By: Alshifa Imam

The study of India’s strategic culture may be interesting by virtue of India’s unique historical experience and geopolitical context. Specifically, I have described a mixed ongoing relationship between militaries and civilian political actors, typically described by the Clausewitzian phrase, “war is politics by other means.” Generally, the “Clausewitzian divide” of the traditional model, focuses on war’s political ends—in the hands of civilians—and war’s means—in the hands of soldiers. In India, neither military authority nor civilian leadership has been completely disparate or entirely fused, indicating essential trends that have important implications for the defense doctrine and strategic positions of India.

The following article will examine the development, contemporary, and ongoing complexities of India’s strategic culture within civil-military relations and doctrine, while questioning the importance and utility of Clausewitzian duality in understanding India’s strategic framework.

India’s Strategic Culture: Historical Legacies and Foundational Themes

In India, strategic behavior is influenced by philosophical traditions that stem from its ancient civilization, emphasizing doctrines such as ahimsa (non-violence) and moral causation. A notable historic-philosophical development relating to India’s military forces was Ashoka’s reversion to pacifism and moral high ground following the Kalinga war, as well as the path of the Gandhian legacy that critically informed a great deal of the independence movement in the twentieth century. There is cultural restraint in physical force. After independence, Jawaharlal Nehru’s doctrine of “strategic autonomy” reinforced the state’s predisposition to neither aligning with nor taking on the characteristics of a state that utilizes armed violence as a political tool. The military, while respected and trusted for its outputs, existed separately from the formulation of policy and ultimately strategy, signaling cultural concerns about the grasp of martial power, and preparation of civilian control measures to avoid politicization of the military.  

The Indian state established and entrenched the supremacy of civilian decision-making authority over the military as a formal response to their partitioning and the threat of military coups in neighbor states, Pakistan and Bangladesh; therefore, while ensuring civilian control, the state created a gap in the articulation of strategic ideas and an undercurrent of thought, which are important pathways for military doctrine development.

 Civil-Military Relations: The Indian Model and Its Discontents

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) of India developed a model where senior civilian bureaucrats became the primary intermediaries between politicians and the military, which insulated the military from politics but also excluded them from strategic policy discussions and resulted in a reliance on bureaucracy for input in policy development, even in areas requiring significant operational knowledge.Key features include:

• Deliberate exclusion of service chiefs from the Cabinet Committee on Security except by invitation
• Separation of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from decision-making on key security matters
• Absence of integrated defense structures until late reforms such as the 2020 establishment of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS)

The resultant strategic culture has often been described as reactive and defensive. Civilian leaders, wary of military adventurism, entrusted the armed forces with implementation rather than formulation of military policy. This division has led to:

• Lack of inter-service coordination, especially evident during the 1962 Sino-Indian War and the subsequent border conflicts with Pakistan
• Doctrinal inertia, with innovation often stymied by institutional silos
• Missed opportunities for leveraging military advice toward integrated national security objectives

Clausewitz’s ideal is a synergistic relationship, not a rigid separation, between political aims and military means. Yet, Indian civil-military relations have often resembled a form of parallel play, rather than functional synergy. While civilian control ensures democratic stability, its insufficiency for holistic strategy creation is manifest in several key episodes, notably:

• The lack of high-level consultation during the 1965 war resulted in poorly coordinated military operations and premature ceasefire
• Civilian avoidance of operational oversight at times denied the political leadership a granular understanding of military realities

Doctrinal Development: From Defensive Orthodoxy to Deterrence by Punishment

Following its independence, India relied on a doctrine of defense defined by territorial integrity and the requirement for minimum force. The legacy of partition and repeated tension and conflict along its borders led to a reliance on a British model of frontier defense and virtually no doctrinal development until the war in 1962 revived a consideration of India’s strategic environment and generated a deeper situational analysis.

The 1980s produced a doctrine for armored innovation under the Sundarji Doctrine which separated holding Corps to blunt aggression and strike corps that weighed armored counter-offensives, both considered as a doctrinal innovation. The clearly organizational philosophy expressed in the Sundarji Doctrine was conventional deterrence and mobilizing large reserves large reserves was premised on quick-strike, high-intensity wars with imaginable limited objectives.

However, the system exposed severe weaknesses:

• The slow mobilization during Operation Parakram in 2001–02 revealed the impracticality of massed, centralized strike corps
• Doctrines remained slow to adapt to new modes of war, such as sub-conventional threats and grey zone conflict

Prompted by the limitations of previous doctrines, India developed the “Cold Start” doctrine—envisioning rapid, integrated offenses across the border to achieve limited objectives before international intervention. Although never formally promulgated, its principles have permeated doctrine and active force deployments.

Recent years have witnessed:

• Greater attention to jointness and integration of services
• The adoption of network-centric warfare and technological modernization
• Proactive use of military force for punitive operations, as seen in cross-border counterterrorism strikes

Key policy changes such as the appointment of the CDS and the establishment of joint theatre commands are recent attempts to narrow the civil-military gap and cultivate an integrated strategic planning culture. At the same time, there seems to be growing appetite to use military force for purposes that are not entirely defensive.

An assertive Indian military needs to be integrated tightly into the national decision-making processes, so that the country could use force to achieve its national interests. This may take time, but must be developed in a sequential manner.

 Contemporary Challenges and Imperatives

India’s security landscape is complicated by open, unresolved borders with China’s occupation in the near north and the LEGAL occupation by Pakistan to the northwest. The context of frequent skirmishes is compounded by numerous sub-conventional multi-domain threats: insurgency and terrorism. Further complicating the issue is the problem of maritime competition and some of the challenges associated with expanding interests in the Indian Ocean Region.

To fulfil its great power aspirations and rationally react to multi-domain threats, India must begin to make some reforms:

• Ensuring military representation in strategic policy formation and evaluation
• Enhancing inter-service cooperation and doctrinal jointness
• Building a tradition of critical debate and professional military education within the civil and military establishments alike
• Recalibrating civilian-military relations toward a relationship characterized by constructive engagement, mutual respect, and shared strategic vision

Rethinking the Clausewitzian Divide: Toward Synergy Rather Than Separation

While the Clausewitzian trinity—politics, military, and people—emphasizes interaction and balance, the Indian experience demonstrates the hazards of over-insulation. The key lies in achieving synergy rather than mere subordination:

• Civilian control must not equate to military exclusion from strategy deliberations
• Military professionalization should not come at the cost of strategic illiteracy among political leaders and bureaucrats
• Integration mechanisms—like the CDS and joint planning bodies—should be empowered, not symbolic

India’s strategic culture, long marked by restraint, is adapting toward assertiveness out of necessity. This transformation demands an equally forward-looking approach to civil-military relations, where the Clausewitzian divide gives way to Clausewitzian dialogue.

Conclusion

India’s experience as it develops its strategic culture is full of contradictions—traditional norms of restraint in tension with modern requirements of assertiveness; a strong tradition of democracy existing alongside a persistent civil-military gap. As the global and regional context becomes increasingly complex, India must move away from older paradigms of separation and towards paradigms of synergy, commensurate with a state that aspires to regional leadership and global purpose. Changing the civil-military compact—and with it, the intellectual foundations of strategic doctrine to meet the demands of the 21st century—is essential to achieve these aspirations.