Bharat Education Opinion Policy Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

RSS Chief Sides with Gen Z, Alpha

Were Jantar Mantar protests peaceful to trigger dialogue in spirit of ‘reasoned debate’ to forge consensus on education reforms? K.A. Badarinath Bharat’s youth who fall under 35-years age bracket total to over 800 million. Only a few thousands of these youngsters joined Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) led Jantar Mantar protests on NEET paper leak last month. Genuine students, irrespective of their ideological moorings, that sought educational reforms, corrective measures against paper leaks may not be treated as ‘anti-national’. And, they have the right to protest, take to streets in a peaceful formation or even get loud. Protests are one way of leading to consensus on core education issues in a large diverse democracy like India that’s on path to constant reform. In a democratic polity like India’s, protests are perfectly fine. Even this instrument of protests has to be used with lots of wisdom and responsibility in forging consensus on reforming education system that may have fallen short of student’s expectations and aspirations of youth. This seems to be tone and tenor with which Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Dr Mohan Bhagwat for the first time articulated the organization’s position on recent protests in New Delhi while interacting with thousands of Gen Z and Gen Alpha at an event in Mumbai on Thursday. The 49-days protests were however not entirely peaceful as envisioned by Bharat’s Constitutional visionary Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar in several of his writings. RSS chief made a specific reference to Dr Ambedkar’s line on peaceful protests in his public interaction with youth. Ambedkar held peaceful protests on several occasions unlike violence, hooliganism and stone pelting witnessed in recent Jantar Mantar protests infiltrated by rowdy sheeters, drug peddlers, rapists and criminals. Dr Ambedkar had led thousands of people in 1927 against caste-based discrimination in accessing drinking water from wells. This protest is easily seen as one of the most unique and popular as ‘Mahad Satyagraha.” Kalaram Temple entry satyagraha in 1930 was yet another peaceful movement that was held under leadership of Dr B.R. Ambedkar seeking end to untouchability of low caste Hindus. Ambedkar sought equal rights to temple entry in Nashik as an issue of ‘fundamental human dignity’. In a speech on November 25,1949, Dr Ambedkar had argued stringently against unconstitutional methods and disruptions terming them as ‘grammar of anarchy’. In fact, Dr Ambedkar wanted communities, citizens groups and stakeholders to take recourse to constitutional means like Parliament and elections for seeking redress to their issues. When Dr Bhagwat referred to Ambedkar’s line on peaceful protests, not many would have gauged the context and its significance. RSS chief’s messaging seems to be crystal clear. There’s no place for violence unlike what happened during the CJP protests. Culture of reasoned debate in Bharat was highlighted by the RSS chief in the context of protests held by students. Well, did the protestors trigger a reasonable debate on their issues? It’s a big question. Second big rider pointed to by Dr Mohan Bhagwat was that protests should not lead to divisions in the society or bring about divisiveness. But, did the Jantar Mantar protests pass this test? Well no. Only some genuinely concerned students and their families were there seeking changes in education system. But then, anti-social elements took control of narratives as well as the dais at Jantar Mantar. Stone pelting was resorted to by anti-social elements akin to what we had witnessed in Kashmir valley terrorists backed street incidents. Students’ issues took a back seat. Instead, protests got politicised with several opposition parties jumping in lending an anti-Modi twist to the protests. Left extremists who joined the protests claiming to be heirs of Dr Ambedkar were in fact seeking relevance as their guerilla war waged against democratic institutions got wiped out. In fact, the RSS chief brought the conversation back on issues that mean a lot to students and youth. Dr Mohan Bhagwat pushed for setting aside six per cent of GDP for education making it affordable and accessible to all. RSS has also argued against commercialization of educational institutions as avenues for profiteering at the cost of students and youth. At the same time, RSS chief has pin pointed to ‘collective responsibility’ of entire Indian society for taking education to all and not leaving it in exclusive domain of government. So, bringing meaningful debate on education engaging students and youth as big stakeholders may be the way forward. (Author is Director & Chief Executive of Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies and a veteran newsman)

Bharat China Human Rights Pakistan Terrorism

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Balochistan Burns, Islamabad on Rampage

Pakistan resorted to raids, violence, terror against Balochs while US, Europe stand as mute spectators. Rohan Giri Pazeer Baloch, son of Muhammad Amin, was picked up from his home in Panjgur in November 2025. His family looked for him for months, hoping he would come back. Alas! he did not, but his lifeless body surfaced in Kech three months later. A few districts away, Zareef Baloch who ran a small medical store, was taken by individuals his neighbours described as a state-backed death squad. Not long after, a twenty-year-old named Muhammad Fareed, the sole earner for his family after his father mysteriously disappeared, was abducted as well. One could continue listing these names until the write-up runs out of space, yet Balochistan would still be overflowing with names of those who have disappeared, murdered by Pakistan’s hoodlooms. Paank, human rights wing of the Baloch National Movement, counted 225 extrajudicial killings and 1,355 enforced disappearances in the province in 2025 and pinned the responsibility squarely on Pakistan Army, its intelligence agencies and the Frontier Corps. Baloch Yakjehti Committee put the count at 1,223, the number of people forcibly disappeared that year, among them women, teenagers and two elderly men. Paank called its own report A Year of Repression. There was not much need to dress it up further. Islamabad would prefer that you overlook these human violations and acts of terrorism. In first week of July 2026, Baloch fighters did hit back hard. Coordinated assaults across several districts during July 4 – 8 left 42 dead. Out of these, 38 were security personnel after a strike on a police post guarding the Mangi Dam project in Ziarat. Islamabad claimed this to be an unprovoked atrocity and violent. However, Pakistan has stonewalled public questioning on what a province should do with decades of grief, especially when the perpetrators openly acknowledge their actions. Military raids never really stopped for long enough to call them an aberration. Eighty-two enforced disappearances were logged in January 2026 alone, described by monitors as part of a pattern that is both widespread and systematic. By June 2026, families in Jiwani near Gwadar were crossing into Iran after night raids and home demolitions, their children now out of school in a displacement that has become in the flattest possible sense, routine. None of this began last week or even last decade. Balochistan’s insurgency has its roots back in late 1940s when the region was folded into a country it had not quite agreed to join and locals began accusing Islamabad of extracting the province’s wealth while leaving its children without schools. Every uprising since has been met with a crackdown and every crackdown has quietly triggered next uprising, the way burning a field down to the soil somehow never stops it from growing back. Then there is Gwadar where the whole thing acquires a price tag. Sixty-two billion dollars of Chinese investment sits on edge of this coastline, meant to give Beijing a shortcut past the Malacca Strait. The port, marketed as crown jewel of CPEC has pushed out local fishermen and wrapped the area in security restrictions that have hollowed out whatever economy was left, while the state treats requests for compensation as either terrorism or foreign funded subversion. Ask to be paid for your own coastline and you risk disappearing. China has bought the port. It has not bought the people who used to fish beside it and every few months it gets billed for that difference in the form of an ambush on its own workers. Widen the frame and neighbourhood looks nervous rather than helpful. As per reports, Pakistan’s army is already tied down along the Line of Control, Durand Line and its own fight with the Pakistani Taliban. So Balochistan becomes the front it cannot properly staff and a death squad unleashed instead of a school or a hospital. Iran now hosts some of the families fleeing the area while keeping a wary eye on its own Baloch population. Afghanistan’s Taliban government stands accused of sheltering fighters who slip across a border that exists mostly on paper, a charge Kabul denies. And, Bharat mostly shows up here as an excuse. Pakistani officials always have a ‘foreign hand’ to point fingers at almost by reflex whenever Balochistan burns. Pakistan has never ever produced any verifiable evidence on this mysterious ‘foreign hand’ argument. This obviously is seen as an easy while lie for not reading its own human rights reports. Those reports, for what it’s worth, are not being written by Balochistan’s enemies. European Union’s own GSP Plus monitoring mission flagged concerns in 2025 over enforced disappearances and the misuse of anti-terrorism law in a province that gets European trade preferences specifically because Pakistan promised, on paper, to behave better. So no, this isn’t really an insurgency story at its core. It’s a story about the state that gave up on winning Baloch consent a long time ago and settled instead for manufacturing Baloch absence, one raid, one dumped body, one displaced family at a time. Every operation with a grand name, Al Azm, Shaban and those before got Islamabad a week of headlines and left behind one more generation raised on funerals. Paank called it repression. Baloch Yakjehti Committee called the raids collective punishment. None of the reports were written or belonged to Bharat. Baloch rights defenders spent years cataloguing their own dead because nobody else would and who are, even now, still waiting for anyone outside their own funerals to take cognizance. (Author is a research scholar at Amity University, Gwalior, working at the intersection of socio-political research and media analysis. His writing engages with contemporary public narratives through a research-driven and analytical lens)

Bharat Disinformation Education Media Misinformation Security World

158

Engage, Converse, Solve, Achieve!

Youth be engaged in education reforms & setting up our own information technology ecosystem that’s youthful, open, competitive, cost effective. K.A. Badarinath When Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered to forgive youngsters who abused him and his late mother, large number of sneers and jeers were let out by anti-social elements that infiltrated the students protests held by Cockroach Janata Party (CJP). Prime Minister Modi striking a ‘conciliatory’ note in his insta videos to begin a substantial conversation with Gen Z and Alpha Z was unexpected for his political rivals and hooligans that were seeking relevance in the face of students and youth unrest. But then, spread of CJP protests in some states that hitherto did not see any movement reflected that restlessness within the youth was being utilized as a trigger to spread unrest and lawlessness. Such protests against paper leaks and exams related malpractices also spread in states like Jharkhand and Punjab where the opposition parties were in the saddle. Protests and largescale violence in opposition ruled states did not get the kind of attention from certain media outs that chose deliberately to play down the incidents. One big lesson for those in administration and governance across political spectrum is that youth seek ‘meaningful and serious engagement’ on their issues. Hooligans, rowdy sheeters, drug peddlers, rape accused apart from Islamist radicals and church-led proselytisers, youth and students have thrown up a serious challenge for reworking in the way Bharatiya society is run. Many analysts dashed off the 49-days protests as spontaneous outburst coupled with some deft backroom management by confirmed anti-national characters. Given that Bharat has the largest youth and student force with over 800 million aged under 35-years, their voice be heard, engaged, taken on board and a scientific understanding of the issues undertaken. Reforming education in a large diverse country and aligning it with aspirational youth is non-negotiable and needs to be comprehensively done to restore its credibility and emerge as global educational hub for innovation, research as well. Finding solutions to multiplicity of problems faced by Bharatiya people and communities internationally through this huge trained workforce should be the idea. Secondly, given the aspirational nature of upwardly progressive Bharat, setting up our own information ecosystem that’s more youthful and competitive on quality and price parameters as against world wide web and technology giants like Google is something that this movement has taught us. Given that a good number of young IT professionals joined the Jantar Mantar protests, repurposing their energies to evolve a new model for IT governance may work. Instead of false narratives being pushed by influencers and agenda-based handlers holding the sway, developing our own internet-based information highway with last mile delivery and servers based out of India is what needs to be prioritized. A parallel IT ecosystem, internet-based information highway that’s competitive both in terms of quality and pricing needs to be put in place while global technology players reform the way they seek to engage with Bharat. In this context, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications & Information Technology headed by Nishikant Dubey is significant. The all party panel has demanded a personal apology from Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg for having taken down a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In effect, the policymakers in India are questioning the role of these technology companies during the CJP protests, comments on 2024 elections etc. Since protests and founding of CJP were an offshoot of an IT based campaign, reforming our technology policy and hastening it up is an imperative. In our case, Chinese model of IT system and governance may not work. China may have taken an extreme position with complete ban on access to Google or other western search engines with Baidu having a virtual monopoly in sync with Communist Party of China’s agenda to deny free speech, limit access to information and conversations. Sensing the uneasiness in its own youth, in May 2026, China launched a massive campaign to cajole its youngsters and pull them out of ‘extreme pessimism’ or mollify them from posing serious questions on the country’s economic future. Cyber Administration of China’s drive may not be workable for open debate and conversation with youngsters having fresh ideas, ideological proclivities and idiosyncrasies. In a free and open democratic polity like India that still runs on civilizational ethos and strength of its cultural diversity, controls and regulations may not be an option. Latest protests and mobilization done by Cockroach Janata Party should serve as a trigger not only to reform the education system but rejig the content for our youngsters, decolonize their mindset from European imposition of Macauly’s model and hold conversations and engagement with students. For instance, can we engage with them on all educational and societal issues via technology platforms? Institutionalizing this engagement is something that the central government and states can consider seriously. For instance, skills, work opportunities, history and evolution of Bharat should form core of educational reforms even as processes are being redone. All sectors of economy, development and community life having direct linkages with technology should also be conversed widely to evolve a consensus. For instance, what works for our villages, towns, cities and the society should be decided in conjunction with youngsters. A wider and deeper debate on education coupled with revamping our IT ecosystem is the only way forward. (Author is Director & Chief Executive of non-partisan think tank, Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies based in New Delhi. He’s a veteran newsman also)

Bharat Education Policy Politics Security

160

Scientific Deconstruct of Cockroaches

Jantar Mantar protests were never just about students. Foreign-funded NGOs, radical Islamists, Maoists, criminals and church, gave a lethal twist to the campaign. K.A. Badarinath A scientific deconstruction of what Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) and its 49-days violence ridden protests at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi warrants looking beyond the ordinary. Neither the protests were simply about leak of papers relating to national examinations for admitting students to top medical colleges nor were they instant outpour of students anger against the system alone. Possibly there were a couple of thousands of students and their parents that were genuinely agitated about leak of entrance exams papers. A big chunk of the protestors was with questionable background or their intent needs closer scrutiny. Resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan was demanded and achieved. What next is the lingering question that haunts a lot number of gentry. Will Pradhan’s exit from the council of ministers solve the issues relating to education sector? If one were to go by media reports there were over 46 such leaks in states and centre pre-2014 before this government took charge of Bharat’s affairs. Has resignation of education ministers of these states or at centre been demanded? Was the ‘education mafia’ tackled then is the moot question? Some reports suggest that cleanup of education system undertaken by this government was to be side-stepped and hence the cockroaches demanded his resignation. One report suggested that even change of portfolio was not acceptable to agitators who held the capital to ransom as hooligans took over the streets. Gridlock aside, who are these cockroaches that ratcheted up big time following on the insta and other social media handles that pushed the envelope? A big section of bureaucracy and political leadership is so much overwhelmed that they are not even willing to look at facts and begin the pushback. A Delhi Police analysis based on its Crime Kundli database and face recognition technology, over 2873 individuals with criminal background ‘infiltrated’ or took over the students protest that swelled to about 20,000 at its peak. Murder, robbery, dacoity, crime against women, drug peddling those with heinous criminal background were zeroed upon in their first set analysis. Illegal arms peddlers, chain snatchers and kidnappers also made their way into the protests that were marked by huge attacks on the Delhi Police force. Antagonists of Delhi Police did not waste time to question the database and its findings. They were out to claim that Delhi Police was attempting to paint the cockroaches protest black. As Delhi’s veteran crime reporters would vouch, this database is one of the most scientifically built assets to tackle crime in the national capital. It has not been created to denigrate two months old cockroaches born out of a satirical statement made by Honourable Chief Justice of India, founded and allegedly funded by foreign powers that be. How did so many crime-sheeters make it to the protest? Who mobilized them? There’s no plausible answer as of now. And now, they have the gumption to question the very authority of Supreme Court of India on proceeding against criminals linked to protests. Social media is awash with reports that Malayali businessman Mohammed Shaji of Dubai based Abreco Freight flew 23 of his employees to participate in the Cockroaches protest spending thousands of dollars. Big question is what’s the link between the two sides. Shaji reportedly facing issues with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government covered all expenses for these employees and even provided some extra incentives to motivate their participation in this protest. Has anyone cared to find out the international linkages of these cockroaches? Has deep dive analysis been made into lethal twist given to cockroaches’ protest at Jantar Mantar by Bhim Army and its chief Chandrashekhar Azad? The Nagina member of parliament not only extended his support to the Abhijit Dipke led CJP but actively fore-fronted the sit-in within and outside the Parliament premises. An elected Member of Parliament wedded to a certain ideology has full freedom to do what he did. He reportedly mobilized people on the ground, gave violent edge to the protesters who repeatedly claimed it was ‘peaceful and violence free’. There was nothing peaceful about the protests whatsoever. Bhim Party that was born out of divisive ideological moorings and sectarian agenda did its bit to lend numbers, logistical support and even partly funded the campaign that largely metamorphosed into one against Modi government, Bharat and RSS. Azad who dabbled with Congress, Left parties and Samajwadis in northern state of Uttar Pradesh has had his face off with law enforcement agencies in the past as well. While these Azad hooligans turned protests into an unruly affair, charges were made that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its supporters were responsible for the protestors’ violence. Now comes the question of All India Students Association (AISA) that mobilized some youngsters from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and elsewhere. AISA is itself fighting for seeking relevance given that its parent Left extreme ideological assorted Naxalite groups have virtually folded up. AISA came into being as recruiting ground for all Marxist, Leninist armed groups including peoples war group whose Radical Students Union was merged into this outfit in a new avtar. AISA’s participation and some of its activists undertaking a fast along with Sonam Wangchuk is only a feeble attempt to revive the spirit of ‘naxalite revolution’, propagate the ideology of annihilation and wage an armed struggle against elected governments. Did splinter Naxalite groups on the run also become an active part of these protests? Has anyone examined this question? What was the role of Neha and her brand of CPI ML – Liberation activists? Did they see an opportunity in the Jantar Mantar protests to corner Modi government that was breathing down the neck of Maoist guerillas forcing their surrender or elimination? Now comes the radical Islamists link to the protests that were never spontaneous nor democratic, simple and plain. Bangladesh’s Jamaat e Islaami was abnormally active during the protests lending support

Bharat Hindus Opinion Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

160

Rising above Caste, Creed & Social Status

RSS strongly believes that distortions that have crept in need to be addressed as Hindu society goes about reclaiming its lost glory. Vinod Kumar Shukla Bharat that holds Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (world is one family) as its philosophical foundation frequently faces accusations of being oppressive, unjust and regressive towards certain sections of its own people. But, how far does this charge hold true? To argue that Bhartiya society is innately regressive is historic mischaracterisation. Claims that its civilizational pathway inherently denies equal rights are unfounded. It is true, however, that Bharatiya society lately fractured along caste lines due to a rigid, hereditary system that crept in is a distortion that is neither correct nor intrinsically Indic. Throughout civilizational history spanning over 5,000 – 7,000 years, institutional aberrations were bound to occur across different eras and regions. Yet, Bhartiya society not only recognised these flaws at certain period of time but proactively corrected them from within. Emergence of Mahatma Gautam Buddha, Mahavir Swami, Adi Shankaracharya, Sant Kabir, Guru Nanak and innumerable other saints and social reformers demonstrate a robust internal tradition of reform and corrective processes operating under larger Sanatan umbrella. But it is foreign interventions that profoundly impacted both social fabric and collective psyche of Bharat. While Islamic invasions brought existential threats to life, faith and dignity, European colonizers deployed strategic narratives designed to divide and disintegrate Hindu society. Modern concept of ‘caste’ was one such foreign intervention manufactured by drawing a false parallel with ancient concept of Varna. English word “caste” is derived from Portuguese and Spanish word ‘casta’ which means race, lineage or breed. This European construct is being used to demonize Varna by Breaking Bharat brigade which was not hereditary. Most of ancient Bhartiya treatises explicitly state that Varna is determined by work profile, merit, conduct rather than birth. As Skanda Purana, the largest one, notes: जन्मना जायते शूद्रः संस्काराद् द्विज उच्यते। वेदपाठात् भवेत् विप्रः ब्रह्म जानाति ब्राह्मणः।। (Book VI, Nagara Kanda, Chapter 239, Verses 31-34) “By birth, everyone is a Shudra (an ordinary person). By undergoing purificatory rites and moral education, one becomes a Dwija (twice-born). By studying Vedas, one becomes a Vipra (learned), and one who realizes Brahman (the Ultimate Truth) is known as a Brahmana.” This clear distinction is reinforced in Srimad Bhagavad Gita, where Lord Krishna reveals to Arjuna: चातुर्वर्ण्यं मया सृष्टं गुणकर्मविभागश: । तस्य कर्तारमपि मां विद्ध्यकर्तारमव्ययम् ॥ 4.13॥ “Four categories of occupations were created by me according to people’s qualities and activities. Although I am the creator of this system, know Me to be the non-doer and eternal.” Srimad Bhagavad Gita further dwelves that varna system is not by birth but by action when it says: ब्राह्मणक्षत्रियविशां शूद्राणां च परन्तप । कर्माणि प्रविभक्तानि स्वभावप्रभवैर्गुणै: ॥ 18.41॥ Duties of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras—are distributed according to their qualities, their guṇas (and not by birth). But contemporary discourse around caste has been heavily shaped by colonial interventions, Western framing and specific ideological agendas by falsely equating it with Varna. Both external and internal forces working against interest of Bharat have weaponized the caste narrative to delegitimize Hindu tradition, value system and civilization, blaming it for systemic discrimination while ignoring historical distortions introduced by the British. Clearly birth-based caste system finds no support in Vedic traditions. All these distortions were done with a purpose. To disrupt the social harmony of a self-sustaining Bhartiya society, colonial administrators used censuses and codifications to institutionalize and freeze fluid social groups. Communities that once enjoyed social mobility were boxed into rigid hereditary categories. The first all-India census was conducted in 1871, followed by classifications under H H Risley in the 1901 census that formalized these divisions. Risley operationalized theory that varna, however ancient, could be rigidly applied to all modern occupations and groups in Bharat. Thrusted upon the society and repeated for generations, this artificial classification became a major impediment to social harmony. In present context, companies like Cisco and some state legislatures in United States continue to drive the narrative of caste as an impediment to social and economic progression in Bharat and hence identified caste as an issue of concern. Against this backdrop, Samajik Samrasta (Social Harmony) initiative of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) gains significance aiming to counter these distortions and restore the original spirit of civilization. In modern digital age, where social media often exacerbates social fractures, targeted grassroots intervention becomes even more vital. Samajik Samrasta is intensified in centenary year of the RSS which ideated on five core social transformative ideas as ‘Panch Parivartan’ (Five Transformations). Samajik Samrasta is one of them. Anticipating threat posed by caste divisions, many of which were legacies of the colonial era and aberrations within the Bharatiya society, RSS initiated its anti-discrimination work decades ago. Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, founder and first Sarsanghachalak (chief) of RSS included erasing internal divisions within Hindu society as one core vision of the organisation, believing that national strength could not be built on a divided Hindu society. Way back in 1925, he emphasized that every Swayamsevak (volunteer) must embrace shared civilizational identity as Hindu first, transcending caste lines. Second Sarsanghchalak M S Golwalkar while defending the functional philosophy of the varna system, strongly criticized its degeneration into a rigid, birth-based hierarchy renamed as Caste by the British. He also denounced untouchability as a historic deviation from true Hindu principles and called for its total elimination. Even M K Gandhi advocated for original concept of Varna while Dr B R Ambedkar, in his seminal work ‘Who Were the Shudras?’ posited that Shudras were originally part of the Kshatriyas (the second Varna). He quoted several scriptures to suggest that there were three Varnas at some places and four elsewhere. However, his quest remains that who were modern days Shudras? Subsequent RSS leadership accelerated these social integration efforts. The third Sarsanghchalak, Balasaheb Deoras, placed equality and social harmony at centre of organization’s outreach, famously declaring in 1974: “If untouchability is not wrong, then nothing is wrong in the world.” Current Sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, continues to

Bharat Defence Kashmir Pakistan

182

Kargil Review Committee: Two Decades of India’s Defense Reforms

Brig Brijesh Pandey The 1999 Kargil War is remembered as a war India won despite fighting under self-imposed restrictions of ground as well as Air Force not crossing the Line of Control (LoC). That framing, while accurate in terms of the triumph of the brute infantry courage and artillery firepower, screens the uncomfortable question as to what then, prompted the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) in the first place. The answer to this, lies in the fact that India was strategically surprised by the gravity of the intelligence failure along the front that the forces had occupied for decades. Pakistani forces had intruded at a massive scale, occupied the heights above Dras, Kargil, Batalik and Turtuk, and had remained there for weeks before they could be detected. The KRC was chaired by K. Subrahmanyam, and its findings were carried forward by the Group of Ministers (GoM) report of 2001, together constituting the most substantial defence-reform exercise in independent India’s history. More than a quarter-century later, three questions remain worth asking honestly: whether the KRC’s recommendations actually mattered in practice, whether India’s defence reforms have kept pace with a changing security environment, and whether the strategic, geopolitical and energy-security landscape has already outrun the assumptions of 1999-2001. Kargil as an Institutional Failure, Not Merely an Intelligence One The central insight of KRC not limited to Kargil simply being an intelligence failure, but the failure of systems. The report broadly identified: Six Pillars of Reform: Progress and Limitations Creation of the Integrated Defence Staff (2001), Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), a reinforced National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) along with the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) reflect the most critical components of the success of the reforms. CDS as India’s first one-point military advisor duly supported by DMA and DIA closes the vital gap identified by KRC. The long-time of 21 years taken to appoint the CDS in 2020, illustrates the complexities involved in the institutional reforms against the entrenched service interests. Establishment of theatre commands, the operational payoff of having a CDS, remains unimplemented years after they were targeted for rollout. It is held up due to the disagreements between the three services over the allocation of command and order of battle of these commands. The capstone institution exists but its operational integration is not even half finished. The Multi Agency Centre (MAC) along with its state components, the DIA, substantial enhancement in satellite reconnaissance, long endurance UAVs as well as airborne early warning have measurably improved India’s technical intelligence base since 1999. However, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the periodic border stand-offs and other terrorist initiated incidents suggest that fusion of multi-source intelligence into timely, actionable intelligence is harder to institutionalise. Buying sensors or raising infrastructure is easier to achieve than building the analytical culture and inter agency trust, the KRC actually called for. Defence procurement is the area that has seen tremendous change in form, though substance is little mixed. Acceptance of Necessity for equipment worth close to rupees 10 Lakh Crores in last two years under the road map of Atmanirbharta, Defence Acquisition Procedure, positive indigenization list, iDEX and defence industrial corridors are actively shifted the discourse from import led procurement to the domestic designs. Platforms such as Tejas, Brahmos, Aksah, Pinaka, Astra and Prachand demonstrate genuine domestic capability. The unresolved core problem, however, is one the KRC-era reforms did not anticipate. Dependence has changed forms; it has not disappeared. India remains import dependent for propulsion systems, semiconductors and rare earth magnets. India’s lack of sovereign design capacity in these areas dwarfs the achievements recounted previously. Another challenge that remains to be fully addressed is the procurement timelines. There have been instances when the time lag between “wanting to procure” to the “actually procured” was stretched to over two decades. This does not suit the era in which technology is changing so rapidly. Tri-service exercises, integrated ISR, space and cyber have advanced considerably. Operation Sindoor demonstrated that India can synchronise land, air, sea, information, space and cyber effectively in a live contingency. But jointness at the exercise or a single-operation level is not the same as jointness permanently embedded into the command structures. This is precisely why the creation of theatre commands matters most. Post Kargil and particularly post Galwan, investment in road, rail, tunnel and forward basing infrastructure along the northern borders has been substantial, addressing the KRC-era logistics deficiency directly. This remains one of the most unambiguous successes of the last decade, the stage of infrastructural parity with China is still some distance away. KRC was not left to operate in silence. Naresh Chandra Task Force (2012) revisited many of the same higher defence management questions eight years before the post of CDS was finally created in 1920. Likewise, Shekatkar Committee (2016) targeted force restructuring and cost rationalization. The very fact that in the period of 17 years, India needed three successive high-level committees to arrive at the reforms first envisioned by KRC, highlights the “resistance to change” which exists within India’s defence establishment. Geopolitical Ground has Shifted ever since the KRC In 1999, the KRC’s entire frame of reference was Pakistan. That frame is now inadequate. The People’s Liberation Army’s aggression of 2020 at Galwan, infrastructure built across Tibet, naval expansion into the Indian Ocean confirm that China, not Pakistan, is now India’s principal long-term military concern. This means that reforms designed around Pakistan’s intrusion centric scenario cannot be assumed to translate into readiness against much larger, better resourced adversary across much larger frontier. China-Pakistan Collusion and Two front Planning Pakistan’s growing reliance on Chinese missiles, aircraft, radar and electronic warfare systems raises the prospect of coordinated contingencies on two fronts simultaneously. India’s shift towards integrated theatre operations, multi-domain and network centric warfare is a response to this threat. However, as long as the theatre commands remains a “held in abeyance” dream, the two front problems will remain unaddressed. Energy Security: An Unacknowledged Dimension of KRC Energy security is

Bharat Hindus

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Explainer – Indian National Flag: Emblem of Cultural Ethos, Sovereignty and Civilisation

The Indian National Flag is far more than a national emblem; it is the living expression of India’s civilisational continuity, constitutional sovereignty, and democratic spirit. Born not from conquest but from one of history’s greatest mass movements for freedom, the Tricolour embodies the values of courage, peace, progress and moral responsibility. It reflects the collective will of over a billion citizens, symbolising a Republic rooted in an ancient civilisation yet confidently shaping the future through democracy, inclusivity and strategic autonomy. As India rises on the global stage, the Tricolour stands as a timeless witness to a nation whose greatest strength lies in the harmony of its heritage, its Constitution and its people.

Press Release

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CIHS to Host an Interactive Session with Jamaican High Commissioner

Press Note New Delhi, July 21, 2026: Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS), a prominent non-partisan think tank, will host an exclusive interactive session on “India-Jamaica: Shared History, Civilizational Bonds, Cultural, Society and People-to-People Connections” with H.E. Mr. Jason Keats Matthew Hall, High Commissioner of Jamaica to India. Scholars, policy makers, and strategic minds will attend this discussion of significance to discuss the various aspects of India-Jamaica civilization connections, societal relations and collaborations. “We are privileged to have H.E. Mr. Jason Keats Matthew Hall with us to share his perspective on Indo-Jamaican civilizational and cultural bonds. This event will showcase the importance of strong international associations in shaping a peaceful and prosperous future for global communities,” said K.A. Badarinath, Director and Chief Executive of CIHS. Moreover, “India and Jamaica have long historical connections. We look forward to a lively exchange of ideas that will promote deeper understanding and pave way for innovative joint initiatives,” remarked Rahul PAWA, Director of Research at CIHS. This event is part of CIHS’s ongoing Maitri Initiative to deepen international dialogue, promote collaboration, partnerships and enhance people to people relations in the evolving global order. Event Details:Title: India-Jamaica: Shared History, Civilizational and Cultural connections, Society and People-to-People Connections in Conversation with H.E. Jason Keats Matthew HallDate: Wednesday, July 21, 2026Time: 11:00 AM to 12:30 PMVenue: India International Centre (IIC), Lecture Room-2, Annexe Building, Max Mueller Marg, New DelhiOrganised by: Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies About the Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies CIHS is a network of thought leaders and scholars committed to the study of the cultural and societal dynamics shaping our world. Through research initiatives and strategic engagement with diplomats, policymakers and practitioners, CIHS translates that understanding into meaningful global cooperation and enduring people-to-people connections. RSVP and Contact information: Vivek Raina, +91 88518 38835, vivek@cihs.org.in

Pakistan's Vanishing Minorities: Maria Shahbaz Case

Bharat Hindus Human Rights Pakistan

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Pakistan’s Vanishing Minorities: Maria Shahbaz Case

Rohan Giri In March 2026, a court in Pakistan closed the file on a thirteen-year-old girl from Lahore and, in doing so, opened a much older wound that the country has never quite managed to heal. Maria Shahbaz, a Christian by birth, had been abducted, coerced into converting to Islam, and married off to the man who took her. Her family brought documents to prove her age. They pointed to marriage papers that did not match the facts of her life. None of it moved the Federal Constitutional Court, which ruled that her later statements, given after weeks in the custody of her abductor, were enough to validate the marriage and send her back to him. It is the kind of verdict that, on paper, looks like the end of one girl’s story. In practice, it reads like the latest entry in a ledger that Pakistan’s minorities have been keeping, reluctantly and at great cost, for decades. The European Parliament noticed. On 8 July 2026, it adopted a joint resolution on the case, built from four separate drafts submitted by the European People’s Party (EPP), the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew Europe (Renew) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). What made the resolution worth reading closely was not simply its condemnation of a single court ruling, but the company that ruling was suddenly forced to keep. Buried in the recitals was a figure that ought to have made headlines of its own. In 2025 alone, roughly three-quarters of the documented victims of forced conversion and marriage in Pakistan were Hindu, a quarter were Christian, and nearly eighty percent of all such cases occurred in a single province, Sindh. A single ruling can be an aberration. A demographic skew repeated year after year, concentrated in one province, against the same two communities, is something else entirely. Anyone who has followed Sindh’s Hindu community for more than a news cycle will recognise the shape of this story before it is even told. In February 2012, a nineteen-year-old named Rinkle Kumari was taken at gunpoint from her home in Ghotki district. What followed was almost a template for everything that came after: a sudden disappearance, a claim of voluntary conversion, a court appearance in which the girl, by then weeks removed from her family and in the custody of the man accused of taking her, said what was required of her. Pakistan’s Supreme Court sent her back to her abductor. She told the court, in words that were reported at the time, that there was no justice for Hindus in Pakistan and that she would rather be killed there than returned to the shelter home. She was never seen by her family again. In the years since, the names have changed, Sunita Kumari, Neena Kumari, Lata Kumari, Reena and Raveena, but the sequence rarely does: abduction, a hurried conversion, a marriage certificate produced after the fact, and a court willing to accept a coerced confirmation as proof of consent. Independent research conducted by the NGO South Asia Partnership Pakistan, together with the Aurat Foundation, has estimated that at least a thousand girls, overwhelmingly Hindu, are forcibly converted in Pakistan every year. That is not the residue of an unfortunate exception. It is a functioning system. It is worth asking why this system has been allowed to function for so long, and the answer has as much to do with numbers as with law. Sindh remains home to the largest surviving Hindu population in Pakistan, a community that made up close to fourteen percent of the region’s population at the time of Partition and has since fallen to somewhere between three and four percent. That decline is usually explained away as the ordinary consequence of migration. But researchers who have studied the pattern closely, in India and elsewhere, argue that migration alone cannot account for a fall of that magnitude, and that a slow, decentralised mechanism of attrition, operating family by family through coerced conversion, has done at least as much to hollow out the community as any single wave of departures. No government needs to announce a policy of demographic erasure if its courts will quietly ratify the results of one anyway. There is a second thread in this story that the final joint resolution touched only lightly, though an earlier draft from the S&D group was willing to say it more plainly. That draft connected the pattern of forced conversions to the wider use of blasphemy laws, anti-terrorism statutes and cybercrime provisions against government critics, naming the convictions of Imaan Mazari, Hadi Ali Chattha, Mahrang Baloch and Sibghatullah Shahji, and the continued detention of Baloch and Pashtun rights figures including Ali Wazir. The final text softened this into a general call for judicial reform. But the connection, once drawn, is hard to unsee. A judiciary willing to accept a coerced statement from a frightened thirteen-year-old as evidence of free will is not a separate institution from the one that has, in parallel, been used to jail the lawyers, journalists and activists who try to speak for people like her. Both failures come from the same place: a legal system that treats the powerless, whether a minority child or a dissident adult, as someone whose stated wishes can be safely disregarded once the right procedural box has been ticked. The most telling part of the resolution, in the end, is not what it says about Pakistan’s judiciary but what it says about Europe’s own leverage. Pakistan has held Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) status for years, a trade arrangement that grants its exports near-zero tariff access to European markets in return for implementing twenty-seven international conventions, among them the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The S&D’s original draft said, without much ambiguity, that continued failure to honour these commitments should result in the withdrawal of that status. By the time the four groups had merged their texts into one, that line had softened into a

250 Years of American Diplomacy: Hidden Blueprint for Today's World Order

Geopolitics United States USA World

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250 Years of American Diplomacy: Hidden Blueprint for Today’s World Order

By N. C. Bipindra Tariff fights with Beijing. Arguments over NATO burden-sharing. Debates about whether the dollar can keep its throne as the world’s reserve currency. None of these are new problems. They’re the latest release of an operating system American diplomats have been building and patching for 250 years. If one wants to understand why the current world order works the way it does, and why it’s now under so much strain, one has to trace the code back to its source: two and a half centuries of US foreign policy decisions that quietly still govern how nations trade, fight, and negotiate today. Founding Doctrines That Still Justify Modern Alliances and Spheres of Influence America’s first diplomatic instinct was survival, not dominance. Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address warned against “entangling alliances”. Yet the Revolution itself had only succeeded because of a French alliance. That contradiction never really resolved; it just evolved. Today’s flexible, purpose-built coalitions, such as AUKUS, the Quad, and ad hoc sanctions coalitions against Russia, are direct descendants of that founding lesson. Alliances are tools of leverage, not sentimental attachments, used only when they serve concrete strategic interests. Then came the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, declaring the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European powers. This was the first American claim to a regional sphere of influence, and it is the exact logic Washington still invokes today when it objects to Chinese naval bases near the Panama Canal, Russian influence in Latin America, or China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. When commentators debate whether China is building “its own Monroe Doctrine” in Asia, they are explicitly borrowing this 200-year-old American framework to explain 21st-century power politics. Institutions Still Running the World Today Woodrow Wilson’s failed League of Nations and the subsequent horror of World War II taught American diplomats a lesson that shapes the present more than any other. That informal alliances weren’t enough; the world needed durable institutions. Out of this emerged the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Bretton Woods system, which made the US dollar the world’s reserve currency. This is the single most consequential legacy for today’s world order. Every conversation about de-dollarisation by BRICS nations, every IMF bailout negotiation, every UN Security Council veto fight over Ukraine or Gaza: all of it plays out inside institutional walls that American diplomats built in the 1940s. When people ask, ‘Is the US-led world order collapsing?’, what they’re really asking is whether these specific mid-century American institutions can survive a world they were never designed to manage: one with multiple genuine superpowers rather than a single dominant architect. Containment’s Blueprint for Today’s Great-Power Competition The Cold War doctrine of containment, that is, checking Soviet expansion through alliances, foreign aid, and forward military presence, didn’t vanish when the USSR collapsed in 1991. It simply went dormant and is now being reactivated almost line-for-line. NATO’s eastward expansion, US troop deployments in the Baltics, and the current Western strategy of arming Ukraine while avoiding direct conflict are all textbook containment, applied to a resurgent Russia. Meanwhile, the US-Japan and US-South Korea security treaties signed during this era are the exact frameworks now being stress-tested by North Korean missile tests and Chinese pressure on Taiwan. Cold War diplomacy didn’t end. It is the current operating manual for US strategy in both Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Globalisation Bet That Explains Today’s Backlash The “unipolar moment” of the 1990s produced the WTO, NAFTA, and an American-led bet that economic interdependence would guarantee peace and stability. That bet partially paid off and partially explains the world’s current turmoil. China’s WTO accession in 2001, championed by Washington, fuelled the very economic rise that the US now treats as its foremost strategic rival. The populist backlash against globalisation in the US and Europe, the rise of protectionist tariffs, and today’s “friend-shoring” and “de-risking” trade policies are all direct corrections to choices made in this specific window of American diplomacy. Multipolarity and the Diplomacy of Managed Decline Since the 2008 financial crisis, American diplomacy has shifted from managing a unipolar world to managing relative decline in a multipolar one, without triggering catastrophic conflict. This is the direct backdrop to nearly every headline today. Be it economic statecraft over military force, through export controls on semiconductors, sanctions on Russia, and tariff wars with China, which have replaced older tools of coercion, echoing 19th-century economic pressure tactics but at a global scale. Or coalition flexibility over rigid blocks, whether the Quad and AUKUS, reflecting lessons from Cold War alliance-building, adapted for an Indo-Pacific where allies want partnership without full entanglement. Even the institutional strain in the UN Security Council, WTO, and Bretton Woods system (all American creations) is increasingly gridlocked precisely because they were built for a world with one dominant power, not several. Why This History Is the Real Map of Today’s World Order Nearly every current geopolitical flashpoint has a direct ancestor in this 250-year timeline: NATO tension traces to Cold War containment, dollar dominance traces to Bretton Woods, US-China rivalry traces to the globalisation bet of the 1990s, and regional power claims from Ukraine to the South China Sea trace to the logic of the Monroe Doctrine. This isn’t a coincidence. American diplomats built the current system, and its cracks are showing precisely where the original design assumed a world that no longer exists: one where the US faced no serious peer competitor. Reading Tomorrow’s Headlines Through Yesterday’s Decisions The next major shift in the world order, whether it’s a new reserve currency, a redefined NATO, or a rebalanced Pacific, will be shaped by leaders who understand this 250-year pattern of American diplomacy: oscillating between isolation and engagement, unilateralism and institution-building, idealism and realism, containment and selective alliance. Understanding that pattern isn’t just history for its own sake. It’s the clearest available lens for predicting where the current, fraying world order goes next. (Author is Chairman, Law and Society Alliance, a New Delhi-based think tank, and guest columnist with CIHS)

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