INDIAN NATIONAL SECURITY AND COUNTER-INSURGENCY: THE USE OF FORCE VS NON-VIOLENT RESPONSE

This book, based on extensive field research, examines the Indian state’s response to the multiple insurgencies that have occurred since independence in 1947. In reacting to these various insurgencies, the Indian state has employed a combined approach of force, dialogue, accommodation of ethnic and minority aspirations and, overtime, the state has established a tradition of negotiation with armed ethnic groups in order to bolster its legitimacy based on an accommodative posture. While these efforts have succeeded in resolving the Mizo insurgency, it has only incited levels of violence with regard to others. Within this backdrop of ongoing Indian counter-insurgency, this study provides a set of conditions responsible for the groundswell of insurgencies in India, and some recommendations to better formulate India’s national security policy with regard to its counter-insurgency responses