That sinking feeling

The general opened the first and pulled out a top secret contingency plan in case of a sudden Pakistani attack. He unlocked the second and there was, predictably, the operational plan to block a thrust by the Chinese.

"Now what do you have in the third one?," Nehru asked, wondering if that was indeed the coup plan.

A smiling Chaudhuri unlocked the drawer and lovingly placed its contents on the desk. A bottle ofRoyal Salute.

The story underlines a thought process that has dominated, and blighted, our higher defence establishment since independence, that the soldiers are somehow not to be trusted, that they are a threat to civil and political authority and therefore must be controlled and contained at all times. In addition, they are not supposed to be particularly bright, so they also need to be directed. And wet-nursed.

This mindset is probably rooted in the fact that we acquired independence in the aftermath of World War II. So bureaucrats who, for more than half a decade had seen field marshals ride roughshod over them, and run the war pretty much autonomously were left wondering if that was going to be a precedent for independent India. The fact that independence and the partition also brought the military out into the forefront, to control massacres as well as to save Kashmir may have added to this insecurity. And then there was the military coup in Pakistan. It was probably a combination of all this thatplayed into the minds of Nehru and his key advisors and herein germinated the doctrine of suspicion vis-a-vis the brass. So an Ayub was seen lurking under the cloak of a Thimayya, a Chaudhuri, a Manekshaw and even Sundarji. The more successful, the more high-profile, the more popularly admired a soldier, the greater threat he supposedly was to civil power. Poor Admiral Bhagwat, in comparison, was small fry.

It is also the literature on the 1962 debacle that tells you what this suspicion, this contempt for the brass and the politico-bureaucratic arrogance can cost a democratic nation. Read all the great, sometimes self-serving, kiss-and-tell accounts from Lt-Gen B.M. Kaul (The Untold Story) to Brig. J.P. Dalvi (The Himalayan Blunder) and the then intelligence bureau chief B.N. Mullick’s The Chinese Betrayal and one common thread runs there: that the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces headquarters in the years preceding the war, had become dens of careeristic back-stabbing andintrigue. There were generals, babus and politicians (mainly Menon) indulging in skulduggery of the kind that could only be compared to Bihar-style politics. There was a minister dealing directly with favoured political generals, the most promising general, namely Manekshaw, was being victimised — he was almost sacked — for the crime of being too outspoken while the others were out in the market-place, canvassing and buying support from wherever possible, from politicians to astrologers. A sickening state of affairs, and the result was a sickening defeat, the bitter taste of which even my generation, barely in nursery school at that time, can never forget.

Now, nobody can wish that such a calamity should strike India yet again for there is far too much at stake, particularly at a time when the political system certainly has no Nehrus and Shastris or even the stabilising influence of a strong, national political party. But, hypothetically, were such a disaster, god forbid, to happen, the subsequentliterature would read very much like the post-1962 accounts. Maybe worse.

The past five years have been the worst ever in the history of India’s higher defence and security management. You wonder, with all the time consumed in running intrigues to secure or deny promotions and postings, who is left with any time anywhere in South Block to think strategy or lead the army. Just look at the "achievements" of the last three years. We have had a relentless rush of officers approaching the courts for redressal of grievances and winning some spectacular victories — including the appointment of an army commander and an air marshall. This is besides Harinder Singh approaching the Calcutta High Court and his subsequent promotion. The great untold stories of these times are acts of defiance — of the same civil authority — by both the other chiefs much before the Bhagwat stuff hit the fan. Army Chief Gen. Malik refused to notify Mulayam Singh Yadav’s out-of-turn promotion and extension to one of his favourites whileAir Chief Marshall Sareen had similarly refused to create a post for a similarly favoured air marshall. Both cases were quietly buried. Some believed that the same would happen with the Bhagwat-Harinder affair. It is also no surprise that in the same period at least two serving chiefs had the privilege of having their native homes visited by the intelligence bureau or state police sub-inspectors. It was the accumulated result of these frustrations that persuaded the three chiefs to commit the unprecedented act of signing a joint protest to the defence minister against the "behaviour" of the defence secretary in October last year.

Instead of understanding this frustration or appreciating the seriousness of the situation the political leaders were persuaded by the bureaucracy that the time had come to "fix" the generals who were getting out of control. Bhagwat, with his kamikaze outspokenness, became a convenient target to be made an example of. The MoD, and George Fernandes, would have got away with it ifthey had eschewed the temptation of playing Bihar-type politics through a series of leaked, mostly old, documents, lies and innuendo. If they had simply stuck to the stand that a government had every right to sack an admiral who so brazenly defied its authority — as Bhagwat did — they would have got away with it. But it is the subsequent smear campaign that underlines the depth and seriousness of the rot in our defence establishment. Bhagwat would probably soon fade into history, and probably deservingly so. But somebody would need to start worrying soon about a nuclear-armed defence establishment that stinks and leaks worse than a beat-up country fishing boat. And that somebody had better be Atal Behari Vajpayee.