Saahil Acharya’s Essay

Gateway House Global Minds Essay Competition 2011

3rd prize: Saahil Acharya

Bangalore

Most of the facets of our ‘Indianess’ we derive, intentionally or unwittingly, from our past. Among the pages of Indian history are devoted a great number to the tales of two kings of the same dynasty – Chandragupta Maurya and Askoka. Both these great figures played a role in forming a nation out of the chaotic mass of kingdoms and fiefdoms that the subcontinent consisted of. They left us more than awe-inspiring tales. We have two, apparently antagonistic, schools of thought that arose in this era – Kautilya’s ‘Arthashastra’ and Askoka’s ‘Dhamma’. One preaches the principles of good governance as separate from morality or religion, while the other imbeds morality and religion into the very definition of ruling. More importantly, ‘Arthashastra’ is a pragmatic approach to the difficult task of nation building, and Ashoka’s is one more idealistic than any one is likely to encounter. India as a nation is poised on the brink of an era of, once again, radical reshaping of world politics, and the question of which should form the basis of our foreign policy is important.

To dismiss one completely is foolish, and although Ashoka’s idealistic policy, at face value, appears of little consequence in the modern world, it is important to interpret the intention behind it. Pacifism is the modern sense would entail a foreign policy keen to douse any flames of dissent and argument surfacing on the world. There are many states that have achieved, as much as is practically possible, an environment conducive to their internal development by dabbling as little as possible in world politics. India is not such a state, and can never be one. We are too big, and our interests vested in too many nations across the word. Our increasing economic strength, moreover, will not allow us the leisure of sitting back and watching countries trying to strangle each other, or rather, one doing so and the others trying. We are in the limelight. We have risen from crippling poverty to assume the role of the second fastest growing economy. This position, inherently, carries with it the burden of sustaining the growth, something I do not see happening unless, for example, we continue exploring for oil overseas. This, therefore, is one major reason. The second, more compelling, reason is one which, in my opinion, will conclusively seal the argument.

The fact that India is a nation armed with nuclear weapons somehow takes the breath out of the ‘pacifist’ argument. Our membership to this elite club guarantees that we will never be excluded from any ‘nuclear’ debate. This is not to say our move towards nuclear armament is not justified. We are surrounded by aggressive neighbours, China and Pakistan, both nuclear armed now, and at the time the deed was done, many pacifists regretted the compulsions that forced our hand. Our present economic situation is probably a result of this bold move, which made the world sit up, and look up the ‘land of elephants and snake-charmers’ on the world map. Even currently, our foreign policy cannot, from any angle, be considered a pacifist one. We are aggressively arming ourselves with foreign and indigenous weapons, and buying intelligence and reconnaissance equipment. All this is to sustain the growth, and to ensure we do not get sidelined by the ever expanding Chinese or torn apart by Pakistani terrorists.

Pacifism does not find a place in modern foreign policy because of the simple reason that in the modern world, it is impossible for a country of our dimensions and proportions to

secure internal peace and prosperity without asserting our right to things that are, quite frankly, not ours. We cannot stop arming ourselves, nor can we withdraw bids to acquire foreign oilfields or tell our neighbours we mean no harm. Ashoka’s state was the biggest and most powerful in the region and in his time. We cannot assume the same for ourselves- even the most vehement nationalist will accept our country is not quite the ‘Big Brother’.

The only conclusion we can draw is that there is no place for idealism in international polity. The timeless truth prevails to this day- the strongest rules. But even as Kautilya challenged this with his Arthashastra, so must we.

The ‘Arthashastra’, quite conversely, suites us, as a nation, just fine. This ancient treatise was written for just such a nation as we find ourselves today, and its core principles align themselves quite nicely in the battlefield of modern politics. ‘Every nation acts to maximize power and self-interest, and therefore moral principles and obligations have little or no force in action among nations.’ Just how much this statement is true needn’t be discussed- it is as easily implied as it is obvious. The long term goals we have set for ourselves as a nation require us to be like the ones we seek to overcome and exceed. Somehow, we must make up for the lack of wealth and sheer power of the armed forces with cunning, guile and diplomacy. This requirement, uncannily, is precisely what Kautilya’s Arthashastra addresses. In the modern context there is, obviously, no need for open warfare. Our country does not seek to add to its territory. Kautilya himself believed ‘peace should always be preferred to war.’ The host of foreign diplomatic problems we

face, however, must all be confronted with the ‘Kautilyan’ viewpoint. The world is soon going to polarize, and this time, not into two distinct, antagonistic poles, but a medley of three or four, with constantly changing boundaries and overlapping agendas. To understand what future path our country should take in dealing with our neighbours and other existing and aspiring superpowers, we must look back to that great master who moulded a kid into a king, a kingdom into a nation, and gave us a piece of infinitely interesting and hopefully, useful literature- the Arthashastra.

After such an analysis, and before conclusion, it is important to consider that, in all their idealism, Ashoka’s concepts of ‘no conquest’, ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘State morality’ are what all countries, at least in spirit, should aspire to be. The fact that such a spirit cannot possibly exist in our nation’s policy, from whose womb was born the first ruler of a united ‘India’, is something to be rued over. This fact, more than anything else, serves to tell us, as blandly as Kautilya did in his Arthashastra, that we live in evil times- times in which the prosperity of one people depends on the slavery of another, times in which very basic needs of lakhs of refugees from Somalia are denied, while the United States holds down the world economy because its citizens cannot buy quite as much ice-cream at the supermarket, times in which an emerging nation like ours needs to scam, bamboozle and wrestle its way to the top, because that is, after all, the ambition of the modern nation.