Unedited version
The Chief has spoken;
but is the Chief listening?
At an unspecified event at the
United Services Institution of India (USI) - the haunt in New Delhi of retired generals
fading away - the army chief, reportedly intoned, "The military should be
somehow kept out of politics. Of late, we have been seeing that politicisation
of the military has been taking place.” Though not elaborated in the media
report, the observation was likely triggered by a query on the building of three
foot over-bridges by the army in Mumbai at the location of the recent stampede
at Elphinstone station that left 22 dead and 35 injured. Inspired by its
earlier showing in New Delhi in the run up to the Commonwealth Games, when an
under construction footbridge near the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium collapsed, the
army had taken up the gauntlet to assist Mumbai commuters when put to it by the
defence minister in a visit to the site along with the Maharashtra chief
minister and the railway minister.
At the time, it was unclear
whether the army has been consulted prior for this assistance by the defence
minister. In the event, it elicited considerable social media outpourings by
veterans miffed at the call by the civil authorities on the army when there are
sufficient resources with the civil administration – in this case the railways
– to fight their own fires. Analogy was drawn to the period early in the Modi
era when the army was tasked by the previous defence minister to put a pontoon
bridge across the Yamuna in order that the Sri Sri Ravishankar’s yoga jamboree
on the Yamuna riverbed could proceed.
Following Nirmala Sitharaman’s
announcement at Elphinstone bridge, in the company of party stalwarts, the army
chief dutifully took on the task, justifying it later as a public relations
exercise useful for image building of the army. This is the second instance of
Sitharaman’s proactivism in tapping the army in her short stay so far at the
helm of the defence ministry. Early in her tenure, she had required the army to
clean up the mess tourists leave behind in the mountains and high altitudes
where they are deployed. In particular, this is in the pilgrimage belt along
the upper reaches where the Ganges originates. The army clicked its heels and
fell in line, with social media awash with photos of colonels taking to the
broom – along with army wives. One such much-forwarded image was from Gulmarg,
where presumably the army is deployed in tackling terrorists infiltrating into
the Valley besides protecting the Line of the Control (LC).
This background suggests two
possibilities behind the army chief’s cryptic remarks at the USI event (he
reportedly did not elaborate). The first is that he was telling off his critics
to lay off the army in their criticism of the army’s seemingly currying favour
with its right wing overseers, the BJP government, by being more available than
necessary to step up and fill the breach. The criticism has it that the BJP as
part of its subversion either brazenly or by stealth of most national
institutions, would unlikely leave the army alone. In light of the advance of
cultural nationalism and constriction of liberal-secular space across the land,
the army could not possibly escape the attention of the emerging ‘deep state’
in India. Critics have therefore been calling for greater self-regulation by
the army in the civil-military domain, lest cultural nationalism contaminate
its secularity and compromise it.
That this is the more likely
possibility is visible from the chief going on to say, “I think we operate in a
very secular environment. We have a very vibrant democracy where the military
should stay far away from the polity." To him, there is little cause to be
wary of the right wing dispensation. He is sanguine that the society remains
unchanged. Nevertheless, as traditionally, the army needs to stay at a distance
from the hurly burly world of democratic politics. At the event, he explained
the army’s stepping up at Elphinstone as part of its aid-to-civil-authorities
mandate, though leaving unclear as to how normal rush hour pedestrian commuting
can be equated with natural disasters, for which the army can be tapped to lend
a shoulder. Clearly, the army chief takes his words seriously of ‘stay(ing) far
away from the polity,’ leaving him blind to the political lurch towards the
right that India has taken over the past half-decade. Since more situational
awareness is expected of an institutional head, he needs alerting to the
reality of India today.
This ab-initio rules out the second
possibility, that of the general tacitly cautioning his civilian political
masters to keep a distance from the army. This is unlikely in light of the
general being beholden to the dispensation for his surprising elevation to the
appointment. The general’s public utterances since his controversial elevation
to his position as chief have unfortunately impacted his credibility. His
recent dilation on surgical strikes in Myanmar under his tutelage as corps
commander in the North East – that were
precursor to the ones in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir – were ill timed from point
of view of the Gujarat polls. The ruling party can do without any ballast for
its political fortunes.
The government has been at pains
to distance itself from its supposedly weak-kneed predecessor. In this it has
used every opportunity to demonstrate a muscular, martial, risk-taking and war
ready India, be it against the Pakistanis in the surgical strikes of last year
or the Chinese with the Doklam standoff. It has thereafter duly milked the
opportunities for their political worth, such as using the halo from the surgical
strikes to good effect in the consequential Uttar Pradesh polls.
Modi has most recently used the
strained relations with Pakistan over the past two years to depict the Congress
as in league with Muslims and Pakistanis to meddle in the Gujarat elections.
Over the period, the army has kept Pakistan to the till along the LC, having
reactivated it early in the BJP’s New Delhi tenure, and has through the year
undertaken Operation All Out for cleaning up the Valley floor in a hark back by
some two decades. The general was quick off the blocks early in his tenure to
pull out the Cold Start file from the operations closet and wave it at
Pakistan. The Cold Start doctrine reputedly is the conventional punishment up
India’s sleeve in case of Pakistani trespass of India’s threshold of tolerance.
Since this is the utilization of the army for its professional worth in line
with national policy – albeit one propelled by domestic political purposes –
the army cannot be averse to the professional opportunity it espies and the
institutional spaces (such as budgets, seat at the policy table etc.) it opens
up.
However, institutional leadership
needs being wary of use of the national security card for political interests,
in this case continuing friction with Pakistan enabling the political
polarization within India for political gains by the ruling party. The ruling
party has chosen its chief well, one who would plough a narrow professional
furrow. The problem is that at the apex level of the military sensitivity to
the political context of professional activity, including its internal
political dimension, cannot be elided by clichés such as apolitical military.
The military apex needs to be sufficiently clued up politically to detect that
in the context of the times it needs to be porcupine-like to ward of unwanted
political attention. The Chief needs to heed his own words.
