If there is polarisation, it will reflect in national security too: MP Manish Tiwari at book launch

"The purpose of writing this book is not playing the blame game or pointing fingers at anyone. The book rather focuses on the belief that if there is polarization in the society, it will inevitably reflect in the national security situations as well."

Chandigarh: Congress MP Manish Tewari on Tuesday said that security situations regarding India's borders with Pakistan and China have generally not been analysed properly, something his book '10 Flashpoints; 20 Years National Security Situations That Impacted India' tried to decipher.

"In India there's an unfortunate culture of not analysing the security situations openly, apparently for 'security reasons'. We only wake up when something happens," Tiwari said in the release event of his book '10 Flashpoints; 20 Years National Security Situations That Impacted India'.

Tewari said that the sole purpose of writing the book was "to apprehend the security situations we have dealt with in the past and perhaps inculcate some improvisations in the future situations".

"The purpose of writing this book is not playing the blame game or pointing fingers at anyone. The book rather focuses on the belief that if there is polarization in the society, it will inevitably reflect in the national security situations as well," he said.

India, he said, was still overshadowed by the conflict it faced with Pakistan in 1999 and was dealing with the Chinese border disputes with the "same approach" that it had 20 years ago.

What happened during Kargil in 1999, happened again with China in 2020, he said.

"In 1999, we were not able to understand the extent to which Pakistan had penetrated into the Indian soil for understandable reasons. But in 2020, we repeated the same mistake and could not understand that China had infiltrated into the Indian soil," said the Congress MP, whose book takes a potshot at the Congress-led UPA government regarding its reaction to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

"Although we won in 1999, we need to stay vigilant in case of China," he added.

During the event, Tewari talked at length about the subject of his book.

He said that the book highlights some crucial security situations faced by India that largely impacted the security dynamics and possible future approaches towards them.

Tewari's book had caught the limelight earlier this month after he had posted a paragraph from his book on Twitter, implying that the UPA should have taken a more kinetic action during the 26/11 terror attacks.

The statement had given the opposition an opportunity to take a dig at Tewari's own party which was in rule during the attack.

However, on Tuesday he clarified that through his book he has tried to explain the fallouts of the strategic call that the government decided to take during the attack. "The book does not second guess that strategic call, it just points out the fallouts it brought," he said.