Civil-military relations whose equipoise is critical to the credibility of the democratic experience came (back?) into less than desirable focus in the Indian context in the first quarter of 2014. In end February, then naval Chief Admiral D K Joshi took the unprecedented step of submitting his resignation in the wake of a submarine accident. Assuming moral responsibility as the head of the service, Admiral Joshi stepped down after a series of accidents and incidents involving naval platforms had drawn critical comment in the public domain. In this eight month period, the Defence Minister chose to admonish the Naval Chief in public over these unfortunate incidents/accidents and finally the tipping point was reached. Instead of an empathetic approach – the civilian side of the defence lattice distanced itself from what was happening in the Navy and far from projecting itself as a stakeholder, preferred to isolate the naval Chief.
The Government of India represented by the civilian political apex – the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) accepted the Joshi resignation with uncharacteristic alacrity much to the surprise of many observers. The conjecture was that perhaps the Ministry of Defence had already arrived at a determination that a serving naval Chief could be ‘cast off’ and that a plan was in place to appoint a successor. However it is over a month at the time of writing this comment and the Indian Navy is still without a Chief!
Subsequently in mid March, the long suppressed Henderson Brooks Report (HBR) that had reviewed the ignominious 1962 war with China was suddenly placed in the public domain and predictably – it confirmed what had been long known in professional circles that one of the principal drivers for the humiliating reverses suffered by the Indian Army was the distorted civilmilitary relationship.
The degree to which then Defence Minister Krishna Menon disastrously micro-managed the 1962 operations is reasonably well-known, as also the overwhelming profile of PM Nehru who brooked no dissent in his imprudent China policy. A new insight obtained from the HBR is about the kind of contribution made by the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary in particular, which is noteworthy and illustrative of the distortion in the civil military equation even as far back as 1962.
At a review meeting chaired by then Defence Minister Krishna Menon on September 22, 1962 – the HBR notes that the Army Chief – the much maligned General Thapar had actually cautioned that any Indian military action at Dhola post would lead to a Chinese retaliation in Ladakh. What transpires is that instead of an objective assessment of the Army Chief’s caution India’s top diplomat weighed in and to quote from the HBR: “Foreign Secretary M J Desai felt that the Chinese would not react very strongly against us in Ladakh. He considered that operations for eviction of the Chinese from NEFA should be carried out, even at the expense of losing some territory in Ladakh.” Between the misplaced certitude of the civil servant, the illinformed intelligence inputs that misled the politician and the inability of the Army HQ to pay heed to sound professional assessment from the tactical formations the Indian soldier was forced to defend snow-laden, mountainous territory with no protective clothing let alone ammunition! What followed of course, is tragic history but a sense of déjà vu prevails more than 50 years after 1962 apropos the management of India’s higher defence challenges and is cause for alarm.
In recent decades the credibility, and status of the Indian military and the perception about the institution in the populace has taken a beating. A fair share of the blame must also lie with the top leadership of the ‘fauj itself for having lowered the benchmark of professionalism in career advancement and personal probity. The irony and distress is that instead of meaningful redress collectively – the civil and military parts of the national security edifice seem to be pitted against each other–and this was most embarrassingly demonstrated in the General V K Singh date of birth controversy and the purported ‘coup’ during UPA II.
The military in India has a curious institutional position in the Indian state structure, in that, despite its professional expertise, the ‘fauj’ has no meaningful locus in the higher defence management of the country. A civil servant – the Defence Secretary has the primary responsibility for the defence of the nation, as per the rules of business of the government, under the overall charge of the elected representative – the Defence Minister who represents the political authority exercised over the fighting element of the state.
A flawed narrative about the dangers that an unfettered top military leadership could pose to a nascent post-colonial democratic dispensation state became a deeply entrenched belief in the Nehru years (1947 – 64 ) leading to a progressive assertion of ‘civil’ translating into bureaucratic control over the Indian military. In keeping with India’s complex sociological hierarchy based on caste , one would aver that from being an institutional subaltern (the civil being the superior entity), the Indian military has been quarantined in such a manner that it remains isolated and outside the frame of state relevance and is reduced to being the metaphorical outsider.
A flawed narrative about the dangers that an unfettered top military leadership could pose to a nascent post-colonial democratic dispensation state became a deeply entrenched belief in the Nehru years (1947 – 64 ) leading to a progressive assertion of ‘civil’ translating into bureaucratic control over the Indian military. In keeping with India’s complex sociological hierarchy based on caste , one would aver that from being an institutional subaltern (the civil being the superior entity), the Indian military has been quarantined in such a manner that it remains isolated and outside the frame of state relevance and is reduced to being the metaphorical outsider.
Has the Indian soldier been reduced to the ‘untouchable’ in the Indian institutional lexicon ? It took the deep conviction and determination of a Gandhi and an Ambedkar to redress that social inequity. There is little to suggest that the current political leadership in India is even cognizant of the deterioration that has set in apropos civil-military relations in India. The 1962 war was a wake-up call but as the H B R reveals – the steadfast somnolence continues. But for the intrepid and stoic fauji from Dhola post in 1962 to craggy Kargil in 1999 “Mera Bharat” and the tricolor is still “Mahan.”
Commodore C Uday Bhaskar VSM
(Retd) is an eminent security analyst
