https://www.academia.edu/44170962/NUCLEAR_HERESIES_Part_I

NUCLEAR HERESIES

Part I

BY ALI AHMED

 

Ali Ahmed, PhD (JNU), has been an infantryman, an academic and a UN official. His second doctorate, a PhD under Special Regulations from Cambridge University, was awarded based on his publications - inter-alia - on nuclear doctrine. This book is a compilation of his writings on nuclear doctrinal issues in South Asia.

 

 

 

For nuclear skeptics, who have kept us safe

 

Foreword

Nuclear Heresies is an apt title for this book. Being a nuclear skeptic but with a seat on the margins of New Delhi’s strategic community, I have been unable to come to terms with the prevalent notions on nuclear doctrine and strategy. Though within the room, I have had a seat in the back bench and along the walls of seminar rooms. From that vantage, the vacuity of what passes for informed discussion on nuclear deterrence was pretty much evident, which I proceeded to record.

In this book, I have tried to convey my skepticism on nuclear doctrinal thinking in India over the past twenty years. During the period, the doctrinal field was bubbly, though rather monochromatic. The pundits associated with nuclear doctrine formulation held forth, while their hangers-on mouthed the virtues of an imbecile doctrine, in part, for access to the high table.

The alternative strategic community was as usual alert to this from its marginalized perch on the sidelines of the strategic circuit. It lost one stalwart early on and its other leading lights were caught up with other equally salient matters as India lurched towards the Right in the period. Thus, vigour was at an ebb in the critique, even if rigour was not.

In any case, the alternative strategic community lacked the resources which the state liberally used for the information war on its people, that India is a responsible nuclear power. There is no such thing as a responsible nuclear power.

I persevered in pointing out the emperor had no clothes on, as was the case with most other issues of national security and strategy. This was inevitable from my perspective liberal-rationalist perspective since the mainstream was realist dominated, one taken over in the last decade by closet cultural nationalists who finally shed their pretenses in the Modi era.

Essentially, the book makes the case that nuclear assets, ignoble in themselves, are in unsafe hands. The Hindutva brigade cannot be trusted with the crown jewels. Just as they have muddied the rest of national security, they can be relied on to do this with nuclear strategy too. By then, realization would be too late. Therefore, this book is intended as a timely reminder to voters to rethink who they have handed over the nuclear suitcase to and withdraw the same urgently and unequivocally.

I thank my examiners for the PhD by Special Regulations for reading through this extensive work and showing their confidence in the ideas in it. This emboldens me to pass on the work here, mainly to students who can make up their own minds on what’s right for this country and region. This is the primary motivation of the book. I hope it serves the purpose of getting citizens to junk nuclear weapons, which their governments want them to think as necessary to keep safe. 

The book is in two parts, since a single volume would be rather bulky. The two parts comprise chapters, commentaries and articles penned so far this century. The major published works comprising the more thoughtful pieces are in Part I, whereas Part II comprises commentaries on the debates through these years. The two together should prove a useful trove for strategic and peace studies enthusiasts, regional specialists and military affairs afficionados. 

 

Contents

Political decision making and nuclear retaliation   5

The political factor in nuclear retaliation             21

Nuclear retaliation options                                 36

No first use nuclear policy                                 39                               

Pakistani nuclear use and implications for India  42

TNW in nuclear first use: The legal counter        56

Cold Start and the Sehjra Option                        64

Furthering NFU in the India-Pakistan context      72

A conflict strategy for India in the TNW era       80

Indian Army’s flagship doctrines                       88

India’s nuclear doctrine: Stasis or dynamism?     105

Extract from India’s Doctrine Puzzle: India’s nuclear doctrine  127

Limited War: The strategic conundrum               133

Airing the Sundarji Doctrine                              135

Limited War: An Assessment                            139

Reflection on the threat of nuclear war               142

India: Dissonance on the doctrinal front              150

Extract from IDSA Monograph No. 3: Reconciling Doctrines - Limiting Conflict 165

 

In tribute: Recalling the Sundarji Doctrine          175

 

Extract from the PhD under Special Regulations  183

  

 

 BOOK NAME: THE INDIAN ARMY: REMINISCENCES, REFORMS & ROMANCE

https://www.thebookreviewindia.org/from-the-pen-of-a-general/ 

AUTHOR NAME: Lt.Gen. H.S. Panag

BOOK YEAR: 2020

BOOK PRICE: 599.00

REVIEWER NAME: Ali Ahmed

VOLUME NO: 44

PUBLISHER NAME: Westland, New Delhi

BOOK PAGES: 272

Lt Gen HS Panag writes that having commanded two armies, the northern and central army, he had over six lakh troops under him at some point or the other. Most of them may have seen the badge he wore on his uniform since his colonel days that read: ‘Don’t do anything that I don’t do. Do like me, do better than me and do it now!’ This was his command philosophy, arrived at through inspiration from his father, a redoubtable colonel, and with experience since his National Defence Academy days as Academy Cadet Adjutant.

The leadership example of Panag accounted for his fearsome professional reputation across the service. He was known to challenge youngsters visiting his office to pushups and reputedly often came out ahead. He writes of winning his spurs with the soldiery when on a long-range patrol he lugged the heaviest load–the wheat sack–all the way. On reaching back, they carried him on their shoulders into the camp. This distinguishes military officers from the other professions, implying that not only must officers have brains but also brawn. Panag in his book brings out the brains aspect equally dexterously. He is said to have boasted on having read some three thousand books while in service, no mean feat considering soldiering is not an idyllic sojourn.

Besides brains and brawn, more important is moral fibre. Panag’s standing up to the troll brigade over the Right-Wing government’s dissimulation on Chinese action in Ladakh is an example. He led a combat group there, so knows the terrain. His commentary, along with that of a couple of notable veterans, has been of the order of speaking truth to power, which in today’s times in India unfortunately requires considerable guts. Since this book was written prior to the crisis up north, those commentaries do not figure in the book. However, premonitions of danger and what needs to be done to meet it abound in the book, indicating that had the national security minders listened there may have been no set back in Ladakh, requiring the horde of prevarication as now. His section on China is a must read on that account.

The first section in the book, on human rights, also sets him apart. On the military’s human rights record, the General is perhaps a lone ranger, testified to by his calling out the Army Chief for awarding Major Leetul Gogoi, the villain in the ‘human shield’ case.  He has used his experience post retirement on the armed forces tribunal to good effect by pointing out the gap between the army’s precepts on human rights and accountability for its actions. He was the only one to write of the second case that the Supreme Court dealt with when it allowed the army to take over the Pathribal case. In the event, the Pathribal case perpetrators were let off by the army. Panag points out the infirmity in the second case, regarding five killed in a fake encounter at Dangari, in Assam, which he prognosticated would lead to perpetrators being similarly let off. His is therefore an important voice that problematizes the official narrative of terrorists violating the human rights of security forces.

Panag flows with the tide in his section on Pakistan. He believes that the military has a role to play, the extent of which is a governmental decision. To him, India’s strategic options range from surgical strikes to limited war and include generating a fourth-generation warfare threat for Pakistan within Pakistan, what National Security Adviser Ajit Doval once famously referred to as the Baluchistan option. Even so, the first strategic option on his list is to ‘engage Pakistan diplomatically to work out a mutually acceptable solution within India’s constitutional framework and without change in territorial sovereignty’ (p. 182). He was army commander in the period when this option was being tried out.

Panag’s approach to Kashmir, to which is devoted one section, similarly carries cadences of the period of relative quietude when he was in command. He naively suggests that the Prime Minister reach out and hug the Kashmiris. Indeed, the emotional connect could work wonders, as was the case spectacularly with Vajpayee and less so with Manmohan Singh. Kashmir has been reduced to Delhi’s control rather than, howsoever imperfect, democratic control. Panag is prescient in saying that this is a set back that is yet to reveal its full extent and to play out fully. Though the massive protests he anticipated have not occurred, he cannot be faulted for not having anticipated a pandemic when the book went to print. In any case the dragnet across Kashmir suggests that the authorities were also equally worried on this count.

The other sections carry short pieces on leadership, reminiscences and on thus far unremarked military heroes. He writes these up simply, typical of a fauji. His poignant sketch of the love affair between a Sikh lad and a Kashmiri maiden is one waiting for a movie to take it to a wider audience. The story is evidence of the different life scripts that play out in Kashmir, of fear and hate juxtaposed against empathy and kindness.

The book comprises commentaries and articles by Panag on three web portals–Newslaundry, The Print and Times of India–from his retirement lair in a village in Sirhind. Divided into parts on human rights, reforms, leadership, reminiscences, conflict and unforgettable heroes, it has something for everyone, from a defence watcher to a youth enamoured with the fauj. This is perhaps the last such critical work of depth from a general since Krishna Rao’s tome. Subsequent works, such as by Shankar Roy Chaudhury, ‘Paddy’ Padmanabhan, ‘JJ’ Singh and VK Singh, and even from the formidable intellect, Sundarji, were mostly rather light (excluding here Sundarji’s writings on the nuclear question). Other than Rustom Nanavatty’s look at counter insurgency, we have not had from our generals the calibre of work such as that by Rupert Smith and Stanley MacChrystal. However, the strategic commentary over the years by veterans, such as Gen ‘Mucchu’ Chaudhury, ‘Monty’ DK Palit, Mathew Thomas, Afsir Karim, Dipankar Banerji, Ashok Mehta, Gurmeet Kanwal and Ajai Shukla to name some, has been remarkable for a nation supposedly lacking a strategic culture. Since there is more to General Panag than 6-minute reads, he must step up on his next foray for the benefit of Indian strategic literature.

Why India Did Not Go to War with China

Vol. 55, Issue No. 35, 29 Aug, 2020

Strategic Affairs

India had the military ability to evict the intrusions in Ladakh or carry out a quick grab action of its own in the early stages of the crisis. Yet, it did not exercise the offensive military options. The explanation for such strategic reticence lies at the political level. 

The Prime Minister speaking at an all-party meeting on 19 June said, “Neither have they [China] intruded into our border, nor has any post been taken over by them”? (Wire 2020). Following from this claim, a flippant answer to the question implicit in the title could be that India did not go for a military option in Ladakh because there were no intrusions. Similarly, a superficial answer to the question is that the army was caught unawares by the intrusions and could neither evict the Chinese from the Indian side of the line of actual control (LAC) or make a counter grab across it.

Evidently, the army, taking COVID-19 precautions rather seriously, had de­­ferred the usual spring manoeuvres in Ladakh. However, privileging the threat from the novel coronavirus over the Chinese propensity for periodic transgressions was owed in part to a dis­counting of the China threat at the strategic level. After all, not only had the Prime Minister, in early December last year, hosted the second informal summit in Mamallapuram with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, but the two special representatives, Ajit Doval and Wang Yi, had met at the 22nd meeting of special representatives later in the month. Therefore, for the army to have let down its guard is explicable, but subsequent relative inaction calls for an explanation.

Not having registered any strategic warning, operational-level early warning indicators were not given due significance. An extensive Chinese troop exercise reported in late May in Korla in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, close to Aksai Chin, failed to trigger an alarm. Besides, the pattern of Chinese transgressions over the past decade, such as at Depsang in April 2013 and Chumar in September 2014, has seen an eventual falling back by them. At last, 73-day long crisis, at Doklam, India had shown its resolve, leading to a belief that this would deter China.

In the present crisis, India preferred not to follow the Kargil model of evicting intrusions. India maintains force levels in Ladakh sufficient to react to contingencies such as small-scale intrusions if launched timely, before the Chinese fir­med in or built up reserves. If the opportune time is lost for early eviction or a counter grab (taking over a sliver of territory elsewhere), then additional troops would be required and as would the time for acclimatisation and familiarisation. By then, it would be too late as the Chinese, taking advantage of their better lines of communication and having seized the initiative, would have firmed in. Thus, India lamely settled for mirror deployment, or a troop build-up intended to deter further intrusions. Even as the developments in Ladakh were playing out, China had prudently taken care to beef up other sectors, evidenced by the 9 May face-off at Naku La in north Sikkim, to deter the option of horizontal expansion of the crisis by India.

It is apparent that the Chinese accurately assessed a timid Indian military response and were prepared to handle it militarily. Even so, they must have been surprised at India’s resort to military and diplomatic talks, with an expansive aim to restore status quo ante, a reversion to their side of the LAC. Five rounds of talks between corps commanders and three days of talks at divisional commander level at the military level, interspersed with four rounds of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India–China Border Affairs, buttressed by telephone conversations between the two foreign ministers on 17 June and the two special representatives on 5 July, have not unseated the Chinese from the areas of intrusion at Pangong Tso, Gogra and at Depsang. The three locations found mention in the report that was pulled down without explanation from the website of the Ministry of Defence (Hindu 2020). Despite diminishing returns, India is readying to keep troops deployed for the long haul over the winter.

Explaining the Riddle

India’s operational formations have their primary operational task cut out—of defending national territory—and have the requisite resources either under com­mand or on call. In Ladakh, not only have armoured elements been pre-positioned but air force capabilities have been enhanced by advance landing grounds. Forward basing of squadrons with advanced jet fighters, as the Su-30, has been done in the North East. Two divisions were raised over a decade back for boosting defences in Arunachal Pradesh. A mountain strike corps was partially raised for counter offensives (Economic Times 2020). Therefore, not only did India have the in-theatre resources to take on the Chinese, but also the capability to deter escalation.

Doctrinally, India has been long prepared. India’s “pivot” towards China preceded the American one under Barack Obama. Over the 2000s, having catered for the Western front by drawing lessons from the Operation Parakram in a changed doctrine, colloquially called ‘‘cold start,’’ the Indian army came up with the ‘‘transformation’’ study that built up the China threat (Gokhale 2011). This eventuated into a new army doctrine that played up a collusive ‘‘two front’’ threat (Hindustan Times 2017). Extensive preparation followed the doctrinal turn, including being among the top importers of arms worldwide, for most of these years, with much of the equipment, such as howitzers from the United States (US), headed for the China front (Economic Times 2019).

The answer for a lack of robust military response, despite the preparedness, can be looked for using the levels of war framework that includes five levels, namely political, grand strategic, strategic, operational and tactical. At the tactical level, the sacrifice of Colonel Santosh Babu and his men on 15 June in a fierce hand-to-hand encounter with the Chinese, equipped with improvised but lethal weapons, has shown that the rank and file were game for the battle. At the operational-level, the military has a measure of the Chinese and feasible operational-level options have found discussion during the crisis (Panag 2020). The culmination of India’s preparedness was witnessed in autumn last year when integrated battle groups (IBGs) of the reformed mountain strike corps were put through their paces (Business Standard 2020).

At the strategic level, it cannot be that India was awaiting the five Rafale fighters that landed in Ambala amidst much fanfare to even the balance in the power asymmetry with China. As a former military adviser in the national Security Council secretariat writes, “Power is a relational variable and therefore the context in which power is compared is certainly closer to the truth than absolute power calculations” (Menon 2018). India has a chief of defence staff, which, though a nascent appointment, could have orchestrated a joint response. Counter grab possibilities in other theatres went a-begging for want of strategic resilience. Strategic inaction can partially be attributed to not receiving a nod at the grand strategic level.

A seemingly plausible rationale for this inaction exists at the grand strategic level. The economic rationale is most compelling since India has had an economic downturn that preceded the COVID-19 outbreak. The defence budget had been attenuated over the past few years to compensate. Over the short term, the crisis has led to fast-forwarding of arms acquisitions, with attendant opportunity costs for economic recovery (Shukla 2020). Over the long term, an increasingly closer resemblance in terms of deployment density may be envisaged along the LAC, which will prove costly in terms of infrastructure costs and number of troops to be maintained. The ongoing preparation for keeping some 30,000 troops in Ladakh through the winter is a curtain raiser (Bedi 2020). Next, the efficacy of other instruments to take on China is questionable. It is a truism that diplomacy without military backing lacks credibility. Economic retaliation against China can only have
an economic backlash in light of the asymmetric interdependence.

At the political level, there are reputational costs for a rising power such as India for not using the military instrument at a juncture at which states normally resort to it; for territorial defence. Emboldened by India’s discomfiture, Nepal and Pakistan have respectively taken out new political maps claiming Indian territory. While the opportunity has been used to deepen the quadrilateral of democracies, an irresolute India can hardly be apprised as a reliable partner. In any case, the phrase deployed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, atmanirbharta (self-reliance) to generate economic self-sufficiency, if interpreted broadly as strategic autonomy, can be expected to take a blow.

Limited War Option

The preceding consideration suggests that a war may not necessarily have proven prohibitive in comparison with the costs of military reticence. Given this, did the fear of escalation stay India’s hand? Escalation is a possibility, but being known, it can be catered for. A prominent concept in strategic studies, limited war, provides some reassurance.

Limited war is the only form of war that two nuclear weapons–possessing adversaries can reasonably indulge in. The concept has been around since the Korean War (Osgood 1957). It is one in which aims are kept limited and consequently so are resources for its prosecution. Limitation can manifest in the scope of geographical spread, choice of targets, use of weapons, etc. “Deliberate hobbling” (Brodie 1959: 311) of power is resorted to by nuclear adversaries. Thus, there is nothing inevitable about escalation, particularly where military doctrine is informed by the limited war concept.

Perhaps India, going by comprehensive power indices, was deterred by the power asymmetry. The fear of escalation dominance—the capability to prevail at the next higher level of the escalation ladder—being with China may have proved dissuasive. Keeping with limited war tenets would have helped stave off the possibility of chancing up the ladder, thus neutering any escalation dominance capability with China. In a limited conflict, only usable power at the point of decision matters, which for China is at the end of a long line of communications over the Tibetan plateau in the inhospitable terrain of distant Ladakh (Menonc2018).

Even so, by this yardstick, in the similarly skewed India–Pakistan dyad, Pakistan should not have countered the Balakot aerial surgical strike with its daylight air raid on the line of control (LoC). Likewise, early this year, the Iranians should have been deterred from launching missile strikes on two US military targets in Iraq in retaliation to the US targeting an Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani. Consequently, there is no compelling case for strategic prudence for a weaker side.

Political Rationale

At the political level, the Clausewitzian logic that the “war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means,” is the most significant (Clausewitz 2008: 34). That no military option has been exercised by India suggests that there were other superseding political-level considerations. The recent observance on 5 August, the first anniversary of the reduction of Jammu and Kashmir to the union territory status, provides a clue. The consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya was supervised by the Prime Minister on this very day. Had military options been exercised against China, the more significant political preoccupation of the Modi regime—that of transitioning the secular Indian state into a majoritarian Hindu republic—would have been interrupted and its timeline disrupted. The outcome of military conflict being unpredictable, Modi could not have chanced reputational damage since it would have set back the wider political agenda. If Modi’s image and power became collateral damage from a war with China, it could potentially unravel the advance of Hindutva across the national polity and social spaces.

At the political level, there is also a non-trivial, less remarked consideration. The march of majoritarianism has been such that, arguably, most institutions have been felled by it. The military has been relatively unscathed so far. From a civil–military relations perspective, a regime with an expansive domestic agenda, which some fear includes reshaping the Constitution in its own image at some point in an indeterminate future, can be expected to exert to neutralise the military. The crisis provides an opportunity for this in some measure. Being caught off guard and subsequent inaction detracts from the military’s image of professionalism. Also, the military’s staying put indefinitely, which amounts to an LoC-isation of the LAC, will keep it to the professional till.

Thus, the answer to the question of why India did not exercise a military option is easier seen at the political level. Internal political compulsions stemming from the present government’s need to stay in power and give it a rightist orientation takes precedence. Whereas, limited surgical strikes against a weaker neighbour, have utility in terms of societal polarisation for the right-wing political enterprise, and taking on a stronger and well-prepared foe—China—can upset their political project. That is the more plausible reason why India held off from exercising the military option in the face of a compelling casus belli.

References

Bedi, Rahul (2020): “LAC Tension Means Indian Army’s Advanced Winter Stocking for Ladakh Needs Major Rejigging,” Wire, 6 July, viewed on 9 August, https://thewire.in/security/lac­-
tension-means-indian-armys-advanced-win­ter-stocking-for-ladakh-needs-major-rejigging.

Brodie, Bernard (1959): Strategy in the Missile Age, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Business Standard (2020): “Exercise Him Vijay’ was Very Successful; Mountain Strike Corps Ready: Army Chief,” 31 December, viewed on 1 August, https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/exercise-him-vijay-was-very-successful-mountain-strike-corps-ready-army-chief­­­­-119123101204_1.html.

Clausewitz, Carl von (2008): On War, Beatrice Heuser (ed), translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.

Economic Times (2019): “India to Deploy Latest American Weapon Systems for Ex-HimVijay along China border,” 13 September, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/india-to-deploy-latest-american-weapon-systems-for-ex-himvijay-along-china-border/articleshow/71108992.cms?from=mdr.

— (2020): “How India Defends Its Border with China,” 19 June, viewed on 20 August, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/de­­fen­­ce/how-india-defends-its-border-with-china/articleshow/76465059.cms?utm_sou­r­ce=con­tent­ofinterest&utm_medium­=text­&­utm_cam­pai­gn=cppst.

Gokhale, Nitin (2011): “India’s Doctrinal Shift?” The Diplomat, 25 January 2011, viewed on 10 August, https://thediplomat.com/2011/01/in­­­di­­­­as-doctrinal-shift/.

Hindu (2020): “Defence Ministry Takes Down Report on Chinese Transgressions Beginning Early May,” 6 August, viewed on 10 August, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mod-ta­kes-down-report-on-chinese-transgressio­ns-into-indian-territory/article32284188.ece.

Hindustan Times (2017): “Army Chief Says China Taking Over Territory Gradually, Warns of Two-front War,” 6 September, viewed on 11 August, https://www.hindustantimes.com/in­­dia-news/china-taking-over-territory-gradually-testing-india-s-threshold-army-chief/story-31zaiTY0X0l7PgAe4Kb24H.html.

Menon, Prakash (2018): “Stand Up against China,” Pragati, 20 April, viewed on 1 August, https://www.thinkpragati.com/opinion/4291/stand-up-against-china/.

Osgood, Robert (1957): Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Panag, Harcharanjit Singh. (2020): “India Has Two Options with Stubborn China. The Better One Involves Taking the Battle to Them,” The Print, 23 July, viewed on 30 July, https://theprint.in/opinion/india-has-two-options-with-stubborn-china-the-better-one-involves-taking-the-battle-to-them/466239/.

Shukla, Ajai (2020): “Urgent Arms Requirement in Ladakh Puts ‘Make in India’ on Back Seat,” Business Standard, 16 July, viewed on 7 August, http://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2020/07/urgent-arms-requirement-in-ladakh-puts.html.

Wire (2020): “Galwan Clash: After All-party Meeting, Modi Says China Has Not Intruded into Indian Territory,” 19 June, viewed on 15 August, https://thewire.in/politics/galwan-clash-india-china-all-party-meeting-modi-sonia.

 

Why the déjà vu over the Shopian killings

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=104450

Unedited version

Three men were killed in an encounter in Shopian last month by the army and passed off as unidentified terrorists. This version of events has been challenged by families in Rajauri claiming that the three were possibly their relatives who had gone to Shopian in search of work and went missing. The army has said that it will inquire into the matter. The police will undertake DNA testing to verify the claims of the families.

It is strange that the army requires a furore for it to inquire into the matter. If it was sure of the facts – and it must know more than it lets on – then it need not launch an inquiry into the matter. Afterall, if there is an encounter in which people are killed, it gets reported up the army’s channel. Therefore, it already has the facts. If these facts were questionable, then it did not wait into the following month to launch an inquiry. If it was sure of the facts, then there is no necessity of an internal inquiry as it now promises, but only an openness to outside investigation, in this case, to the one promised by the police.

Now, we have two investigations, an internal army one and one by the police, or perhaps just one, the army one being assisted through DNA testing by the police. If this be the case, the army needs faulting for dispensing with due diligence in its monitoring and reporting on the encounter. Surely, if the encounter was instead a ‘fake encounter’ then it has no place in the army’s repertoire. The penalty should have been instantaneously exacted last month. Since this has evidently not been done, the army chain of command was either complicit in the killings by creating and sustaining a command climate permissive of such killings, or, worse, ordering the killings.

Let us take the second, seemingly implausible, possibility first. This author as a  company commander once was privy to a corps commander dropping in at the battalion headquarters and – over lunch – suggesting to the assembled orders group of the battalion, that included this author as a young major, that the battalion needed something to ‘show’ for its presence in that hostile infested area of the north east. The corps commander explained that having been flown in for counter insurgency operations after the area was declared disturbed, the army needed to project that it was effectively tackling the insurgents. He thought it would be a good idea if the company commanders would rely on a couple of tough lads and take out a couple of civilians and depict them as militants. He said this would take the pressure of him to show results. The ever polite battalion officers saw off the corps commander that afternoon.

Since this episode was a quarter century back, there was no action taken on his suggestion, though the times were such – some seven years into the militancy in Kashmir where the corps commander had gained his spurs in command of a division – that the suggestion was made without flinching, even if received with some disbelief. With much water having flown down the Jhelum since then, it can be hazarded that not only can such demands be made, but there may well be enough volunteers in the ranks to carry them out. The demands in themselves would no doubt be cloaked as an operational necessity – such as unmistakable messaging to the militants to lay off an area of responsibility since the troops would through such killings demonstrate that they are alert. Such orders could well be obeyed since by now Kashmiris – who also are to top it all Muslims – are fair game, if the national – read majoritarian - interest is better served by some of them better dead. Recall a young aspirant politician's rueful statement recently that the only good Kashmiri politician is a dead one.  

Ten years back in a similar incident, three labourers were enticed to the line of control with the promise of work and done to death. Their dead bodies were passed off as those of infiltrators. The public tumult this occasioned did not allow the army to sweep the incident under the carpet. Instead, there was an inquiry leading up to a court martial which was endorsed by the then army commander, DS Hooda. Even so, the armed forces tribunal, with no less than a former army vice chief on it, let off the perpetrators. Sly potshots were taken by veterans, answering to the label ‘nationalist’, on Hooda’s stand and on his subsequent arraigning of trigger happy soldiers at a road barrier who shot up two Kashmiri teenagers in a passing car, calling the latter decision ‘politically motivated’. What this recount suggests is that within the military there is a counter culture – which is now the dominant culture –at gross variance with the purported ethics of the military.

Where the dominant institutional culture is this counter culture (with values aligned with the what passes for nationalism in politics today) a permissive attitude to killings such as this is extant. Not only does such an attitude allow for such killings but valourises perpetrators. Need one remind readers of Major Leetul Gogoi. When accountability calls, the counter culture facilitates cover up – such as at the infamous case of Pathribal when not only was no action taken against perpetrators, but even when called for by no less than the Supreme Court, the Court was fobbed off by the army’s inaction. It is easy to discern that the inaction owed to the accountability for the decision to kill the five unfortunate Kashmiris was at the highest door, with an operational rationale written all over it. After all, the American president was then on a visit to India and the Pakistanis needed to be painted in black. That the divisional commander was rehabilitated in another command billet and, post retirement, in a governmental sinecure, indicates illegal orders were passed on and obeyed. Therefore, the perpetrators had to be left off, lest all up the food chain would have to buy it too.

Now for the second possibility, that the command culture is so vitiated that long discredited ‘kills’ continue to be the yardstick of performance. This author had warned back when the army put out its doctrine in the public domain of ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ that it would not last the test of the next uptick in insurgency. What needed to be done was introspection over its record till then in Kashmir and an extensive education imbuing it with a democratic ethic valuing human rights and a duty to citizens caught up in such situations. The recurrence of incidents such as Machil soon thereafter and this case now does not mean that the army has failed as much as that it did not try, or, rather, did not want to try.  The public doctrine was merely public relations suited to the political circumstance of the time – of quietude in Kashmir and a ceasefire along the line of control. The army has also since been subject to the onslaught – through trojan horses within - of cultural nationalism. It can be inferred from this incident that the Othering that accompanies the Hindutva discourse has infected the army too; else how can one account for the perverse killing of three young men, the coverup and now the charade of an inquiry. The usual excuse that some army men were after awards is for the gullible and hides a systemic malady.

Command responsibility in this case must lie with the corps commander since the army commander is presumably distracted by the Ladakh front. It behooves on the corps commander to set the moral compass. If such incidents occur with accompanying inaction, whether Chinar Corps has lost its ethical moorings is a valid question. That the commanding general in Badami Bagh was last seen, with the divisional commander in tow, accompanying a bureaucrat, if a lieutenant governor, to the opening prayers at the Amarnath shrine bespeaks of priorities and levels of self-regard. If the level the army has been reduced to is one in which there are no whistle blowers and none preferring to resign rather than carry out illegal orders, then operational level leadership must face the music.

It is important that the dust not be allowed to settle on this case the way it has over other such instances. The army has to be alerted to a grim future ahead if it succumbs to yet another eyewash of an inquiry. There are far too many such episodes and corresponding inquiries going back to Kunan Poshpora that do its record in Kashmir no credit. It should not end up as yet another force indulging in fake encounters, little different from its khaki clad counterparts. It must preserve its professional backbone, lest it end up as yet another institution fallen by the wayside in the majoritarian march through this land.

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Infantry Journal, December 2019