Emerging Discourses on Security—From ‘Traditional’ to ‘Worldly’ and Beyond: An Innovative Indian Perspective

In the traditional conceptualisation of security, human beings remain predominantly at the centre stage claiming all privileges of military apparatus of the state by virtue of being ‘superior’ to all other living forms. Realist and neo-realist conceptualisations of the state see human kind as the sole reference point and subject of security. It is argued that the security of the state impregnates the individuals against all kinds of threats from the outside ‘other’. With the emergence of non-traditional security paradigms and the broadening of the ambit of security to bring human beings directly to the mainstream, and include non-human material beings, the new materialism and worldly approaches obtain a different kind of prominence in the canon of security analysis. In this new approach, we can find the conceptualisation of ‘being together’ of human beings, other non-human living forms and the non-living material world being part of one whole world. This so-called ‘worldly approach’, articulates and emphasizes the realisation and feeling of human beings for the ‘other’, but falls short of suggesting any means by which human beings could expand themselves to include all-living and non-living forms to create new security models. This article analyses the relevance and applicability of ancient Indian wisdom substantiated by modern science to the analysis of state security.