ABOUT THE BOOK
This book is a strategic meditation on India`s eastern
horizon, where geography, history, culture, and security converge to shape the
nation`s future. Written by a retired senior military commander with decades of
operational experience in India`s most complex theatres, it moves beyond policy
slogans to examine the deeper forces that enable or constrain India`s Act East
Policy.
Drawing on lived experience in the Northeast, close study of
Southeast Asia, and a lifelong engagement with questions of strategy and
statecraft, the book treats the region not as a peripheral frontier but as a
civilisational interface. It weaves together analyses of insurgency,
cross-border instability, economic institutions, education, media, culture, and
people-to-people ties, arguing that connectivity without security is illusion,
and security without legitimacy is unsustainable.
At its core, the book contends that India`s eastward
engagement will succeed only when internal integration, regional stability, and
strategic realism advance together. It pays particular attention to the
Northeast as the keystone of Act East, and to Myanmar and Bangladesh as
decisive external variables in India`s security calculus.
Combining strategic clarity with narrative depth, this work
speaks to policymakers, military professionals, scholars, and informed readers
seeking to understand not just where India must go, but what it must resolve
before it can get there.
ABOUT Author
Lt General Shokin Chauhan, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, SM, VSM, PhD, is
a retired senior military commander with over four decades of operational
experience across some of India`s most complex and unforgiving theatres. Much
of his early and midcareer service was spent in counter-insurgency and
sub-conventional conflict environments, where doctrine translated directly into
casualties and policy was measured in lives held, lost, or stabilised. His engagement with the Northeast of India
spans the full arc of command and responsibility. As a young field commander,
he served in the Ukhrul district of Manipur, gaining an intimate understanding
of terrain, tribal societies, insurgent motivations, and the everyday realities
of soldiers operating far from the strategic centres of power. Later, as GS01
Operations at Headquarters 3 Corps, he was involved in planning and executing
operations across a volatile, multi-state security environment where local
dynamics, crossborder linkages, and national policy intersected daily. His association with the region deepened
further as Director General of Assam Rifles, where he oversaw India`s oldest
paramilitary force at a time when the balance between force, restraint, and
legitimacy was central to long-term stability. In his final operational role in
the Northeast, he served as Chairman of the Ceasefire Monitoring Group,
engaging directly with leadership of the NSCN factions. This role placed him at
the intersection of armed conflict and political reconciliation, where
dialogue, trust-building, and patience became as decisive as firepower. His
involvement contributed to sustaining ceasefire mechanisms and advancing the
fragile pursuit of peace in Nagaland and the wider Northeast. Parallel to his command appointments, Lt
General Chauhan has remained deeply engaged with strategic analysis,
civil-military discourse, and national security debates. His writing bridges lived
military experience and strategic thought, combining operational memory with
institutional critique. He writes not as a distant observer, but as a
participant witness to the evolution of irregular warfare, proxy conflict, and
hybrid threats in South Asia. This book
emerges from that dual identity, soldier and strategist, and from an enduring
personal affection for the Northeast of India. He regards the region not as a
periphery, but as a civilisational bridge: culturally rich, historically
misunderstood, and strategically indispensable to India`s future. His work is
guided by the conviction that clarity is a strategic virtue, that geography is
destiny only if misread, and that nations are punished not for emotion, but for
misunderstanding reality.
United Service Institution of India (USI)
The
United Service Institution of India (USI) was founded in 1870 by a soldier
scholar, Colonel (later Major General) Sir Charles MacGregor. The story of its
growth is the story of the growth of the Indian Armed Forces. It was founded
for `furtherance of interest and knowledge in the art, science and literature
of the Defence Services`.
The USI
Centre for Military History and Conflict Studies (formerly the Centre for Armed
Forces Historical Research) was established in December 2000 with an aim to
encourage the objective study of all facets of Indian military history in
general, and the history of the Indian Armed Forces in particular.