ABOUT THE BOOK

The primary role of a nation’s foreign policy is the maintenance and preservation of National Interest. How a nation conceives its national interest and seeks to protect and promote it through its foreign policy must hence be a matter of public importance and discourse. This book expounds upon the various facets of India’s foreign policy, tracing its roots from the times of Chanakya, millennia ago, and then expanding upon the post independence phase of India’s foreign policy.

Chanakya is credited with crafting perhaps the very first treatise on statecraft, sometime in the fourth century BCE. India thus has a rich legacy in dealing with foreign powers towards the furtherance of national interest. Post independence, India’s foreign policy was crafted by its first prime minister and since then has evolved over the last seven decades, maintaining at one level a distinct continuum even as it transferred from one Government to the other. A new zest has however been given to India’s foreign policy over the last four years, and a transformation is visible in multiple ways, though the core remains the same.

The transformation is visible in the uncompromising firmness shown on issues related to the nation`s integrity and honour and in that sense, it has become a bold, proactive, innovative and ambitious foreign policy with ‘Samman, Samvad, Samriddhi, Suraksha, Sanskriti evam Sabyatha’ being the driving forces behind India’s global engagement. There is today a greater expectation of India’s role in the world, as reflected by India emerging as a natural participant in several regional and global discourses. Another important transformation has been the rekindling and strengthening of India’s linkages with its diaspora, cooperation in the field of counter terrorism, emphasis on the neighbourhood with significant progress taking place in terms of physical and cultural connectivity and on a renewed economic vigour. 

This book brings out the dynamics in play in India’s foreign policy and offers a holistic  understanding of the factors which have shaped its growth. Covering a vast swathe, it delves on India’s strategic culture and security concerns, economic growth, soft power, and relations with the neighbourhood and the world.

ABOUT Author

Maj. Gen. Dhruv C. Katoch, SM, VSM is an alumnus of Sherwood College, Naini Tal, National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla, Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, Higher Command Course, Mhow and National Defence College, New Delhi. He holds MSc and MPhil degrees in Defence Studies from Madras University and is a Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) from Indira Gandhi University, Rewari.

A third-generation Army officer, he took part in ‘Operation Pawan’ for two years as part of the IPKF in Sri Lanka. He has also served and participated in operations against terrorists and insurgents in J&K and various states of North East India. He commanded his battalion on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, a sector in Mizoram and a division in Arunachal Pradesh where he was responsible for the defence of Kameng Sector. Before retiring from the Indian Army on 31 January 2009, he was the Chief of Staff of an Operational Corps on the Western Sector. Post retirement, he joined the Indian Army’s premier think-tank, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, later rising to be its Director till November 2014.

He has authored innumerable papers and study reports on defence and security-related issues and edited/co-edited six books. He speaks on these issues on television news channels and at military training establishments and universities across India. Based in the NCR, he is currently Director, India Foundation; Editor, SALUTE magazine and Secretary-General, Indian War Veterans Association.