A Doctrine of Diminishing Returns

How the Modi government compromised India’s national security. An extract

On the face of it, national security is the most important aspect of government, according to the BJP—at least it was in 2019. In the election manifesto of that year, Amit Shah wrote: ‘Friends, this election is not merely to elect a government, it is an election to ensure the country’s national security.’

Both Modi manifestos carried the statements ‘Nation First’ and ‘India First’ which were apparently axiomatic. Did ‘India’ mean its people or its territory or something else? And what did ‘first’ mean? Ahead of what or whom and at the expense of what? All that was assumed to be understood by voters and left unexplained.

The first point of the 2019 manifesto was ‘zero tolerance approach to terrorism’. It claimed, ‘Modi has fundamentally altered the national security paradigm of India in the last five years.’

The confident tone continued: ‘India is now in a position to adopt an independent stand on national security, to successfully strive to strengthen our armed forces and to lead the world in various spheres. In the field of space too, India has emerged as a global power.’ (It was unclear how and when Indian became a global power in space, given that it had not even put a man into orbit unlike the USSR, US, Russia, China and the private firm, SpaceX.)

Shah added: ‘Our security doctrine will be guided by our national security interest only. This is exemplified by the Surgical Strikes and the air strikes carried out recently. We will continue our policy of “Zero Tolerance” against terrorism and extremism and will continue to follow our policy of giving a free hand to our security forces in combating terrorism.’

The belief was that Modi’s ordering of these two attacks in September 2016 and February 2019 had ‘fundamentally altered the national security paradigm of India.’

To what extent was this true?

To understand the background to this we have to look at what is called the Doval Doctrine. This is not a written text and has never been articulated in a book. This is because India doesn’t have an intellectual national security advisor of the Henry Kissinger school, but a man of action and the field. Ajit Doval did not waste his time on thesis and dissertation; he got down to it.

In a profile which lampooned him, A.G. Noorani wrote, ‘Doval does not hesitate to roll up his sleeves and get into action. He went to Iraq on a rescue mission for Indians taken hostage by the Islamic State; organised the Indian Army’s “hot pursuit” into Myanmar and then went over to smoothen ruffled feathers; phoned Pakistan’s High Commissioner in New Delhi and instructed his counterpart in Islamabad to berate Pakistan for the firings on the LoC; supervised, astonishingly, the arrangements for crowd control at the funeral of Yakub Memon in Mumbai; questioned the Delhi Police on the Uber cab rape case; and much else. This is a real man of action, the kind of whom we have never seen before.’

And all this was only in the first year and a half of the Modi government.

So what is the Doval Doctrine? It may not be out yet in print, but it is available on