Prayer for policy

The advantages India enjoys in dealing with the Chinese are heavily dependent on the 14th Dalai Lama and his inspirational leadership, but there is no long-term strategy

Since India’s independence in 1947, it has been described as short-sighted in its strategic outlook. George Tanham of the RAND Corporation famously postulated in 1992 that the country lacked a strategic culture, ostensibly because it had never faced an “existential threat”. Clearly, Tanham was unimpressed by six centuries of repeated invasions from Central Asia, or by Timur’s bloody sacking of Delhi in 1398, or by 200 years of British colonial rule that reduced India from opulence to penury. Even so, it is true that, without a long-term, national security strategy drawn up by India’s political leadership, the country deals with