Infuence of Vedanta on Indian Strategic Culture Adil Rasheed * The strategic culture of a country is influenced by its foundational texts that establish its core beliefs, ideational makeup and broad behavioural responses, even if they may emanate from non-strategic sources. In this respect, the article studies the impact of Vedanta scriptures— Upanishads, Brahma Sutras and Bhagvad Gita—as the locus of India’s strategic thought and culture through the ages. Keywords: Vedanta, Indian Strategic Culture While discussing the roots of strategic culture of any country, it is important to understand its core belief systems, enshrined in its spiritual, philosophical, political and military treatises that may have played a fundamental role in shaping its collective psyche and by extension, its patterns of perception and behaviour. Therefore, in addition to reading a nation’s traditional treatises on warfare, diplomacy and statecraft for determining its strategic culture, it is also important to peruse thoroughly the endogenous spiritual and ideational literatures that may have shaped its perception of ‘Self’, as well as the outer world and the proverbial ‘Others’. The difficulty in identifying the locus of Indian strategic culture has been that it has so far largely concentrated on ancient texts dealing solely with strategic matters, that is, treatises focusing only on statecraft, diplomacy and warfare. In this respect, laudatory progress has been made in the study of Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Kamandaka’s Nitisara and even * Dr Adil Rasheed is Research Fellow at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi. ISSN 0976-1004 print © 2021 Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses Journal of Defence Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, July–September 2021, pp. 69–91