The Third Eye: In the backdrop of relations with Pak, India can draw strength from its strategic culture

STRATEGIC culture is the collective consciousness of a nation towards its unity, well-being and contribution to humanity at large.

- D.C. PATHAK

Awareness of an integral identity is the foundation of strategic culture and it is rooted in three 'civilisational' paradigmsthe shared 'historical' memories of the people, their willingness to work together in the 'present' and their perception of a common 'destiny'. This makes strategic culture a product of the synthesis between the 'heritage' of a nation and its 'security doctrine' for the future.

Strategic culture is sustained by thoughts of how 'ancient' this heritage was, and in the Indian context, this helped to get over many divides of language, caste and region facing the country. Unfortunately, however, the cataclysmic Partition of India on the grounds of religion, caused largely by the alliance of the British and the power-seeking practitioners of Political Islam, resulted in the death of lakhs of people in communal riots.

The memory of the Partition riots cast its shadows on independent India, which interestingly, housed more Muslims than its population in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Indo-Pak relations have ever since tested the resilience of India's strategic culture because of the evil attempts of the Pakistan Army-ISI combine to exploit faith-based motivation for cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere.

The Pakistan-directed terror attack at Pahalgam on April 22 in which Hindu male tourists were targeted, was designed to internally destabilise India, though, as it turned out, all Indians united against the despicable act of Pakistan that had evoked universal condemnation as well. The communally driven terrorist violence instigated by Pakistan deserved to be eliminated permanently.

In this context, it has to be mentioned that the ancient culture of India witnessed reforms like that brought about by Arya Samaj, but the non-assimilative outlook of the advocates of Islamic 'supremacism' impeded the process of moving our strategic culture forward to embrace all the people of this country.