Transcription
But all the politics aside, it is also important to understand what such memoirs mean. What are the rules that govern them and what can we learn from this current controversy? We have top generals help us decode that. Joining us now on the show, we have Major General Yashmore. Also with us is Lieutenant General Raj Shukla. Lieutenant General Shukla, I want to start with you first. Good evening. Thanks very much, both, for speaking to us.
You know, General Rawat has now said that his book was never published. How do we make sense then of this entire controversy that was revolving around an unpublished book? What really happened?
This General Rawat episode, if you may call it that, should turn the spotlight on two critical issues. One is that should memoirs by senior army commanders, leaders, be written? Should they be released? And should they be read? And two is the deeper issue of the civil-military relationship, a subject to which I have devoted my entire career. Now, both these issues, in my view, are extremely salient. So, let's take the first one.
See, as India steps into the big league, what we are now, the fourth largest economy. Look, it tells us we are third ranking in terms of comprehensive national power. We need to step up our game in national security and specifically this business of higher defense organization and, uh, what we call the civil-military relationship, where I think there are issues of deep insights, deep nuances, and many of these nuances come from memoirs. So, books like "War in the High Himalayas, 1962." There is a book by General VK Singh, not the chief, but an officer from the signals, about 12 remarkable military leaders. They must be read.
A few months back, I was at the release, or I spoke at the release of a book by General NC, which was titled "Alone in the Ring," which means the chief of the army staff is alone. He is by design a hot potato. What General Rawat said, he has to take decisions which will be of great consequence to national security. Let me quote to you General HR McMaster, who was, you know, national security adviser to Trump. He's written a book called "At War with Ourselves," and on a lighter note, the first chapter of that book, if we know Trump, he's titled "You're Hired." The second chapter is "You Are Fired." He was actually fired. After I'm here, and he recounts how to release that book, he had to get clearances from the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon. So, memoirs must be written. They must be released. They must be read. They are a tool of professional military education. These books form prescribed reading for JCs, senior command, defense services, staff college. That's how military leadership grows.
But the point I think which General Rawat and the publisher both are making, that when you are really to privilege communications with the chief of army staff, is they, prior to release, they must have the concurrence of the government. Now, that, for some reason, did not happen, and that remains the, the mystery. And I'll tell you why it's so important. I'll just take 30 seconds before I yield the floor to General Moore.
I was in the MO directorate. I was a brigadier when the Henderson Brooks report was to be released, and Mr. Kuldip Nayar was pressing for its release. And through Mr. Habibullah, who was the chairman of the Information Commission, he came to MO directorate, and he was putting pressure on us. We said, "Sir, the army has already, you know, we've been defamed enough for '62 because we were at fault there. The, the Brooks Henderson Brooks report carries passages of core commanders crying in ops rooms, chiefs being helpless." But we said, "They are larger issues of statecraft here, foreign policy, boundary disputes." Mr. Habibullah sat with that in a corner, and after one and a half hours, said, "We cannot release it." And it is very different from when we quote the United States. The United States fights distant wars. Vietnam, there are no immediate boundary disputes. In our case, it's very different. So, I'm the short point is, General Rawat has the right to write his memoirs. They must be written. They must be released. Everybody gains, but they have to have clearance, clearance from the government because there are broader issues involved.
With that, I'll yield the floor to General Moore, and then, you know, join the conversation later.
General Moore, do you think that this would have actually led to a healthy conversation on what lessons can be learned, had we not got politics involved that has left the waters?
And that, I'll, I'll come to that after General Moore speaks.
Exactly. And I think General Shukla has cleared all the myths around this entire thing. Memoirs must be written, and they, they're not only for serving officers. There are a large number of young people who wish to join the NDA, the IMA, the, you know, forces, young and otherwise also. Large number of people wish to, they learn about the military. So, memoirs of senior officers like General Rawat, how did he join NDA, his life as a young officer, I think 95% of the book is all about his life, and those must be read by young people across, or even older people in India and abroad. So, that's me. But yeah, that point, there are two contentious issues in the book. One is, of course, this entire thing of higher defense management, decision-making, and my take is, have we learned any lessons from Kargil? At least that time, we were honest enough to have a group of ministers. We went into deep analysis, border management, higher defense management, and that is the time when we recommended, we must have integrated theater commands and CDS, and, you know, ID, all these things came up post the deep analysis. We took the military, took along with the civil leadership and the bureaucracy on the lessons learned in Kargil. But here, on this particular, just five years, but there's nothing much that has come out as far as how was the decisions being made. We are not talking of personalities here, but we should know what was the decision because now we are dealing with China. Because otherwise, the next generation will never know when another problem comes up, 10, 20 years later. So that is one.
The other issue in this book is about the Agnipath scheme. Somehow, that is not being discussed now, but when the initial, the excerpts were released, he has written that there is a quote attributed to him, which was available, [clears throat] in the social media, "bold from the blue," key, how Air Force and Navy is accepting a scheme like this. He never accepted it. He probably recommended 75% reduction and 25% could be wasted out after four years. So that is also an issue, I think, which is somewhere there in the book. So, both the issues are again, as Shukla said, civil-military relationship, uh, you know, higher decision-making, operational, how, how are our senior officers performing under stress? Otherwise, it's all okay. Every year, almost year two year, we have turnover of GOCs, core commanders, army commanders, and chief. Sometimes nothing much happens in their entire tenure, but it is rarely when we have this kind of a national security issue on our borders. There were huge skirmishes, we lost a CEO and 19 other ranks. We need to know a little bit more. And only if we discuss, we debate in a healthy environment, will we learn lessons. If we don't want to discuss and debate, then, uh, you know, you, we will really not know what happened, and we will not be able to, you know, analyze these issues and learn from them. So, I think memoirs must be written. Probably some bit of this could have been handled two years. The book, either those portions could have been deleted initially itself, could have been handled between the publisher, General Rawat, and the and the hierarchy. But now, now the, I think issue has gone beyond the publisher and the and the chief.
And both sides have got their backs up now. You know, it is more about politics rather than what the military details are, including what has now become a political slogan. General Shukla. Now, it is not even about now, people are debating what is that supposed to mean? Was it abdication? Was it a free hand?
So, you know, I think it starts with a cultural issue. I am from UP. If you tell me, what does it, what do I interpret? I will say, the politician is telling the military man, "I know nothing of this stuff. I respect your professional wisdom. You do what you think is appropriate, and I will stand by you." And what else does the politician say? He's not going to tell you, "In phase one, you do this. In phase two, you do this." So, that is one point. The second point, I'll make, I go back to General Padmanabhan. General Padmanabhan said that when Mr. Vajpayee gave him the orders for Kargil, and he asked, "Sir, what are my specific orders?" He said, "Now, that is the way the politician speaks. The art of generalship lies in inferring this, and therefore, it is an area of ambiguity. It, it requires, you know, careful calibration and trust."
If I may just go back now to '71. Military to military, there's an outstanding guy whom we don't debate, Sagat Singh, one of the best core commanders we've ever had. General Aurora, knowing Sagat, tells him, "Sagat, when you reach the Meghna, or if you reach the Meghna first, you will not cross him." Sagat says, "Yes, sir." But when Sagat reaches the Meghna, General Aurora rings him up and tells Sagat, "Sagat, you have reached the Meghna. You remember what you told? I told you." And Sagat turns around and says, "Sir, I'm a core commander. I see opportunity across and Dhaka beyond. I'm crossing at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow." Now, if he had, if that operation had not succeeded, he would have been court-martialed. But that had succeeded. We created a new geopolitical reality. So, it is not about these bland statements. Political-military relationship settles questions of war and peace. And that's why what General Moore said, that Kargil review committee business is so important.
Let me make two issues. And here, General Rawat raises some good issues. This China Study Group has outlived its utility. Now that the CDS has been formed, the chain of command must flow either from the political leadership to the theater commander, and that was the whole purpose of theater commands so as to reduce these bureaucratic layers, or from the political leadership to the CDS and the theater commanders. The China Study Group is good for peacetime confabulations. It does not work in war. Deterrence needs to flow to the brigades and the battalions. It has not happened. We must really examine why should a China Study Group? And if that happens, then you will lead, lead to these kind of issues. So, I agree entirely with General Moore. And if I may make just last point, you know, this, these issues must, cannot be left to the military.
Cargill review committee, the author was Mr. K. Subramanian, the father of Mr. Jaishankar. What a brilliant mind. When he spoke of theater commands and, um, uh, you know, uh, the DIA, the DIA was created because he wanted the military to take its gaze beyond the LAC, LAC, look beyond, shape your environment, what you call hemispheric influence. The theater commanders were supposed to have a coy diplomatic role. Look at instabilities in Myanmar and Bangladesh. We have reduced it to issues of air, R, and as if it is all about that, you know, that bandra bant between, sorry to use a Hindi, I mean, I mean, I'm not, not sorry, but that Hindi phrase reflects it pretty well, the distribution of vacancies between the three services. So, I think both General Moore and I are making a point that these deep issues of higher defense organization need to be debated by civilians. Militaries have never reformed on their own. They need these civilian intellectualism to push them to reform. And I think those will be the lessons which we, we should carry from this, shall I say, unfortunate General episode.
And which is why we need to move beyond the sloganering that we are seeing so far. General Moore, what is the thing to do at this point? And what do you make of that one thing that has become, uh, you know, the buzzword today, that one slogan? It is again, there's so much a fog in these things and in the narrative. What exactly happened? We have only heard what, as a chief, the pressure on him to take decision. What has happened earlier, right from April onwards, when this thing was crisis, was he told that you will not fire? That part we don't know. So why did he go otherwise? I'm sure any military leader, say, we spoke of Jan Sagat Singh, Jan Manekshaw, we have had some brilliant, we did, you know, we surprised, shocked, I think brilliant operation by Indian Army. Again, the, the orders were, the intent was clear, but here was something held back from the military, that you will not fire. That is why he was going, asking on telephone. That part we don't know. So maybe, maybe that is why. Otherwise, I think in the military sphere, whether it is on the Line of Control, with here, or anywhere else, and right from '71, right from actually after '71, we changed a lot in our thought process. We became a proactive from strategic defense. We started even in our military exercises, our thought process as military leaders, we were now looking in offensive plans, doing things, maneuver warfare, you know, use of me. Jan Sundarji, I think the most brilliant mind Indian Army produced, J. Sundarji, and one of, some of us were seeing him very closely, heard him many times, read his books. So, you'll encourage people to read, which I was not.
What about the Official Secrets Act, 1923? What is the meaning today? That is why today, how many officers have written books on CI? Myself have been, you know, great proponent of small team and covert operations. There are a number of people who have done. We could write books which foreigners will read on on military operations and, you know, young leadership. But this restriction of how much you can tell, what you can tell, it inhibits writing skills. And if you don't read...
Is the case we heard of General VK Singh's book, where he was booked for talking about India's external intelligence. He was booked under the Official Secrets Act and subsequently is still waiting for his book to be out in the public domain. General Shukla, wanted to make an intervention, sir.
I wanted to make this point. Uh, General Moore spoke of General Sundarji. I was the commandant of the War College, and General Sundarji had been one of the commandants. So, one day, I was sitting, and one combat paper fell out, and it was titled "India's Nuclear Something Something." I saw in his own hand, General Sundar's scribble, and I compared that with India's nuclear doctrine. It was very nearly India's nuclear doctrine. That is the value of scholarship and brilliance. You know, people make this mistake that the military doesn't need scholarship, doesn't need intellectual rigor, that they couldn't be anything more further from the truth. We need people who ideate well, who act well, who execute well, and who narrate well. And General Sundarji is the foremost example of that.
The second issue, you know, and I will just take 30 seconds. This whole business of writing national security strategies, why it is so important. General McMaster makes this point that somebody like Trump, I mean, we know how, shall we say, how impatient he is with these documents. When he started figuring the 2017 National Security Strategy, he said, "My whole attempt was to get Trump to own it." So, I used to send him drafts. He would read them reluctantly. I would get to own him. And that has now resulted in what we call the Dondro Doctrine. It is on the military leadership to get the politician in so that this narrative expands. It doesn't have to be. There has to be day-to-day interaction. Trust has to be built. And perhaps the onus is both ways. And when you do that, see, India today is in a very happy space as far as civilian control is concerned. I mean, nobody questions civilian control. You look at the crisis that China is in, very deep crisis of gender. Pakistan, of course, is a basket case. But from this happy space, can we go to a more productive civil-military relationship? If we do that, India will become this great power that we all, you know, aspirationally wish to be. I think that should be the central lesson from this episode of General.
You know, here's hoping that in this ugly controversy that we've had, trust doesn't become a casualty. And at least we can walk away having learned the uchit lessons, the real lessons. For your wisdom, thank you very much, General Shukla, General Moore, for having joined me. Thanks for watching.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you.