SOURCE:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/legacy-of-dignity-for-army-chief/343057.html

            Legacy of Dignity for Army Chief

                                      By

                 Lt Gen Baljit Singh (retd)

When a Chief assumes office through ‘deep selection’ and superseding ‘equals’, he must stand by his better military judgement and follow his conscience to remain prepared to even resign, if need be.

Army Chief-designate Lt General Bipin Rawat paying homage to the martyrs of the 1971 India-Pakistan war. 

George Orwell was born in India in 1903, to British parents. As was the practice in those times, he was banished to spend most of his childhood and adolescent years in England; schooling at the exclusive Eton College, followed by graduation from Christchurch College, in Cambridge University. Again, as was the “done thing” for such well born and aspiring young men, he qualified for entrance to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and was appointed to the Imperial Police cadre, to serve in Burma.

By all counts, George Orwell was a distinguished police officer but he had made a poor choice of profession as he was intellectually inclined, or rather driven, for seeking equitable social opportunities for the teeming economically poorer segments of human society. He espoused his dream brilliantly through the book Animal Farm, which after numerous rejections was ultimately published in early 1945.

As may be imagined, the characters of the book are essentially pigs, horses, et al, who are harnessed to toil at the Manor Farm for their human master, Mr Jones. And one fine day, all animals assemble and in a kind of coup take over the farm to usher in Utopia, and adopt seven commandments, the most important being:
All animals are equal, and whatever goes on two legs is an enemy.

However, George Orwell had witnessed how the principle of equality was soon turned into dictatorial tyranny by Stalin in the USSR. So the utopian philosophy in Animal Farm is modified by the leader of animals to read: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Now it may be tad oversimplification of what in the armed forces today goes as the system of “Selection Grade Promotions”, but in essence that is what it is.

There are very well-honed step-by-step merit-evaluation checks applied at multiple levels of the screening process on all aspirants for the next elevation in rank. It would be hard to fault the system per se, particularly as it also provides opportunity for redress by those who may deem it rightful.

Having said all this, let me go back to the mid-1950s for the selection of the successor to General SM Shrinagesh.  As this has been brought to my notice by a friend, retired Maj General PK Mallick, by quoting from the book, Leadership in the Indian Army: Biographies of Twelve Soldiers, by Maj General V K Singh of the Corps of Signals published by SAGE Publications, 2005; I find it most appropriate for all Indian citizens to be better informed:

“In May 1955, Thimayya was appointed GOC-in-C, Southern Command. His tenure was uneventful, except for an attempt by Pakistan to infiltrate in the Chad Bet region of the Rajasthan desert, which was effectively dealt with by a motorised battalion. In September 1956 he moved to the Eastern Command, thus becoming the first officer to command all three field armies in India. In the Eastern Command he had to deal with insurgency by the Naga tribes, in North-East India. At that time, General S.M. Shrinagesh was the Chief of Army Staff. He was due to retire in May 1957, and there were several contenders for the post. Lieut Generals Sant Singh and Kalwant Singh were from the same Sandhurst batch, having passed out on 29 January 1925. The other two were Thimayya and PN Thapar, who had also passed out from Sandhurst together, on 4 February 1926. Thimayya had been placed 15th in order of merit (Sic. at Sandhurst), while Thapar was 18th. Hence, he was technically senior to Thapar. However, the most important factor was Thimayya's impressive war record — he had won the DSO, and was the only Indian to have commanded a brigade in battle. The others did not have any notable achievement to their credit. As expected, Thimayya was selected for the top job in the Army, and on 8 May 1957, he was promoted to General, and took over as Chief of Army Staff. He superseded Lieut General Sant Singh, who resigned, as well as Lieut General Kalwant Singh, who decided to continue....”

What is not stated about General KS Thimayya and what additionally may have singled him out in the “deep selection” process is that he was in command of Siri Division (later 19 Infantry Division), which oversaw practically all operations to include the capture of Zozi La on November 1, 1948, personally led the first Dakota landing at Leh (an improvised landing strip) on May 24, 1948, and the liberation of Ladakh right up to the Karakoram Pass!

Subsequently, after two years of stalemate at the UN General Assembly, when it was finally agreed to set up the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, Maj General Thimayya became its Chairman on July 27, 1953, and his delicate and impartial handling of the acrimony was universally applauded. It was to his credit that North Korea amicably accepted 70,183 of their prisoners of war.

I had less than two years’ service at the time, but I recall that General Thimayya as the Chief was the toast of the entire Army. And with his vast experience of war from up front, he was believed not to favour “showing the flag” posts deployed in Ladakh and along the McMahon Line in the East. In terms of numbers, fire power and logistic access, these posts were a “push over” for the better placed Chinese.

General Thimayya’s war wisdom and political astuteness proved correct. Sometime in August-September 1959, the Chinese in a short and swift move inflicted heavy loses to our isolated post at Longju, in the Siang Valley close to where the Brahmaputra river descends into India. Another post at Machuka was so terribly isolated that our troops chose to abandon it when challenged by the Chinese. Admittedly, that was a disgraceful soldierly conduct but that is how it ended.

These foregone defeats imposed on the military against the better judgement of their Chief, and Defence Minister Krishna Menon’s inability to engage the Army Chief in a meaningful discussion, was the fundamental reason that drove General Thimayya to tender his resignation. Far worse was to follow when Prime Minister Nehru persuaded the Chief to retract his resignation and in the next breath, berated him in the Lok Sabha.

So when a Chief assumes office through deep selection and superseding two “equals”, he must stand by his better military judgement and follow his conscience to even resign, if need be.

And lastly, when General KM Cariappa became the first Indian Chief on January 15, 1949, he had followed the age-old tradition, that is, the incumbent Chief demits office at the stroke of midday and the Chief-designate quietly walking into his office the following morning. And performs his first duty to his Army by way of the “Special Order of the Day”, which basically is a motivational epistle focused on upholding the oath of fidelity, come what may.

 Of late, an unsavoury deviation has crept in, that is, the Chief-designate walks into the office accompanied by his wife, where they are received by the incumbent Chief together with his spouse.

This does not go well with the dignity of that exalted office.