'Wars are fought to impose a nation’s will': Ajit Doval on leadership, morale and India’s future

The NSA was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue in Delhi.

• Ajit Doval stresses wars aim to break morale, not for brutality
• He praises PM Modi's leadership for India's rapid progress over the past decade
• Doval urges youth to learn decision-making, remember India's historical lessons

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National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, on Saturday, said wars are fought to impose a nation’s will and break an adversary’s morale, stressing that national power ultimately rests on leadership and collective will. He also praised the current leadership for putting India on a path of rapid development.

The NSA was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue in Delhi.

Doval said conflicts are not driven by brutality but by the objective of forcing opponents to submit. “We are not psychopaths who get pleasure from seeing enemy corpses, dead bodies and severed limbs. That’s not why wars are fought,” he said. “Wars are fought to break a country’s morale so that it surrenders according to our wishes and accepts our terms.”

He said many of today’s global conflicts were rooted in attempts by countries to impose their will through force. “If you are so powerful that no one can oppose you, you will always remain independent. But if you have everything without morale, all your weapons and resources will be useless,” Doval said, stressing that leadership was essential to sustain national morale.

Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, Doval said India had witnessed a transformation over the past decade. “In 10 years, the leadership has taken the country from where it was to where it is now, putting it on the path to rapid progress,” he said, adding that the commitment, hard work and dedication of the leadership were an inspiration for the country.

Turning to India’s youth, Doval said the country’s future leadership would depend on the ability to make timely and decisive choices.

“India will definitely develop. At the pace and speed that the Prime Minister has set, even if it runs on autopilot, it will still be developed,” he said. “But the question is...who will lead this developed India? How capable will they be?”

“The greatest strength of a leader is making the right decisions, making them on time and implementing them with complete faith and conviction,” he said, urging young Indians across fields such as science, technology and security to cultivate decision-making skills from an early stage.

Doval then referred to India’s past, saying the country’s freedom had come after immense suffering and humiliation under foreign rule. “This independent India wasn’t always as free as it appears now. Our ancestors made great sacrifices for it. Many people faced the gallows,” he said. “Our villages were burned, our civilisation was destroyed and our temples were looted.”

Calling history a challenge for today’s generation, Doval said it should ignite a sense of resolve among the youth. “The word ‘revenge’ isn’t ideal, but revenge itself is a powerful force. We have to take revenge for our history. We have to take this country back to where we can build a great India based on our rights, our ideas and our beliefs,” he said.

He said that despite having a highly developed civilisation, India had failed in the past to anticipate threats to its own security. “We didn’t destroy anyone’s temples. We didn’t loot anywhere. We didn’t attack any country or foreign people when the rest of the world was very backward,” Doval said. “But we failed to understand the threats to our security and to ourselves.”

“History taught us a lesson when we remained indifferent to those threats,” he added. “Did we learn that lesson? Will we remember that lesson? If future generations forget it, it will be the greatest tragedy for this country," Doval noted.