Clouds Over Chetwode’s Credo : Indian Army’s Apolitical and Secular Character under Threat

Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode’s inaugural speech delivered on 10 December 1932 at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) Dehradun set the tone and tenor of military professionalism in India. The Field Marshal’s speech contained two pieces of advice for the Gentlemen Cadets. 

The first piece of advice urged the young cadets to remember that “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.” 

His second advice outlined the three guiding principles that place the honour of the country above every other concern of a military officer. 

In early 1930s, Chetwode’s insistence on keeping the army politics-free was to dissuade nationalist youth from joining the newly Indianized army and challenging the validity of the empire. The Indian state that was neither based on ideology or theology opted for its army to remain moored to an apolitical and secular ethos and thus Chetwode continued to be relevant post-independence. 

Today, the Chetwode’s code of military professionalism is flagrantly violated. The Indian military is no longer blasé about politics. Politics is no longer a taboo in army messes and naval wardrooms because it is openly discussed by serving officers on social media. 

The social-media posts by many serving officers largely echo the aggressive-nationalist sentiments expressed by the right-wing politicians. Only on rare occasions one gets to hear a contrarian view from a serving officer. 

Forget left-wing views, the officers who believe in Field Marshal Chetwode’s credo are also reticent. They feel constrained to bring a modicum of balance in the discourse. 

Some social media comments make one wonder if the Supreme Commander of the armed forces is the Prime Minister and not the President. The fact is that boundaries that distinguish military personnel from civilians in context of their political participation are getting eroded. 

Looking at social media trends and the brazen manner in which rabid right-wing propaganda is posted and forwarded by serving military officers, it is not far-fetched to imagine that the top military leadership in the country is fully aware of it. From time to time the military establishment has been issuing directions for armed forces personnel to refrain from commenting on social media. However, the fact that instructions are going unheeded clearly shows that there is lack of will on part of the service headquarters to impose discipline. 

Take for example the Navy Foundation, a body of former naval officers. The Delhi chapter of the foundation is regularly involved in spreading communal agenda. The Hindu reported about the 20 October 2015 newsletter of the Navy Foundation that featured an article with negative references to the minority community.[1] 

A few retired senior naval officers also informed the naval headquarters about this. In December last year the Naval Chief reiterated that “Every ship of the Indian Navy is a microcosm of India, where we have personnel from every single state, including every religion as well.” 

The Indian Navy  neither indulges in invoking any religious text before casting off or launching its missiles, nor does it employ and religious gurus to help its sailors in need. In fact, the Indian Navy, prohibits the display of images of Gods or religious symbols in sailors’ mess decks or any other part of the ship. 

One cannot deny the retired community their right to politics, but can the Naval Foundation that is directly linked to the Naval Headquarters web-portal be allowed to post communal and political propaganda material. Such partisan trends are indicative of the deep malaise that has gradually crept into the armed forces over the past few years. 

There is a distinction between serving a constitutionally elected government (the BJP) and serving the ideology (the RSS) that the government believes in. The Right-Wing nationalist discourse that conflates religion with the state has set in motion a chain of confusion. where honoring the cow is seen as equivalent to serving the country. Armed forces are an important ingredient in the right-wing recipe of aggressive nationalism. In order to appease its ideological master, the ruling dispensation at the center wants the armed forces barricaded within the sacred walls of Hindutva. Just as the Turkish army is considered to be the “home of the Prophet,” the RSS perhaps prefers to confine the Indian army to a home of some Hindu God. 

The use of armed forces by the right-wing for political purposes is a menace. The martyrs in J &K were brazenly politicized in the recent controversy in which nationalism of India’s premier university was questioned by some media houses using doctored videos. Last week, a Hindi news channel, IBN 7 interviewed Havildar Sudhir Kumar Yadav in uniform, where he spoke against the against JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, taking absolutely similar position as propagated by the RSS.[2]

Such blatant use of a serving army man in political fight is unprecedented. The forces behind this sinister propaganda are unaware of the dangerous consequences of mixing armed forces and politics. In all probability the video could be doctored, because after a few hours of its broadcast it was removed from the website of the channel, however, IBN7 did carry a story on their website that mentioned about the interview. However, if the interviewee is service personnel then it has to be seen what action army headquarter takes against him for such indiscipline. 

Ajai Shukla, India’s foremost defence journalist in his article titled “Armyism” published in Business Standard, gives us more examples where the government has involved the armed forces in religious functions like Yoga Day.[3] 

The government is scaling up the military to a pedestal where questioning or criticizing the military becomes sacrilegious and paradoxically it is engaged in ridiculing its just demands for OROP and other allowances in the seventh pay commission. Adding insult to injury, the government approved deployment of army personnel and equipment for building pontoon bridges for a private function of Sri Sri Ravishankar, a religious guru. As if this was not enough, the government acted in a ham-handed manner and arrested a 75-year old veteran, an office bearer of the ex-servicemen organization struggling for just and legitimate pension rights. 

The rightward politicization of the military is disturbing the civil-military equilibrium and militates against the tenets of a democratic state. The dangers inherent in these trends need to be debated by social scientists as well as military studies experts. These developments have the power to boost the army’s propensity to acquire political power or as Field Marshal Chetwode warned in his 1932 speech, “Once there is any suspicion that an Army, or any part of it is biased politically, from that moment the Army has lost the hill confidence of the nation who pays for it. It is no longer impartial, and that way lies chaos and civil war.” 

---

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/controversial-remarks-in-navy-foundation-newsletter/article7798041.ece

[2] http://khabar.ibnlive.com/news/desh/kanhaiya-kumar-army-sudhir-kumar-yadav-jnu-kashmir-rape-460405.html

[3] http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/ajai-shukla-armyism-116031401233_1.html

Give Military Man the Entry, or he will Kick it Open...

There are only two contenders for political power in any nation. The first is the political man backed by money and second is the military man aided by the gun. Since money is more powerful, the military normally accepts to play second fiddle to it. This acceptance of a subordinate role results more from expediency than magnanimity. While money has the strength to stand on its own feet, military often needs the crutches of the state to stand tall. However, the two normally stay together in a symbiotic relationship. 

For example, in China,  men-in-uniform are seen rubbing shoulders with other party members in the Politburo. Similarly, in America, money power vesting with the military industrial complex has ensured that the US armed forces elite are active members of the club that rules the world and garners  global wealth. It is this dubious connection of the top military leadership with the top 1% of the wealthy population that is agitating the US veterans who have fought in distant lands. As one US war veteran says, “Don't stand with the global 1 percent. Don't stand with these generals that continuously abuse their own service members and then talk about building democracy and promoting freedom." 

However, in the unique Indian civil-military set up (that has refused to change even after 60 years of independence), the military leadership continues to be debarred from entering the elite club that gives exclusive entry rights to politicians’, bureaucrats and businessmen. Having seen the enormity of dubious money transactions that happen in this shady club, the military man is feeling shortchanged for being kept out of its premises.  

There is growing perception among many veterans and serving officers that the sanctity and security of the country that Chetwode had described as the utmost duty of a soldier has been destroyed by the tainted Politico-bureaucratic nexus aided and abetted by unscrupulous businessmen. 

In the neo-liberal age, national causes look too profane and weak to be the raison d’être for the armed forces. Their association with business interests  is too obvious to be ignored. Over the past two decades, there has been considerable weakening of the state -military umbilical cord. 

I recently read an interesting blog by an army officer that once again asked the age old question – “What do I die for”? The article begins with Anatole France’s quote that the ‘soldier dies for the industrialists’. The author of the article, Col VP Singh further says, “Soldiers, today, must learn that they no more fight nation's wars but the conflicts started by inept, inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy in league with self-centered, greedy and corrupt politicians.” 

Unlike the pre-independence officer, the post-independence lot do not suffer from any guilt conscience of having served a colonial master. They have won victories for India in various wars and are not ready to buy the argument that confines the military to the periphery of power structures in the capital for the sake of democratic health of the nation. 

The trends hint at the armed forces trying to swim hard to locate an anchor. This search can either lead them to become more ambitious for political power or ferociously hanker for a trans-national alliance as an independent entity – similar to what Pakistan and many other third world armies have done by getting into a cozy relationship with the Pentagon or letting their elite mortgage them to the empire. 

We are almost back to 1950s, when the military leadership, like many good servants of the Queen, was skeptical about the ability of the home-grown leadership to govern India. The Indian military officers trained under British tutelage - had tasted - if not fully savoured - the glamour of power while working for the British flag. Post independence, the military elite thought that they would continue to be as important to democratic India as they were to the empire. However, the roles and missions of the newly independent India were completely at variance to the imperial aims. 

Leaders like Field Marshal Carriappa and General Thimmaya did try to disturb the civil-military apple cart by asserting the military supremacy. However, the progressive elements within the political class ensured that independent India’s military unlearnt their imperial lineages and were confined to the fringes of the corridors of power. The military leadership reeling under the guilt of their erstwhile mercenary connections accepted to remain a passive spectator and concentrate on their professional development. 

The generation of officers currently at the helm is witness to deterioration of political standards in the country. They have also seen the frontal assault on Indian democracy in 1975, when ‘emergency’ was declared. The question that comes to mind is, why is the post independence officer speaking up now - why did he remain a mute spectator to the growing criminalization, and communalization of Indian polity in the late 1980s and early 1990s? 

The only plausible answer to these questions is – in 1990, after the demise of Soviet Union, a new hope was sold across the world and the global herd began moving in the direction of generating wealth by hook or crook. The Indian military elite (more at an individual rather than at an institutional level) too got busy keeping up with the Joneses in the “race to the bottom”. 

However, as the gloss of capitalism started peeling off and the blatant loot of state assets started tumbling out from the closets of those who had been singing paeans of inherent virtues of neo-liberalism, the military officer could not believe that he has been fooled. 

Let us not fool ourselves and the nation by thinking that military leadership is short on respect and once they get this rather vague commodity, everything will be smooth. Because one is yet to find a military leader who questions the basics of the neo-liberal set up that is splintering the national security – they have never even once raised their concern about privatization of military that is fast usurping their turf. 

One is convinced that the battle for honour and respect that the military man is waging against the bureaucracy is just a decoy because much like the Englishman, the Indian military man too does not have any “false pretension to be loved; he wishes to be comfortable and to “make money”. The military man does not openly say it, but he also desires to be a part of the loot currently underway in the country. 

The military elite is cocksure, it has a natural life membership of the club that ensures how money is to be made and distributed within the nation, it is for the other club members to realize that they have very little choice but to make room for the military man.