The New Arthashastra: A Security Strategy for India (original) (raw)

[Co-authored with Devesh Kapur]. As India assumes an increasingly salient role in world politics, questions of strategy have come to the fore in the study of Indian security. There is growing scholarly interest in Indian strategic thought and practice across a range of areas including conventional military power, nuclear weapons, maritime security, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and international regimes. This collection of articles expands the horizon of inquiry in some of these areas by situating Indian strategy in its historical context, by challenging conventional wisdom, and by opening new lines of research. In the following sections, we lay out the contours of what the contributors to this special issue collectively take to mean by strategy and then situate the issue in the literature on Indian strategy. We subsequently provide some over-arching observations on Indian strategy that emerge from the articles collected here and conclude by raising some questions regarding the intellectual and practical primacy of strategy in statecraft today.

State defense is a very important aspect in maintaining the existence and sovereignty of a country. Since ancient century Chanakya in a very famous treatise Arthasastra emphasized the importance of diplomacy and efforts to build up the strength of a country. This paper aims to examine the Arthasastra text as the basis of the Defense Diplomacy strategy. Indonesia adopted a Sanskrit slogan in the military world which indicated the close relationship of Indonesian defense and the treasury of Asian civilization with the influence of Indian text. Chanakya asserted, the state must build defense, ready to fight but can maintain peace. A country is deemed to be authoritative so that other countries either with a hostile tendency or as partners, will have high respect. Nevertheless, Arthasastra insists the supreme goal of a country is to build prosperity with defense and security as a prerequisite to build prosperity for a country.

This brief examines India's relations with Pakistan and China using the lens of Kautilya, the ancient Indian strategic thinker-and argues for pragmatism: assessing the basis and severity of the threats, searching for possible strategic opportunities amidst the risks, and overall, avoiding the scenario of a two-front war. It begins by acknowledging that Pakistan and China view India through different prisms: for Pakistan, that of ideology; and for China, geopolitical balance of power. This necessitates varied approaches. It would do well for India to be flexible with China, a "strategic competitor"-this could prove to be a more rewarding, and realistic foreign policy objective compared to pursuing a grand reconciliation with Pakistan, a "strategic opponent".

There are three main reasons Kautilya’s Arthashastra must be studied. First, it is the earliest treatise on statecraft written anywhere in the world and being Indian in origin there is a need to celebrate this heritage by providing it a prominent place in the Indian discourse on International Relations. Second, the Arthashastra continues to be relevant because of the key insights it provides about the enduring nature of the state and of the inter-state system as well as because of the framework of thought and action it prescribes for states to navigate through this system. The third and even more important reason for studying the Arthashastra is to provide a boost for the discipline of International Relations in India, a discipline that is widely acknowledged as continuing to wallow on the margins of the global discourse in this field.