Was the Chinar Corps Commander right at Kokarnag?
A message on social media carried an account of an exchange some 35 years back between the then Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) and the Chinar Corps Corps Commander (CC).
The long-retired DGMO says: “I spoke on the telephone soon after, while he was still in the hospital, and chiding him jovially saying, “XXX you must remember that you are now a Corps Commander, not a Platoon or Company Commander”. He responded equally jovially saying, “XXX, you know me well. That’s who I still think I am!”
The former DGMO’s intervention on social media chatter lent authenticity to the episode. It was prompted by a photo of an MRI scan of the CC’s head – taken in an unrelated matter - that had shown up a foreign object lodged in his skull. Perplexed the doctors had brought it to the CC’s attention; who had then wracked his memory to figure out how it could have got there in first place.
As it turned out the CC had received head wounds during an encounter in Kashmir while in command of Chinar Corps. The banter between the two regimental mates over the episode was when he was receiving treatment at the Base Hospital.
The doctors there had pulled out some 4-5 splinters and patched him up. Having to do it quickly, they apparently left one splinter that resurfaced three decades later to cause a social media flutter.
Their urgency stemmed from the Pakistani media going to town over news that the CC, along with his ADC, had been gunned down by Kashmiri ‘freedom fighters’ in Kokarnag that morning. Hurriedly made presentable, with a beret to cover the scars, the general – through pain - credibly refuted the ‘fake news’.
The ‘news’ was of an encounter in Kokarnag that winter morning in the early period of outbreak of troubles in Kashmir. The general had led his Quick Reaction Team (QRT) in a house clearing drill at the fire-fighting station to get two Anti National Elements (ANE, as was the terminology those days) holed up inside.
The ANEs had dropped two of our jawans in an ambush the previous evening. Though cornered in the building through the night, they’d taken out another two soldiers; and for good measure murdered a local school master sent to persuade them to give up.
At this juncture, the CC, who was keeping tabs, turned up at the scene as was his wont. Sensing despondency, he probably felt the need for early action to turn the tables. The divisional commander (GOC) fetched up in quick succession.
Recce and tactical appreciation done, the CC had the GOC’s QRT provide covering fire while he, with his QRT, would in true Infantry style, ‘close with the enemy, capture or destroy him.’
He crawled up through the snow past the bodies of two of ours downed earlier. The ADC, after tightening the cordon around the site, dashed up to join the general and his QRT.
A firefight ensued.
The general threw in two grenades in quick succession to enable a break-in. As they spilled into the house, they were greeted with a magazine worth of Kalashnikov. The upshot was ricochet splinters plastering the CC’s scalp. Profuse bleeding from embedded splinters led to the QRT pulling the CC out of the fight by the scruff.
The ADC at the front of the pack could not disgorge back into the open. Losing blood, the CC was unpersuaded by entreaties for evacuation, insisting he would only leave only with his Aide onside. Providentially, the ADC survived the pounding the building received thereafter.
Had the story’s ending been any different, at a minimum, the DGMO – a military diplomat in a previous appointment and going on to be UN force commander - might have been less diplomatic. Himself a war-time gallantry award winner, he best knew his was a bitter pill to administer.
Consequently, the CC wasn’t spared a firing by the Army Chief the following day.
In that telephonic call, the CC held that being senior-most on the spot, he could only first place his own life on the line. A Higher Command course-mate, the Chief let him off.
The DGMO is spot-on with his observation that as corps commander, the CC’s job was cut out. Since it patently does not include rushing ANEs, the episode raises the question: Was the CC right?
Whatever the reservations of the GOC - who went on to be Army Chief in his turn – either did as ordered or participated in the decision. It’s possible therefore to infer all was not wholly wrong.
A perspective on command at the operational level in counter insurgency situations –pitched by a general with the staff experience in Kashmir later in the early years – was that the commander must have a wide-angled view and busy with managing the environment, leaving his radar screen clear of clutter of ground detail.
Another commander from the field opined (p. 354) that the higher commander must have a light touch, knowing when to pat on the back.
Such a managerial perspective must be contrasted with a leadership-centric one.
The early years of insurgency in Kashmir were somewhat turbulent as the army came to grips with it. Whereas initially it was people-centric, with mass movements as a characteristic, it gradually turned into a militarised proxy war of sorts only by the middle of the nineties.
At its outset, Chinar Corps, that CC headed, was relatively stretched. Recall, it spread from Demachok to the Pirpanjals. It bid for and received an additional division, that was at the time of the operation in question, only settling in.
Indeed, the managerial perspective is a product of the learning from the immediate period thereafter, as SOPs got written up and the grid steadily firmed in.
The CC thus had to lay the touch-stone and foundations for the counter insurgency that followed.
He just did it in inimitable style, with his jovial rejoinder to the DGMO giving the hint.
To him it was obvious that Patton’s Third Army could not have pivoted in the Ardennes in face of Hitler’s last gamble, without the general not positioning himself at muddy forest crossroads.
By no means was he intended for that command. The army had twice earlier sought his services in the North East.
A product of his generation, he had earned his spurs battling Naga hostiles in the late fifties in Nagaland.
Volunteering for an active command to get away from the drudgery of staff at a corps headquarters, he led the Assam Rifles in Mizoram in a second one-star command. This was at a crucial time when military pressure was applied during the Mizo talks-process in the mid-eighties; receiving a distinguished service award for his efforts.
His counter-insurgent credentials were backed by his knowledge of Kashmir acquired during his next - two-star - assignment along the Line of Control (LC).
It is at this juncture that destiny took hold.
When off to the North East with his luggage already transiting Gauhati, he was asked to instead head back to Badami Bagh as the incumbent Chief of Staff was felled by a heart attack.
Promoted three-star, he was slated as the low-profile head of the Assam Rifles in Shillong. A bureaucrat intervened, citing that his professional credentials stood embellished by his once topping the staff course. If his name had anything to do with it, it remained unsaid.
So it was back to Kashmir, but at a time his whole life seems in retrospect to have prepared him for – a tenure bookended with by Rubaiya Sayeed kidnap and the Kunan Poshpora episodes.
He was an early practitioner of what came to be called ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ a decade later.
His life lessons were from Nagaland, where one evening his company was packed off overnight to another location. Apparently, hostiles’ ambush of a convoy had led to stockading of nearby villages for ease of surveillance and control, if not quite retribution.
He had set about interacting with the villagers, organising evening volleyball for the young adults; tutoring children into ‘jana, gana, mana’; and attending Sunday church unarmed and unescorted. A Naga shawl gifted in appreciation at the end of the two-months long interaction was handed back to the church.
Kashmiris were beneficiaries with Governor Jagmohan recounting in his memoir of the army’s efforts to win hearts. That the army lost a mere five men to ANE action in the period of his command - not counting the dastardly shooting down of airforce personnel at a bus stop among the opening salvos of what amounted in time to a war on and within Kashmir – perhaps owes in part to the fair conduct of troops under extreme pressures of cold, night and relentless operations.
But it was in the operational side, he was in his element.
Son of a state force’s brigadier, he came under fire first as a teen when his father’s convoy was strafed by the Indian Air Force. A young lad forced to go back by the Partition from his military cadet school in Dehra Dun, he was accompanying his father when spotted by the IAF.
The Brigadier - the first state forces’ staff course graduate himself - was siting the defences of Gulbarga sector to prevent the impending Operation Polo making a headway from the south west towards Hyderabad. In the event, the fight in this sector was fierce enough for India’s first Ashok Chakra to be awarded for gallantry in the battle to unlock the axis.
A bantam-weight boxer at the academies, the cadet went on as commissioned officer to be cited for no less than the PVC in 1965, winning the Vir Chakra instead.
His rise through the ranks marked him out a maverick, with not a few seniors at successive tiers hearing that they were at liberty to sack him or accept his resignation if they didn’t have faith in his professional judgement.
A story has him on the phone telling the army commander in Udhampur when queried on why he had ordered the opening up of artillery on enemy LC defences that in case the army commander didn’t agree, he could sack him.
His reading shelf stocked the biography of Rommel, a tome on the Chindits, Kitson’s counter insurgency tract, and, The Brothers Karamazov.
A stanch belief – as was his - eases launch into the unknown.
So, when confronted with the situation at Kokarnag, it is easy to grasp why the CC chose a particular manner to turn the situation around. Grasping the essentials on arrival at the site, with a coup d'œil befitting an infantryman and a general to boot, he seized on it as an opportunity for administering an indelible and very personal imprint on his command.
Indian history is replete with such acts, the result notwithstanding, such as that of Tanaji Malusare. Not for him a managerial huddle at a time of test in military leadership – when a despairing body of soldiers look on to see what the senior or does not do.
That his example inspired is clear from the newly promoted brigade commander in question leading from the front in all operations thereafter, receiving a bullet in his thigh for his pains; but which put him ahead of his equally competent colleagues when it came to his turn to be Chief.
Soon thereafter another two-star out in front stopped a bullet, as did another two one-star commanders destined for Chief in respective turn. Indeed, an army commander too earned a wound medal a decade on. Prudence has been inculcated since the ambush of Brigadier Sridhar.
It’s fair to ask: Wouldn’t the Indian grip over Kashmir have been less firm if the CC had dithered, waited for reports and briefings instead?
Whereas Indian young officers have a well-earned status at the frontline of leadership, senior ranks are not easily spared scepticism.
Even so, there is sufficient evidence of daredevilry at the higher echelons – whether it is Rajinder Singh rushing up to Mahore; Usman sleeping on the floor; ‘Timmy’ Thimayya riding up with the 7 Cav; Mehar Singh touching down in Dakotas; Hanut carving out a minefield lane; Sagat Singh’s green-field landings along the Padma; Ved Malik landing with the initial flights on to an uncertain runway; Jameel Mehmood flying himself as two-star and turning in a bullet-holed helicopter at the pad; Tipnis and ‘Jimmy’ Bhatia flying across hostile territory; Nair landing in Daulat Beg Oldie; a Suresh Babu heading a patrol, to recall a few.
That seniors face scepticism in a Cynical Age only implies a greater thrust to ensure leadership trumps managerialism.
If Mahabharata is guide, the subcontinental leadership bar has always been high. Meeting it even when not doing so would go unremarked is the acid test – when only mere soldiery is looking on.
After all, it would have taken but a couple of hours to reduce that building to dust.
But then there would be no scope for counterfactuals: Kargil being detected earlier; Mumbai massacres ending in quick time; Chinese evicted at first step across; Pahalgam killers tracked down and laid out.
As the CC fades away, the detecting of a foreign body embedded in his scalp is an apt juncture to record his contribution to Indian military leadership ethic: let not the joy of soldiering die with the throttling of the young platoon and company commander within each officer as he (or she) grows in service.
