LAUSR

The generalist reader, as also those interested in indigenous historical knowledge, owes a debt of gratitude to Professor Subrata K. Mitra and Dr. Michael Liebig for bringing out this remarkable study. This is especially so since the IDSA has been investing for several years now in studying indigenous historical knowledge and its links to modern Indian political thought. Professor Mitra and Dr. Liebig bring out, in their unique interpretive account, how the inheritance of Kautilya’s philosophy is embedded in India’s political praxis right through its history and how this text is connected to contemporary India. By way of example, they analyse Gandhi—as the master strategist of the Indian Nationalist Movement—and come to the conclusion that Gandhi not only knew the four upayas—Sama, Dama, Danda and Bheda—but that he was never really as ‘dogmatic on the use of Danda’, or force, as conventional wisdom would have us believe. Antonio Gramsci, the incarcerated, radical Italian leader, reinforced the views of the authors. Gramsci looked upon Gandhi as a strategic practitioner in the context of the resistance to imperial rule. According to him, the Gandhian freedom struggle was composed of ‘a war of movement, a war of position, and underground warfare’. Gandhi’s tactical line was ever responsive to the changing dynamic of colonial repression and the mobilisation of the masses against it. The Gandhi-led freedom struggle was a realist movement, taking into account the existential situation confronting India. It was not one of overwhelming force deciding the issue in one single confrontation, but a battle of attrition. Professor Mitra and Dr. Leibig divide their book into five parts: an interpretive exposition of Kautilya’s Arthashastra; Kautilya and modern India; reuse of the past and the making of India’s modern politics; Kautilya, India and global political theory; and the Kautilyan moment, the power–knowledge matrix, and the genealogy of global political theory. The glossary of Sanskrit and Hindi terms is helpful. The second part of the book contains a fascinating account of how the Kautilyan legacy is part of the mental make-up of modern India and its political elites, even though the text of the Arthashastra was rediscovered less than a century ago. The authors recall that the IDSA had held a seminar in 2005 on George Tanham’s contention that there was never a tradition of strategic thought in India—as reflected in his 1992 RAND study, entitled Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay. The then long-serving director of the IDSA, Mr. K. Subrahmanyam, did acknowledge Chanakya as a strategic thinker, but Strategic Analysis, 2018 Vol. 42, No. 4, 451–452, https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2018.1482621