While India is a civilisational state in terms of antiquity and pedigree - a characteristic it shares with China - its security experience as an independent nation is of recent vintage. I understand some of the foreign delegates to this conference had an opportunity to witness the parade on the occasion of the 53rd Republic Day on January 26 last. I hope they have been able to get a broad sense of the achievements of India both in its defence and development sectors. I mention Republic Day not so much for the pageantry and distinctive spectacle it is, but also to draw attention to the constitutional underpinning of the Indian experience. The core principles and values that India is committed to are drawn from this document and these include the commitment to democracy, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.

As is the case with most states, India has had to shape its security initiatives in relation to the prevailing global systemic. The Cold War decades accorded a distinctive political and ideological sheen to the international strategic ambience and this, in turn, was manifest in different ways. Bi-polarity and the military alliances they engendered, encouraged India and many like-minded Asian and African nations to opt for non-alignment. Yet the shadow of the Cold War darkened the security canvas of many regions and Asia in particular. North East Asia, South East Asia and Southern Asia, for instance, became arenas for the erstwhile super-powers and their allies to flex their muscles. What is germane is the manner in which both India and China were affected by this turbulence emanating from the systemic of Cold War.

The events in Afghanistan from 1979 onwards brought the Cold War into the Indian periphery and, now, when we join the dots in hindsight we note the arrival of the non-state actor by way of the ‘mujahideen’ who received state support and have since entered the regional security framework. Simultaneously, the 1991 US led war for Kuwait introduced an anxiety about weapons of mass destruction and the techno-strategic implications to such trans-border military capability.

The end of the Cold War brought about a re-arrangement in the global systemic and led to considerable flux. India again attempted to nurture its core national interest even as the nature of the security challenge underwent a complex transformation. At the upper end of the scale, strategic arms control and limitation and arms reduction-subsumed in acronyms such as Salt and Start-gave way to stringent non-proliferation and counter-proliferation measures. India’s core interests were adversely affected by this systemic and the dominant discourse endorsed by some of the major powers.

At the lower end of the spectrum, low intensity conflict and state sponsored terrorism, leavened with misplaced religious radicalism and empowered by Kalashnikov, became a lethal cocktail. Shadowy non-state actors and the deviant regimes that supported such violence posed a new challenge to the Indian state. There was little empathy for India at the time, and we persevered in patiently tackling the virus that infected the body-politic in both Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. We prevailed—though many lives were lost.

In the same period, India also found it necessary, however reliantly, to demonstrate its nuclear weapon capability. This was May, 1998. There was anxiety and anger expressed in many quarters but again we were convinced that this was necessary to protect India’s core interests and ensure that Indian sovereignty was not shrunk. Given the complexity of the security environment, the doctrinal under-pinning to this capability namely ‘no-first-use’ and the commitment to global disarmament is in keeping with India’s restraint regarding such matters.

I am aware that China expressed many reservations at the time and do not wish to open that chapter now. India engaged with the major powers patiently and, soon thereafter, many bi-lateral relationships were stabilised. By the end of the millennium, India had stabilised its relationship with the USA and other major powers. The altered systemic of the post-Cold War was about to crystallise when the tragic events of 9/11 unfolded. Terrorism and the non-state actor who perpetrated such dastardly acts with the support of deviant regimes became the new threat and challenge to the global comity. The still-evolving global systemic was re-arranged yet again, in a tentative post-Cold War mould. India is committed to the spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 1373 in the global campaign against terrorism.

India’s relation with all major powers has undergone a positive transmutation and this includes China albeit in a more cautious manner. In each case we have tried to advance the security interest in a consensual manner with a clear understanding that this would not be to the detriment of any other nation or grouping. Where possible, as in the case of the Asean Regional Forum, India has joined the collective security initiative and contributed to the spirit of such effort.

In the post - Cold War, post 9/11 period, the nature of the discourse about security and how it is to be prioritised is in consonance with the Indian experience of the last two decades. Terrorism and the support this scourge receives from certain regimes is the cancer that is to be contained at the regional and global level which overlap. We in India have always maintained this, but it took the tragedy of 9/11 to sensitise global opinion and acknowledge the scale of the challenge. The Sino-Indian relationship is to be re-arranged in this altered context.

China has made gigantic strides in the last two decades on the economic front. Its various fiscal and social indicators are a source of envy and, on occasion, some apprehension. There is a lesson here for us in India about the importance of national will, determination and collective discipline—though the radically different political framework needs to be factored in.

There is a vast potential to rearrange the Sino-Indian relationship and be cognisant of the reality we are dealing with. We could become ‘brothers’ as envisaged in the idealistic days of the 1950s. We will not be a ‘threat’ to each other and this has been reiterated at the highest political levels. There are some areas where emerging challenges and old anxieties need to be assuaged. The Indian Government has taken certain consistent positions on matters that concern China and these include both Tibet and Taiwan. These have been conveyed to our Chinese counterparts at the appropriate level. On the Indian side, there are complex divergences that include not border problem but interpretation and endorsement of territorial jurisdiction. We are working on this in a mature and perhaps `Asian’ civilisational manner. China and India have acquired to my mind a certain degree of consensual mutuality on the border issue. We have our differences but we are working on them, though the pace has been referred to as ‘glacial’.

Whenever India has had to deal with its immediate neighbours, we have always been told that the existential reality is that India is the larger and bigger power. The corollary is that hence a special responsibility devolves upon New Delhi to assuage the concerns of its neighbours and accommodate their interests, even while respecting their sensitivities. This is a valid proposition and political scientists will recognise the Gramscian flavour embedded here. May I suggest that in dealing with China, the matrix for India is inverted. China’s self-image is that of the ‘regional heavy-weight’. But then as the bigger power we expect that China will also discharge its responsibility and accommodate our interests, and reciprocate the spirit in which we are conscious of Beijing’s sensitivity on certain issues.

Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity are abiding core values. They are as relevant in guiding state endeavour in the domestic context, as they are in a nation’s conduct of external relations. We in India are aware that democracy is a treadmill and one has to arrive at consensus through continuous dialogue and the accommodation of competing interests.