https://m.thewire.in/article/books/who-dares-win-joshi-is-great-that-said-theres-more

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/joshi-is-great-that-said-theres-more

Joshi is great; that said, there’s more.

Reviewing 'Who Dares Wins'

General Joshi interests on two counts. He is an authentic ‘Kargil War Hero’, as the book cover puts it.* More interestingly, he was the commander of the northern theatre during the Chinese incursion.

His autobiography is worth a read on the first count, on tactical level leadership, for it tells of the making of the war hero.

However, a reader would be disappointed if she wishes to know more about the Chinese actions in Ladakh during his time there. Presumably his current position as head of the China think tank of the external affairs ministry prevents him from being more informative.

Alternatively, the blanket on information access - that has been a feature of the Modi regime - perhaps kept the general reticent on that most consequential operational level command he held.

Reportedly, a few years back an order was put out restraining members of security services from discussing matters in their operational ken after demitting office; though it is uncertain if that covered the military. There were threats of stoppage of pensions too.

One problem with this regimen is the free pass given to the regime’s narrative on security incidents. Ordinarily, such narratives can only be self-interested and in case of the populist authoritarianism on in India, self-centered.

The downside is that it deprives the primary principal in the principal-agent relationship – the Voter – a grasp of whether ‘all is well’ with Indian security.

Absent a fuller perspective – brought about by a liberal information order as befits a democracy – the Voter is handicapped. This explains Mr. Modi recent surpassing of Indira’s record in number of days at the helm.

To be fair, a self-styled ‘apolitical’ army might not wish to put out a narrative that might show up the governmental one. Sure, the civilian masters of the military have the ‘right to be wrong;’ but its not for the military to conceal it.

However, this approach to ‘apolitical’ betrays a limited understanding of the principal-agent relationship.

While the government (here regime) is the principal and the army the agent in the principal-agent relationship of subordination, the army must know it is an institution of the State.

The State is run per the Constitution. The Constitution makes the regime accountable to the people - the ultimate principal. Thus, people exercise accountability through their power of the Vote.

Inadequate information on which to base their choice debilitates the Voter.

Hence, the Voter cannot be the target of and subject to information war - the feature of nascent emphasis in the current-day changed character of war.

The notion that all it takes is to win the war of narratives amounts to believing that the nature of war itself has changed. Worse is to ‘win’ the narrative war internally. This is absurd.

Since security concerns are existential in nature, it is of categorical imperative status that people are furnished reliable information on security.

That is the national interest and national security, as distinct from regime interest and security.

A mistaken conflation of the two appears to be at hand, resulting in a novel understanding of political subordination of the military.

A government is run by a political party voted to power may be less than forthright on security matters – using the security of information as cover. This enables hiding of shortcomings and projection of falsity as reality.

Absent State institutions playing their intended role with a commitment to Constitutional verities, the opposition, the attentive public, ‘armchair strategists’ and the Voter are deprived of the benefits of the democratic checks-and-balances schema.

To the extent the military is participant, it is complicit in the ‘dismantling of India’s democracy.’

Memoirs of officials serve a very useful purpose in fleshing out the record. They illumine areas independently, if not quite disinterestedly. Admittedly, memoirs are but a perspective and may be self-exculpatory; and yet, they constitute the drops that make up the ocean.

By this yardstick, Joshi’s memoir is half-baked. It is a useful tactical level take of the Indian fighting man.

However, for the next quarter century, a reader might have to be content with Joshi’s promise of a sequel. He says it will be a sanitized version, as Operation (Op) Snow Leopard - quite like Op Sindoor - continues indefinitely.

Joshi is only being practical. Recall, his then boss, Army Chief Naravane’s memoirs were aborted.

The upshot will be that readers won’t get to know anything more than the official version. Joshi puts this out as gospel in the couple of paras he devotes to what - to some - amounts to a significant setback.

He recounts how he witnessed as early as 5 May the first Chinese incursion, in this case a PLA helicopter making for Galwan but which scooted back on spotting the Indian one, in which Joshi was taking a ride.

Joshi admits to a challenging situation that required ‘deft handling’. Enumerating the ‘transgressions’, including at Galwan, he pats himself of the back – “We handled them well.”

To be sure, Galwan triggered due planning and preparation for the launch of a ‘quid pro quo operation (QPQ)’ in the Rezang La-Rechin La complex on the Kailash ranges, on either side of the Pangong Tso and also further to the north.

He appreciatively writes: “We completely took the PLA by surprise, brought them back to the negotiation table and forced them to beat a hasty retreat. This was Operation Snow Leopard.”

Whereas a show of force was warranted and its execution commendable, it, firstly, took rather long in coming, and, secondly, its effects were not exploited – any gains given up even before Joshi demitted uniform. There is no word on the latter.

As theatre commander, Joshi had the wherewithal in-situ for securing Indian territorial integrity. The Indian military’s pivot to the China front having begun a decade earlier, quite like at Kargil which - is not dissimilar - he ought to have echoed Ved Malik: “We’ll fight with what we have.”

Providentially, as a self-acknowledged China-hand, and a Mandarin speaking one at that, he was the right man in the right place at the right time. He’d done time in Beijing as defence attaché.

All his three star-commands were in Ladakh, successively at Tangtse, Karu and Leh. He took over command after a stint as chief of staff, just as the Chinese reportedly marched up from their annual exercise for lodging on the Indian side.

The buck stopped with Joshi.

Joshi has the correct appreciation of operational command, calling it ‘a major transition’. To him, ‘officers who have operated at the tactical level for thirty-five years of their career are suddenly catapulted to the operational and strategic level of warfare….’

He prepared for the transition by reading up the likes of aggressive ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis’ autobiography.

So, what held Joshi back?

Whereas he has an appreciative word for this other two corps commanders, there is nary a mention of his commander in Leh. Was there any dissonance on the response? Can Covid-19 be held responsible? If his hands were tied, did he remonstrate? Or does he buy into the Jaishankar’ism: ‘they are a larger economy’?

The two paras are but ‘haan mein haan milana’ with the regime; the upshot is that a 1962 Henderson Brookes-like report is kept in abeyance. Accountability – no strong point of the regime – cannot be exacted.

Consequently, General, a self-exculpatory sequel may please be dispensed with. (Another general of his cohort has already brought out a sequel of his self-eulogy, this time on transitioning from ‘war-room to boardroom’).

Instead, critical biographers and military thinkers are alerted to a prospective subject: the ji-huzoor interpretation of ‘apolitical’ by Joshi’s leadership cohort.

Clearly, under this regime the military qua institution is not pulling its national security weight.

Whereas the question earlier in Indian civil-military relations (CMR) was of bureaucratic inter-positioning stifling the military, now the key question is the extent political interests and compulsions of the regime - if not its narcissist numero uno - are trammeling the military’s institutional role.

By now enough instances have accumulated of the military’s misconstruing political subordination with subservience.

After all, what else is new-fangled terminology as Udbhav, Bhairav, Rudra, Op Mahadev, Op Shivshakti meant to signal?

Joshi’s mentor on operational and strategic intricacies, along with the current-day Chief of Defence Staff, trashed the notion of raids across the LC prior to Modi’s advent.

The claim of destroying a seminary in Balakot, and downing an F-16 in the bargain, is another. Then came the famous waving of an anti-tank mine on national television to abort the Amarnath yatra, setting the stage for the vacation of Article 370.

Joshi’s characterising the Chinese incursions as ‘transgressions’ also amount to as much. There is also no mention in the book of the Agniveer scheme, the antecedents of which can be seen as long term response to the intrusions.

Lately, it’s the withholding of information relevant to forming an assessment on the regime’s showing in Op Sindoor. It took a middle-rung naval officer speaking at a seminar abroad to inadvertently spill the beans.

It is not known since when has a Lieutenant Governor taken on responsibility for an ‘All OK’ in the military’s Area of Responsibility, which surely covered Pahalgam. A record of prevarication puts under cloud the passing off of the three terrorists killed as the perpetrators at Baisaran.

How the generation of military leadership of which Joshi is a self-acknowledged leading light coped with regime onset and consolidation bears serious CMR reflection.

He clearly earned his spurs at the tactical level, brought out well in the strong first half of the book. A recently promoted lieutenant colonel, he took over officiating command in the midst of battle – his commanding officer was hors-de-combat due to high altitude effects.

His meeting the challenges at the academies, grooming in the unit and his career gaining traction are well handled. His progression was unremarkable for a good and successful officer – sound course gradings, grounding within the unit, exposure in an instructor tenure, the staff course rigmarole and a UN outing.

Fortuitously, he was also physically well prepared. Gaining weight during his tenure in Angola, h’d just shed 10 kilos in anticipation of a call for interview for the post of Adjutant of the military academy, a appointment that requires if nothing else a ramrod bearing.

Fit, young and belonging to the unit, he was the man of the moment, for the anointing under fire. Joshi credits officers as Vikram Batra, a stolid junior leadership, subunit bonding and the combat support provisioned for the unprecedented success (two Param Vir Chakras in one operation) of his team. He was also well-knit with the formation, being a ‘blue eyed boy’ of a charismatic divisional commander.

Nothing must be allowed to take anything away from his service to the nation, to the army and his unit.

It would be too much to expect his generation of professionally-imbued officers to have withstood the deinstitutionalization of the military that beset it as they reached higher ranks.

At best they may be arraigned for not applying peer pressure to rein in political entrepreneurs in uniform - who functioned as conduits for political contamination of the military. Such individuals were artfully placed in charge by the regime and therefore out of reach.

This is especially so when no other institution has been left standing (witness antics of no less than a recently retired Supreme Court chief justice).

It would be churlish to mar Joshi’s upstanding record with taxing him with the responsibility of preserving institutional integrity. Not being legend cannot detract from being great.

*: YK Joshi, Who Dares Wins: A Soldier’s Memoirs, Gurugram: Penguin 2024, pp. 240, Rs 699.

 https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/was-the-chinar-corps-commander-right?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=i1fws

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  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 the CC intended for command of Chinar Corps. 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.