On Subrahmanyam

The best way to remember and commemorate K. Subrahmanyam is to do it in a way he would have approved – by examining his own career and ideas, and their impact on the larger questions of Indian security and defence policy, and India’s relations with the rest of the world. Above all, we need to ask why he was so important. To do this would require much more than a brief note. It would require a deep and broad discussion, which will hopefully include a biography by someone who takes his life and work seriously but does not engage in uncritical adulation. We serve his memory best by unsparing analysis, and by taking his work and his life as his unwritten autobiography.