The National Democratic Alliance and National Security
Dr Apurba Kundu

Presentation by Dr Apurba Kundu, EIAS Senior Research Fellow, at the Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism, conference held from 21-22 February 2004 at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London.

Brief Summary

Since independence in 1947, the Indian armed forces have been involved in any number of challenges to India’s national security. Domestically, these have included the (sometimes forcible) incorporation of the Princely States, left-wing terrorism in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, armed insurrections in Assam and the Northeast, Punjab and Kashmir. International challenges to national security have led to armed conflicts with Portugal (over Goa), China (over Ladakh and the Northeast frontier area), and Pakistan (over Bangladesh and Kashmir).

The Indian armed forces also have sent an Indian Peace-keeping Force to Sri Lanka, prevented the overthrow of the government of the Maldives, and participated in almost 40 United Nations (UN) peacekeeping activities throughout the world. Given the ongoing (threat of) violence in the Northeast and Kashmir, and disputed national borders on its north and west, the Indian armed forces will continue to serve as crucial guarantors and defenders of the country’s national security.

Despite the numerous domestic and international challenges to India’s security, successive national administrations have given little serious attention to military matters, especially in terms of the strategic role of the armed forces as a tool of government. With few exceptions, decisions dealing with challenges to national security have been reactive, tactical, and/or confined to the prime minister and an informal coterie of advisors rather than proactive, strategic and/or the result of a formal consultative process within the governing party, the armed forces and non-governmental experts.

In a marked departure from previous national governments, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sought to address national security issues both proactively and strategically in line with its philosophy of achieving a strong India. This presentation begins by examining the strategic vision, such as it is, of the BJP. It then shows how this led to the extraordinary security decision to become an overt nuclear weapons state in 1998, and how this status affected India’s response to the armed challenge in Kargil in 1999 faced by the BJP-led coalition which immediately preceded the NDA government.

This is followed by an examination of the NDA’s national security as outlined in the seminal Reforming the National Security System: Recommendations of the Group of Ministers of 2001, before describing the near-war situation which developed between India and Pakistan in the spring-summer of 2002.

The presentation finishes with a conceptualisation of NDA national security policy as “strong at home, engaged abroad” as evidenced by defence spending on external and internal security, the military’s deployment on peacekeeping duties, and defence cooperation with other countries. In simple terms of law-and-order, to be strong at home is primarily a function of the local, state and central para-military forces (CPFs); at least when the outstanding issue of securing the Kashmir border is settled. As Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, this issue cannot be resolved by force alone.

Thus, ensuring the internal security of India is best served by normalising relations with Pakistan. For the NDA, the best means of doing this is by using the economic self-interest of both countries to propel a slow but steady progression of normalisation, including the opening of transport links, sporting exchanges and people-to-people contact.

Given the unusual but obvious personal chemistry of Indian Prime Minister Atul Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf, the growing realisation of the populations on both sides that the threat and use of violence has for too long held back the economic development of South Asia as a whole and their countries in particular, and the crowding out of the BJP’s hindutva ideology by promises of “bijli, sadak, pani” (electricity, roads, water), there may never be a better time for trying to peacefully resolve the differences between India and Pakistan. Then again, Musharraf has recently survived two attempts on his life, and Vajpayee is advanced in years. Will Indo-Pakistan rapprochement survive their passing?

In today’s world, to be engaged abroad is primarily a function of the economic, technological and moral strength of a nation. Certainly, the growing success of economic liberalisation measures introduced almost fifteen years ago is finally appearing to push India up the global radar, and “make trade, not war” may be the best way to describe the NDA’s efforts to open up trade with the hitherto relatively untapped markets of China and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Association (ASEAN). After decades of lobbying, the NDA has also seen fit to tap into the pent-up nationalism of non-resident Indian (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIOs) by passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill to facilitate the reacquisition of Indian citizenship by children of Indian citizens and former Indian citizens belonging to 16 specified countries.

While concentrating on the more traditional military aspect of national security means this presentation cannot fully judge whether “strong at home, engaged abroad” has made India more secure under the NDA, it can offer some indications as to how defence-related decisions have impacted/will impact the country’s safety as a whole. The most momentous defence decision made in recent years was not to overtly demonstrate the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities in 1998, but to refrain from using them during the Kargil Conflict in 1999 and the build-up of armies along the Indo-Pakistan border in 2002.

For, while the first decision brought down global opprobrium and economic sanctions upon India, and caused Pakistan to become the seventh declared nuclear weapons state, it did little to change the nuclear war-fighting doctrine of either country. Indian strategists had always envisaged an Indian nuclear bomb as a defensive weapon only; similarly their Pakistani counterparts always saw their bomb as a means of negating India’s superiority in conventional arms in the event of a war which threatened…threatened what exactly?

The answer to the above question is why the latter decisions—refraining from using nuclear weapons during the 1999 Kargil Conflict and the 2002 border build-up—are more important than the 1998 nuclear tests themselves, for they taught Indian and Pakistan leaders the rudiments of fighting a war when both sides have the power to inflict unprecedented horrors on their enemy. In the Kargil example, the Indian leadership learned that if they could fight a relatively high-intensity but geographically limited war, nuclear weapons need not enter into the equation.

While this prudence, in terms of resisting attacking supply lines and bases across the Line-of-Control (LoC), cost additional hundreds of military lives, it prevented an escalation which, if it had resulted in a nuclear response, would have killed many millions of Indian civilians. Pakistan, on the other hand, seemed to learn very little; once again their strategic planning in terms of calculating the probable outcome(s) of their actions was abysmal, once again, they found themselves reacting to Indian moves rather than controlling them.

The 2002 border build-up taught different lessons. The Pakistan defence decision-making hierarchy, now under the direct control of Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil misadventure, was once again reacting to rather than controlling events and, as such, was predicating its responses wholly on decisions made by the Indian leadership. Now that the burden of escalation rested with itself only, the NDA administration forwent the muscular response of war many were advocating as a suitable response to the unprecedented attack on the Lok Sabha and other bloody provocations.

Instead, they decided that as the chance of nuclear war, however remote, could not be discounted as an option which might exercised by the Pakistani leadership—under just what circumstances the Indians still could not predict with any certainty—the best option available was to use international pressure to wring promises of concessions from Musharraf regarding securing the LoC from infiltration. It seemed little reward for so much effort in the face of so much provocation. Yet, the lessons learned were vital:

Force as a means of settling national disputes between South Asian states—at least between those equipped with nuclear weapons—was finished.
India could not take its rightful place in the world if relations with Pakistan continued to fester.

From these lessons came the NDA’s current focus on economic, technological and diplomatic engagement with the world.

Conference Programme (pdf)