George Tanham--A Great Friend of India

KS Correspondent

April has been bad news for India. It lost two great friends. One, Ambassador Robert Blackwill’s spirited defence of India on the issue of cross-border terrorism cost him his job. Secondly, George K. Tanham (1922-2003), who passed away recently, was more concerned about India than India's own strategic elite.

Prof. George K. Tanham, associated with Rand Corporation, was a longtime friend and scholar on India. He died on March 29, in Washington, after a prolonged cardiac illness.

George and Kathleen Tanham saw India as their second home. His home in Strasburg, Virginia was often visited by India's elite. Tanham was deeply concerned about lack of strategic culture in India. This made India vulnerable to proxy-wars and frequent imperialist blackmail. It also retarded its march as a rising global power.

George Tanham, in a seminal essay, "Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay", published in 1992, had tried to explore the reasons which denied India its strategic culture. He made a study of cultural and historical factors that shaped Indian strategic thinking. He found Indian elites, "show little evidence of having thought coherently and systematically about national strategy".

Prof. Tanham believed history was a poor guide for understanding Indian strategic thought because "Indian history is often dimly perceived and poorly recorded". He added until fairly recently "Indians knew little of their national history and seemed uninterested in it".

George Tanham outlined four key elements, which influenced Indian perceptions on power and security. The experience of the British colonial rule nurtured in Indian thinkers a pre-disposition toward a predominantly defensive, land-dominated strategic orientation. Geography lent Indian thinking an "insular perspective and a tradition of localism and particularism". The discovery of history by Indian elites in the past 150 years have also influenced Indian strategic thinking. Lastly, a key element in Indian elite thinking has been the primacy culture in its world-view and the "assumed superiority" of this culture. This path-breaking study has been republished in a volume--Securing India.

Prof. Tanham, born in Englewood, New Jersey, was trained as a historian at the universities of Princeton and Stanford. He took part in action during second world war. After the war, he joined the teaching staff at the California Institute of Technology. In 1955, he moved to the prestigious Rand Corporation, which he served till his death. He distinguished himself by bringing out an excellent study on the dynamics of Counter-Insurgency warfare.