A cursory reading of Kautilya’s Arthashastra reveals an almost-paranoid concern about securing a kingdom. It is short of astonishing that the principles he has enunciated there is universally valid.

Contrast that to the way modern India has completely botched up in this very crucial department. On all fronts.

Two news items are relevant:

Real significance of Gwadar port

China’s decision to finance the construction of Gwadar port and coastal highway linking the port to Karachi will help its plans to develop western China [...] But this is only one side of the picture. China has no blue water navy and feels defenceless in the Persian Gulf against any hostile action to choke off its energy supplies. To cope with the new challenges, the Chinese leadership envisaged a new plan that was called by the US as “assembling a string of pearls”.

This is also the other side of the Dragonian embrace of Pakistan. For more information the string of pearls, head here.

Frankly, this shouldn’t shock India because it is the price of negligence.

Despite glaring and violence historical instances of the critical importance of Indian Ocean, we have demonstrated no concern about what our neighbours are doing about what we have neglected. Several warning signals have been sounded in vain. We seem to always wake up only when the water level rises above the neck–we have a parallel in how we play our cricket matches.

The root lies in absolute short-sighted cluelessness, nay, an abject lack of seriousness about defending all our borders. In Defending India, Jaswant Singh attributes India’s incoherent defence policy to the failure of establishing a strategic culture. In the immediate aftermath of independence, India should have, he says, established a sort of centre of excellence dedicated to strategic affairs. Not only did India do the exact opposite, but compounded the error by completely politicizing defence. Thus, Krishna Menon and V.K. Kaul were made scapegoats in the China war so Nehru could emerge unscathed. Jaswant Singh further says India never learnt to exercise power. This is how low India has sunk from the days of Kautilya who detailed how exactly the King had to exercise power, in what proportion and manner, against what other state, and so on.

On the contrary, China has quietly and rapidly modernized its Navy, and exercised the oldest trick of befriending an enemy. It betrayed signals about three years ago, yet:

[Despite mounting concerns about China in the Indian Ocean,] India is not ready to privilege its Navy, which remains the smallest and least funded service in this year’s defence budget as in previous ones. The Indian Air Force (IAF) has taken the lion’s share of the capital outlay for equipment purchase, which runs contrary to India’s current threat profile, while the Navy, which must secure the Indian Ocean for India’s growth, prosperity and security independence, has been shortchanged as before.

If one can forgive the development at Gwadar owing to it lying in enemy territory, nothing explains the slow rise of Sri Lanka, which now has powerful friends:

China moves into India’s back yard

China is all set to drop anchor at India’s southern doorstep. An agreement has been finalized between Sri Lanka and China under which the latter will participate in the development of a port project at Hambantota on the island’s south coast. [...] China’s role in the Hambantota project has stirred concern in some quarters in India. Some analysts here have argued that India has lost out to the Chinese. They say China won the project thanks to Indian lethargy and shortsightedness. According to this view, while India has been dragging its feet on this and other issues, the Chinese quickly moved in to clinch the deal. In the process, it has made inroads into Sri Lanka - a country that India regards as within its sphere of influence. [...] Even as the Sri Lankans were finalizing the deal with the Chinese, they clinched an agreement with the Americans. In Colombo, officials reached agreement on an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the US. The agreements come at a time when India is already watching with concern the growing Pakistani influence in Sri Lanka.

This is a truly unforgivable development. It points to a failure on multiple fronts, the root of which lies in India’s arrogant attitude towards its smaller, weaker neighbours. It is paying the price for the recent Nepal foul-up. That some members to the far Left have a hand in the Nepal Affair is not entirely false. It is rather unfortunate that despite a deep, shared heritage dating back to ancient times, India chose to bully these tiny states. It has rarely–if at all–shown the same “courage” in the face of stronger powers. Rajiv Gandhi’s disastrous misadventure in Sri Lanka shows in these scathing words of J.N. Dixit:

India’s credibility as a mediator and .. regional power capable of controlling critical developments and stabilising the situation suffered seriously… in the world at large. The Central government’s credibility with the people of Tamil Nadu has also been affected…because of the failure of the [Indo-Sri Lankan] agreement.

Indira Gandhi set the tone for this failure by

…her policy [of] materially supporting Tamil militant separatists [was wrong]. India’s interests and the Tamil cause which oriented her towards generating pressure on Jayawardene could have been pursued by…diplomatic means instead of extending material support to Tamil militants. (Defending India)

This should count as a bigger failure than the Chinese humiliation because India created a problem where none existed. Did our policymakers learn since then? The answer lies here:

However, there are others who have played down the implications of the Sino-Lankan cooperation at Hambantota. They dismiss allegations that India lost the port project to the Chinese and maintain that India was not interested in the Hambantota oil-tank farm and bunkering project in the first place, as it already has a sizable presence in Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s northeast coast.

“India feels that it is unnecessary to bid for it [Hambantota] given the fact that it is already refurbishing the World War II-vintage oil-tank farm at Trincomalee with 99 giant tanks. Out of these, only 35 can be put to use in the near future,” a report in the Hindustan Times said in 2005. “There isn’t enough business in Sri Lanka to make expansion worthwhile even in Trincomalee. India also does not consider the Hambantota project to be of a great strategic value, either. For India, a presence in Trincomalee makes much more strategic sense.”

None of these arguments are supported by facts. When dealing with a proven backstabber like China, extreme cynicism becomes a virtue in shaping policy. The facts that support the opposite state that China’s presence in Hambantota is

…about China’s presence close to Indian shores, which has implications for India’s security. Besides, with Hambantota, Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean has been further consolidated.

Which translates to gross dereliction of securing our shores. The US, China, and Pakistan to an extent, have already surrounded us. This again contrasts with the unassailable Naval fleet that Shivaji–fairly recent compared to Kautilya’s times–had built:

At the time of his coronation, Shivaji had 57 major ships of war … with a total fighting strength of 5000 men. Five years later, there were 66 major ships…Shivaji’s fleet was barely five years…raised from scratch…[the British] dug a ditch around the town in Bombay as a protection against him, and … erected a wall behind the ditch. They even joined hands with their bitterest rivals, the Portugese…the Dutch lost an implausible number of men the only time attacked one of his forts and then they called up a squadron of warships…from Batavia…no ship could pass the Konkan waters singly…(Defending India)

This account is about Shivaji’s Navy general, Kanhoji Angrey.

Yet we refuse to wake up to these developments but are active in far more important things–like counting the number of Muslim heads in our armed forces.

Crossposted on Desicriticsand INI Signal.