Live Encounters Magazine Special Edition April 2025.
Why did I choose to study International Relations
as a Field of Study? by Dr. Namrata Goswami. – Article One
We all choose a field of study and work that is our passion. After all, that is what gives meaning to our lives. During the span of my career, I have been asked several times why I chose to study international relations. I could have been an artist, a fashion designer, a singer, an interior designer, or a travel reporter. There was a time when I seriously considered making wildlife films for channels like National Geographic and Discovery. All those alternative fields of study and work were among the variety of things I wanted to do, growing up. I however zeroed in on international relations as a field of study once I started my undergraduate education. The question is why.
I believe my passion for international relations started when I dived into a deep study of history, geography, political science, and philosophy once I joined college. However, the seed was laid in this mountain town where I grew up in northeast India. Haflong [that’s its name]. The idea of India and its pluralism is most visible in this town, which is like a mosaic of different ethnic communities and cultures. Located amidst the Barail mountain ranges of Northeast India, the town was small, but its landscape was grand. Moreover, the landscape had a timeless quality, connected as it were across international borders to the mountain ranges in Tibet, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Yunnan [China], with the rich civilizations that flourished in the river deltas of the Brahmaputra and the Mekong. The folklore of the ethnic communities was rich with stories of distant lands that they immigrated from, and the words of these songs were deeply poignant, recalling the difficulties of long travel across treacherous yet ethereally beautiful mountain passes. Assam, the state in India, that my family originates from, was ruled by the Ahoms for 600 years (1228-1826), a minority ethnic community that immigrated in 1228 to Assam from Yunnan, China. The Shans inhabited the tracts between Upper Burma and Western Yunnan. The first king, Sukapha, who established Ahom rule in Assam, was a Shan prince from Mong Mao (present-day Yunnan, China). Sukapha crossed the Patkai mountain ranges in Burma (Myanmar) and established his reign [1] not only by superior military tactics but by a series of negotiations with the local tribes of Assam through his policies of assimilation. Wet rice cultivation, ubiquitous to Assam today, was introduced by the Ahoms. The Ahoms were known for their administrative system, which maintained a unique blend of governance mechanisms to cultivate and expand their kingdom amongst the local tribes. The king established a council of ministers, the institution of the village headmen, and an intricate mixture of an advisory council drawing from various local Assamese ethnic communities.
It was the Ahom military competence that they are best remembered for. Assamese recalling of history tells stories of valor and courage and military strategies that included a fascinating mix of guerilla and conventional warfare and fortifications of strategic locations. The Ahom army consisted of infantry, cavalry, a navy, and artillery.[2] Assam under the Ahoms deterred and defeated a Mughal invasion in the famous 1671 Battle of Saraighat, a largely naval battle, led by Ahom general Lachit Borphukan. The Ahoms succeeded due to their focus on good intelligence of the enemy, an ability to adapt and innovate on the battlefield, and their skill in developing a governance mechanism that sustained their kingdom. When these mechanisms became weak however, the Ahoms were defeated by the Burmese, from across the border, who in turn were defeated by the British in 1826 (colonial British forces), and Assam was then passed over to British colonial rule by the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826.[3]
Growing up amid such a rich history, where ethnic communities immigrated from across the international borders between India and Burma, India and Tibet, India and China, India and Bangladesh, India and Bhutan, where folktales recalled tales of valor and despair, of inter-ethnic conflicts that ravaged the land, but also how communities found a way to live together despite that, established that seed in me and a hunger to understand why those tribes chose to immigrate, why they prided their independence, how a regional kingdom like the Ahoms defeated a pan-Indian empire led by the Mughals, and how stories of cultural assimilation and contact were sung every day despite the reality of ethnic conflicts. As I carried all these stories with me, my travels within Northeast India, to the borders of India-Burma, India-China, and India-Bangladesh, brought another international dimension to my notice. The memories of how local ethnic communities participated in the Second World War. I listened to numerous historical stories, from which I learned about an American general named Joseph W. Stilwell, under whose directions, American engineers built the historic Stillwell Road [named in his honor by Chiang Kai-shek], a strategic military route connecting northeast India with Burma and onward to China.[4] One person who participated in the war recalled, “Stilwell, he was a tough one, building that treacherous road. We called it man-a-mile road, where we lost local construction workers every mile we built”. I heard stories in Nagaland about the Battle of Kohima (a town in Nagaland in Northeast India) where the British forces, in collaboration with local ethnic forces, defeated the Japanese. After defeating the British in Burma, the Japanese forces invaded northeast India and entered Kohima, Nagaland. In the Battle of Kohima, 15, 000 Japanese forces fought with 1500 British-Indian troops for several weeks until reinforcement arrived. The battles were brutal, sometimes ending in hand-to-hand combat; if the Japanese forces won, then the invasion of British India was the outcome. After reinforcement arrived for the British-Indian forces, and with more than 7,000 casualties and no food left, the Japanese forces retreated.
According to military historian Robert Lyman, the Battle [of Kohima] “changed the course of the Second World War in Asia…The Japanese invasion of India, of which the Battle of Kohima was a significant part, was [their] first major defeat in the Far East,”.[5] And yet, the Battle of Kohima is known as a forgotten battle and failed to capture the imagination like Waterloo, D-Day, and other battles in Europe. Not only in Western retelling of World War II but also in Indian history, which at that time, was of course taken over by India’s fight for freedom from British Colonial rule. And yet, growing up amid these local and international narratives, with stories of Japanese bombers, of valor on all sides, Indian, British and Japanese, I was curious why these important battles were not part of the popular historical retelling, or why the people who gave their lives averting an invasion of India, was not even part of the celebration of India’s own history. In 2013, the Battle of Kohima was the surprise winner of the greatest battle of the Second World War, defeating other battles like Waterloo and D-Day during a debate at the National Army Museum in London. When I traveled to Kohima, I went to the World War II cemetery there and the words that touched me deeply was this epitaph, that was there at the front gate as you entered the cemetery that stated, “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today”, an epitaph that was inspired by Simonides of Ceos statement to honor the Greeks who fell at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.[6]
The experience of growing up in an area surrounded by four international borders, the rich history of ethnic communities that were part of a larger Southeast and East Asian civilizational ethos, an ancient kingdom ruled by the Ahoms, who themselves immigrated from Yunnan, China, with roots with the Tai race in Thailand, the imposition of British colonial rule and the resistance to it, the impact of World War II, and then the entry of the post-colonial Indian state, created a curiosity in me to understand and examine the different impacts that these history had. I also had questions about how strategic culture emerged, why certain histories and narratives were privileged over others, for example, why the sacrifices of soldiers during the Battle of Kohima were forgotten, and how international relations theorizing missed such poignant tales of military history, strategy, warfare, and the impact of emotions, will and friction. For instance, I was intrigued by the variation in military strategy that the Ahoms adopted to deter and defeat different enemies and how their innovation and adaptability equipped their military to fight both guerilla warfare and conventional battles and defeat the empire-level Mughal military.
That is what motivated me to work towards a doctorate in international relations. More significantly, for me, I realized that to understand any nation’s adoption of certain foreign policies and/or space policy, it is vital to examine the different levels of complexity that inform such policies at the local, national, regional, and grand strategic levels. For me, understanding local stories and cultures motivated me to write a book on the Naga ethnic conflict, titled The Naga Ethnic Movement for a Separate Homeland: Stories from the Field,[7] which captures stories of ethnic conflict in northeast India, but my work also crossed borders into Burma and China, with a desire to bring to light the directly affected local population’s perspectives from Arunachal Pradesh on the China-India border issues, a state in northeast India that China claims in its entirety as its territory.[8] My work also highlights how strategic cultures and history affect the space policies that nations adopt to develop space capacities and establish themselves as Great Powers in the System.[9]
My motivation is to make international relations more global, more capable of reflecting important narratives from across the world, improve its ability to explain events wherever they occur, to expand its knowledge base that accounts for hidden stories of great courage and military significance from strategic locations around the globe, to enhance its ability to go beyond and deeper from the state of the field as it was when I first chose to study it and to build and converge Western and Eastern knowledge bases that develop truly authentic international relations theorizing.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the United States Government, the Department of Defense, the United States Air Force, or the United States Space Force.
[1]Dipak Kurmi, “Sukapha’s Visionary Journey to build the Ahom Empire in Assam”, The Sentinel, November 29, 2023, https://www.sentinelassam.com/more-news/editorial/sukaphas-visionary-journey-to-build-the-ahom-empire-in-assam-678288
[2] “Tracing the Ahom Rule: The Ascendency and Decline in Northeast India”, The Sentinel, December 27, 2024, https://www.sentinelassam.com/north-east-india-news/assam-news/tracing-the-ahom-rule-the-ascendancy-and-decline-in-northeast-india
[3] Arup Kumar Dutta, The Ahoms: A Reimagined History (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2023).
[4] Phil Coomes, “The Stilwell Road 70 Years on”, BBC, August 10, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-33785650
[5] Anbarasan Ethirajan, “Kohima: Britain’s ‘Forgotten’ Battle that Changed the Course of WWII”, BBC, February 13, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55625447
[6] The Kohima Epitaph and the Exhortation, March 26, 2013, https://support.britishlegion.org.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/155/~/kohima-epitaph-and-the-exhortation#:~:text=The%20Kohima%20Epitaph%20is%20the,Tomorrow%2C%20We%20Gave%20Our%20Today
[7] Namrata Goswami, The Naga Ethnic Movement for a Separate Homeland: Stories from the Field (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
[8] Namrata Goswami, “China’s Claims on Arunachal Pradesh: Local Perspectives”, IDSA Issue Brief, January 11, 2011, https://idsa.demosl-03.rvsolutions.in/publisher/chinas-claim-on-arunachal-pradesh-local-perspectives/
[9] Namrata Goswami and Peter Garretson, Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space (Lanham: Lexington Press, 2020).
© Dr. Namrata Goswami
Dr. Namrata Goswami is an author and educator specializing in space policy, international relations, and ethnic identity. Currently, Dr. Goswami teaches at the Schriever and West Space Scholar Programs, the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, and at the Joint Special Forces University. She is a guest lecturer at Emory University for seminars on Technology, Society & Governance, and India today. She worked as a Research Fellow at MP-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi; a Visiting Fellow at Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway; La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; University of Heidelberg, Germany; Jennings-Randolph Senior Fellow, United States Institute of Peace; and was a Fulbright Senior Fellowship Awardee. She was awarded the Minerva grant by the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense to study great power competition in outer space.
In April 2019, Dr. Goswami testified before the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s space program. Her co-authored book, Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space was published in 2020 by Lexington Press; Rowman, and Littlefield. Her book on The Naga Ethnic Movement for a Separate Homeland was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. She has published widely including in The Diplomat, the Economic Times, The Washington Post, Ad Astra, Asia Policy, Live Encounters Magazine, Cairo Review. She was invited in November 2019 to share about her life and her work at a Tedx event held at the Rosa Parks Museum, in Montgomery, Alabama. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPNdnahLaY