https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/politicisation-from-below-hindification
Politicisation from below: Hindification and Hinduisation of the army
A portrait of all army chiefs and commandants of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) is placed in the academy’s hallowed Chetwode Hall, with respective name below each, written in hindi. This avidity in furthering the hindi agenda is touching; a true signifier of political control of the military. Only, it appears the military is being more loyal than the king. Whereas earlier the paramilitary under police loyalists tumbled over themselves to show their worthiness on this score, the army appears to have scrambled aboard the bandwagon.
A complementary agenda is that of Hinduisation. This has been roundly addressed most recently thus: ‘The concern is not religion itself. The concern is the perception that the military institution may be identifying itself with particular religious narratives at a time when religion has become deeply intertwined with political discourse.’ The author, a prominent military-watcher, goes on to warn of outsized consequences:
The Indian Armed Forces have enjoyed extraordinary public trust precisely because they have historically remained secular, apolitical and professionally detached from political contestation. This reputation is a national asset. Its dilution has horrendous ramifications for the military of a multi-religious, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual nation.
The general lets-off the brass-hats, assuming that such a ‘dilution’ may be for ‘perceived personal gains.’ The temple visits of General Dwivedi show a conscious lending of an epauleted shoulder to the national reset. Its moot whether this was for ‘personal gains,’ now that he departs into the sunset. Precedent set, his successor cannot but be expected to conform.
However, what if brass-hats are instead driven by a sense of their mandate, handed to them tacitly by the regime? What if the military leadership believes that is indeed the way to go for the military, to keep step with the pronounced and unmistakable turn in the social and political spheres?
Two perspectives of the nation – ‘multi-religious, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual nation’ and one from Hindutva thinking emphasising oneness and wholeness – are in contention. Even if the latter not a full-fledged reality, it is not quite an illusory either.
The national security-conscious military may be sufficiently impressed with the unity-conferring promise of the majoritarian paradigm, and is consciously playing its part in its consolidation. Politically sensitive to the change in Indian political culture, the military may view the three characteristics – ‘secular, apolitical and professionally detached’ - as anachronistic. The 2H are the pincers of revision.
Does the future envisaged – a majoritarian state – fit national security better or would the general’s foreboding – ‘horrendous ramifications’ – be the outcome?
Adjusting to a new dawn
A grand leader, advertising strength in his body language and rhetoric, is at the helm, even as dynastic politics is nastily derided. Since taking power, the regime has consolidated its grip, through the Chanakyan ministrations of a latter-day Kautilya. The planet’s richest and largest political party has the world’s largest NGO as its back-office and to hold its back. The unregistered NGO itself sees no distinction between itself and Hinduism. A revivalist narrative, built over the last hundred years, has culminated in supersession of the ‘unity in diversity’ thesis with ‘unity sans diversity.’ A single-party dominant political system - reminiscent of the so-called Congress system of yore - is different in the manner it has at its core, religion and – religion by itself being insufficient – insurance has been taken out in the form of a unifying Other.
Military veterans - enamoured or bought over – projected the benefits of a strong-on-defence regime prepared to foster a national will. The military was done with the strategic formulation of ‘resolve and restraint,’ manifested in supposedly limp-wristed responses to the proxy war, Kargil, Kandahar, parliament attack, spate of lesser terror attacks and 26/11. Sensing a military conditioned for institutional capture, the regime professed to be military-supportive.
It gave the military a ‘free-hand’ for retribution through exercise of conventional force. It took on its shoulders responsibility for the army blindsided by China in Ladakh. It delivered on long-demanded baubles, as the chief of defence staff (CDS) post and the constitutional status of Kashmir. It left the military to arrive at jointness and integration at its own pace. It upped the defence budget and fast-tracked acquisitions. It has avoided the operational-directive route fostering accountability in favour of a coffee-table variety of unenforceable defence forces’ vision and strategic guidance. The regime not only ingratiated itself with the military, through a set of parvs and photo opportunities, but has also taken care that the apex leadership is sufficiently supervised by a deep-selectee, the CDS. The beguiling agnipath scheme has a helped with coup-proofing from any drift towards critical thinking, leave alone dissent, within the military.
The military appears to have seen the writing on the wall, as have other pillars of democracy and institutions of governance. Now, no statement from a military functionary is without reference to either the ‘honourable prime minister’, viksit-ism and triumphalism over a military operation of meagre strategic effect. The military has also put forth a concept of fusion: collaboration of all stakeholders in the defence sector in the national security enterprise. However, since fusion is a two-way street, the military is also subject to an inverse embrace, such as hosting the defence secretary at its staff college or ferrying exam papers. It appears that the earlier bureaucratic buffer between it and the political master has receded. Such proximity presages an ideology influx.
The military has pragmatically cast the weight of its authority and respect it commands on the side of the majoritarian enterprise. In the secular era in which democratic alternation between parties was feasible, the military was secular and apolitical. The multifarious idea of India dispensed with, ‘secular’ is potentially redundant. With a single party set to even dominate the regional political space, ‘apolitical’ too is irrelevant. In an era of ‘one nation, one party, one election,’ to belabour the two would amount to being offside of their political masters. To end up on the winning side, the military has wilfully discarded political distancing as a hallmark of professionalism. For its part, the regime noting that to be ‘professionally detached’ may yet be desirable, has taken care to ensure interminable deployments on the northern border and a continuing operation on the western.
The military is sanguine that any backlash that the bull-dozing incites can be managed by an up-gunned central armed police force, that demonstrated its accountability-exempt capability in cleansing central India of Maoists. The suppressive template – with Israeli example – has been finetuned in Kashmir. The long-standing strategy of exhaustion appears operational in Manipur. No ‘horrendous consequences’ impending, the 2H can be allowed to do its thing within the military to attune it to a fusionist future.
A reality check
But what if the military barks up the wrong tree? Worst-case preparedness requires vetting the military’s assumptions: that a national levelling is underway; that an assist from the military for the regime is called for; and that a plaisant national security environment will emerge.
The military needs reminding that the elevation of crookery to a sublime political art cannot make a nation. Even if the vision enthuses, means and methods matter; cunning only conjuring up a house of cards. False gods are subject to an emperor-and-his-new-clothes syndrome. These are not platitudes and homilies, but wisdom. Anything can go wrong from policy missteps to fratricide over succession, etc.. At the eventual dénouement, the nation would need a ticking military; any dilution cannot but have ‘horrendous ramifications.’
Politicisation of the military has been in the air for long. Now it is taking flight. The cautioning extant is for the political class – essentially the opposition - to keep off the military, such as in General Naravane’s take on keeping contents of his book out of the necessarily hurly-burly political scrutiny. Another line of caution that has entirely fallen by the wayside is that the regime not appropriate the national institution’s showing for its own self-aggrandisement. As for politicization-from-below glimpsed here - the military’s tending unbidden towards a side of the political spectrum – there is little comprehension, leave alone commentary.
For now, it cannot be said with any degree of certainty whether the infusion of 2H into the military is organic through osmosis with society or if it is an institutionally sanctioned program. Either way, the two tend to ally the military with the baser political forces that have beset north India over the recent decades. Consequently, it distances the military from the social and geographic periphery, where diversity is most pronounced. Since the tendency in current-day politics is the devouring of the periphery by the dominant political forces of the heartland, the military’s 2H program makes it appear as a willing participant on side of the latter. It really ought to let up in its zeal to jump through the hoops before the rim strikes back.
