Vol - L No. 29, July 18, 2015
Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence by Steven I Wilkinson, Permanent Black in association with Ashoka University, 2015; pp 295, Rs 795.
Atul Bhardwaj (atul.beret@gmail.com) is Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi and at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi.
Stephen Cohen was the first American to study the Indian military. He came to India as a Fellow of the American Institute of Indian Studies, an “outpost” of Philadelphia University, established in Pune in 1961. His subject was the “role of the military in early and middle stages of political development in Indian subcontinent in 1920” and “the military and Indian constitutional order” in 1964.1
With the release of Army and Nation, we seem to have come full circle. If the study of the Indian military by Stephen Cohen was funded by Ford Foundation, Steven I Wilkinson’s research is a part of the Yale India Initiative supported by an Indian philanthropic organisation, headed by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys Technologies Limited.
Military sociology is a neglected subject in Indian universities. It is equally ignored in military training institutions. The paucity of literature on Indian Army’s internal dynamics can be attributed to the class arrogance of the officer corps and the concomitant indifference of academics to matters military.
It is in this light that Wilkinson’s book is a welcome addition to the meagre literature on the Indian military. Barring Nirad C Chaudhuri’s elaborate work in the 1930s on Indian Army’s racial composition and P K Gautam’s Composition and Regimental System of the Indian Army (2009), no substantial work on the subject by an Indian author is included in the “references” section of the book. Therefore, Wilkinson’s effort to fill the eight-decade void deserves praise.
Coup Proofing
Elite military concerns like downgrading of generals and admirals in the government’s protocol list, their conspicuous absence from India’s decision-making bodies, the civilian domination of the Ministry of Defence and the bureaucracy’s reluctance to approve the post of combined Chiefs of Defence Staff (CDS) covered in the numerous Indian books and papers on civil–military relations are adequately discussed in Army and Nation. The book relies on Western concepts about third world civil–military relations—concepts enunciated by scholars such as Morris Janowitz, Samuel Finer, Samuel Huntington and Zoltan Barany—to understand the politician–general conundrum in India.
One of the primary concerns of Western scholarship on civil–military relations in the third world is the coup potential of the officer cadre and their role in internal politics. This is understandable, because such studies primarily cater to the foreign policy and military sales pitch for their establishments. However, what is conveniently omitted in Western research is the impact of arms import on the behaviour of the military elite of the third world vis-à-vis their civilian bosses. In countries like India, the corruption associated with arms deals helps the top military leader form a nexus with the politician–bureaucrat combine to share the spoils. In countries like Pakistan, the money that flows in along with the arms helps the entire military institution to further strengthen its economic position vis-à-vis the civilians.
The focus of Wilkinson’s book is on elite networks in India that have ensured the “coup proofing” of Indian polity. Wilkinson shows that “coup proofing” was the strength of the Congress Party and the post-independence institutions that set the tone of civil–military relations in India. The two important and interesting aspects discussed in the book are the impact of the British policy of “martial races” on the partition of India and the impact of Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-alignment policy that lowered the strategic threshold and thereby ensured a limited role for the army in the foreign policy matrix. Wilkinson cites B R Ambedkar to show how the predominance of Sikhs and Muslims in the British Indian Army became a reason for the nationalists to build a consensus for the formation of Pakistan. In Nehru’s calculations, during the negotiations with Stafford Cripps in 1942 and with the cabinet mission in 1946, the control of defence was the most crucial element of independence.
Wilkinson has also conducted comprehensive research on the class composition of the Indian Army. His conclusion is that the ethnic mix of the Indian Army, despite the rhetoric of inclusiveness and fair representation from all regions, has more or less remained the same as it was when the British left India. Such studies are essential to correct the existing imbalances in manpower planning and personnel management techniques. These studies are also useful to private military companies (PMC) that are now in search of developing military manpower markets in Asia and Africa.
Revolts and Mutinies
Wilkinson brings out of the closet the issue of mutiny and discusses the challenges that cropped up for the leadership in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star when some Sikh units retaliated in response to the Indian government’s military action on the Golden Temple, the holy shrine of the Sikhs. However, not much has been said about the history of revolts or mutinies in the Indian armed forces that were tethered to religion. For example, the first Sepoy mutiny of India occurred in 1806. The mutiny was aided by Christian missionaries to settle scores with the East India Company. The grievance of the missionaries was that they had to seek a licence from the Company to operate in India. By 1857, the relationship was on a different plane, the Company respected the missionaries’ zeal to spread their religion. According to Sayyid Ahmad Khan, what irked both the Muslim and Hindu soldiers were the “proselytising activities of Christian missionaries” (Geaves 1996: 25).
Wilkinson uses popular narratives on the 1962 war when he says that
General Thapar (1961–1962) was appointed by Defence Minister Krishna Menon because of his perceived pliability and because Menon had blocked many of the other plausible candidates in an effort to promote one of his own protégés, Lieutenant General B M Kaul (p 21).
Kaul was India’s defence attaché to the United States (US) in 1947–48. Kaul was considered to be close to Louis Johnson, one of the key players in Pentagon since World War II (Subrahmanyam 2005). Before embarking on his maiden visit to the US in 1949, Nehru had asked Kaul to approach the US authorities for an exclusive Indo–US military relationship (Venkatarmani 1999: 68). After leaving the army, Kaul worked in Jayanti Shipping Company that belonged to Dharma Teja, an international business player who in the early 1970s became a prominent name in India’s corruption history (Kaul 1967: 491).
The fact is that Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit, was better known to Jawaharlal Nehru, B K Nehru and also to the American establishment than he was to Krishna Menon. Almost one year before the 1962 war broke out, Kaul met B K Nehru, Krishna Menon’s bête noire, in London and told him about the likely war with China and the need for American arms (Nehru 1997: 385).
The aspect missing in Wilkinson’s analysis is the attitude of the Indian bourgeois towards the Indian military at the time of independence. Despite huge stakes in defence production and contracts during World War II, Indian capitalists willingly relinquished control over the defence sector and urged the government to manage it. Therefore, with the political and the capitalist class on one side, the military elite stood isolated with very little room available to assert their separate identity. The acceptance of civilian primacy in civil–military relations is evident in the first letter written by General K M Cariappa to Vallabhbhai Patel on being appointed as the chief of army staff. The general wrote:
I received your very kind letter of congratulations on my new appointment. I thank you very much for your good wishes. I assure you that I will give my very best at all time to justify the confidence you and your government have placed in appointing me for this very important command. May I please be permitted to take this opportunity to thank you very much for having given your consent as our Deputy Prime Minister in the making of this choice?2
Contemporary Issues
Chapter 5, “Army and Nation Today,” covers the contemporary issues in Indian civil–military relations. The author has elaborately covered the row over the age of the then army chief, V K Singh and his open defiance of the government. The corruption issue within the army is also highlighted.
However, one feels that Wilkinson could have done more justice to another contemporary issue of the armed forces’ growing quest to be “respected” by society and have media attention for its martyrs, as is given to Bollywood and cricket stars. This rather strange trend started in 2008 during the Sixth Pay Commission deliberations when ex-servicemen movements sprang up. Aping American veterans, the Indian retired community returned their medals to the President of India and even sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister signed in blood. The issue was given a burial with a generous pay package by the government. However, these questions were revived during V K Singh’s age controversy. This so-called “revolution for respect,” that was largely conducted through email groups and Facebook, assumed dangerous proportions. For the first time, one witnessed even serving officers openly talking politics on social media and defending their favourite prime ministerial candidate. This has thoroughly exposed the chinks in the “apolitical and secular” armour of the armed forces.
Wilkinson’s work should encourage military sociologists in India to undertake more challenging studies. For example, there is no academic work on the officers–men relationship in the age of television and social media, or for that matter on the linkages between the political rise of the lower castes and propensity among the better educated jawans from lower castes to indulge in insubordination. The scope of the civil–military studies needs to be enlarged to include the armed forces’ relationship with the society at large.
The problem is that the army itself is intellectually ill-prepared to undertake or fund such studies that challenge the class and in many cases caste, dominance over their men. Furthermore, research also needs to be conducted on the impact of religious polarisation within the country on the behaviour of predominantly Hindu soldiers in riot situations, or during any “aid to civil power” operations. Such studies become crucial in context of the army’s, both positive as well as negative, involvement in the Hashimpura (1987) and Gujarat massacres (2002).
Notes
1 National Archives of India/Ministry of External Affairs/55(10)/AMS/1961.
2 National Archives of India, Gen K M Cariappa Papers, Part I, Group XXI, SL No 4, Letter to Sardar Patel, 10 December 1948.
References
Gautam, P K (2009): Composition and Regimental System of the Indian Army, New Delhi: Shipra.
Geaves, R A (1996): “India 1857: A Mutiny or a War of Independence? The Muslim Perspective,” Islamic Studies, Vol 35, No 1, pp 25–44.
Kaul, B M (1967): The Untold Story, Bombay: Allied Publishers.
Nehru, B K (1997): Nice Guys Finish Second, New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Subrahmanyam, K (2005): “Arms and Politics,” Strategic Analysis, Vol 29, No 1, viewed on 12 June 2015,http://www.idsa.in/strategicanalysis/ArmsandPolitics_ksubrahmanyam_0305
Venkataramani, M S (1999): “An Elusive Military Relationship–II,” Frontline, Vol 16, No 8.
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