do u think that usa will tolerate india becoming a independent sovereign nation ,who has foreign policy of its own ?…why do u think that after china containment , they wont come after india ?…yesterday usa used china to contain ussr , today they r going after china , why is it any different treatment against india?…usa foreign policy is all about not tolerating a peer competitor or any great power rival in any region(2002 national security strategy, wolfowitz doctrine , carter doctrine in west asia )
santoshkumar@ — India has always been in America’s crosshairs. It tried desperately, using every possible means, to prevent India from going nuclear, but failed by the smallest of margins. But it succeeded in keeping India below the thermonuclear threshold with the 2005 nuclear deal by barring future testing that Jaishankar negotiated. (For the granular details of how all thios came to pass, see my 2002, 2005 book – Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, and the compilation of their essays bitterly opposing the N-deal by PK Iyengar, AN Prasad. A Gopalakrishnan, Bharat Karnad) Reasons why I have been arguing for some 35-odd years that the US is untrustworthy and unreliable as friend and strategic partner.
good evening sir…thanks for ur reply sir…your book “nuclear weapons and indian security ” is too costly (9000 rupees) to afford for a middle class indian like me sir ….
Sorry, about the price, it is scarce and demand for it is high! The original price was Rs 795!
@Gagandeep, you can safely discard most of what Praveen Sawhney says about Chinese capabilities. He has no credibility in Indian security circles and I have watched his analyses on YouTube which are sub par. He also responds to comments in these columns under a pseudonym but I have found his analyses to be weak and basically propaganda.
@Amit- I don’t have much clue about this Sawhney chap but the way you sound seems he is an asset of MSS in India. It won’t surprise me as truth is stranger than fiction.
Another suspicious character is Sudhendra Kulkarni. He is highly pro-China and gets unnecessary coverage in Global Times for a nobody. A reliable source told me that Kulkarni was in Beijing last month. I am sure CPC or MSS must have sponsored his trip.
@Sanaatani, I don’t know about individuals being under the control of foreign agencies, but I just read and watch what people say – one can easily reach a conclusion based on their views, whether they are good or not. And whether they promote propaganda or not. Praveen Sawhney is questionable.
Professor,
The maverick Trump is already having major international impact! Trudeau is gone, which indirectly benefits India. He’s creating havoc with Greenland, Canada, and the EU as well as the Panama Canal. All this is giving license to India to talk about the chicken neck and Gilgit Baltistan. Russia is talking of taking back the Baltics. The impact of just words coming from a maverick!
And this is why nothing will ever change in India;
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/iaf-chief-ap-singh-tejas-fighter-jets-production-delay-china-sixth-generation-aircraft-2661342-2025-01-08?utm_source=Story_hp&utm_medium=Story&utm_campaign=home_Story
@Chamaar
this is so frustrating
there is a famous quote that a careless nation realizes the importance of territory and sovereignty after it is lost
fits perfect for india
People like Bharat Karnad have money and time to keep harping their theories.
He wasn’t or isn’t part of any bureaucratic or political system so nobody took him or will ever take him seriously.
These two machines manage the system. The status quo prevalent since decades suits them well. They won’t listen to any outsiders noise to disturb their pot.
Indian armed forces also have perfected the art of enjoying their days in colonial era cantonments.
They very well know that fighting any war is too much of hassle. Just enjoy the perks and power of their exclusive sphere.
India is a ‘Khichdii’ nation; it wasn’t, isn’t or will never become a great power.
@Doordarshan probably you have neither read Bharat Karnad nor followed developments in Indian Defence very keenly. Many observations made by Bharat Karnad have been gradually implemented though there is lot that needs to be done. For example, after support for indigenous Tejas and opposition to Rafale (which everybody was busy singing paeans to), govt has dithered on ordering more Rafale. Have you ever meditated why govt never went ahead with importing nuclear reactors from US despite signing Civilian Nuclear Deal? Why Modi said of Russia one trustworthy friend from the past is better than many new friends ? It is a different matter that Bharat Karnad due to his ‘at your face’ and ‘no holds bar’ writing has hardly got credit for anything.
Bharat Karnad’s vision is even too bold for me otherwise I was going to say that he should be National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister. What else do you think ? Writers like him just keep on writing for fun? He has never tried to take sides between BJP and Congress, nor sweet-talked anybody but just has been writing about what is in the interest of the nation.
And I doubt you have read even the above piece or else you would have understood what is the importance of having independent minds like Bharat Karnad as part of CPR.
Plato said, “Unless philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers, this world will not change”, so a change commensurate with our expectations doesn’t happen. But writers like Bharat Karnad are a valuable pressure group that keeps governments from wandering too far away from their path.
And as about money, had Bharat Karnad been born in USA, he would have been sitting on tens of millions of dollars earned solely through writing. But put by providence amidst idiots, he has to make do with what he has achieved.
Good Morning Sir….i have few doubts on wat u write in the article sir..”Over the last 35-odd years, I have made the case for vigorously proactive foreign and military policies, expansive geopolitics (based on a collective security architecture in Asia to ringfence China, having Israel and Japan at the two ends, the Southeast Asian countries as the vulnerable underbelly poviding a fighting frontage on the South China Sea, and India as the pivot able to switch forces and resources east and to the west articulated in my 1994 book — Future Imperilled: India’s Security in the 1990s and Beyond), which the MEA has accepted as its plan form.”
santoshk@ — Many or most of these issues have been addressed in my books and writings; sorry, will take up too much of my time to repeat my arguments here.
Dear Dr Karnad, Congratulations for another superbly written article. I have couple of questions for you. 1. What are the motivations for Pakistan to invest in ICBM at this time? 2. Can China provide Bangladesh with missiles and replicating the Pakistani scenario in the Eastern border also?
typhoon@ — in In reverse order, absolutely yes. As it is, China has outfitted most of the B’Desh military and put down deep roots, and it will just be a matter of choosing the occasion to up the ante by arming it the way it has Pakistan.
One of your finest articles. Have read it thrice just to enjoy the dressing down of Modi&co. Although, as a student of Friedrich List, i disagree, slightly, with your economic proposals. What we need is a secretly goverment-financed (or insured) but privately managed R&D companies. This is how Chinese “State Capitalism” works; every Chinese tech company gets financial support from the State.
This is an interesting article: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/migration-and-the-sovereign-firm
“For most self-respecting countries, it’d be a matter of the greatest national shame for its prime minister and foreign minister to proclaim to the world that its economy and systems are so weak and rotten, the country simply cannot afford to have the local engineering, scientific and managerial talent stay at home and make good. For Modi and Jaishankar, however, it is an accomplishment to boast about! ”
This paragraph should be tattoed on the heads of politicos. I remember reading about the french ridiculing Macron for boasting about FDI in France as a sign of third-worldism; Self-respecting nations invest in their own countries.
However, there is much deeper problem of overpopulation of low-iq individuals, which can’t be solved democratically. The only option is to transition into a Chinese-style Communism, and then lower the population.
Ranveer@ — The Chinese-style authoritarianism may be worse than any Indian solution that could hove into sight!
Democracy creates tribalism where non exists, and expands it into wide chasms where it does. Democracy, in India, is about freebies and “community” perpetuation. People will continue to vote for corrupt and incompetent politicians of their own communities. These mafia families will continue to get re-elected, and will continue their rent-seeking, and if denied, hold the nation hostage to their whims or cause chaos through their biradars. Moreover, these families do not care about the nation, and like the Princely States before them, will be happy to assist and work under any foreign empire as long as their position is maintained. (Look no further than the Gandhi family working with the US state department to get their family business back).
Democracy is already a hard task for small homogeneous nations(South Korea), and a suicide for big diverse nations. Petty nationalisms of ethnic and linguistic variety from Kashmir to Tamilnadu will continue to rise, to the point where our “Asabiyyah” will start to come apart at the seams. This post-47 invention ought to be retired. People can barely govern their families, they are wholly incapable of governing a nation, and, therefore, should not be burdened with it!
Had the Chinese chosen a democratic route post-WWII, they too would have been drowning in ethnic, linguistic and religious chaos; Deng could not have been able to reform such polity. Instead, the Chinese, despite their diverse ethnicities and languages, able to unify the nation under the single language, and have managed to Hanify China. Few centuries from now, people will look back at the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Manchus not so differently than the Beothuk’s of Newfoundland; While we, in contrast, will be playing dandiya with not just current petty nationalists( Kashmiris, Tamils etc) but future and much more varied ones, from north-east to the western border.
Chinese(Deng) Communism is different from Soviet communism, and it is the only system that will save us from ourselves, from making the same mistakes that led to the Ghazni and Ghori invasions and the disasters that followed up till 1947. And the only way to establish that system is through BJP. It’s the BJP and RSS’s job to widen their historical horizons and understand what Deng (and others since time immemorial) understoood about the nature of power: how to acquire it(when you don’t have any), grow it, and then wield it.
A communist BJP has to do following things:
(1) ‘Selection’ of high human capital (including martial prowess) and its multiplication. Deselection of the opposite.
(2) Massive funding of STEM and manufacturing.
(3) Establishment of Hindi as a national language, as a language of STEM, no matter how much noise the petty nationalist make.
(4) Absorption, after depopulation, of BD, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka into Indian union. Or, they can be depop after absorption. Myanmar too if need be.
(5)Destabilization, dissolution and destruction of PK before its absorption.
(6) Increasing the tensions between China and USA so as to benefit from both– especially USA. While it is hard to see the complete dissolution of American Empire, it can be weakened. And once it is weakened we should lay claim, first to the IOR, and then to Eastern Africa.
There is more, but this should be our task for next 100years. And it should be done as quietly and covertly as possible. The need for ‘Rules-based order’ should drive our strategic policy, of course, only after we order the world and make the rules!
@Ranveer, @Itanium, I don’t believe that the Indian population has low IQ. In fact, when I compare the average Indian and the average American, I lean towards the conclusion that the average Indian is actually quite street smart. The average American is questionable! There are other systemic issues that keep India mediocre.
@Ranveer @Prof Karnad.
“However, there is much deeper problem of overpopulation of low-iq individuals, which can’t be solved democratically. The only option is to transition into a Chinese-style Communism, and then lower the population.”
Your diagnosis is spot on, but the prescription is dangerous. You give up freedom once and you lose everything else forever! Its silly that a lot of Indians imagine that Chinese style communism & dictatorship will fix Indias ills.
But to confess I or for that matter no body knows the true solution for the all the problems that India faces.
Honestly in lot of our minds, the bar was always low for a country saddled with such debilitating physiology and psychology. But somehow we have managed to surprise ourselves and everyone else in the world with spectacular achievements in the highest areas of technology; from nuclear submarines, fighter jets, ICBMs to nuclear re-processing, cryogenic rockets, space exploration and more.
And just like that we suddenly have now raised the bar significantly in every area and want things to be like US or China almost instantly.
“there is much deeper problem of overpopulation of low-iq individuals”
And from that insightful observation and looking at the situation now one can conclude that we have actually overshot our expectations and unexpectedly come out in the front and are now rubbing shoulders with US, Russia and China.
So the major lesson to take is that India being a big and diverse country, the “statistics of genetics” will produce human beings of high intelligence in the upper percentiles in massive quantities.
And this coupled with positive social, cultural and intellectual foundation that Hinduism lays will enable extraordinary leverage with India’s massive labour force – This is the part which our leaders did not get or realize and certainly did surprise rest of us.
@Ranveer, Comparison with China is futile since China doesn’t have a caste system. Let’s face it even RSS is caste-based since most of RSS chiefs are Marathi Brahmins. Manufacturing as of today is impossible since Indian population is lazy and unwilling to respect back breaking work. There is no work culture or meritocracy in India which ensures that India in the last few years is de-industrializing.
@Itanium, @typhoonmaximum254b0f9a4f, @ Amit
Freedom is a tool, in right hands it could be wielded to (a) Cast a penetrative eye on the nature of reality by philosophers and intellectuals (Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Nietzsche etc) (b) Used for scientific research, unencumbered by any religious dogmatism, and (c) To let the ‘men of nature’ explore and expand –unchained by any cutoms or rituals.
In short, for the pursuit of higher goals. In wrong hands, it dissolves into endless whinning.
We do not have the kind of freedom people think we do. Criticising a lowly politician would result badly despite living in a “democracy”. We can’t criticize the ‘desert’, neither can we eat ‘that’ kind of meat despite it being eaten by ancient Hindus. As a result, our non-carnivorous diet has made us into a dietary basket case.
Every nation has a Caste System. Ours, in contrast to our ancestors’ ‘Selective’ multiplication, has devolved into peasant endogamy and priestly(feminine, docile, servile, domesticated men) class. Contemporary Hindus and “Hinduism” would be unrecognisable to the ancient Hindus, the same way a golden retriever is unrecognisable to a gray wolf – in his physiology, habits and rituals. The absence of selection pressures and the presence of arranged marriages has resulted in the debasement of human capital.
Moreover, ancient Hindus wouldn’t be able see themselves in the current political class. Instead the life of Bajirao I would be far more familiar to them. As someone who had the feet of a horse, vision and perspective of a hawk, Intelligence and cunning of a Wolf, and the strength, beauty and bravery of a tiger. He ate meat(probably ‘that’ kind too), slept around, enjoyed life, sought glory and distinction in war and pursued excellence in every endeavour. A man of steppe, unbounded and a free warrior.
A communist BJP should be selecting and cultivating this martial-technocratic class, to not just rule India but to populate it as well.
@Ranveer, lack of freedom of speech is a reason for India’s lack of progress – agree. Also agree that cultural issues like caste hamper progress as there are in built biases against commerce. There is also the culture of ‘respect’ for elders whether they are good or not. Not very meritocratic. Corruption is a big issue. Fatalistic thinking like karma etc. Diffidence. The list goes on. Yet, at a macro level India is progressing. Given that, it is a great power already. But whether it will be a superpower, is doubtful. There is promise, but it will take decades to fructify, if ever. We can only wait and watch, and perhaps do our part.
Just thinking out loud here.
Imagine a creature with several weak/invertebrate limbs, multiple hearts & nervous systems, and one small (in proportion to its body mass) but somewhat intelligent head (octopus is the closest one that comes to mind). Any way one dissects the society – institutional capacity, IQ distribution, industrial landscape, ethno-lingual makeup etc. – the scan / mapping is strikingly resembling the octopus. The bio-mechanics of such a creature will have serious structural and functional limitations. Should one then expect it to soar, or swoop and scoop like an eagle? Breathe fire or dance intimidatingly like a dragon? Certainly it does not have the attacking ferocity or sniffing powers of the bear?
So my basic contention is this. Till such time the country internally / domestically resembles an octopus in its physical constitution, its external FP will enact timid defensive ‘survival’ strategies from the octopus playbook.
Camouflaging itself into the patterns and colors of the surrounding rock landscape to avoid predators. Perhaps our NP and Non-Alignment FP are merely expression of the same.
The real question then is what will it take to transform the octopus structurally?
Mao-era studies showed that within three generations, IQ could be significantly enhanced to bureaucratic competence levels, even within traditional agrarian blood-lines. And that led to emphasis on primary education. (Btw use of large scale social research as a public policy tool was pioneered by Mahalanobis, before being adopted by China and the West).
We also know that European late-comers to industrialization (Germany, France, Russia) leveraged the socio-cultural-religious sphere by building glowing narratives of past high civillisation for societal consumption, even as the agrarian economy was transformed into industrial one (once reading literacy was achieved, rural masses could consume all that romantic era literature).
Finally, we know from Japan’s Meiji era restoration period that their top peoples were sent in large numbers by the emperor to Europe to ‘study and learn western science and methods’.
To sum up, the Indian state (intelligent but small head) just like the CCP before them, will need to summon the Indian peoples into being (multiple large but soft limbs, multiple hearts) in order to revive Bharatiya civilisation. The thrust of Modi / BJP’s ‘strong state’ therefore is totally in the right direction. It doesn’t have to be any radical change in the political economy or constitution, like dictatorship etc. All that is needed is some sort of catalyst to push through much awaited reforms and other pragmatic solutions, across multiple domains. In dangerous moments, the octopus mimics its environs. Likewise, the GOI needs the large predators to set some precedents, to justify its own behavior. Paradoxically, a severe crisis borne out of a turbulent trade and geopolitical environment may be our best hope for a better future, just like it was in 1991, 1971, WW2.
@Ranveer,
The characteristics that you attribute to Bajirao I , can also be applied to someone like Aurangzeb if you are ready to overlook his religion. So why not hold him as your model. For me the biggest problem with Bajirao I , compared to Aurangzeb is that though Bajirao I enjoyed life but he could not survive even till his early 40-s. Yes he married Mastani but even then his empire did not last much long after his death. Aurangzeb managed his falling empire much better even in his late 80s compared to Bajirao I.
typhoon@ — Down an unrelated tangent, but one of them toppled and grabbed the establishment. The other had to create it from scratch.
@typhoonmaximum254b0f9a4f
Everything that is good and valuable in the west has come from following Greco-Roman civilization – Not necessarily the Woke moralists(Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) of the Greek world but others who were much more primal. From the Renaissance to Machiavelli and Nietzsche and down the line, all were hellenists. Even now much of the American imperial class is Hellenic/Nietzean.
Similarly, every time a nominally ‘desert’ kingdom had followed Greeks and Romans good things happened to that kingdom. Ottoman success, in part, was related to their understanding of power and civilization as understood by the Greeks and Romans.
The purpose of civilization is a continuous refinement, through the pursuit of excellence, of humans to achieve higher and higher goals. The natural inclination of humans is to either wallow in mediocrity or go down the spiral of biological and intellectual debasement. Some civilizations are more amenable to this ascent than others. Greek, Roman and ancient Hindus have in them this progressive quality.
Although, we have been on a downward spiral for so long that we have forgotten what it is to be progressive. One measure of our predicament is the usage and implementation of two opposite words. One pointing to the ascending culture– Uttamta. And the other towards declining culture–Jugaad.
@Ranveer
Very interesting series of comments. I have never encountered this line of thinking and reasoning. What school of thought is this?
BJP can’t even streamline all the elections in a single year, what makes you think it is even capable of embarking on the Chinese path?
Nothing new is being said here. You can find the similar thoughts in Machiavelli, Nietzsche and number of Greek and Roman personalities. Even ancient Hindu literature is filled with such similar thoughts– of course, much of it is burried under heaps of priestly nonsense. For instance, our ancient practice of ‘Swayamvar’ would be far more intelligible to a Spartan than it is to contemporary Indians.
BJP/RSS, even if re-elected for another hundred years, wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. You’ll get just another round of peasant idiocy–temple building, foolish dietary restrictions and endless sloganeering. These people are biologically incapable of having any higher aspirations. They are tinkerers at best or corrupt mafiasos at worst. We need a paradigm shift!
Professor Karnad, do you also support Supra Hindu theocratic state proposed by @Ranveer ? How else enforced uniformity of the kind desired by China (Hanisation of all) be feasible ?
I remember you have always proposed improving relations with Pakistan so that those corps could be deployed against China and having a BRI kind of connectivity instead with Central Asia through Pakistan.You have also decried anti-muslim bashing indulged in by BJP cadres and that variety of nationalism preached by some of its leaders. Not a long ago I had posted your words verbatim in this space (Refer to my comments under the previous article or the one before).
Even the RSS has distanced itself from this ultra Hinduszenisatiom of the Indian mainland, forget about assimilating Bangladesh and Pakistan. Sample these latest comments of Mohan Bhagwat,”“We have been living in harmony for a long time. If we want to provide this harmony to the world, we need to create a model of it. After the construction of the Ram Mandir, some people think they can become leaders of Hindus by raking up similar issues in new places. This is not acceptable… Every day a new matter (dispute) is being raised. How can this be allowed? This cannot continue. India needs to show that we can live together.”
And later in the speech: “Who is a minority, and who is a majority? Everyone is equal here. The tradition of this nation is that all can follow their own forms of worship. The only requirement is to live in harmony and abide by rules and laws.”
Refer to this link
https://www.chetanbhagat.com/columns/kudos-bhagwat-but-rss-could-do-much-more/
So what is your take on it ?
gagandeep@– We need to emulate the sense of national purpose — don’t ask how? China, unlike India, is racially/ethnically homogenous — 95-97% Han. So the Confucian displine comes naturally to such society/societies — a prerequisite for fast econ development. Reason why there are the other “smaller dragons” of Southeast Asia on similar Chinese fast-track form.
@Prof Karnad
Homogenity will fix problems to some extent, but then you are still left with the masses to essentially “run its democracy” and to further project the kind of power that we talk about here in this blog.
And those kinds of agenda; of power projection, military gadgetry etc.. will always be of subordinate importance especially during the poorer decades.
So again all that makes one feel like that we have come so far in strategic, military and economic spheres and etched a position for ourselves is actually a massive achievement in itself.
Because to think about it, P5 is an enormously successful cartel that was carefully crafted to freeze the ultimate power amongst few major countries willing to come forward post 1945 – and that certainly intended to keep India out.
India has been party to its belittling. The history of that time, including of the San Francisco Conference that determined the post-war world in my Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security.
100%. We never set ourselves up to be a big power when the new world began in 1945. So perhaps we got what we deserved.
What a tragedy that a country that can complete space satellite docking, lunar landing and possessing a nuclear triad cannot get a seat in UNSC Permanent Bench!
Sigh!
@Gagandeep
There are religions(Abrahamic) and then there are pre-religious polities and people –Greeks, Romans, Hindus(Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs). There is no such a thing as “Hinduism”, no such thing as an Hindu “religion”. We don’t have a concept of religion. One can be an Hindu and still be an atheist without breaking Hindu framework, in fact, what is now a days considered as Atheism/Materialism is large part of Hinduismos(way of Hindus).
This is impossible under, say, Christianity, Where, being a Christian atheist is theologically an oxymoron. This confusion of our own history and philosophy is the result of decades of anglicization. Moreover, the biggest problem with BJP/RSS is that they’ve been Abrahamicizing Hinduismos, to the point of unrecognition.
At the frontend, We should be whispering sweet nothings in the ears of every one of those countries, showering them with gifts and economic aid. All the while at the backend, doind the things that need to be done–covertly, quietly and with a plausible deniabiity.