B.Tech

This Subject Includes

• Course No: HS 147
• Course: B.Tech
• Semester: V
• Title: War and Peace: India’s Military History
• Stream: History

• Preamble: This course pertains to India’s military history from the early to late twentieth century (1900s-2000). It is a modern history of India’s engagement with the world through specific episodes of inter-state armed conflicts, peacekeeping operations and military strategies. It will examine India’s role in the World Wars leading up to the Kargil conflict in 1999 to analyse the historical patterns of India’s military strategies in a global context. Additionally, the course will highlight the transition of India’s military organisation in the last century. In doing so, this course will offer uniquely Indian perspectives into the historical evolution of the country’s role as a responsible military actor in the maintenance of international peace and domestic stability.

  Course Content: Introduction to India’s military organisation; Colonial Sino-Indian Military Relations: Boxer Rebellion and Indian forces; India in the First and Second World Wars; ‘Indianisation’ and Nationalisation of the Armed forces; Cold War in Asia: Korean Peninsula and Indian armed forces; South Asian military cooperation: Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan; Nuclear armament; India-China conflict 1962; India-Pakistan conflict 1965, 1971; India and the Gulf War; History of Indian Peacekeeping: Sri Lanka Civil War; Kargil 1999.

  References:

  1. Srinath Raghavan, India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, Penguin: 2016, AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, Penguin: 2001.

  2. Susanne Rudolph, Llyod Rudolph, Mohan Singh Kanota, Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh’s Diary, A colonial subject’s narrative of Imperial India, Basic Books: 2002.

  3. Srinath Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India, Palgrave Macmillan: 2010.

  4. David Omissi, Indian voices of the Great War: Soldier’s Letters, 1914-18, Penguin: 2014.

  5. VP Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory, Harper Collins: 2011.

  6. David Malone, C Raja Mohan, The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy, OUP: 2016.

  7. Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method, Princeton University Press: 2006