Turn to Arthashastra for strategic options: NSA
19 Oct 2012 1:51 AM GMT
India needs to develop its own strategic vocabulary and doctrines to truly seek 'the broadest possible degree of strategic autonomy' National Security Advisor [NSA] Shivshankar Menon said Thursday, adding that reading Kautilya's Arthashastra will help 'by broadening our vision on issues of strategy'.
'Much of what passes for strategic thinking in India on Thursday is derivative, using concepts, doctrines and a vocabulary derived from other cultures, times, places and conditions' he added.
Terming the Arthashastra a 'text of its time and place, Mauryan to Gupta administration,' Menon said: 'Kautilya's is more than just a power maximisation or internal dominance strategy for a state. He has an almost modern sense of the higher purpose of the state, and of the limits of power'.
Arthashastra is 'serious manual on statecraft, on how to run a state, informed by a higher purpose [or dharma], clear and precise in its prescriptions, the result of practical experience of running a state. It is not just a normative text but a realist description of the art of running a state,' the NSA added.
Describing India's supposedly incoherent strategic approach as a 'colonial construct', the NSA insisted that 'some of the problems in IR and strategic studies that we think we are dealing with for the first time, have been considered by great minds in India before' and the country should 'use the past to learn ways of thinking about these problems, improving our mental discipline, as it were'.
'By reading Kautilya one is also reminded of the rich experience in our tradition of multipolarity, of asymmetries in the distribution of power, of debate on the purposes of power [where dharma is defined], of the utility of force, and of several other issues with contemporary resonance,' the NSA concluded.
'Much of what passes for strategic thinking in India on Thursday is derivative, using concepts, doctrines and a vocabulary derived from other cultures, times, places and conditions' he added.
Terming the Arthashastra a 'text of its time and place, Mauryan to Gupta administration,' Menon said: 'Kautilya's is more than just a power maximisation or internal dominance strategy for a state. He has an almost modern sense of the higher purpose of the state, and of the limits of power'.
Arthashastra is 'serious manual on statecraft, on how to run a state, informed by a higher purpose [or dharma], clear and precise in its prescriptions, the result of practical experience of running a state. It is not just a normative text but a realist description of the art of running a state,' the NSA added.
Describing India's supposedly incoherent strategic approach as a 'colonial construct', the NSA insisted that 'some of the problems in IR and strategic studies that we think we are dealing with for the first time, have been considered by great minds in India before' and the country should 'use the past to learn ways of thinking about these problems, improving our mental discipline, as it were'.
'By reading Kautilya one is also reminded of the rich experience in our tradition of multipolarity, of asymmetries in the distribution of power, of debate on the purposes of power [where dharma is defined], of the utility of force, and of several other issues with contemporary resonance,' the NSA concluded.
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