New Delhi: It is not just China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that seeks to apply the ancient wisdom propagated by the revered 6th century BC military strategist and thinker Sun Tzu, the author of the famed ‘Art of War’.
The Indian Army, faced with mounting security challenges, has begun work to study the basic tenets of Chanakya as enunciated in his treatise the ‘Arthashastra’ and Thiruvalluvar’s work ‘Tirukkural’.
Chanakya (4th century BC) and Thiruvalluvar (1st century BC), who wrote in Sanskrit and Tamil respectively, are revered for their thoughts on warcraft, strategy, philosophy, economics, and diplomacy.
Speaking about the relevance of the ideas of Chanakya and Thiruvalluvar, Indian Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane said on Thursday that ancient wisdom was being examined for its utility in the current context.
“Sometimes in our zeal to look at the future, we forget the lessons that the past brings to us… Hard power has always been relevant and will continue to play an important part in the future, albeit in new ways, adapting to the changing strategic context. This is also one of the reasons, why our ancient Indian wisdom on statecraft, and application of force, propounded many centuries ago, remains timeless and pertinent even today,” he said.
Gen Naravane was speaking on Thursday at the Pragyan Conclave 2022 themed ‘Contours of Future Wars and Countermeasures’ and organized by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS).
The Army chief underlined the challenges that confront India. “From an Indian perspective, we face unique, substantial, and multi-domain challenges. Disputed borders with nuclear neighbors, coupled with state-sponsored proxy war, stretches our security apparatus and resources.”
The changes in warfare have manifested in conflicts that are “increasingly transcending, time, space and force dimensions, and enveloping new frontiers” and also blurring “the distinction, between combatants and non-combatants, front and rear, often avoid direct military engagements, and resort to extensive use of proxy actors”.
Saying that in future conflicts, the troops, on the forward-most locations, ready and in a high state of alertness, may not be the ones to face the first wave of aggression, Gen Naravane pointed out that military doctrines and concepts have struggled to keep pace with this change and stay relevant.
“The concept of victory itself has changed, as enduring success, especially against non-state actors, has remained elusive for most”.
Cautioning of the times ahead, the chief said: “We are already witnessing ‘trailers’ of future conflicts. They are being enacted daily on the information battlefield, in the networks, and in cyberspace. They are also being played along, with our yet unsettled and active borders. It is for us to ‘visualize’, the battlefield contours of tomorrow, based on these ‘trailers’. If you look around, you will realize that the ‘sci-fi’ of yesterday, is the ‘reality’ of today. We too have to ‘leap-frog’ to the future, skipping many stages, to an entirely new configuration.”
