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Why Naya Bharat needs a Jameel Mehmood

Even as the Indian armed forces engaged in Operation (Op) Sindoor, some concerning headlines this side of the border collectively call out for tempering of the elation in its wake.

Here, the incidents in question are first listed, followed by a caution.

It's not all that glitter is gold

One, with the hot-pursuit of terrorists who perpetrated the atrocity at Baisaran meadow failing, Kashmir witnessed the demolishing of houses of militants with controlled explosions, including of those uninvolved. The operation was by night and in at least one instance, neighbouring houses were also damaged. The security forces involved refrained from releasing official information on the action.

Two, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar has opened an inquiry into “unconscionable, unacceptable acts” off the Rakhine coast in Myanmar. Allegedly, under the cover of darkness, the Navy dumped Rohingya refugees – who had been corralled from Delhi and transported by air to the Andamans by air - into the sea. (It would be a pity of the aircraft for move to Andamans were furnished by the air force.) Worse, allegations include sexual misconduct by unspecified escorts aboard the vessel.

Three, the Eastern Command informed of killings of 10 armed cadre of an unnamed armed group near the border in Manipur by the Assam Rifles. A Myanmarese group involved in the civil war against the military-led central authorities has since questioned the encounter. Apparently, the group was against the ongoing fencing of the border in the area; also objected to by local communities.

Four, the Sikh clergy denied deployment of air defence assets within the Golden Temple complex, forcing the army to distance itself from the statement of its air defence chief and local army commander. It appears that army was countering an earlier propaganda plank of the Pakistani military that improbably held that the Indian side had targeted Golden Temple during Op Sindoor.

For Indians to also refer to Golden Temple in a mirroring information war is to unnecessarily involve an Indian community in intelligence games. Whether the Temple witnessed a ‘surfeit of drone and missile attacks’, in keeping with the intelligence on threat to the Temple, is questionable.

Further, the commanding general in Amritsar in his media statement held that consequent to the Pahalgam attack, ‘the nation’s anger under able leadership took the form of Operation Sindoor.’ In Hindi, he describes it as ‘prabal netritva ke adheen (under bold leadership)’. Since the reference to the ‘able and bold leadership’ can only be to the political masters of the military. This is of a piece with the air force’s shabash: “…has been possible only because of budgetary and policy support from the government of India in the last decade." Both are egregious.

Five, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan’s new book just hit the stands. In it, the general has opined against any need for a written national security doctrine (NSS). Evidently, the leading military authority, in face of expert opinion to the contrary, provides covering fire to the government that has not been able to come up with one for over a decade.

Further, the timing along with its aim – “a cogent viewpoint…as to how the Indian Armed Forces are transforming…and their steadfast contributions towards realization of the national vison of becoming ‘Sashakt, Surakhshit, Samridh and Viksit Bharat’ by 2047” – lends ballast to the ruling party’s surge, capitalising on the military’s operational showing as is its wont.

Get up, stand up

It was not always this way. The military has been known to retain its lights even in face of political pressures. Its reputation for professionalism rests on this feature, of truth telling.

In the Nehruvian period, General Thimayya’s confrontation with Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon is well known. General Manekshaw, in keeping with Indira Gandhi’s view, reassured Indira’s cabinet that it would be premature to take down Pakistan in April 1971. General SK Sinha as Western Army Commander held a different perspective from Indira Gandhi on how the then nascent Sikh extremism should be handled. He was superseded, and the rest as they say is history. The military consistently pushed for nuclearization, even when the political class dithered. A naval chief was sacked, inter-alia, for intercepting gun-running through the Andaman Sea for Myanmar rebels favoured by the then defence minister.

General JJ Singh, though initially in favour of a peace deal over Siachen, changed his mind. General VK Singh was not above keeping the bureaucracy on tenterhooks during his stand-off over the date-of-birth issue. From the turn of the 2010s, the military stood for a two-front threat perspective, in face of foot-dragging by successive governments. In Kashmir, the army withstood pressures for rollback of its special powers, though operational circumstance made it appear feasible. The army shied away from deploying in Central India against Maoists, though termed the graver threat to national security.

Don’t give up the fight

Have things changed over the last decade?

In Kashmir, the army abandoned the ‘velvet glove’ in favour of solely an ‘iron fist’. The air force went along with the shift towards a smaller number of Rafales at a higher cost. The army stood askance as the ruling party capitalised on its surgical strikes for electoral gains, using the army to organise Parakram Parv. Its operations’ head then denied surgical strikes were previously conducted. The air force hid its blue-on-blue helicopter accident till the elections were over, while maintaining a façade over the Balakot strikes. The army maintained a stiff upper lip on the extent of Chinese intrusions onto Indian territory. Lately, the air force was reticent on its losses.

Withholding information amounts to turning the information war inwards, to keep citizenry in the dark and the parliament uninformed. Willy-nilly the dividend is yet again to their political master, embarked on yet another campaign on the military’s shoulders.

It appears the military has abandoned taking a position on a professional matter professionally arrived at. This is colourfully put by a middle order politician as: ‘forces are bowing down to Modi.’ Veterans ruing such a state of affairs is testimony.

State capture by the right wing appears near complete.

So now you see the light, ay

Brigadier RR Palsokar, the commander of Mullaitivu brigade, brought out a heart-felt account of his command tenure at one-star rank. Anyone of the generation that witnessed or participated in the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) would know Mullaitivu as a hotspot then, and later as the site at which the Tamil Tigers took their last stand.

The Brigadier recounts a dilemma he faced towards the end of his command when the IPKF was recalled to the mainland by VP Singh on the change of government.

The Perumal government propped up by India was wary of ending up a foundling. The intelligence agency, perhaps with the concurrence of Indian diplomats in Colombo as Jaishankar and Hardeep Puri (‘Viceroy’ Dixit had likely left by then), wanted to steady their protégé in Jaffna. The Citizen’s Volunteer Force (CVF) was thought up.

While Perumal’s coalition herded Tamil youth together for the ‘boots on ground’, the agency ferried in weapons. What the project had not reckoned with was the commander on the ground in Trinco, Major General Jameel Mehmood.

Not lost on anyone in IPKF at the time - including this author - was that another fiasco was in the offing. A CVF company of underage youth rounded up from villages was deployed in his company area.

As Palsokar mulled over what he should do, he received a call from Jameel, whose area abutted Mullaitivu. Jameel told him what he had done in Trincomalee; going to the camp where the CVF was being assembled and asking after who were volunteers. Those who were not volunteers were marched out to rejoin their families. Palsokar’s recall in his own words:

Now came General Jameel’s crunch question. What was I going to do? I tried to tell him what our divisional headquarters had told us. He then asked me a direct question, what did I think personally? I said that I would like to do what he did, but I was not sure if I had either the authority or the guts to do so. General Jameel’s response was, ‘are you a commander?’ That settled it (pp. 169-70).

Folklore has it that Jameel, knowing that the weapons when in CVF hands would eventually get to the Tigers, took a stand. He was transferred out before the weapons were handed over to the CVF.

When I went round the CVF company in my area checking alert levels by night, I could see the luminous foresights of the Kalashnikovs from yards away. This, when I carried a World War II Sten. By when we reached Madras port on de-induction, the CVF had dissolved.

No wonder it took the Sri Lankans another two decades to clear out the Tigers; at the cost of being arraigned internationally for genocide.

Jameel was overlooked for three-star rank. On representation, he went on to command the eastern army.

You stand up for your right

Victories with stand-off weapons are laudable, but by the prime minister’s promise, the next round will be different. The Pakistanis have made that equally clear. If it turns out so, the Chinese might not sit it out either.

Instances recorded at the outset here could get to be a habit and habits we know are character-forming. If careers of officers of the Jameel ilk are not preserved, the CDS-envisioned Transformation and, in turn, Modi’s dream of Viksit Bharat will come to naught.

 https://kashmirtimes.com/opinion/comment-articles/a-republic-day-revisit-to-the-armys-leadership-credo

https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/a-republic-day-revisit-to-the-armys?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=i1fws

https://m.thewire.in/article/security/should-the-army-be-faithful-to-its-country-or-the-government

A Republic Day revisit to the Army’s leadership Credo

Jan 26, 2025

The Credo for army officers stands displaced from its pride of place in the Chief’s office annexe, where it was inscribed on a plaque on the wall opposite the famous painting of the Surrender at Dacca.

While the Surrender has been replaced by a painting – christened here ‘The Brahmin’ - the Credo has been replaced by a self-congratulatory and delusional stanza from a hindi poem.

Recall, the prime minister pitched for decolonizing the military at the combined commanders’ conference held in his home ground, Kevadia, early in his second term, ‘advising the Services to rid themselves of legacy systems and practices that have outlived their utility and relevance.’

Most recently, the supreme commander in her Republic Day address, reiterates this, thus:

… many relics of a colonial mindset persisted among us for long. Of late, we have been witnessing concerted efforts to change that mindset… Reforms of such magnitude require an audacity of vision… There has also been a fresh engagement with our civilisational heritage… An exciting array of initiatives is underway in the domain of culture to preserve and revitalise our traditions and customs.

The Credo under threat

Does the Credo, articulated first by a colonial master, number among the threatened ‘array of initiatives’?

Hopefully, it doesn’t figure among the ‘75 legacy laws, practices and procedures that date back to the British times,’ identified by the army.

To refresh memory, the Credo is an extract from the then Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshall Sir Philip Chetwode’s inaugural address at the Indian Military Academy (IMA), 92 years ago. It reads:

First, the safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time.

Second, the honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next.

Third, your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.

Reproducing the inaugural address in its journal, a little prior to the Modi era, the army’s think tank added, ‘The Chetwode adage echoes in every military establishment of India and beckons the officers to their duty.’

Now well into the Modi era, an Army Chief not finding a place for it in his office, implies an erasure, not so much of a colonized past as his political masters wish, but a revision of Indian army officers’ definition of duty.

The dissing of the Surrender is clear from the explanation that it is now gracing a ‘most befitting place’. That it now serves as backdrop to where VIPs sip tea during seminar intervals at the Manekshaw Center shows up another lie.

Is the Credo next?

As any intelligence hand knows, running an ‘asset’ involves incremental tests, with nondescript errands early in the engagement progressing to significant demands.

Likewise, the military has first been put to unexceptionable actions – change the beats at Beating Retreat, rework an insignia, rename a guest room, re-designate IMA companies etc.

Progressively, it has proved responsive to graver calls, including tweaking accounts of operational actions, such as the calling off of the 2019 Amarnath Yatra; Balakot; and Ladakh, with the latest being percentages of Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir. Also, remember how the non-descript Tour of Duty proposal metamorphosed to the monster Agniveer!

The military having cleared these, is it now to be initiated into the regime’s fold with a final assault on its professional ethic?

Is a similar exercise of wresting control over the military, as was in pre-war Hitler’s Germany, underway, only one informed by Chanakyan stealth, in slo-mo?

Hitler seized control with some blatant moves, such as the stratagem that displaced Generals Fritsch and Blomberg. Hitler, speedily personalizing command, had the German military then take an oath to his person.

In contrast, the regime – imbued as it is with Kautilyan cunning – would subdue the army to its purpose in a manner as to not open up credible allegations of fascism, imitative of inter-war Germany.

The explanation for displacing Surrender has a clue. A ‘source’ had it that The Brahmin was a reminding of the dharma.

By all accounts, the Credo has served as army officers’ dharma thus far and well enough at that, if the trust in the army is anything to go by.

But then, for the regime, unless you ring out the old, you cannot usher in the new.

What’s the beef with the Credo?

The regime can have no issue with the Credo’s second and third strictures. Both stand reinforced by the motto of the feeder institution to the IMA, the National Defence Academy: ‘Service before Self’.

It’s the first that perhaps gives the regime cause for worry: ‘First, the safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time.’

What constitutes the ‘country’ in the military mind?

Nominally, ‘country’ comprises a people and territory, the preserving of which is the foremost duty of any military. On the other hand, the ‘state’ in political theory comprises, alongside the two, a government.

Conceivably, the lack of mention of government – perhaps as a missing second line - has caught the eye of the regime.

However, it needn’t have worried.

The Credo is but the second piece of advice Chetwode had for the officer candidates of the first course IMA, the Pioneers.

The first bit of advice reads in part:

It is the paid servant of the people, and is at the disposal of the Government of the day…

This should normally dispel any lingering doubts on subordination; but the regime, as is its wont and though into its third term, instead wishes for domination in perpetuity.

Its apparatchiks will likely be exercised by the first bit also carrying the timeless stricture:

May I urge you to remember that politics do not, and cannot, find any place in Army life. An Army can have no politics. It is the paid servant of the people, and is at the disposal of the Government of the day, whatever may be the political complexion of that Government.

The regime that believes it is in saddle till Bharat gets viksit and led by one who cannot even share poster space, is unlikely to countenance an apolitical army.

Instead, it would prefer an army pervaded by its ideology, through a shift to ‘subjective civilian control’.

In military sociology, ‘subjective civilian control’ implies a military is imbued with the dominant ideology.

Thankfully, the last naval chief attaining a sinecure, the navy appears to have weathered the inducement.

The army’s turn now to prove itself, the balance of the first bit of advice is to fore:

Once there is any suspicion that an Army, or any part of it, is biased politically, from that moment the Army has lost the full confidence of the nation who pays for it. It is no longer impartial, and that way lies chaos and civil war.

By all accounts, a part of the army is by now biased politically. Indian equivalents of bearded Pakistani intelligence chief, Javed Nasir, are much visible from their violation of the dress code in sporting religious symbols even, and especially, in uniform.

Also, a regime that has emasculated the army in face of an enemy at the gates by foisting the Agniveer scheme on it, can be expected to chance ‘chaos’.

The threat ahead

In the context of his times, Chetwode predicated his advice, saying, ‘the young Indian man of education seems very attracted by politics.’

However, with the regime’s revivalist ideology resonating in a military recruiter’s primary catchment area today, his appraisal of the Indian context continues to ring true.

The Credo remains relevant, if not more so, considering even Independence Day is subject to threat of reset.

A softening blow has already been struck.

The cohesion and integrity of the officer corps has been targeted by the quantification bug hitting the upper ranks.

The army would be well advised (p. 214) to take a leaf out of the experience of the Wehrmacht, that was once in similar, if more tangible, straits.

It must ensure that the likes of operationally proficient Blaskowitz, Manstein and Zeitzler survive; that its professionally thorough Rundstedts and Rommels also develop their critical faculties; that no Jodl gets that high; while, alongside, ensuring against any Kluge and von Stauffenberg, of Operation Valkyrie fame.

This would be uphill, given that the doctrine of ‘deep selection’ for higher ranks militates against an Indian Mark Milley.

Whose army is it anyway?

Even so, the military might like to reprise the universal and perennial debate on what the military lodestar should be. It’s been visited before.

A thinking general once wrote: ‘The army belongs to the people, never to the government, accordingly, the army is answerable only to the people.’

This echoes MacArthur:

the new and here-to-fore unknown concept that members of the armed forces owe
primary allegiance and loyalty to those who temporarily exercise the authority of the executive branch of government rather than to the country and its constitution which they are sworn to defend.

There are three problems with this proposition.

One, if political masters depart from the Constitution, who is to judge?

Second is, if in doing so, the Constitution is changed, albeit incrementally and through Chanakyan subterfuge, does the military continue to standby, apolitically?

The vice president is already on record questioning the basic structure doctrine, while the president’s Republic Day address has a word in favour of ‘one nation, one election.’

An opposition leader has already faulted the regime for arraigning the State’s institutions against the democratic opposition, that has consistently, collectively commanded a higher percentage of the vote than the regime.

Last but not least is deification of the Constitution. The new Constitution must then command the military’s allegiance.

General Mark Milley’s words in retirement suggest as much:

We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it… each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price… And we are not easily intimidated.

Notable is that Milley presumes a certain permanence of and political consensus over the Constitution.

Here, a Constitutional makeover implies jettisoning a liberal, secular, federation, that breaths equality and fraternity. The ‘idea of India’ shifts to that articulated by Hindutva’s Bharat, visible in the treatment of Adivasis today in Central India.

Such change would entail two easily predictable consequences: fracture of the ‘country’, preservation of which is the officer corps’ first duty; and second, a possible ‘civil war’, that Chetwode warns of in case of politically biased military, even one partially so.

To prevent the dauntingly foreseeable - look no further than Manipur today - the military could arrive at a way station: the military should be apolitical, where it can; it should be political where it must.