Udbhav

I am one of the founding members and part of the resource team of the research program Udbhav: Evolution of Military and Strategic Thought under the auspices of the Centre for Military History and Conflict Studies (CMHCS) of the United Service Institution of India. The purpose of this endeavor is to generate awareness, new scholarship, and debate around India’s indigenous traditions of strategic thought and statecraft, and revisit their relation to contemporary defence, security, conflict, and intelligence studies -- in keeping with the Government of India's vision for developing an indigenous strategic culture.

Additionally, Udbhav seeks to forge and propagate a unique indigenous strategic vocabulary and conceptual framework firmly anchored in India's multifaceted philosophical and cultural tapestry to enhance India's soft power in world politics. It will support solid and innovative academic research and present its outcomes through a series of activities (workshops/seminars) and publications. To that end, CMHCS has formed an informal cluster comprising scholars from diverse disciplines, including historians, classical scholars, Indologists, philologists, political scientists, International Relations (IR) practitioners, and members of the strategic community. The cluster will also examine how India’s ancient philosophical systems interacted with, influenced, and shaped the development of Western civilization, and it will look at the long history of the exchange of ideas between India and Greece.

The project is of critical importance in terms of educating junior military leaders and informing senior military commanders about the theories, doctrines, concepts, and teachings enshrined in the classical Indian texts. The deliberations and research will facilitate the creation of a knowledge pool for scholars and defence personnel for future studies and foster a more nuanced understanding of their relevance and implementation from the learning in contemporary situations.