ABSTRACT
India’s security policy is in a state of transition as the country attempts to secure its position as an emergent power in Asia and beyond. The willingness on the part of Indian policymakers to accept the use of force as a critical element of national power represents a profound shift from the ideational outlook that had influenced Indian policymaking in the immediate postindependence era. The task before them now involves making judicious choices about military commitments, deployments and accordingly appropriate levels of defence spending. The scholarship on India’s security policy is limited and mostly dated (Kavic 1967;
Thomas 1978; Gordon 1995). Such a lacuna in the literature is a puzzle because of India’s overt acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1998, its abandonment of its commitment to nonalignment after the Cold War and its growing significance as an Asian power (Ganguly 2003-4). Despite these profound changes, scholarship on Indian security policy continues to be dogged by a lack of attention. This chapter traces the origins, evolution, current state and future directions of the
country’s security policy since its emergence as an independent state following the collapse of the British Indian Empire in 1947. It looks at the impact of critical political choices on the part of the country’s leadership, the role of regional security threats and India’s relative lack of importance to the global rivalry during much of the Cold War era. The chapter deals with the intellectual rationale for India’s initial security policies, their reevaluation and transformation in the aftermath of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, its conflicts with Pakistan, its quest for nuclear weapons, its responses to internal uprisings and its attempts to extend its reach beyond the confines of the subcontinent.
