The Naravane memoirs: What’s ucchit and what’s not
It will take the then Fire & Fury corps commander’s memoirs to reveal which of his two superiors – the army commander or the army chief – has got it wrong in their respective autobiographies on the occupation of Kailash range.
While the then army commander, Lt Gen YK Joshi, presented the operation as a quid pro quo one, designed to even the psychological score with China, the then army chief, Gen Naravane, stays true to what was put out in the media at the time, that the operation was to pre-empt another attempted land-grab by China.
Since the corps commander in question, Lt Gen Harinder Singh, appears not to figure in the good books of his two superiors, his perspective might shake up things decidedly more than the current shindig over vignettes doing the rounds of the social media from Naravane’s yet-to-be-cleared book, Four Stars of Destiny.
Significantly, he’d be able to tell-all on who ordered the eviction of the tents at Galwan, a matter Naravane’s book glosses over. Since lives were lost, getting to his version is critical for accountability, with Naravane hinting that the matter was raised with the national security adviser.
Clearly, someone ordered a colonel – the Mahavir Bikumalla Santosh Babu - to evict the tents pitched by the Chinese. Some two months into the crisis, both sides were reasonably well-prepared with clubs and spiked truncheons to inflict telling casualties on each other.
This episode prompted Indian repositioning of troops onto Ladakh - Operation Snow Leopard - that enabled the army’s subsequent quid pro quo operation: the occupation of Kailash range.
Naravane’s version is that the operation was in response to Chinese troop movements by night at Chuti Changla in the area of Pangong Tso on 29 August. With troops on hand, another land-grab by China was a planned-for contingency. Northern Command reacted the very next night, 30th August, using mountain strike corps elements to occupy heights and features flanking the lake.
When the China Study Group (CSG) met at a pre-scheduled meeting that very forenoon, Naravane asked that next steps be approved: the race to the top of the balance stretches of Kailash range.
Before any afterthoughts could upend the consent for a ‘go ahead’ at the meeting, the military operations branch quickly passed on the orders. As to whether the CSG has any legal and formal accountability for decision making is another, if major, question.
However, restrictive rules on firing – requiring firing for immediate effect in self-defence only by elements directly threatened - remained in place. These were to be truly tested night on 31st August.
With the operation over two nights competently executed, the Indians could espy the Chinese reaction building up in the Spanggur gap and Moldo garrison below the heights seized. On 31 August, as Chinese tanks moved upslope Lt Gen ‘Jo’ Joshi asked for permission to open up medium artillery fire.
At this juncture, Naravane updated the external affairs minister, the national security adviser and the chief of defence staff, asking of each, “What are my orders?” Apparently, Naravane wanted the restrictive terms of reference on firing lifted in face of imminent danger to forward troops.
It’s not obvious that when the buck for the army stopped with the raksha mantri, why the latter three - even if members of the cabinet committee on security (CCS) - needed to be posed the question.
A follow-up update to the raksha mantri elicited the response that he would revert after checking with the very ‘top.’ A while later, Naravane received the now-immortal marching orders: ‘Jo ucchit samjho woh karo.’
Naravane recounts his moment of command solitude thereafter. Strangely, Naravane was in his official accommodation, rather than in the operations room. In the event, the Indians held their nerve and the Chinese blinked, stared-down by the barrels of T-90 tanks purposely swiveled downslope.
Eventually, following the army’s heroic deployment through winter at those heights, India leveraged the advantage so gained in getting the Chinese to concede on their intrusions on the north bank.
From the narrative, the regime appears justified in its tight control over escalatory possibilities. Perhaps its confidence was from from diplomatic and intelligence channels on the wider Chinese position. Both the NSA as special representative and EAM had post-Galwan interfaced with their counterparts.
As for the later delegation on opening fire to the army chief, it is also only right that it did so considering that the input of the chief himself along such lines. The operational manoeuvre could have gone wrong, showing up the ‘only fire in self-defence’ ruling as unrealistic.
To be sure, the earlier restrictive rules of engagement show up a reluctance to chance escalation on India’s part. This is of a piece with the ‘common sense’: “As a smaller economy, I am going to pick up a fight with the bigger economy?” Giving itself a strategic doctrine is a government’s privilege. War avoidance is mostly a sensible strategy and it’s a government’s call to make.
On his part, Naravane was proven right in retaining the authority to fire when delegated to him. He was aware that in the two preceding days there were no indicators of any vigorous and violent Chinese response, rightly discounting the provocative probing from their side as posturing.
Alongside, the Chinese had even sent feelers on de-escalation, with a brigadier also responding to an ad-hoc border meeting on local de-escalation called for by the Chinese. These could have been deception measures too, since a troop of tanks resumed their march uphill. Naravane rightly reckoned that these might have been sacrificial lambs intended by the Chinese to instigate a casus belli.
In nutshell, the government authorized the mobilization and approved the resulting quid pro quo operation. Having demonstrated India’s determination not be cowed, it could do without provoking escalation into an undesired war.
This begs the question: Why is the government unwilling to be identified with a boldly executed plan that enabled the leverage that followed? Why not take up ownership of a plan that embellishes its muscular image?
The answer is in the regime has been boxed in by its own rhetoric. It has projected such an image of itself and it cannot afford any detraction from it. Naravane’s approaching the political master for devolving fire control responsibilities busts the myth of the army being given a ‘free hand.’
A different reading of the narrative is warranted. The army seemingly aware of the regime’s pusillanimity appears to have forced the regime’s hand in three instances.
One, not only did the army initiate the operation but also – two - forced a decision out of the CSG. Clearly, the political masters required goading. A company-worth of Chinese movements supplied the cover. That the Chinese had earlier intruded with impunity was not enough to settle scores.
Third, Naravane later succeeded in wresting the authority for fire control over three calls made over two hours to Rajnath Singh. Even a loosening of their grip over fire control required Naravane generating a scare scenario with Chinese tanks trudging uphill.
In effect, both Naravane and Joshi can be taken as right (at least until Harinder Singh tells us otherwise). A quid pro quo operation was indeed launched per Joshi’s telling, but only under hard-sell by Naravane to a reluctant political master.
The extracts of the memoirs in public domain throw up three observations on policy and decision making. Taken together, these should serve as backdrop for any thrust towards an offensive strategic doctrine and structural innovation underway.
At the level of individual actors, for Naravane to wish to redeem institutional honour – that took a beating with the intrusions on his watch - is unexceptionable. Since a Kargil-like rebound or even a reflexive quid pro quo action was ruled out with the regime dithering, clearly ‘something’ had to be done. If he ordered the eviction of tents at Galwan (his memoirs are indistinct on this), then he may have had a personal animus to settle too.
At the institutional level, the army appears to have wrested for itself more strategic space bottom-up than considered congenial by an unwilling regime. Imagine the denouement if ‘Jo’ Joshi were an integrated theatre commander, the CDS operationally empowered and the defence minister a rank ignoramus!
At the political level, the political master appears rather too timid to be a trustworthy custodian of national security. Being chary over the use of force indicates the regime’s strategic infelicity. Its loud self-advertisement to the contrary reinforces suspicion that tom-toming its muscularity is but a symptom of its insecurity.
