https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/in-defence-of-richa-chadha?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf
In defence of Richa Chadha
Hindutva had to deploy its big guns as Akshay Kumar and a former army chief to subdue Richa Chadha and her supporting artillery that included Prakash Raj. She was peremptorily tried by the godi media and held guilty of insulting the sacrifice of the Galwan Gallants. All she did was remind our brasshats that the sacrifice of these brave men should henceforth serve to ensure all military planning and operations be done with due diligence.
Chadha was entirely right in her concern. The Galwan incident was prompted by ill considered orders on part of the chain of command. Rashly ordered, the commanding officer valiantly led his men into what turned out to be an ambush. That two months into the crisis and the brasshats were unable to make out its nature speaks for itself. To Chadha, any future military actions must bear the impression of the lesson from Galwan: due diligence.
Chadha was reacting to the northern army commander’s indication that the military is ready and capable of taking Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) when ordered by the government. He was only reiterating what his corps commander in Srinagar had said only a few days earlier. Both were queried on the defence minister’s statement that India aimed to take POK.
So long as the military leadership remembered the chief lesson from Galwan, there is no second guessing them as to whether they can or should go about fulfilling the defence minister’s desire. Chadha’s was only a timely reminder – if colourfully put due to the nature of the means of communication used and the nature of those in showbiz.
Her antagonists trolled her for assuming that the brasshats would be unable to deliver on what they had publicly taken on. They assumed that she was calling out the military for incompetence and pointing out that the military couldn’t take POK. Since the military has been toast of multiple seasons lately, it is understandable if the Hindutva troll army unthinkingly rises to its defence.
That the military needs defending by trolls itself suggests that it is on a sticky wicket. Its boast cannot be allowed to pass uncontested. Whereas Chadha perhaps guessed that the brass might be biting off more than they can chew, it is worth querying if the military can indeed be gung-ho about taking POK.
Without doubt, POK, as hitherto, will figure in any future military tryst. The 1947 War is famous for its battles for Poonch, Uri, Tithwal and Zoji La. The 1965 War is famous for the victory at Haji Pir. In 1971 War, the active front was in Kargil, that turned out stage setting for the subsequent information age war.
That there are plausible military plans to take POK can be expected since that’s what militaries do: make and practice war plans. If ordered to take POK, the military operations branch will dust up the most suitable one and its strike formations will be put to it. Plans can be expected to be cognisant of the lesson from Galwan – due diligence.
However, it is not so pat. Confidence in the military has withered lately. It has visibly traded professional high ground for political approbation. Its leadership has allowed itself to be enticed by foregrounding of military in the political scheme of things. Dalliance with politics exacts a price off professionalism.
Theory has it that professionalism – a characteristic of the officer corps - is a mix of expertise, responsibility and representation. The military brass has military expertise, based on which it performs representative and advisory roles. At the political-military interface or the grand strategic-strategic interstices, the military has to input national security policy and decisions. It is not a mere receptacle of orders.
Therefore, for the two commanders to successively highlight obedience to orders is to skip over the more consequential question implicit: whether such orders received the benefit of the military’s intellectual rigour in first place? Their wilful distracting from the meat of the issue begs the question: Why?
Today, the shadow of Ladakh looms over the military. The army was caught napping, albeit not wholly on its own, but along with the diplomats and the intelligence establishment. Its listless showing in wake of the Chinese intrusions cannot be laid at Covid’s door alone. That it was let of the hook was only self-serving on part of the security establishment. Accountability would have required also asking questions of blue-eyed Doval and Jaishankar.
To compensate, the army has since indulged in an illusion of activity over two winters in the high Himalayas, that has witnessed it all dressed up with nowhere to go. The excuse that Chinese, similarly arrayed, compel our weathering the weather is useful. It bears reminding as we head into the third winter the situation on own side is not as conducive to sitting out multiple winters. Tales from Ladakhi herders denied access to grazing areas do not help justify the deployment.
Is lassitude on the China front being compensated for by breathing fire and brimstone on the lesser neighbour, Pakistan? It makes sense to bully Pakistan, and be seen to be tough, than push back China and be exposed.
Neglected is the aspect that revealing our hand prematurely on POK we deny ourselves the opportunity for a quick grab in the next India-Pakistan joust. Pakistan, alerted to a potential objective, will have locked the barn door. This is of a piece with India’s tentative grab of Kailash Range during the crisis in Ladakh. Had we rolled down then to Rudok and Moldo, we could’ve pulled off a coup. With Chinese coming up with a bridge across Pangong Tso to help reinforce the area, it is now denied us in perpetuity.
What Rajnath Singh had in mind is uncertain. While POK surely figures in his thinking, by his reference to India marching ‘north’, he perhaps also meant Northern Areas (NA). While POK has the underside of having a Punjabised population, that can only spell trouble for any occupying power, Indians perhaps believe – for no discernible reason - that the largely Shia populace further north might be more welcoming.
Going northwards, rather than westwards, from the Kashmir Valley would be to go for the jugular – of both Pakistan and its army. With Indian Navy locking down Karachi and the Makran coast and the land route to China nipped, Pakistan would be on the mat soon enough – or goes the reasoning.
That it would upturn the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and what that might mean for riling China appears not to deter India. It could provoke the ‘two-front’ war, with China using its launchpad at Depsang to push westwards – threatening India’s east flank resting on Siachen as India bites away northwards. Indian information warriors are blissfully unconcerned.
As for going westwards, to complete what Indian military heroes - Harbaksh, Thimayya and Cariappa - didn’t get to, the logic that kicked in some 75 years ago only stands reinforced today. Back then, the argument for stopping India’s military action was that the area, being largely Punjabi-oriented, was outside the reach of political persuasion of the pro-India Kashmiri political elite. Even if taking it was doable militarily, it would be hard to swallow and digest politically. Today, it would be impossible to retain for the simple reason that if keeping Kashmir down after 30 years of counter insurgency is a bother, taking on additional demographic terrain would be imbecility.
This begs the question, what then was the purpose of Rajnath Singh piping up and having two of his senior military commanders lend the authority of their uniform to justify his tilting at the windmills.
It is easy to see the reason in the political perspective at which he – a political bigwig – operates. As a full-time Hindutva busybody and part-time defence minister, he is only voicing what Hindutva ideologues are wont to – complete the unfinished business of Partition.
Superficially, this involves only taking territory encompassed by calendar art, that has Bharat Mata in the foreground to Akhand Bharat as background. This explains the cultural claim to Pakistan occupied areas using motifs as Sharada Peeth. Thus, Singh’s was a political performance.
Did the military necessarily need to follow? Did it think through its participation in an essentially political caper? Did the push back when the information operation was thought up?
That the military did not do so suggests either its politically ingenuous or politically inclined. The former can no longer serve as excuse since the latter is not so far-fetched anymore. The military has also started speaking political gobbledegook. As per the retiree recently elevated to its top post, General Anil Chauhan, the Indian military is now seeing itself as defending ‘the ideology on which the state is based and the values it promotes.’
On the face of it, military objectives following political aims is explicable. However, political aims deriving from a partisan political ideology – in this case Hindutva – cannot merely be received by the military. A military must exercise its right of input in formulation of political aims, basing such input on strategic factors.
If taking Northern Areas is important to tearing asunder a relationship between the antagonist allies in a two-front situation, then it makes military sense to ‘go for it’. Even so, war gaming this shows that attempting to do so will create a two-front threat where none necessarily exists.
Advances must then have limits, for instance, up till the Neelum riverline. Expansive military objectives as an advance down the Jhelum, or, in the south of the Pir Panjal, till the Jhelum riverline, need leavening with strategic sense.
At the strategic level – the level at which an army commander is located – conversation between the political and strategic levels should ensue. The military’s is a duty of obedience to the political level, but not as an uncritical cadet to a drill ustad. It must demand such a conversation. Institutions must be geared to facilitating such a conversation. Its expertise-based input must be welcomed by the political leadership. Obedience to orders is predicated on participation in their formulation.
There is no dearth of examples on military commanders being more than merely obedient cogs:
· Legendary Field Marshal Ervin Rommel routinely trashed Nazi instructions on mistreating non-Aryan ethnic groups or prisoners of war.
· As commander in East Pakistan, Sahibzada Yakub Khan’s refusal to follow orders from Karachi is a stellar example of resignation on the right course to take on disagreeing with an operational directive.
· General John Hyten, when commander of the United States’ Strategic Forces Command, gave out the appropriate response to illegal orders. Assuming that these had emanated out of ignorance, he said that he would advise the president on the right course and revised await orders.
· General Mark Milley once said that orders received after remonstration can be complied with, without recourse to resignation. The political head has ‘the right to be wrong’. For the military level to press beyond a point is to usurp the political level’s privilege to overrule the military and being accountable for any adverse results.
· After Operation Parakram’s mobilisation phase, General Rustam Nanavatty provided his input on the Northern Command’s readiness to execute operations in snow bound POK. In the event, his expert input apparently was consequential in the manner the operation unfolded.
· The back and forth between Calcutta and Delhi on the military objectives of the 1971 operation in East Pakistan is instructive. There was the staff channel between Jacob and Inder Gill and the command channel between Aurora and Manekshaw. Military history has it that the former pressed for an expansive interpretation of the political directive. However, at the political-military interface, it is uncertain if military commanders were given the flexibility to choose between an expansive and restrictive interpretation or did they bottom-up seize it wilfully.
Presuming that General Dwivedi, the northern army commander, has had the benefit of his advice on POK being pondered upon, he has little recourse but to obey – as he affirmed. That he has given away his hand, however, indicates that the exercise in the context of the situation in Kashmir is one of psychological coercion of Pakistan.
It only makes sense as a information war exercise with India is preparing to rig an outcome of the forthcoming elections in Kashmir palatable to Hindutva. India would prefer continuing dormancy of Pakistan’s proxy war. Rather than have the new Pakistan Army chief, Asim Munir, depart from the Bajwa doctrine that well-served mutual interests (even if it turned out from leaked income tax returns, the doctrine did serve Bajwa’s personal interest too), India has chosen to deter him by psychological operations at the very outset of his innings.
It could also well be strategic deception, in that, knowing that taking POK would be rather a mouthful, India is pretending to be prepared to open its mouth wide. The deception could tie down Pakistani army in anticipatory defence of POK, while, instead, India went about, for instance, a ‘Sialkot grab’.
That other possibilities suggest themselves owes to strategic disarray in the regime. Impetus, otherwise outlandish, cannot be rejected outright. For instance, it is not impossible to visualise the regime taking home a lesson from the Ukraine war that if Russia can leisurely help itself to mouthfuls off Ukraine, why cannot India salami slice its pound of flesh off Pakistan? As a wit has it: If Ukraine can wish to retake Crimea, why cannot India take POK? What China can get away with doing to India, why can't India with Pakistan?
Richa Chadha perhaps intuited that the military needs cautioning. Granddaughter of a military man, she is no doubt part of the attentive public that follows military matters. Since the full story of Galwan will not be written on the watch of this regime, dismissively tweeting that a ‘little-known actor’ said something ‘stupid’ is disservice to India’s success in forging a strategic culture wherein citizens’ are sensitive to the military’s concerns. A thriving strategic culture holds the military – and the political hand on the military rudder – accountable. The military better get used to it.
