Indian nuclear submarine programme

Our vision has been obscured by an un-Indian wave of pacifism. Ahimsa is no doubt a great religious creed, but that is a creed which India rejected when she refused to follow Gautama Buddha.

The Hindu theory at all times, especially in the periods of her historic greatness, was one of active assertion of the right, if necessary through the force of arms.” So wrote Mr K.M. Panikkar in India and the Indian Ocean just a few years before the British withdrew from South Asia.

It would appear that the strategic planners of India in the post-British era took their ideological cue from Mr Panikkar’s maritime vision, which he succinctly encapsulated by stating that “To the Indian Ocean we shall have to turn, as our ancestors did, who conquered Socotra long before the Christian Era and established an Empire in the Pacific, which lasted for 1500 years.”

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