Kurukshetra War- A Military Study

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I have read the manuscript of the book on "KURUKSHETRA WAR-A Military Study" by Shri Priyadarsan Sensarma, with great interest.

The author has done a Yeoman's service to the Nation in writing this book giving us a vivid picture of the many Wars of our Epics. It is the finest write up, of its kind, I have so far read, in all my life and I have read scores of books on Wars in the World.

The author obviously has done a very deep study of the "Art of Warfare" in our ancient days. The 'Lessons' he has extracted from his this deep study of 'Warfare' of the old days, are impressive, as I see them, and are an education of Military value not only to the officers of our Defence Services but indeed are of such value also to the political and other leaders of our country.

Wars of today are not the concern of ONLY the Soldier, Sailor and Airman but are also of intimate concern of the people at large, because, they are TOTAL WARS in which every citizen should be intimately concerned with, for ultimate success. Unless there is a thorough understanding of how and why Wars start and how a Nation should be prepared to meet such National Emergencies, in their right perspective, we cannot prepare for and conduct our Wars-(I pray there will be NO more Wars) successfully.

In India, which is the home of one of the oldest civilisation of the world, the people passed through the usual stages of individual, tribal and territorial fighting in different stages of their complicated history starting from the days of Mohenjodaro, Harappa and earlier. Ancient India, as is well- known, rose to very great heights in philosophy, literature, art, also developed well from the military point of view as can be gathered from 'Dhanurveda' 'Dhanuspradipa' and other Vedic sections of literature, Samhitas, Puranas, as also from the great epics-the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Persons like Vasistha, Viswamitra, Jamadagnya, Parasurama used to teach the science and art of war in ancient India.

The scholars may differ on the point whether the epics of India should be treated as documents of historical significance, history-based literary works or just as literary excellence; the epics, however, contain massive materials of military interest. For this reason a student of military studies cannot overlook them. It may be mentioned here that Alexander the Great, considered Homer as the sage who had given a consummate description of the wisdom by which empires subsisted; and the Macedonian King used to carry the Iliad and the Odyssey always about his person, and on retiring to bed laid them with his sword under his pillow. He styled them his military Viaticum. But nobody would consider those books as manuals of military history.