The Third Opinion

The media houses in the West often find India's foreign policy and diplomacy ambiguous and inconsistent (as sometimes it is not beneficial to them?). One of the reasons might be unfamiliarity towards India's rich heritage of history from which she derives her foreign policy doctrine.  Arthashashtra, t he first-ever recognised document dedicated to foreign policy,   still guides India in difficult times when the world order is changing, new challenges have emerged, a new superpower has risen in the east and old equations have changed. Arthashastra,  authored by  Chanakya (the son of Chanak)  or  Kautilya  or  Vishnugupta  (all names refer to the same person), laid the foundation for India's foreign policy ( Kootniti  as described by  Kautilya ). The literature is not merely a theory, but its wisdom is tested on the battlefields of  the Mauryan  empire. It deals with the topics such as the state and its constituents, treas...