Bharatiya Pragna - Dr. Th Chowdary

choosing not to see, nor to strike, all for the fear
of losing its vote-bank.
As far as the BJP is concerned, let me
make it absolutely clear that we shall never conduct
ourselves in such a short-sighted way that
history would hold us guilty of not doing our duty
at the right time and in the right manner. We are
prepared to make any sacrifices for defending
the unity and ensuring the security of our Motherland.
Our vision is not limited by the considerations
of where will our party be after the next
elections. Rather, it extends to caring about
whether India will be united and strong after a
hundred years, after a thousand years.
In the last millennium,
India suffered many a blow. In
the last century, India suffered
blood-soaked Partition on account
of a pernicious ideology.
Therefore, all political parties
and all sections of our society
should so conduct themselves
that no evil power, external or
internal, can set its eyes on destabilizing, debilitating
and dividing India.
Terrorism: Invisible enemy’s low-cost, asymmetrical
war
For such strong protective force to
emerge, it is necessary to know that in today’s
world, failure to protect internal security has
emerged as the most potent threat to the unity
and integrity of nations, to the stability of their
polity and to the protection their constitutional
values. In the post-World War period, failure to
deal with internal security challenges, as opposed
to foreign aggressions, has been responsible for
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the degradation of a large number of nation-states.
Most States when confronted with serious internal
threats thought it to be a passing phase and
allowed the drift to reach a point where retrieval
was no longer possible.
Quite often, the adversarial forces won
not because of their own strength but because of
the weaknesses and mistakes of the regimes that
were hit. Thus, history has a big lesson for us and
it would be tragic if we failed to learn from past
mistakes, both of our own and of others.
An important lesson that we in India
should learn — this lesson is indeed globally relevant
— is that conventional wars are becoming
increasingly cost-ineffective. As instruments of
achieving politi-
Foreign aggressions today cal and strategic
objectives, their
outcome is unpredictableoften,counter-productive.
Hence,
foreign aggressions
today come disguised as proxy wars in the
form of terrorism and other forms of violence.
The enemy targets internal fault-lines for furthering
his strategic and political objectives. Even less
powerful nations are able to exercise this lowcost
sustainable option, giving rise to the new doctrine
of asymmetric warfare.
We can see this clearly from what both
Pakistan and Bangladesh have been doing to us.
Neither can match India’s military strength. Yet,
both have been threatening India with cross-border
terrorism.
This warfare is waged by an invisible
enemy, for whom the civil society is both a source
come disguised as proxy wars in the
form of terrorism and other forms of
violence. The enemy targets internal
fault-lines for furthering his strategic
and political objectives.
November & December 2008 Bharatiya Pragna