Anyone who has asked an Indian Army officer why it has got bogged down in a bloody quagmire in the North East, why it made such a hash of the operation in Sri Lanka, or why the lives of so many jawans were squandered in Kargil, hears the same answer: ‘We fought with one hand tied behind our backs’. Apart from being hard to do unless you have a tail or other appendage to which the hand can be tied, that excuse absolves many sins. That is also the first of many limitations in this book. Though India’s national security has at least as many arms as Kali, perhaps as many as Durga, the editors have chosen to tie all but one away from view, examining only how the state faces armed conflict. That is a one-armed tackle, and a one-eyed view, of a protean and slippery subject.
October 2013, volume 37, No 10