Maj Gen (Retired) GD Bakshi's New Book 'Indian Strategic Culture' Launched In Presence of Ajit Doval

New Delhi: Major General (Retired) GD Bakshi on Friday launched his new book ‘Indian Strategic Culture’ in New Delhi. The book was launched by NSA Ajit Doval. Political Analyst Sushil Pandit, and Ankur Pathak, Director and Chief Operating Officer, Garuda Prakasham were also present at the launch event.   

Speaking at the book launch, Major General (Retired) GD Bakshi mentioned about Mahabharata and Kautilya ways of war saying the latter was not a theorist but rather a practitioner of art, science of national security.

GD Bakshi praised NSA Ajit Doval saying he’s a practitioner of art and science of national security.

“Some two decades back, Western scholars had come to India to study our strategic culture. They concluded that India had no focused military thought or analysis and blamed Hindus, Buddhists part of our history for the lack of strategic culture,” GD Bakshi said.

The Army veteran slammed Western scholars who downplayed size of our Army during the Mahabharata time and called it imaginary and fiction.

GD Bakshi further spoke about what is strategic culture. He slammed colonial thinking, Western scholars for downplaying India’s strategic culture and their bias against ‘Hindu India and Buddhist India’.

He also spoke about how colonial thinking, history has severely distorted perception of India and its past, and how Ramayana, Mahabharata were epic war events and strategic lessons from it.

Speaking at the launch, NSA Ajit Doval said, “...Why do we fight the wars? Is it for some vicarious pleasure in killing the adversary's human resources? What are our military objectives and how do we achieve them? We achieve it by breaking the will of the nation and defeating their army breaks the nation's will. When you defeat them on the battleground, the nation is prepared to have peace with you on your terms. Whether it is Ukraine, Russia or any war. One of the major tasks that was neglected was creating and strengthening the national will. About 100 years ago, one person who rose to do that was Swami Vivekanand...”