It is a privilege to be invited to contribute to the special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the IDSA. The institution and the time span are respectively multi-hued and vast and the managing editor has thoughtfully suggested that I dwell on three aspects: my personal association with the institution; its major punctuations and contributions; and the way ahead, as it were—all from my limited perspective.
Pakistan has had a distinctive and chequered trajectory since its creation in August 1947, following the partition of British India, and was conceived on the basis of the contested two-nation theory. The latter formulation, championed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, averred that the Muslims of the subcontinent needed their own state and against aback drop of cynical realpolitik considerations and venal politics, the new state was born in the womb of intense Hindu–Muslim communal violence.
The volume under review is part of the CASS Series on Naval Policy and History edited by the acclaimed maritime affairs expert Professor Geoffrey Till, and is also the 50th book in the series. Maritime and naval scholarship is a niche area in security and strategic studies and the Cass series is a welcome initiative to address the prevailing sea-blindness and related ignorance in the policy-making circles of the world.
The dramatic revision of China's GDP (Dec 20) by the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing reveals that the dragon's economic vitality is far more robust than earlier estimated.
Bangalore's prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was the venue of an attack by an unidentified gun-toting killer on December 28. Delhi based professor, Professor M.C. Puri - participating in an international conference - was killed and four other scientists seriously injured in the attack. The incident must be termed as one of 'terrorism', even if the identity of the perpetrators is to be definitively established, for it amounted to the pre-meditated killing of innocent people.
The 34th anniversary of the liberation of Dhaka and the creation of Bangladesh on December 16 is an occasion for concern and deep introspection about the nature of the internal turbulence in that country and the related implications for India.
It may be recalled that prior to December 16, 1971, what is now known as Bangladesh was East Pakistan and for almost 24 years from August 1947, the military leadership of Pakistan treated the eastern part of the country as a poor relative.
