SOURCE:
23rd March 2014
In 1992, the Indian Army chief, General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, had to apologise to parliament for suggesting that the armed forces had a stake in India's governance.
One doesn't recall the exact words, but his reasoning went thus:
"We are first and foremost citizens of India, we pay our taxes, we are willing to lay down our lives for the country; so why should we be at the bidding of politicians without stating our point of view?"
All hell broke lose, with George Fernandes, who went on to become the defence minister, demanding that Gen. Rodrigues be sacked.
Despite tremendous public support, the general backed down and issued an apology that was read out in parliament. It took a while before he was rehabilitated, first on the National Security Advisory Board and then as Punjab governor.
This was not the first time a four-star officer had spoken out his mind.
Way back in the early 1950s, General K.M. Cariappa, as army chief, had wanted to send additional troops to Jammu and Kashmir but was forestalled by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Gen. Cariappa took the unprecedented step of appealing to president Rajendra Prasad, the supreme commander of the armed forces, and Nehru had to backtrack.
After his retirement, Gen. Cariappa frequently declaimed on the need for effective governance. He was promptly shunted off to Australia as the Indian high commissioner as the government feared he could engineer a coup!
In the mid-1980s, Lieutenant General S.K. Sinha, then the senior-most officer after the army chief, General K.V. Krishna Rao, and who was expected to move into the top job, was passed over in favour of Lieutenant General A.S. Vaidya, then the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Army Command.
His "crime"?
Repeatedly opposing the deployment of the army on internal security duties, the reason being:
"If I have to ask my troops to fire on their fellow citizens (to quell riots and other disturbances), how do I expect them to lay down their lives for the country in the case of a war?"
But there was another aspect to this.
Most unlike a serving armed forces officer, Lt. Gen. Vaidya had openly supported then prime minister Indira Gandhi's decision to enter into an alliance with a tribal outfit in Tripura that had strong militant links.
But then, things haven't always been negative and a shining example of this is the perfect understanding that existed between Indira Gandhi and the then army chief, General (later Field Marshal) Sam Manekshaw, on the conduct of the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan.
Ever the no-nonsense officer Gen. Manekshaw made it amply clear that he would not be bulldozed and demanded some nine months to be fully ready. Indira Gandhi had no option but to acquiesce and thus, while Bangladesh declared its independence on March 26, 1971, the war began only on December 3 of that year. The result was a clinical victory on the eastern and western fronts.
The question is: Had such a situation existed in the early 1960s, would the 1962 India-China war, whose reverberations are still being felt half a century later, happened?
The top secret Henderson-Brooks report posted online by Australian journalist Neville Maxwell on his blog earlier - its contents were hardly a secret as it formed the basis of his seminal work "India's China War" - makes it amply clear that there was a yawning mismatch between the government's thinking and that of the armed forces.
"It is obvious that politically, the Forward Policy (of Jawaharlal Nehru) was desirable and presumably the eviction of the Chinese from Ladakh must be the eventual aim. For this, there can be no argument, but what is pertinent is whether we were militarily in a position at that time to implement that policy," the report says.
That's not all.
"The government, who politically must have been keen to recover territory, advocated a cautious policy whilst Army HQ dictated a policy that was clearly militarily unsound," the report adds for good measure.
Would this mismatch had been there if there were a better interface between the government and the military? Most certainly not!
In fact, there are reports that a war game conducted in 1960 had pointed to a possible Chinese invasion. However, when the three-star officer who conducted the war game moved to become Indian Army chief, the report was quietly shelved, apparently at the government's instance.
Because of the traditional bureaucracy-driven trust-deficit that exists with the armed forces - exemplified most recently when Gen. V.K. Singh was army chief and moved a large body of troops in January 2012, rattling the top echelons of the government.
It is this trust-deficit that has prevented the implementation of one of the most crucial defence reforms since Independence: the creation of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) as a one-point reference for the government on all matters military. The bureaucracy fears that the CDS could become so powerful that he could come to overshadow them.
The 21st century is far removed from the situation that existed during the First Gulf War (1991), an event that many believe has shaped modern-day strategic thinking as exemplified by the events that followed: the Second Gulf War and the US-led NATO operations in Afghanistan.While the armed forces have kept up with contemporary developments, the government, unfortunately, remains tied to the past.
It's time to shed the sloth and come together for the common good if India is to take its rightful place on the global stage.
Vishnu Makhijani is an Associate Editor at IANS.
He can be contacted at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in
The views expressed are personal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DOWN " HISTORY LANE " :
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060212/spectrum/main2.htm
RIN mutiny gave a jolt to the British
Dhananjaya Bhat February 12, 2006
[The ratings mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy made the British realise it was time to leave India.]
Should the Armed Forces Have a Say in
Governance?
By
Vishnu Makhijani
23rd March 2014
In 1992, the Indian Army chief, General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, had to apologise to parliament for suggesting that the armed forces had a stake in India's governance.
One doesn't recall the exact words, but his reasoning went thus:
"We are first and foremost citizens of India, we pay our taxes, we are willing to lay down our lives for the country; so why should we be at the bidding of politicians without stating our point of view?"
All hell broke lose, with George Fernandes, who went on to become the defence minister, demanding that Gen. Rodrigues be sacked.
Despite tremendous public support, the general backed down and issued an apology that was read out in parliament. It took a while before he was rehabilitated, first on the National Security Advisory Board and then as Punjab governor.
This was not the first time a four-star officer had spoken out his mind.
Way back in the early 1950s, General K.M. Cariappa, as army chief, had wanted to send additional troops to Jammu and Kashmir but was forestalled by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Gen. Cariappa took the unprecedented step of appealing to president Rajendra Prasad, the supreme commander of the armed forces, and Nehru had to backtrack.
After his retirement, Gen. Cariappa frequently declaimed on the need for effective governance. He was promptly shunted off to Australia as the Indian high commissioner as the government feared he could engineer a coup!
In the mid-1980s, Lieutenant General S.K. Sinha, then the senior-most officer after the army chief, General K.V. Krishna Rao, and who was expected to move into the top job, was passed over in favour of Lieutenant General A.S. Vaidya, then the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Army Command.
His "crime"?
Repeatedly opposing the deployment of the army on internal security duties, the reason being:
"If I have to ask my troops to fire on their fellow citizens (to quell riots and other disturbances), how do I expect them to lay down their lives for the country in the case of a war?"
But there was another aspect to this.
Most unlike a serving armed forces officer, Lt. Gen. Vaidya had openly supported then prime minister Indira Gandhi's decision to enter into an alliance with a tribal outfit in Tripura that had strong militant links.
But then, things haven't always been negative and a shining example of this is the perfect understanding that existed between Indira Gandhi and the then army chief, General (later Field Marshal) Sam Manekshaw, on the conduct of the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan.
Ever the no-nonsense officer Gen. Manekshaw made it amply clear that he would not be bulldozed and demanded some nine months to be fully ready. Indira Gandhi had no option but to acquiesce and thus, while Bangladesh declared its independence on March 26, 1971, the war began only on December 3 of that year. The result was a clinical victory on the eastern and western fronts.
The question is: Had such a situation existed in the early 1960s, would the 1962 India-China war, whose reverberations are still being felt half a century later, happened?
The top secret Henderson-Brooks report posted online by Australian journalist Neville Maxwell on his blog earlier - its contents were hardly a secret as it formed the basis of his seminal work "India's China War" - makes it amply clear that there was a yawning mismatch between the government's thinking and that of the armed forces.
"It is obvious that politically, the Forward Policy (of Jawaharlal Nehru) was desirable and presumably the eviction of the Chinese from Ladakh must be the eventual aim. For this, there can be no argument, but what is pertinent is whether we were militarily in a position at that time to implement that policy," the report says.
That's not all.
"The government, who politically must have been keen to recover territory, advocated a cautious policy whilst Army HQ dictated a policy that was clearly militarily unsound," the report adds for good measure.
Would this mismatch had been there if there were a better interface between the government and the military? Most certainly not!
In fact, there are reports that a war game conducted in 1960 had pointed to a possible Chinese invasion. However, when the three-star officer who conducted the war game moved to become Indian Army chief, the report was quietly shelved, apparently at the government's instance.
Why then has such contraditory situations existed for so long?
Because of the traditional bureaucracy-driven trust-deficit that exists with the armed forces - exemplified most recently when Gen. V.K. Singh was army chief and moved a large body of troops in January 2012, rattling the top echelons of the government.
It is this trust-deficit that has prevented the implementation of one of the most crucial defence reforms since Independence: the creation of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) as a one-point reference for the government on all matters military. The bureaucracy fears that the CDS could become so powerful that he could come to overshadow them.
The 21st century is far removed from the situation that existed during the First Gulf War (1991), an event that many believe has shaped modern-day strategic thinking as exemplified by the events that followed: the Second Gulf War and the US-led NATO operations in Afghanistan.While the armed forces have kept up with contemporary developments, the government, unfortunately, remains tied to the past.
It's time to shed the sloth and come together for the common good if India is to take its rightful place on the global stage.
Vishnu Makhijani is an Associate Editor at IANS.
He can be contacted at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in
The views expressed are personal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DOWN " HISTORY LANE " :
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060212/spectrum/main2.htm
RIN mutiny gave a jolt to the British
Dhananjaya Bhat February 12, 2006
[The ratings mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy made the British realise it was time to leave India.]
WHICH phase of our freedom struggle won for us Independence?
Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 Quit India movement or The INA army launched by Netaji Bose to free India or the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946?
According to the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, during whose regime India became free, it was the INA and the RIN Mutiny of February 18-23 ,1946 that made the British realise that their time was up in India.
An extract from a letter written by P.V. Chuckraborty, former Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, on March 30 1976, reads thus:
"When I was acting as Governor of West Bengal in 1956, Lord Clement Attlee, who as the British Prime Minister in post war years was responsible for India’s freedom, visited India and stayed in Raj Bhavan Calcutta for two days`85 I put it straight to him like this: ‘The Quit India Movement of Gandhi practically died out long before 1947 and there was nothing in the Indian situation at that time, which made it necessary for the British to leave India in a hurry. Why then did they do so?’ In reply Attlee cited several reasons, the most important of which were the INA activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which weakened the very foundation of the British Empire in India, and the RIN Mutiny which made the British realise that the Indian armed forces could no longer be trusted to prop up the British.
When asked about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 movement, Attlee’s lips widened in smile of disdain and he uttered, slowly, ‘Minimal’."
"When I was acting as Governor of West Bengal in 1956, Lord Clement Attlee, who as the British Prime Minister in post war years was responsible for India’s freedom, visited India and stayed in Raj Bhavan Calcutta for two days`85 I put it straight to him like this: ‘The Quit India Movement of Gandhi practically died out long before 1947 and there was nothing in the Indian situation at that time, which made it necessary for the British to leave India in a hurry. Why then did they do so?’ In reply Attlee cited several reasons, the most important of which were the INA activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which weakened the very foundation of the British Empire in India, and the RIN Mutiny which made the British realise that the Indian armed forces could no longer be trusted to prop up the British.
When asked about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 movement, Attlee’s lips widened in smile of disdain and he uttered, slowly, ‘Minimal’."
Strangely enough, like the chapattis which went all around India during the 1857 First War of Independence asking the nation drive away the British, it was 20 loaves of bread that started this so-called RIN Mutiny. It was a reaction against the high-handed behaviour by British officers of the RIN.
On January 16, 1946, a contingent of 67 ratings of various branches arrived at Castle Barracks, Mint Road, in Fort Mumbai. This contingent had arrived from the basic training establishment, HMIS Akbar, located at Thane a suburb of Mumbai at four in the evening. The officer on duty informed the galley (kitchen) staff of this arrival. Quite casually, the duty cook, without winking an eyelid, took out 20 loaves of bread from the large cupboard and added three litres of tap water to the mutton curry as well as the gram dal which was lying already cooked before as per the morning strength of the ratings.
On that day, only 17 ratings ate the watery, tasteless meals, while the rest went ashore and ate. When reported to senior officers present, this grievances practically evoked no response and the discontentment continued to build up.
These complaints continued to agitate the ratings and a naval central strike committee was formed on February 18, 1946. It was led by naval rating M.S Khan. Soon, thousands of disgruntled ratings from Mumbai, Karachi, Cochin and Vishakhapatnam joined them.
They communicated with each other through the wireless communication sets available in HMIS Talwar. Thus, the entire revolt was coordinated.
The unrest spread to shore establishments from the initial flashpoint in Bombay to Karachi and Calcutta, involving 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 sailors.
The next morning, the Tricolour was hoisted by the ratings on most of the ships and establishments.
The third day came charged with fresh emotions. Sardar Patel’s statement of assurance did improve matters considerably. However, an unruly guncrew of a 25-pounder gun fitted in an old ship, fired a salvo, without orders from the strikers, towards the Castle barracks and blew off a large branch of an old banyan tree. By this time the British destroyers fully armed to go into action arrived and had positioned themselves off the Gateway of India in Mumbai.
The RIN Mutiny was treated as a crisis of the empire by an alarmed British cabinet and Attlee Clement, ordered the Royal Navy to put down the revolt.
Admiral Godfrey, the Flag Officer commanding the RIN, went on air with his order "Submit or perish".
The next day, the RAF (Royal Air Force) threatened the defiant RIN ships by flying a squadron of bombers low over Bombay harbour even as Admiral Rattray, Flag Officer, Bombay, RIN, issued an ultimatum asking the ratings to raise black flags and surrender unconditionally.
Both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Patel successfully persuaded the ratings to surrender.
Patel wrote, "Discipline in the army cannot be tampered with. We will want [the] army even in free India".
Mahatma Gandhi, criticised the strikers for mutinying without the call of a ‘prepared revolutionary party’ and without the ‘guidance and intervention’ of ‘political leaders of their choice’.
The issue remained unresolved till the morning of February 23, when the hopeless situation produced a vote of surrender. The black flags went up at six on the morning of February 23.
The negotiations moved fast, keeping in view the extreme sensitivity of the situation and most of the demands of the strikers regarding welfare measures were conceded in principle. Immediate steps were taken to improve the quality of food served in the ratings’ kitchen and their living conditions. But these were followed up by court martials and large-scale dismissals from the service. None of those dismissed were reinstated into either of the Indian or Pakistani navies after Independence.
But the brave sailors had demonstrated to the British that they would rise in defence of their motherland, thus leaving the foreign imperialists little option but to quit.
Today a memorial to the brave RIN ratings, completed by the Indian Navy in 2002, stands in the busy Colaba area in Central Bombay.
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August 3, 2015, 9:38 pm
