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General Rawat’s legacy in civil-military relations

General Bipin Rawat has etched a place in military history, not so much by way of martial feats as much for his contribution to civil-military relations of New India. He was first recipient of governmental favour in its resort to ‘deep selection’ as a policy for selection to higher rank. His showing in the successive appointments – army chief and chief of defence staff – places the policy under a pall, showing it up as a ploy for the regime’s attempt at institutional capture of the military, quite in the same vein as it has truncated other national institutions.

Deep selection

Rawat came into limelight as corps commander when two cross-border raids into Myanmar were undertaken simultaneously. These caught the eye of the national security adviser (NSA), who was curiously on hand to oversee a tactical level action, with the army chief in tow. It is not known how many hangers-on and camp-followers - and therefore in the reckoning of international humanitarian law, noncombatants – were among the 60 killed in the camps struck.

It cannot be said with any certainty which of the two influences on NSA Ajit Doval – Rawat’s operational skills or his being an ethnic kin - resulted in Rawat’s elevation for field army command in Pune, outpointing one of his seniors, PM Hariz heading the training command at Shimla. Hariz was doubly-handicapped, being a mechanised warfare expert, but - more pertinently - a Muslim, anathema in New India then emerging.

Later, called to Delhi as vice chief, he outflanked yet another senior, his earlier boss in the North East, General Praveen Bakshi. A journalist recounted how Rawat, as vice chief, was heard hailing the surgical strikes launched by the government after the terror attack on Uri garrison. Did Rawat anticipate a shift to ‘deep selection’ to substitute for the seniority principle in selection of the apex military leaders or was he tipped off by his new found mentor within the new regime?

Such questioning is pertinent when contrasted with General Bakshi, for his part, by underplaying another surgical strike into Myanmar, did precisely the opposite. As it turned out in the run up to change over of army chief, men in shadows whispered against the front runner, General Praveen Bakshi. The deep selection policy had a positive start in the precedence set by the two officers superseded soldiering on.

Whether Rawat played with a straight bat at this juncture comes into question. He did not live up to the precedence in which two officers offered the chair of the army chief stepped aside for their senior being superseded: Generals Nathu Singh and Rajendrasinhji in favour of the senior most Indian officer, General Cariappa.

Operational showing

It soon became evident Rawat was selected for implementing the regime’s soon-to-unfold policy in Kashmir. Operation All Out was just that: a take-no-prisoners approach between 2016 and 2019. Rawat as its principal agent brought about a cultural makeover in the military’s approach, best exemplified by infamous ‘human shield’ episode.

The operations set the stage for the voiding of Article 370 by preemptively de-fanging any potential armed backlash. It is lost to history what Rawat’s input on this was, since the action has resulted not only in present-day aggravation of the situation but also in a long term threat lingering in Kashmir.

To keep Pakistan on a tight leash, Rawat touted surgical strikes. The second surgical strike did not involve the army directly, but the riposte of the Pakistani air force almost got its northern army commander, then visiting the forward defended localities, leaving the army rather red-faced.

But the more significant military event on Rawat’s watch was the Ladakh intrusion. Whereas early in Rawat’s tenure, the army had mobilized and held its own at Doklam, the outcome turned out vacuous. The Chinese reckoning that a similar outcome was possible in Ladakh, launched a massive intrusion in early 2020.

Rawat, by then chief of defence staff (CDS), did not exhibit any dexterity in a timely, equivalent grab action elsewhere. The army always has such contingency plans up its sleeve and its operational formations have intrinsic capability. It had exercised this capability only the previous autumn. Covid outbreak is not a plausible excuse for settling for ‘mirror deployment’, on over the last two winters, only redesignated as ‘proactive localized deployment’. This year, the army even stepped back from the Kailash range, which it had taken over amidst some auto-backslapping last year.

Apparently, CDS Rawat was persuaded that Chinese comprehensive national power was improbably of the order that a regional power, India, could not indulge itself in a perfectly legitimate and militarily plausible, localized, border war. Arguably, Rawat can be faulted for taking the counsel of his fears in his advice as the principal military adviser to the defence minister.

For its part, the government got the advice it bargained for, having chosen a counter-insurgency expert as top military adviser. So enamoured was Rawat with ‘grey zone’ war theory - on which the army doctrine put out under his tutelage is based – that the military appears to have concluded conventional war is passé. Since this emphasizes the ‘half front’ of the ‘two and half front war’ formulation put out by Rawat, it inserts the army into an essentially civilian domain, leading up to the logic articulated by the NSA that civil society is the new threat to national security. 

Elusive Jointness

Rawat’s approach to war-fighting played out in his controversial public face-off with the Air Force. To universal surprise, he admitted to a view that the air force was but an extension of the artillery. This appears a hangover of 1962, when the air was kept out of the conflict. The air force, with a self-belief as a service with a strategic purpose, was quick to publicly contradict Rawat.

A similar run in was with the Navy. While the silent service wishes for sea control capabilities, based on carriers, Rawat instead plugged for a sea-denial capability built on submarines. The argument reached such proportions that Rawat skipped the last Navy Day ceremonies, instead scheduling a lecture at Ajay Singh Bisht’s pocket borough, Gorakhpur.

With turf wars as this, Rawat’s legacy, being associated with the inception of the joint theatre command concept, is dead at birth. Rawat over-interpreted the press note on the appointment of the CDS. The mandate given therein does not state require front-specific joint theatre commands, pressed for by Rawat.

Rawat was unable to see through the politician’s ploy of shooting from his shoulders by not providing him with political direction. Rather than calling out this bit of political abdication on the part of his political masters, he instead went for a bottom-up solution, ordering the services to come up with studies on theatre commands. Though Rawat ran out of time wrapping up jointness, his successor must convince political masters that their investing political capital is necessary.

Inroads of ideology

It is for historians to unravel if Rawat’s forays into the headlines from time to time – the latest being his defence of lynchings – were because he sat on a difficult chair in the worst of times or because he was a regime acolyte. In favour of Rawat, it can be argued that seeing institutions fall like nine-pins around him, perhaps his foremost worry was to preserve the military from a similar fate. A choice to sway with the political ill-wind in such a case could arguably be taken as a pragmatic one. Unfortunately, in Rawat’s case there is no evidence yet that he ever had it mind to defer to the right wing political line only for pragmatic reasons: to ward off worse to come if he were to embark on confrontation. Clearly, the lessons of Admiral Bhagwat’s sacking reverberate through the decades, as perhaps they were meant to.  

However, the foot-in-mouth syndrome that persisted all through his tenure prevents unambiguously ruling out that he was not purveyor of an ideological line, impardonable in a uniformed office holder. Till biographers tell us otherwise, Rawat will have to be held partially accountable for the departures from traditional civil-military relations in his time at the helm. 

https://www.newsclick.in/Gen-Rawat-Political-Statements-His-Swan-Song

Why Gen Rawat’s Political Statements Should be His Swan Song

From General Rawat’s latest verbal assault on liberal sensibilities, the answer to the question in the title is unclear. He is reported to have made adverse observations on the leadership of the counter Citizenship Amendment Act agitations, intoning that resort to violence and arson is an inappropriate direction for leaders to take their followers. He was presumably referring to student and political leaders who are spear heading the agitations across the country. He has received across the board criticism for his pains.

Since this is not the first foray by the general into politics, it bears wondering as to where his gumption comes from. Clearly he has a sense of impunity that can only be result of his being hand in glove with his civilian masters. This is borne out by his care in always speaking in their favour, be it in his earlier interventions on Kashmir related issues or, once famously, his take on a political party in Assam. Whether he exercises his own volition or he is his master’s voice is moot, since both possibilities are calamitous. If the former, then it is military meddling in politics and, if the latter it is politicisation of the military.

In the present case, there may be more pressing personal reason. He may be reminding powers that be that he is still around to take over as the first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). Now if only they would sign off over the next four days before he retires on the appointment shortlist being shepherded through the bureaucracy by his ethnic kin, the national security adviser, Ajit Doval.

Alternatively, the explanation could well be simpler: he is habituated to putting his foot in the mouth. Doing so at this juncture only helps him land a sinecure in case he misses the CDS boat. His predecessor managed an ambassadorship in a nondescript island that would otherwise have been tenanted by a joint secretary level diplomat. Bipin Rawat’s ingratiating himself with the regime by periodic parochial political statements through his three years as head of the army positions him well for a larger, if inconsequential country.

An empathetic explanation is that he has been ordered to do so, and, disciplined soldier that he is, has only discharged his obligation of obedience to his civilian masters. Since internal security is part of the military’s remit as its secondary responsibility, he has a duty to preempt its worsening. The frontline internal security force, its paramilitary, is stuck in Kashmir. The armed police are drawing flak for being obviously communal. The military too hit the streets early on in flag marches in the North East.

In case the situation deteriorates further, and there is no guarantee it won’t in light of the ruling party stakes in the West Bengal elections coming up next year, then the army may willy nilly be sucked in. An early indicator of this apprehension was statement of the eastern army commander extolling the Citizenship Amendment Act as yet another instance of hard-nosed decision making by this regime. His headquarters at Kolkata would then be the hub for firefighting in case West Bengal were to go down the path of agitations.

Precedence has it that India has been very sensitive to security in West Bengal. Its intervention, initially by the intelligence and military in a proxy war and then by the military in an ostensibly humanitarian intervention in East Bengal, was triggered inter alia by the fear that unsettled conditions in Bengal could be exacerbated by Maoists, who were rather active then. Even today, Maoists are close at hand in the jungles, having gotten as close as Junglemahal as recently as early this decade. Besides, agitations involving Muslims could witness jihadi penetration. A jihaid-Maoist combine could prove the proverbial perfect storm.

Therefore, preemptive discrediting of the agitations before they intensify and spread may have been considered necessary. This is a possible rationale for the army chief to have his say. Whats App University has already put out its latest research that Bangladeshi Muslim illegal immigrants trooped up to Lucknow clandestinely and are responsible for the mayhem that prompted Ajay Mohan Bisht, aka Yogi Adityanath, to take tough action.

Arguably, this is to stretch the security rationale somewhat. But without such a sympathetic stretch it is implausible that the army chief has any role in commenting on the counter CAA agitations currently ongoing. No wonder his latest mouthings have drawn swift umbrage of the doyen of the military old guard, Admiral Ramdas. 

This implies a mundane explanation is more apt. The army chief is at his old game of political partisanship. The first salvo in this was fired off, as mentioned, by the general in Kolkata. Incidentally, the general in Kolkata is a regimental mate of the army chief. He was allowed to shoot his mouth off earlier too, having at election time intervened to back the ruling party’s case that there were no surgical strikes before the post Uri terror attack surgical strikes. He was then the military operations head. This bit of partisanship on his part in effect bust the Congress’ claim that it had conducted six such strikes in its time at the helm.

The controversy then went on to involve the northern army commander discrediting his predecessor at Udhampur, retired general Hooda. Since Hooda had undertaken to write up the Congress’ security doctrine, that informed its manifesto, he was seen as proximate to the Congress who needed to then be taken down. The government deployed the northern army commander for the errand, who dutifully, no doubt under orders from his chief, stepped up.

The foregoing shows up three generals as making political interventions in favour of the ruling party: the army chief and two army commanders. The army chief has been front runner for CDS post. The northern army commander was earlier in the lineup for army chief position, but has since been outpointed by the front runner, Naravane. Since the parameters for the CDS post include deep selection from among the senior three star brass from all three services, the northern army commander has his hat in the ring. Perhaps the eastern army commander also fancies his chances, since while the post has been sanctioned the incumbent has not been named as yet.

It is of a piece with the manner of roll out of its decisions by this regime. Recall the lines after demonetization, the commercial chaos after the GST implementation, the lock down in Kashmir after its demotion to a Delhi administered territory and the easily anticipated challenge met by CAA. More pertinently, note that there was no evidence of success at Balakot. Similarly there was no evidence of a downed F-16 to show after the Pakistani counter to Balakot. Instead, there were two Indian aircraft wreckages – one Mig 21 and a helicopter. Given this record of tripping up, it cannot but be expected to slip up on its CDS rollout.

Prime Minister took to stage at the Red Fort to announce the position. Since the parameters were not quite drawn up by then, the hard home work only got down since. This enabled the brass to get into a competition to show off their respective competence for the job. The now retired air chief was an early bird in this game in unnecessarily during election time trying to draw attention away from the procedural short cuts taken by the regime in its handling of the Rafale purchase. He fully well knew that the controversy had nothing to do with the efficacy of the Rafale but tricky conduits of campaign funding. That only the silent service, the Navy, has stayed away, aware that the odds were stacked against an admiral landing as the first CDS incumbent, only serves to prove the other contenders had CDS in their sights.

This unseemly advertisement by members of the brass of their amenability to the regime’s political and ideological position is fallout of the unnecessarily hasty announcement at Red Fort. Instead, the home work done – the mandate making was wrapped up last week with the CDS to head a department of military affairs in the defence ministry – the decision could well have waited for another grandstanding opportunity for the prime minister, perhaps till next Republic Day. 

The CDS rollout has resulted in debasing of the uniform and the credibility that goes with it. The CDS thus can only have an inauspicious beginning. If any of the current day front runners are finally appointed, each could easily be viewed as a compromised choice, and especially so if it is General Bipin Rawat. On this count, it is best that his latest political intervention be taken as his swan song, lest the nation have to suffer another three years of his addiction to partisanship.

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Welcoming the new army chief

One file is likely to go through the bureaucratic mill rather quickly over this week. Ajit Doval, no stranger in this part of India for his dynamism, will likely pilot the file of his ethnic kin, General Bipin Rawat – to whom he owes much for implementing his Kashmir policy with gusto – for as the first chief of defence staff (CDS). The ticker on television at the time of writing has it that the government has cleared the mandate of the CDS. All that remains is to reward Bipin Rawat for his services in Operational All Out that set teh stage for Amit Shah’s August constitutional initiative on Kashmir by allowing Rawat another two years to loyally serve the regime.

To its credit, however, the government has done well to appoint Lt Gen MM Naravane as the new army chief, though the post of chief of defence staff (CDS) that was widely expected to be announced simultaneously continues without its first incumbent. One good thing about Naravane’s elevation is that it blocks Lt Gen Ranbir Singh from the position, unless down-the-line the government makes another change when it gets round to appointing the CDS – if Rawat does not make the cut.

It is not unknown for an incumbent chief to get an extension. Gen GG Bewoor’s extension is precedent. It allowed Indira Gandhi to set the popular and strong Lt Gen Prem Bhagat to pasture in the Damodar Valley in order to usher in Lt Gen ‘Tappy’ Raina, to cap off her kitchen cabinet of Kashmiri Pandits. In the event, Raina disappointed her by steering the army off the emergency. So Rawats chances have not dimmed as yet.

But then Rawat had competition, from his own northern army commander, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh. Singh also went out his way to establish his credentials on amenability with the government. He engaged in two public spats – albeit via the media – with his predecessor in his appointment, retired Lt Gen DS Hooda. The issue they indirectly faced off over was whether surgical strikes after the Uri terror attack were an innovation or were they merely an extension of what the army had been mounting all through the preceding decade and half along the Line of Control (LC).

The first exchange between the two generals was in wake of Hooda’s position taken at the last edition of the annual military literature festival at Chandigarh last year when he opined that the hype surrounding the surgical strikes was unwarranted. He was referring perhaps to the government only two months prior indulging in a bit of self-congratulations when starting off on the run up to national elections the following year when it observed the second anniversary of the surgical strikes as the Parakram Parv.

The second round of disagreement between the two was just as elections drew to close. The military operations had untimely from an elections point of view claimed, apropos nothing in particular, that the surgical strike was a unique event. Hooda had by then been contracted by the Congress party to write up a national security doctrine for them that informed the security part of their manifesto. The army’s raising of the matter yet again at election time was as if to discredit Hooda and his liberal doctrinal take, though even Hooda’s doctrine endorsed surgical strikes as an arrow in India’s deterrent quiver. Ranbir Singh, yet again unnecessarily and with eminently questionable timing, waded in by backing his military operations colleagues. For his pains, Ranbir Singh remains in the higher appointment race, if not as army chief for now, then as CDS, since CDS is open to deep selection from the ranks of three-star brass.  

The good thing about Naravane’s appointment is that both Rawat and Ranbir Singh would no longer be able to impact directly the army’s apolitical culture. Both have gone out of their way to signal political like-mindedness to the government, which has compromised the army’s long-standing apolitical ethic. Even if Naravane shares the world view of the government, he has been discerning in his speech so far and on that account is a welcome change from the verbosity – if not bombast – of his immediate predecessor.

The only known occasion Naravane signaled his acceptability for the government was when he was appointed vice chief from his army commander post at Kolkata, seen as a step up to being front runner for taking over as next chief. He had said that India’s transgressions of the Line of Actual Control with China were twice as many as Chinese incursions up to their line of territorial claims.

Since the mainstream media keeps up a lament over Chinese incursions, it was a useful addition to open domain knowledge that India was way ahead of the Chinese. Perhaps, Naravane was signaling that the eastern army had not slept on his watch, making it as active – even if less visible - in staring the stronger foe, the Chinese, as Ranbir Singh’s northern army tackling the Kashmiri insurgency. This was to the government’s credit since it had political dividend in projecting the government being strong on defence in first place and keeping China at bay with the Doklam stand-off as centerpiece.

As an aside, it bears reflection that none of the generals in tactical level command connected to Doklam made it to next rank. Does this mean India blundered into the stand-off and muddled through before being bailed out by deft diplomatic footwork by S Jaishankar, then foreign secretary, and Mandarin expert, VK Gokhale, the current one? This explains in part Modi’s craven call on the Chinese strong man at Wuhan later and the elevation of firefighter, Jaishankar, who since retired, to head the ministry. This perhaps explains the hyper-alertness of Naravane’s army, signified by double the number of transgressions of the LAC, movements up to India’s claim line on the Chinese side, in order to recreate conventional deterrence post-Doklam.

More significantly from the discussion on Naravane’s suitability from a civil-military relations point of view, the general early on in Modi’s term, speaking at a seminar at Panjab University, Chandigarh, as then head of the army’s training command, reiterated the secular credentials of the country as among its core values. This echoed the section on values underpinning national security and military doctrine that find mention in the joint doctrine of 2017. This perhaps led to his continuing to cool his heels in Shimla even has his junior Ranbir Singh sped off to command the prestigious and India’s largest northern army. Naravane’s move later to head a field army out of Kolkata seemingly rehabilitated him, after partial eclipse by Ranbir Singh, in the race for next chief.

Such moves are significant, since the last time a junior skipped the queue for field army was with Bipin Rawat taking over southern army even as his senior, the first Muslim general in a quarter century to reach army commander rank, Lt Gen PM Hariz, continued in Shimla. In the event, Rawat outpointed both Hariz and the then frontrunner, Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi.

The other good thing from Naravane’s appointment is that the government appears to have got over its Pakistan and Kashmir fixation. When it appointed Rawat to head the army, it had let on that his expertise was required for ending the proxy war and insurgency in Kashmir. Perhaps it believes that extant violence indices indicate that it has managed to end the proxy war and insurgency. It can now turn to the more significant rival, China. It is not as if Naravane is a spring chicken when it comes to counter insurgency, having commanded a battalion of the Rashtriya Rifles, or against Pakistan, having headed a strike corps. However, his expertise is on the China front, with stints as defence attaché in Myanmar and brigade and division command in the north east.

This will help India get over its Kashmir obsession, that would have otherwise continued had Ranbir Singh, who oversaw the recent lockdown, taken over instead. That Rawat and Ranbir Singh did not provide the right military input India’s misconceived Kashmir and Pakistan policies is evident from the constitutional initiative in early August. India flirted with a war that could potentially go nuclear, an unwarranted price to pay for the ruling party to indulge its ideological agenda.

Civil-military relations on even keel require military advice uncompromised by ideological convergence. It is not for a military head to tell the government what it wishes to hear. That Kashmir will stay as a head ache – on account of India’s missteps and his predecessor’s pliability – will keep Naravane to the till in Kashmir.

At the mentioned seminar, Naravane called out the lack of traction of the political track with Pakistan, despite the reactivation of the LC. He virtually predicted the escalation that resulted and the death of prospects of a negotiated return to a pre-existing ceasefire. Now he is better positioned to act on his instinct. He can convey the same piece of advice. Having seen that a hard-nosed policy has limited utility, the government could reverse course. Could it be that its appointment of Naravane indicates a budding policy shift?

At the Panjab University seminar, which was on Pakistan, he drew analogy from Pakistan's case, saying, "This (Pakistani praetorianism) is in stark contrast to India where the armed forces owe allegiance to the Constitution, and not to any party, person or religion." He would do well to keep his words to the fore. The state of civil-military relations he inherits is best illustrated by the recent statement by his successor in Kolkata, Lt Gen Anil Chauhan, praising the government’s Citizenship Amendment Act as another instance of hard decision making on its part.

Kolkata oversees the areas that are likely to see most instability from this Act and its follow on legislation, on the National Register of Citizens. With unrest bound to proceed till next end decade occasioned by following through with this ideological tilting at the windmills by the government, the military may well give up any thought of measuring up to the China threat with its hinterland beset by agitations over detentions camps into the decade. As a first step he may have to rein in Chauhan, incidentally, the military operations head who was seconded by Ranbir Singh in the above mentioned second tiff with Hooda.

By this yardstick, Naravane is the right man and at the right time for the job. Now if he will only advise the government - prone acting hastily on its ideological and parochial political compulsions – to keep ideology from contaminating strategy.

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