Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 38

India’s Ways of (Non-) War: Explaining New Delhi’s
Forbearance in the Face of Pakistani Provocations
of state policy has been the dominant
political condition for Indian thinking
on the military.” 235 This “long-standing
international political–military posture”
can be traced to the views of Indian
nationalist heroes like Gandhi
and Nehru, who “saw the use of armed
force as normatively flawed and practically
costly for India.” Going back to
Independence, this argument continues,
“the Indian political leadership
has generally seen military force as an
inappropriate instrument of politics.” 236
Indian strategic restraint is rooted in a
“political culture stressing disengagement,
avoidance of confrontation, and
a defensive mindset.” 237 In Sarang Shidore’s
conception, strategic restraint is
one of the “operational elements” of India’s
strategic culture specifically “with
respect to nuclear weapons and security
relations with Pakistan.” Shidore
traces India’s alleged strategic restraint
to the post-Independence leadership:
“Moralism has traditionally been a
prominent driver in India’s strategic
restraint doctrine. Nehruvian ideas of
resolution of conflict through communication
influenced the defining of
Indian restraint.” 238 In more recent decades,
he says, “liberal globalism is also
a driver for the continued persistence
of India’s strategic restraint policy”;
New Delhi’s economic liberalization
and high economic growth rates have
generated a “view that a major conflict
with Pakistan carries unacceptable
risks to India’s prospects for development
and security.” 239 One proponent
of this argument, retired Indian brigadier
Gurmeet Kanwal, claims that New
Delhi has observed “immense strategic
restraint” in the face of “grave provocation.”
As examples, he includes:
“low-intensity limited conflict and
proxy war since 1947 in Jammu and
Kashmir; Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar
(1965); Pakistani support to the
Khalistan movement in Indian Punjab
(1980s); the Kargil conflict (1999); the
attack on the Indian parliament, Operation
Parakram, and the attack on Indian
Army family quarters, Kaluchak
(2001–02); and the Mumbai terrorist
strikes (2008). 240 Shidore concurs, writing
that “strategic restraint in Indian
security policy is largely borne out by
the empirical record with respect to
Pakistan. India’s response to pointed
provocations such as terrorist attacks
has traditionally been overwhelmingly
diplomatic rather than military.” He
specifically refers to Kargil, Twin Peaks,
and Mumbai as good examples of Indian
strategic restraint in practice. 241
Although a comprehensive history
of India’s use of military force is beyond
the scope of this article, there are
strong reasons to doubt that a doctrine
of strategic restraint has caused India to
shy away from wielding military power,
either in general or during the episodes
examined above. In the pre-nuclear era,
New Delhi ordered substantial military
operations in Kashmir in the autumn
of 1947, a provocative and disastrous
“forward policy” toward China in the
leadup to the Sino–Indian war of 1962,
an invasion across the international
border with Pakistan in 1965 (escalating
the second Kashmir war, begun by
Pakistan), another invasion of Pakistan
during the Bangladesh war of 1971, a
military occupation of the Siachen Gla-
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