A fine fighting force

 

 

One of the more serious and eclectic accounts of the Indian Army and the Defence Forces is Philip Mason’s 'A Matter of Honour’. After the savagery of the 1857 Mutiny, there emerged a new Indian Army "a new comradeship grew which cherished some of the old tradition". This new Indian Army, for the rest of the High Victorian Period, was one of the main pillars of the empire and of Pax Britannica, Mason notes. For the British empire, they made possible control of Asia and the Mediterranean and Cape routes, because the Royal Navy which policed the seas of the world “would have been ineffective without land forces far larger than Britain was willing to provide from the homeland".

The British effort to develop an efficient and loyal defence organisation in India was a powerful and strenuous effort which did not ease until the transfer of power in 1947. The Indian defence forces have always relied on their commissioned officers for leadership and direction. Much of that ethos, even centuries down the line, remain the same.

In many ways, the defence forces in India remain perhaps one of the two last survivors of a truly British institution (the other being judicary) in terms of tradition, values, commitment and above all, honour or `izzat’. There is something else. In the arch beginning at Ankara and ending in Tokyo, the Indian defence forces remain perhaps the only apolitical force. Indeed, it is virtually the only voluntary force in the developing world which has happily confined itself to live in the barracks, content with their mess life, regimentation and training and postings in far away corners of the country, removed by a long distance from the light and sound of civilian life. They have let the bumbling politician and the arrogant bureaucrat rule the roost without bothering to upset time-honored equations. The high attrition and death rates in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu & Kashmir and the North East, particularly of operational-level officers – fought on behalf of dysfunctional politicians – would have probably prompted a coup, or at any rate, military unrest – anywhere else. In India, it has been met with a stoic `Karmic’ calm.

Its peacetime operations are as comprehensive as its national security duties. `In aid to civilian duties’, as euphemistically put, places a large onus on them to carry out extensive relief operations in times as varied as floods, famines, earthquakes, riots and virtually everything under the sun. But it is their apolitical role which gives them the desired neutrality required for good results in operations which are strictly speaking, the preserve of an increasingly effete civilian administration.

It remains one of the supreme ironies of the situation that the Indian defence forces, which have kept the civilian class warm in their seats, should be increasingly scaled down on the protocol list of official India. In 1947, the Chief of Army Staff was pushed down the protocol list by departing British officials and newly-arrived Indian leadership, which believed that armed forces needed to be shown their place and the political leadership of the country be established firmly in the hands of civilian mandarins. In a sense, it would have to be a sine qua non for any democracy.

There are murmurs of dissent today with the steadily declining status of the Chief of Army Staff and other Service chiefs. Pushed to 29 in the Order of Protocol of the Government of India, they are way behind former Presidents, ex- Prime Ministers, members of the Planning Commission, Comptroller and Auditor General, Ambassadors and Plenipotentiaries and a host of other major and minor dignitaries. Prime Ministers beginning Jawaharlal Nehru believed that that was the way of democracies and India could be no different. Is India’s defence spending moderate? Take a look at this. The Union Budget 2008-09 allocated Rs 1,05,600 crore, or 10 per cent more than previous year's allocation, for defence. Crossing the Rs one lakh crore barrier for the first time, the defence budget looks impressive. However, the question remains whether India's military allocation is adequate for the country's economic and security interests?

With the new budget, India's defence spending has risen by nearly 125 per cent in current prices over the last one decade from Rs 47,071 crore in 1999-00. The increased allocation over the years comes at a time when the economy is growing at an impressive rate. What is important is that the present economy is more globalised than before. As the economy grows further and becomes more integrated into the world order, the need for maintaining the growth momentum and protecting the economy's global character simultaneously increases. The last thing that India wants at present, in the face of increasing signs of a global economic slowdown and its adverse impact on the Indian economy, is a disruption of the current momentum due to its political adversaries, and in this respect, her immediate neighbours present a formidable challenge.

Despite the all-round cynicism, there are highly talented professionals who are attracted nonetheless to the cause of defence. Among them, engineers, doctors, information technology personnel, journalists and others enroll and in the coming years, the figures could be going up. True, some actions recently have marred the image of India’s defence services, but those are more the exceptions rather than the rule. The British generals and administrators who identified the `martial’ races and laid down the foundation of what was to later become the British Indian Army, always believed that defence life needed to be segregated from the vagaries of civil existence. The construction of neat rows of cantonments, away from the chaos of a non-military life, was a significant pointer in that direction. A burgeoning democracy and population has ensured that the line is becoming blurred. For planners, to keep that distinction going without diluting the essence would have to be a challenge to beat all challenges.