Annual Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture

Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam defined the spirit of intellectual discourse and discipline in India for several generations. Through multiple watersheds in the country’s post independence story, Subrahmanyam rendered intelligible the intricacies of policy making. In his expositions, he successfully effected a difficult congruence between the imperatives of India’s national interest and her international obligations. A stalwart in his understanding of the external mien of domestic positions, Subramanyam’s prolific arguments for a ‘polycentric’ world order and the economic enmeshing of nations, are cornerstone of the intellectual tradition that he charted for subsequent generations of policy makers and strategic thinkers. A progenitor of India’s nuclear weapons programme, his most enduring legacy is the coherent intellectual framework he helped provide for the country’s foreign policy and security formulations. Although his unequivocal positions regularly generated controversy, the logical consistency of his suggestions unfailingly stood the test of reality.

It is the mark of great minds that they most appropriately articulate the essence of their times and posit the correctness of the times to come. To that end, K.Subrahmanyam’s contribution to Indian strategic thought has been exceptional. To pay tribute to individuals of such merit is necessarily a difficult task. It however is an obeisance that should to be paid, to both, mark the lifetime of a remarkable individual and acknowledge the indelible imprint of his thought on a nation.

It is with this objective in view that Global India Foundation has instituted the ‘Annual Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture’, to extol the remarkable contributions of this doyen of India’s strategic community to the intellectual tradition of India. The Foundation hopes to establish, through this effort, a platform for the articulation of the nation’s most pertinent strategic concerns.

Sri Brajesh Mishra, Padma Vibhushan, Former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, shall be delivering the Inaugural edition of the Series, on the 2nd of August, 2011 at the New Seminar Hall, India International Centre, New Delhi, and His Excellency Shri M. K. Narayanan, Governor of West Bengal, shall chair the proceedings.

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