Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 22 (IANS) Vice President Hamid Ansari Saturday advocated the need for India to develop a culture of strategic thought and called for creating a national resource-base of language professionals for more nuanced formulation of foreign policy.

He also underlined the need for a “closer scrutiny” of the demand to make archival records available to scholars.

“We need to evolve a uniquely Indian understanding, based on the historical context of our relations with other nations and peoples, as also contemporary realities and concerns,” Ansari said.

He was inaugurating the first conference on international relations. The conference has been organised by the public diplomacy division of India’s external affairs ministry in collaboration with the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank.

“We need our own culture of strategic thought,” Ansari said at the conference that has brought together leading academics and international relations experts to discuss with diplomats the changing contours of India’s place in the global order.

“A first step towards this should be acquisition of linguistic skills. This is one area where there is an acute national shortage of skilled professionals, well versed in the languages and idioms of other countries and peoples,” he said.

He told the conference: “Work out the means through which we can create a national resource-base of language professionals which can be tapped not only by government, but also by academia, media, industry and business.”

He stressed that India’s understanding of countries and people cannot be based solely on academic output of foreign institutions.

“The harsh reality, however, is that the study of international affairs in our country is episodic, emotive and inadequate,” he said.

Ansari pushed for greater archival documentation and stressed on the need to make archival records available for academic analysis in the field of international relations.

“Unfortunately, despite significant strides in transparency, especially through RTI, archival documentation is so scanty that our researchers are forced to rely on declassified documents of foreign governments. We do need to bring our rules on this in line with the practice of other advanced and open societies,” he said.

Ansari, a former career diplomat who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the study of international affairs was needed to conceptualise India’s experience as a player on the global stage to study in-depth the countries and regions of relevance to India and the manner in which this experience and knowledge can be related to our present and future policy options.