Modi government politicising armed forces is a dangerous pointer to the future
Recent instances of political statements by senior military officials all the way to the top are worrying. The military, including the Indian Army, Air Force and Navy, are not supposed to make political statements, which are increasingly released in the press, or even printed in the press, apart from being discussed in the media.
The civilian leadership has not only stood by, but by its actions, including a refusal to remind the Army of its restrictions on statements on controversial political matters, shown its duplicity.
Both PM Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley have allowed the Army, most importantly the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Bipin Rawat, who superseded two more senior officers as decided by the political executive, to have his unfettered say.
The April 9 incident in which a Kashmiri shawl-weaver Farooq Ahmed Dar - one of the few Kashmiris to vote in the Srinagar by-polls where polling was just 7 per cent - was arrested by a military force led by Major Leetul Gogoi and used as a human shield, is an example. Major Gogoi claimed in a public statement made during this controversial episode that Dar was a "top stone-pelter".
Stone-pelters do not vote. He said this while the Army's Court of Inquiry was still deliberating on this incident, which is against Army discipline. Dar was tied to an Army jeep bonnet, with a placard around his neck, and had been by 5 pm driven 28 kilometres to a CPRF camp.
When his brother, the sarpanch and deputy sarpanch, went to the camp and asked that Dar be given drinking water, it was refused. He was released at 7pm. The motorcycle he was driving was not released for several days.
It is a commentary on this episode that the national media got to know the details in the last week of May. That long interval is intriguing.
General Rawat defended his decision of giving Major Gogoi a commendation even when the Court of Inquiry was in session. The COAS claimed he was aware of what the decision was going to be. Obviously, this was allowed because of political intervention from the PM downwards.
Worse happened later. General Rawat in a long interview to the Press Trust of India in late May, reported in the national press, categorically stated that he would be happy if the Kashmiri stone-pelters took to weapons, because then he would be free to retaliate in kind.
As for the rest of the people, he felt that they should be scared of the Army, even though the Army was there to defend them. This is completely against military regulations and rules in a majority of countries throughout the world.
It is also a flagrant violation of the Indian Constitution. The fact that the political leadership has turned a blind eye to these violations is a dangerous pointer to the future.
Now a serving Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam, a faculty member at the National Defence College, has also expounded his views in public (The Indian Express, June 15, 2017). Defending Major Gogoi, AVM Subramaniam writes: "...this was a young Assamese major who understood the intricacies and complexities of hybrid warfare in (a) semi-urban terrain."
Apparently this officer does not know the terrain in which the Lok Sabha constituency of Srinagar exists. Major Gogoi's intervention was very much in the urban part of the capital of Kashmir.
"Hybrid warfare?" Where was the hybrid warfare there? The AVM responding to critics states that, "they are way off-target when it comes to understanding the Indian Army and how it is coping with the challenges of the proxy war in J&K."
While two reputed political theorists are wrong in their comparison with General Dyer's terrible act at Jallianwala, even senior Army officers like Lt General DS Hooda, then Northern Area Commander, have called for talks with separatists and student leaders in Srinagar in August 2016, a month after Hizbul Mujahuddin leader Burhan Wani was killed.
If this is how the NDC faculty theorises such issues, no wonder Major Gogoi's act of humiliation and anti-Constitutional activities against Indian citizens in Kashmir might be replicated elsewhere.
Clearly, AVM Subramaniam fails to respect the fact that the turmoil and proxy war will not be won primarily by the gun, but by winning over hearts and minds. Brutal treatment by gung-ho officers will be remembered for a long time, and exaggerated by the people of the Valley as yet another example of harsh and biased rule by the security forces.
A former Northern Area Commander Lt General HS Panag has pointed out that in this episode, the Army's traditions, regulations, rules and ethos have been overtaken by "the mood of the nation".
The last Northern Area Commander DS Hooda detailed the controls and discipline of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), clearly pointing to the need for even the Indian Army to continually maintain discipline, including the protection of civilians.
It is imperative that the necessary lessons be learned and implemented, and this sorry affair not be elevated as a fine military strategy which it is not.