Tuesday, October 28, 2008

radha rajan: This nation is not an idea

oct 28th, 2008

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Radha Rajan
Date: Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:50 PM
Subject: This nation is not an idea
To:


Dear all, this is the URL of my column for the RSS organ 'The Organiser' spl deepavalli edition. Regards, RR
 
 

This nation is not an idea
By Radha Rajan

A round the world, with the sole exception of India, countries use state power to deal with threats to national security. Until around the last quarter of the twentieth century, notwithstanding Islam's vivisection of the Hindu nation in 1947, the world understood national security generally to mean only external threats to the nation by another country through what is referred to as 'conventional warfare'—army, air-force and navy.

Even as methods of warfare 'evolved' as one of the definitive indices to being a 'developed' nation, acquiring more and more destructive powers and capabilities, the weapons of conventional warfare had to include scientifically advanced methods of decimating an entire populace through chemical and biological substances and nuclear weapons. The post-colonial era expanded the understanding of national security to account for internal insurgencies and separatist movements which were overtly and covertly encouraged by hostile states as war-by-other-means to attain foreign policy strategic objectives.

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