"Fears block MoD union with military"

PUNE, Jan 14: Brigadier (retired) N.B.Grant maintains that the entire controversy over the dismissal of Naval Chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat has occurred due to misinterpretation of what constitutes civil supremacy. On the Bhagwat episode, Brig Grant said, “There can be no doubt that in a democracy, the civil Government must remain supreme vis-a-vis the military and (citing the example of western democracies) this implies the supremacy of the elected members of the Government, namely the minister, Cabinet and Parliament.”

“In India, unknowingly we seem to have gone a step further. Under the term `civil Government’, we unconsciously also included the civil servant, about which there cannot be any doubt that this was never the intention when we became a republic,” he said. “ Perhaps one of the reasons for this fallacy was the fact that, as in other democracies like the UK and the USA, the ministers are known as `secretaries’ and our civil servants believed that this was synonymous with their own India ranks, namely `secretaries’ of the IAS cadre.” “If he (Bhagwat) had taken the Defence Secretary head-on over an issue which he believed to be correct and crossed swords with him, he would have been perfectly within his authority to do so because the Defence Secretary does not constitute civil supremacy.” “Unfortunately, the Admiral was at loggerheads and defied the authority of the members of the Government who constitute civil supremacy, namely the Defence Minister and the Cabinet. As such he was at fault in doing so, nomatter how right his case may have been,” Brig Grant said, adding that in such a case the Prime Minister had no alternative but to dismiss him. Brig Grant, however, was pretty sure that the President must have been consulted on the matter, especially in this case as he was the Commander of the forces.

“But the real power lies with the Prime Minister as in the UK and, hence, he is the real Commander-in-Chief. It certainly would have been more honourable for Admiral Bhagwat to have resigned. It is not as if he did not know if he could be sacked.” The sacking of Bhagwat, was analogous to the dismissal of Gen McArthur by President Harry Truman during the Korea War and the dismissal of US Air Chief Gen Wheeler by President George Bush during Operation Desert Storm.

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“History shows that in both cases the dismissals were faulty and subsequent events proved that both the generals were correct in their stand. However, at that point of time, their dismissals were justified for defying the civil supremacy of the President.” “The only way to avoid this kind of a situation in future is to integrate the Ministry of Defence with the military under a Chief of Defence Staff concept.” “Unfortunately, even today the Government is hesitant to accept this for an obsessional fear of a military coup and the bureaucracy is reluctant to agree to this for the fear of losing their hold on the services.”

Brig Grant, however, was quite critical of military officers running to civil courts at the drop of a hat.