Friday 5 August 2016

A MILITARY COUP IN INDIA?
(Edited Version)
Deepak Singapore                                                                                                         Daily Pioneer 
 (As edited by Samuel Dhar)                                                                                     Friday, 05 August 2016 
                                                                                                                                  
It’s a known fact that the military in India is simmering. If they are not given their due, there is likelihood of the proverbial, 'Reap what you Sow'.

Whether our Government openly admits it or not, the recent aborted coup in Turkey has come as a shock and forced a reality check at home. It is but natural, for the political establishment, to wonder if such a turn of events can ever find resonance within our Armed Forces. 

The Turkish Armed Forces are the second largest within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It is a professional military — secular, well led, well trained and fully equipped for their role. Given that the modern Turkey as we now know, owes its birth to the intervention of its the then Chief, General Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its history has a number of Military interventions.

The details of the present unsuccessful coup in Turkey are scant and speculation abounds, regarding its motives and the reasons for its failure.
The manner in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his pro-Islamist party have responded, has raised many questions around the World. 

If the coup in Turkey was organised to prevent the secular fabric, binding the country, from being subverted, as some suggest, then its abject failure is a cause for concern. It raises grave doubts about the perceived secular outlook of the rank and file of the Armed Forces. Despite supporters of the President taking to the streets, the rebel elements of the Armed Forces  should have been able to easily suppress the unarmed civilians and police on the streets of Accra. That they could not, shows that elements sympathetic to the Islamist cause within the forces sabotaged the planned coup. NATO and the West have much to worry about.

In our context, analysts, have arrived at the same conclusion, though for differing reasons, that our Armed Forces will never indulge in such a treachery. 

A section believes that the Armed Forces are highly professional, extremely well disciplined, rooted in the ethos and traditions imbibed by our British masters, of the Military being totally apolitical, with total subservience to the civilian  masters, the bureaucracy and the politicos.

Some others, like Steven Wilkinson, who in his book, 'Army and Nation : The Military and Indian Democracy Since Independence', deals with this subject, and questions such a premise and points to the Pakistan Army which comes from the same lineage and yet has a long history of interventions in domestic politics. 

Wilkinson is of the opinion that our Military rank and file, though seething with anger at the deliberate lowering of their status, vis-a-vis their civilian counterparts, has been de-fanged and “coup proofed” by a series of measures put in place by the bureaucracy and its political masters.

As per Steven, the measures include  a steep decline in its protocol precedence and perks, diversifying its ethnic composition and giving overriding powers to the civilian bureaucracy within the Ministry of Defence in every aspect of military functioning, including selection of senior ranks.

In addition, large paramilitary forces under the Union Home Ministry have also been formed to “ring fence” the military and act as countervailing forces against it, if and when required.

Finally, Steven suggests that the senior hierarchy has been made to remain mute and continue to toe the Government line through a well planned lure of post-retirement crumbs, such as an ambassadorship here or a governorship there or a membership of the Armed Forces Tribunal. 

Both the above theories have merit. Given the divergent growth profiles of the Indian and Pakistani Armies following independence, comparisons to the latter Army, however, have little relevance . 

One cannot also not lose sight of the fact that over the years, the Military, especially its leadership, have been keen votaries of our democratic process, keeping in mind that no Military has the ability to successfully run a vast country like India. 

In the above regard, the wisdom of the Military Brass, which did much to keep our democracy stable and functional through trying times too,   must be applauded, despite the utter lack of governance, near absence of political leadership, continued loot of treasury by crony capitalists and an almost non-existent criminal justice system over decades.

Notwithstanding the above, it must be pointed out that neither traditions nor ethos, however deeply embedded, will ever be a reason enough to stop military intervention. 

That any Military can either be totally “ring fenced” or “coup proofed”, is akin to living in cuckoo land. The East India Company made just that mistake in 1857 with disastrous consequences for itself and those who served it. While we may prefer to call it our First War of independence, the spark that led to the conflagration was an angry Army, extremely upset at the manner of its treatment that felt slighted by Company officials and its own officers.

We need to face the truth head on that the military is simmering for a number of reasons, too well known to bear repetition. That an erstwhile Service Chief was referred to by the esteemed Raksha Mantri as 'Chotey Loag'; that the Government could not be bothered to call the Service Chiefs and extend them the courtesy of explaining the reasons for their objections against the shabby treatment of the Military by the Govts approval of the 7th Central Pay Commission, speaks volumes of the arrogance of those in power. 

If the above was not enough, the Armed Forces continue to be hampered by serious shortages in manpower and critical equipment. the demands of the three Service Chiefs have fallen on nearly deaf years. 

All of the above coupled with the ongoing Hindutva thrust across the length and breadth of our Nation, has resulted in clear divisions within the ranks of all the three Armed Forces, from top to bottom. Indications also exist that all is not well in the relationship between the officers and the PBOR, with a section of the latter becoming critical of the officer cadre.

The Government would do well to remember that angry men with guns , that too of the finest Defence Forces in the World,  are dangerous.

The Govt must also weigh-in the fact that there are three Army divisons deployed in close proximity of our Capital. The memory of the panic created in the Govt hierarchy, at the reported news of the move of mechanical columns of the Army towards the Capital from neighbouring Haryana, when Gen VK Singh was the COAS, is still fresh.  The Defence Secretary had at that time been recalled from a foreign engagement. More telling was the fact that the Defence Minister was unable to summon up enough courage to personally speak to the Army Chief.

Now we don't really want that, do we? The Government needs to take urgent corrective measures to assuage this growing anger in the rank and file of the Defence Forces. It must recollect what the sage Chanakya said over 2,000 years ago, which remains relevant even today :

           “While the Magadha citizenry endeavours to 
         make the State prosper and flourish, 
         the Mauryan soldier guarantees that the State 
         continues to exist!”

The writer is a military veteran and consultant with the Observer Research Foundation_

3 comments:

  1. This is very serious concern to any nation like ours where politicians with help of beaucracy demoralizing their own arms forces. Mr Modi and Jaitley take a serious note of the said article.

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  2. Your article is thought provoking and requires special attention by the government. Over the last seven decades there were lots of changes in the profile and thinking of the service personnel. They are not the ones with the earlier ethos with which the services operated, fought wars and lived cohesively. Even before entering service, the service personnel presently get their preset religious and political leanings which was not so in the past. These aberrations further influence the service personnel specially in the PBOR section to disobey their officers at the nick of the time. They are now more qualified, paid far less compared to their own officers and their civilian counterparts, they get false and true inputs about their service conditions and the apathy they suffer in the hands of the insensitive government and their own seniors in service, all these are available in the media at the touch of the keyboards. All this will lead to an unwanted situation if the government adopts its ostrich mentality that all is well as it was decades ago. After all, a soldier is drawn from the common man in our society. A stitch in time to correct the anomalies in the living standards of the PBOR by the government will save the very fabric of the discipline in the services and the command and control structure in services can be reverted back to that existed earlier.

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  3. The very fact people are thinking of a coup shows things are on the downslide and such a possibility is not unlikely. The ill treatment meted out to the service personnel by the successive Pay Commissions and the way the senior babus treat the military officers cannot go without undesirable consequences. I think a military coup is no longer a question of whether but when. The paramilitary forces cannot stop the Army juggernaut if and when it decides to move. The politicians and the Babus are playing with fire.The earlier they take measures to stem the rot the better for the country.

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