https://thewire.in/security/is-modi-regime-conditioning-armed-forces-dissent-subversion

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/the-armys-bombshell-into-the-domestic

The army’s bombshell into the domestic sphere

At a seminar at an intellectual hub of the Indian army, a general speculated that the Pahalgam attack may have been a ‘trap’ set by Pakistan to get India into striking back.

Discounting that the converse could be speculated on equally plausibly, what detains us here is what the general goes on to say.

This is especially so since it is not self-evident from what the military informs on his talk. It also seems to be a departure from what the seminar was about to begin with.

Reportedly, he said that, “countries inimical to New Delhi have been trying to replicate what happened in Bangladesh, in India. The yearlong farmers’ protest, the agitation against CAA and the situation in Manipur, (he said,) was part of a larger ploy to destabilise the country and to prevent it from being ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047.”

In short, in a seminar advertised as on ‘disruptive technologies and future warfare’, when - per the military - he is ‘exploring how technology synchronises strategic communication across services’, he instead indulges in what’s but plain and straight-forwardly political-speak.

The text has not yet been made available in the open domain, being perhaps in the compiling stage of the seminar proceedings, it is hard to grasp how the political line he plugs fits in with his topic ‘Weaponsing the Narrative’.

Apparently, slides showcasing anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests and Manipur were trotted out by the general to depict these instances ‘as part of information warfare,’ that accompanies so-called ‘colour revolutions’ instigated from without for regime change.

He brings into military’s seminar rooms a conspiracy theory – that an erstwhile global hegemon is out to sabotage the regime, using the instrument of democratic agitation by motivated stakeholders ranging, in his imagination, from farmers to the usual suspects, Muslims, and - not to forget - Kashmiris.

In effect, the general does ‘weaponise the narrative’, but against democratic dissent provoked by the regime’s missteps and ideological propensities.

This brings up the question if a serving general can indulge in blatant political-speak and if the military should be lending a forum for such purpose.

Reportage from the first edition of the Ransamwad has the usual coverage of the usual worthies. The only other talk that found mention in the media was of this general, indicating that even an otherwise compliant media picked up the sound of a potential bombshell.

It is not known if the military was similarly sensitive. Was it privy to the content of what the general was to say prior? Has it taken umbrage against the forum being abused?

The troubling thing is that the military may by now be inured against seeing the general’s obvious politicking as such.

This can be on two unedifying counts: one, that it is likeminded, and, two, that it is too wimp, under the ministrations of this regime for over a decade, to roll-back the well-regarded penetration of such thinking within the military.

The first would not surprise.

Afterall, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) earned his blue-eyed status by seconding his ethnic kin, the then army chief, on the anti-CAA agitations. The army chief in question went on to be his predecessor as the first CDS.

Since his chair (which incidentally per rumours is to fall vacant next month) is open to all three-stars, it is unlikely this politically garrulous two-star general is auditioning for it. From his current and previous appointments its evident he has been put to pasture, so may only be signalling for less.

Greener pastures lie ahead for such voluble generals, from joining regime-friendly retired brass-hats on their breezy speaking circuits. Recall when last heard, the general was busy using info-war techniques on Kashmiris disaffected by the hollowing out of Article 370. His then boss at Chinar Corps, a self-styled info-warrior, is doing fine by this yardstick out of uniform.

Of the second, the army’s genuflection to ‘apolitical’ has singularly failed to deter. No wonder, the video on an ‘apolitical’ army was withdrawn once. Generals shooting their mouths off is no longer unknown.

Whereas it can be argued that they are doing their info-war turn, it is excusable at a stretch if and only if no Indian community or legitimate stakeholder is disparaged in the bargain.

The army has no business lending its reputational weight to pejorative inuendoes such as wanton claims that anti-CAA protests were ‘part of information warfare’.

The subtext is that Muslim and liberal participants in the protests were stooges of a proverbial ‘foreign hand’, which, in this case, is shorthand for our friendly neighbour – to where protestors have ad infinitum been invited to migrate.

Since this was reportedly part of the slides of the presentation – and not off-the-cuff answer to a question as the other nonsensical mouthings of the general are – it has seeming imprimatur. In hindsight, his earliest appearance appears portentous.

His invite to the forum can easily be seen to be complacence on part of organisers, mistaking the general’s service in Pakistan, where was an attaché, and in Kashmir, where he was the info-war minder, as relevant background.

However, it cannot be ruled out that there is a politicised cabal out to polarise professional spaces, who may serve as conduits to forces outside. It stands to reason that where the majority is somnolent politically, it takes but a few political entrepreneurs in uniform to reset the organisation’s compass.

If so, spring cleaning is overdue.

The timing of the general’s presentation made at a location housing the army’s largest officer presence suggests that it is no coincidence, but could well be a considered opportunity by forces-that-be to implant a skewed perspective into the military’s mind.

Two ingredients of the scenarios posited by the general exist current day.

Exponentially strained relations with the a ‘strategic partner’ exist at a time when the regime facing its most significant convergence of challenges, from a potential backlash to voter disenfranchisement possibly aggravated by ‘tariff wars’.

Does it anticipate democratic direct action ahead, that it wishes to pre-emptively delegitimise? Is the regime conditioning the military into believing that democratic dissent amounts to subversion? Does it wish to inoculate the military with diversionary opiate prior?

There is no call for the military to view the events where people have taken to the streets such as in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and, indeed, in Pakistan, with any prejudice. When institutional checks and balances breakdown, people tend to democratically even the playfield.

There is no call for a military to have a position on any disturbances a government encounters. It has to stick to the rule-book, irrespective. Its role does not require an ideological overlay.

On the contrary, having such blinkers on will turn it into just a more muscular version of the Khakis in khaki-chaddis in Delhi and Manipur during respective crises.

Instead, as antidote to the good general’s potion, it may like to timely reprise lessons from its showing in Gujarat.

The theoretical problem with ‘weaponizing narratives’ the general surely elided in his talk is that some among the intended targets are domestic, including voters. ‘All is fair in love and war’ is not wholly applicable in such cases.

A practical problem is that Operation Sindoor continuing, and the next possibly five-year war promised as ‘soon’, the domestic space can only continue in the line of fire of the regime’s information war.

This, when it is steadily losing its mojo, can only escalate, catching not only the common citizen in its crosshairs, but its most vulnerable ones – the minority - at that.

Since influence operations are the flavour of the season, the military must in the current circumstance tread tenderly (p. 27). It needs reminding that its existence is over double that of a self-important entity currently celebrating its centenary.

 https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/whats-really-colonising-the-military?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=i1fws

https://thewire.in/security/whats-really-colonising-the-military-mind

What's really colonising the military mind

The military’s implementing of Prime Minister Modi’s decolonization dictum was on display yet again, this time in the renaming of Fort William as Vijaydurg.

Possible hypothesis on the name change are:

· A benign view of the military’s alacrity is that India’s is an obedient military, subordinate to the civilian masters.

· The army has read the tea leaves and is selective of the battles it picks. It perhaps intends to ride out such punches, if not the regime itself; bowing to the wind better than being blown away.

· Its strategic in allowing the regime some leeway, for the regime’s attention for its organizational projects. The three services are in a competition to bend. When the navy has been rather supple, can the army be far behind? Though the Air Force came up with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ tune for Beating Retreat, it is not quite neck-in-neck, since the Air Chief is against airing dirty linen.

· Maybe the army is periodically throwing the regime some bones.

· It’s also not impossible that its leadership comprises believers, over-eager as are nascent converts.

· Perhaps the commanding general in Kolkata is currying regime’s favour, quite like the current Chief of Defence Staff did once from the same perch, pronouncing on a student agitation.

Why fret?

Irrespective of which of these holds water, the army’s alacrity can be laid down to the army leadership being from the Great Indian Middle Class. It’s been brain washed for some thirty years, the duration the army incubated the current leadership.

It appears the regime may be close to having the military leadership it wished for and the budding Hindu Rashtra, a military it deserves.

Sensibly, the regime is proceeding post-haste to redo the military. It wishes the military to first shed its past skin, so that it can slip into the one it has in store.

The regime having time on its side, it is not possible to expect the military to take a stand.

It can be expected to continue down its ‘apolitical’ road, oblivious that under the circumstance of the Chanakyan – surreptitious, stealthy, subterranean, surely – assault on India’s verities, to be apolitical is political.

For now, the military is best advised to be go slow, shirk, disrobe leisurely.

What’s at play?

If ‘Vijaydurg’ is its substitute for ‘Fort William’, then it must engage more intimately with alternatives thought up for it.

The alternate chosen is out of sync with the people and the place, as pointed out by a former army chief, a local to boot.

Linked as Vijaydurg is the great warrior general, Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, it is of a piece with the army installing statues of the Maratha king at two other places, neither of which the legendary patriot had any connection with – Kupwara and Ladakh.

For its part, the navy’s statue of the Maratha king - later felled by strong winds - was at least mitigated by the navy’s roleplay as legatee to the king’s exploits at sea. (Never mind that an admiral, Kunjali, was Muslim, prompting the navy to change the name of a Colaba helipad that bears his name - and that too in the pre-Modi era!)

There is no such redeeming feature in the army’s action, with locals – less in Kupwara where they are understandably muted – querying it.

The then Maharashtra chief minister inaugurating of the one at Kupwara suggests where the funds come from, providing a clue to the intent.

It’s clear the military is being put to furthering an agenda. Its leadership – with bios invariably touting alma mater National Defence College - cannot be so naïve as to not know what that is.

The proliferation of Shivaji likeness in unlikely places owes to the appropriation of a secular, progressive, modernist and humanist historical figure by the Right Wing. (Never mind that they stand for precisely the obverse, or rather, the appropriation owes precisely to that variance.)

Shivaji’s resolute fight against Aurangzeb - Hindutva’s Darth Vader - forced the wily Emperor to spend the rest of his life campaigning austerely in the Deccan.

Shivaji’s challenge is interpreted - in the Right Wing’s worldview - as the first blow against India’s initial colonisers, its Muslims.

Thus, the name change in Kolkata is a double-blow: more obviously against British colonisers, but also, more subtly, against Muslims.

Further, in Kolkata, it helps the onslaught on a stronghold against Hindutva: Bengal, the other being the deep South.

Ideologues know best erasure is a preliminary and necessary step to rewriting history.

By erasing the part of history of Bengal and its people that gave Bengal a head-start into modernity over the rest of India, they hope to subdue it. The insertion of Hindutva icon is to recreate Partition’s divide.

On a wider note, the privileging of Shivaji is the regime’s way of ‘unifying’ India. It assumes diversity is a threat. Therefore, the emphasis on ‘One this, One that, and the ‘Other’’.

Unifying narratives, as one woven round Shivaji, are supplemented around historical figures as Mahabir Borphukan in Assam and Bhagwan Munda in Adivasi India.

The former is to build the ferment against ‘illegal immigrants’ which even Trump could envy; while the latter is against Christians, explicable when ‘British’ is collapsed with ‘Christian’.

It places a Christian ‘Other’ on par with the Muslim Other – in order to construct a Hindu identity and, in turn, unity (‘ek hai toh safe hai’).

This is increasingly necessary, troubled as the regime is by the imminent exposure, heralded by the Telangana caste census, of the Grand Indian 15:85 Faultline, wherein 15 per cent lord it over the 85 per cent majority.

A DIY kit

There are two possibilities, neither of which are edifying: one, either the army is acting in connivance; or, two, it is being dictated to.

Rajnath Singh has a former military general as principal adviser in his office, a post created for him.

The incumbent ordinarily ought to have alerted the Raksha Mantri, since he would know the military ethic, even if it evidently escapes Singh.

Its possible that the army furnishes the list of 75 prospective decolonization initiatives, while the replacement draws on back links with the Right Wing behemoth.

When confronted with criticism on his redecoration of his office annex, that witnessed the relegation of the iconic 1971 War victory painting and the plaque with the army’s leadership credo, the Army Chief apologetically accepted three ‘golden ages’: the British, the Moghul and the era before that.

However, the fort’s renaming soon thereafter suggests that while his heart is in the right place, demonstrating spine might be needed.

For that, the military must engage Ali-like in a ‘rope-a-dope’ trick, resorting to a theaterisation-like merry-go-round.

The military must vet the Replacement Dharma for any repositioning entailed in relation to the Constitution.

The regime’s innumerable protests to the contrary only aggravate suspicion that these serve as cover for its designs on the Constitution, a pre-requisite for formalizing Hindu Rashtra.

Simultaneous steps to politicise the army are a dead give-away, since these but ensure the army does not rally to a guardianship role.

Reduction of the salience of the army in the national security scheme and in national esteem is evidence.

Diminution is visible in the army being at butt of memes (‘not a game changer but a name changer’) and brasshats as bookend for politician photo ops.

Worse is in placing the military afoul of the national security interest, such as in renewed jollity with China without a reckoning over the three ‘buffer zones’ in Ladakh.

Such undercutting of the military contradicts Rajnath Singh’s homily: ‘A robust security system relies on a strong military. No nation can develop unless its military is powerful.’

The regime must be apprised to the three paradoxes its actions bestir, in order that, hopefully, it treads more gingerly:

· The more it hollows out the military, the more likely it will seek to preserve itself.

· The closer it gets to Constitutional tinkering the more the military’s guardian role comes into play.

· Disempowering the military internally, necessarily militates against empowering it externally.

Notwithstanding that, the military will do well to check on which of the hypothesis behind its name changing binge holds water, and shore up against keeling over.