Ajit Doval is India's National Security Advisor, being the top bureaucrat he is the govt.
I see. Maybe it is his job to be paranoid.
Speaking of threat from China, it is often pulling everyone back to 1962. This thread pointed me to some online resources and provided some good reading materials. One paragraph caught my attention and it appears to be a good summary on what leads to Forward Policy.
"While there were obvious breaks with the British Indian legacy at the
diplomatic and rhetorical level, the geopolitical dimension of early India–
China relations revealed significant continuity with the colonial past. There
was no geopolitical tabula rasa, despite the euphoria of independence.
The territorial parameters within which the new relationship was shaped
were inherited from the Raj. In practical terms, India came to defend
nineteenth century colonial frontiers in the Himalayas, while China re-
conquered its erstwhile imperial possession after a century of humiliation.
Independent India inherited the geopolitical legacy of the Great Game,
but refused to continue playing it by the rules of Curzonian realpolitik.
To Nehru, Sino-Indian friendship was still too important to be derailed
by ‘petty issues’ like the desolate Himalayan borders. It is within this
inherently unstable combination of pan-Asian optimism and post-Great
Game geopolitics that the contextual origins and the root causes of the
1961 Forward Policy decision can be found."
http://www.idsa.in/system/files/jds_6_4_JohanSkogJesen.pdf