[2020 army chief General MM Naravane & Northern Army commander Lt Gen YK Joshi]

There’s at once much more, and much less, to the quotes from the memoirs — Four Stars of Destiny, of the former army chief, General MM Naravane, carried in a commentary by Sushant Singh, an ex-army officer turned perceptive commentator on military matters, published in a recent edition of the magazine, Caravan. Access to this otherwise paywalled piece is available at https://archive.is/20260202071854/https://caravanmagazine.in/security/navarane-memoir-ladakh-crisis. The quoted parts are, apparently, the most controversial portions of the book that has not so far been cleared by the Defence Ministry for public release. If the content of these quotes is the reason why the Modi regime is chary, then it is needlessly apprehensive. Because, in reality, it is more damning of Naravane than it is of Modi and his government.

But what’s the brouhaha about? It has to do with the nature of the government’s directive, specifically, the defence minister Rajnath Singh’s instructions, to Naravane to deal with a situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) created by some PLA tanks from its Moldo garrison rumbling uphill towards an Indian position at a higher level in the Kailash Range, and the Northern army commander YK Joshi pressuring him to allow the firing of his medium guns in response. The drama in Sushant Singh’s narrative refers to Naravane “making frantic calls to the leaders of India’s political and military establishment, including Rajnath Singh, the defence minister; Ajit Doval, the national security advisor; General Bipin Rawat, the chief of defence staff; and S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs”, asking each of them, in the army chief’s words “What are my orders?”

This is mighty strange, but why were Doval, CDS, and the Minister of External Affairs, Jaishankar, of all people, even on the list that an increasingly frazzled Naravane was contacting to get instructions from? Were these persons in a formally designated heirarchy whom the army chief was, protocol-bound, to call serially for his orders with an imminent clash brewing? And did these people constitute what Sushant Singh calls ” a government committee” put in-charge of developments on the LAC by Prime Minister Narendra Modi? “My position was critical,” writes Naravane finding himself between Joshi “who wanted to open fire with all possible means” and a government committee “which had yet to give me clear-cut executive orders.”

And, if the persons, ostensibly on that “committee”, were called for directions by Naravane in that emergency in 2020, why were they on that list at all? And, are these same persons still to be called for pol-mil directives that the current or a future chief of the army staff is/will be expected to get his instructions from should things heat up on the disputed border? To put it plainly, why should the army chief expect an “executive order” from any one other than the Defence Minister? And why should it be tactically detailed? Look up the political directives from US President Franklin Roosevelt to General Eisenhower at the beginning of the American involvement in World War II — when American forces reached North Africa in 1942, and before Normandy landings in 1944, and consider just how undetailed they were. Or Churchill’s guidance to his theatre commanders, from a British politician who was a known authority on military matters. Rajnath Singh, in comparison, is a provincial Hindi Belt politician, like many others in the cabinet, who couldn’t spot a military drone from a hobby drone if his life depended on it.

But the guidance that was issued, and who issued it is the nub of the story. Implicit in Naravane’s account is his dissatisfaction with the Defence Minister’s instructions. Rajnath Singh, albeit after consultations with the PM and others, as the memoir reports, advised Naravane “Jo uchit samjho, woh karo”— do what you think is appropriate. Why was that directive wrong or inadequate, and why are doubts being raised about the Defence Minister as the order issuing authority, and Prime Minister Modi charged with dereliction of duty, and of shirking his responsibility for a decision that Naravane exaggeratedly believes could have started a running war with China? Sushant Singh thinks it was the PM’s call that he didn’t make — a very questionable thesis.

In the event, Naravane decided correctly to have Indian tanks with the lead army unit get into hull down positions, lower their guns and get set to fire downhill at the advancing line of Chinese tanks — actions that stopped the PLA armour in their tracks, ending that particular incident.

This denouement raises several troubling questions. First of all, about what Sushant Singh calls an “existing protocol” — “clear orders not to open fire” till, in Naravane’s words “cleared from the very top.” Why is such a protocol there at all? That’s my peeve — what is so special about the LAC that it has to be treated with kid gloves, and even the smallest troop movements have to be cleared by the China Study Group — that apex group of Mandarin-speaking nay sayers headed by NSA, before its decisions go up the chain to the PM?

But, to return to Naravane’s narrative, isn’t Rajnath’s directive with the PM in the know not “from the very top” then? Why does he, Sushant Singh, and other like-minded people, have a problem with that? And, if as the ex-army chief says, it made for “purely a military decision”, again, what’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t all tactical decisions on the LAC, in any case, be taken at most by the Divisional commander, if not lower commanders? Why bring the corps and theatre commanders even and, more ridiculously, the COAS, into it? The real problem from Naravane’s point of view, it would appear, was that he was “handed a hot potato… [a] carte blanche [to do whatever he thought was best, with] the onus…now totally on” him, and he did not cherish it. It turns out, he did not want to make that decision, have that onus on him!

In that case, what does Naravane, and others who think like him, believe the army chieftaincy is about — endless rounds of meetings in South Block with chai and samosas/biscuits, inspections of army formations and facilities with the requisite pomp and bandobast, making speeches, taking off on the occasional MEA-arranged foreign trip, and similar fun things? Or, for taking hard decisions in crises?

But Naravane dramatises the whole thing — about his sitting “with the map of J & K and Ladakh on one wall, Eastern Command on another”, visualising “the location of each and every unit and formation” on marked and unmarked maps, and about his contemplating various factors, such as the ongoing Covid pandemic, a faltering economy, fractured global supply chains and whether the army and government “Would…be able to ensure a steady supply of spares, etc., ….in case of a long-drawn-out action? Who were our supporters in the global arena, and what about the collusive threat from China and Pakistan?” But, he reassured himself that he had the necessary reserves, and that the army was “ready in all respects” before the Hamlet in him again surfaces: Writes Naravane “but did I really want to start a war?”

Sure, military chiefs are assailed by doubts before a big operation or even small actions but, as history shows, usually these are mostly about the war/ops plan, the assets deployed and the sufficiency of resources to sustain it, and the quality of his commanders implementing it. Why was he thinking about things that are the preserve of others laterally or higher in the food chain to weigh and evaluate, which was not his remit? After all, Rajanth had handed him a “carte blanche”.

Last week, at a talk I gave to a Higher Command Course in a military training institution, a student officer, in response to my view that India and its military need to be more aggressive and assertive when it comes to war and warfighting, asked if the military should not be “more responsible” because of the economic straits the country is in, etc., the kind of talk especially from military officers that gets up my nose. Seemingly, Naravane’s type of thinking is the prevailing norm for officers slated for promotion to higher ranks. And I said to this officer what I say here regarding Naravane’s attitude: It is none of the military brass’ damn business to think like politicians or diplomats or economists. Attend on the offensively desirable military outcomes you should be delivering whether any recessive-minded government wants it or not!

Remember how the late great general and commander 17 Mountain Division, Sagat Singh, the man who singly got us the victory in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, handled the PLA with offensive disdain, and disregarded his immediate corps commander GG Bewoor’s directive, and the same protocol and CSG constraints Naravane faced, and retained the Nathu La Pass for the country in 1967 by beating up on the PLA. And how Naravane’s predecessor in office, General K. Sundarji, in his Op Chequerboard, exactly 20 years later, showed resolve to tangle with the PLA that the Chinese High Command did not expect, forcing the PLA to withdraw from its intrusion in Somdurong Chu. Imagine what a Sagat or a Hanut Singh, the great armoured commander, when he took over the same Gangtok-based 17 Div would have done with a carte blanche that Naravane was afraid to exploit.

The PLA is a puffed up paper dragon, deflate it, let local commanders mount continuous offensive tactical actions that may lose a bit of ground here, gain a bit of territory there, to make the LAC a live theatre. The army may be surprised by the dividend such a policy will fetch for its own reputation and by way of politico-strategic gains for the country with respect to its negotiating position. Being a perennial punching bag does not help.