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Articles: My Thoughts | NEHRU...The great SELFISH leader
- Mr. HARI BABU GUNDAVARAPU
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| The principle he followed was arbitrary, perhaps not always unjustified or unfair, but possibly wrong in places, and certainly disputable in many places. That often led to vague and irrational diplomatic arguments during talks with China or postponement of negotiations. His vacillating mind didn't stand him well against energetic and radical leaders like Mao and Zhou, both of whom were very clear about the concept of sovereignty.
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'I remember many a time when our senior generals came to us, and wrote to the defense ministry saying that they wanted certain things... If we had had foresight, known exactly what would happen, we would have done something else... what India has learnt from the Chinese invasion is that in the world of today there is no place for weak nations... We have been living in an unreal world of our own creation.'
Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajya Sabha, 1963
Instead of 'I', Nehru used the collective 'we', a clear indication of his reluctance to own up his own mistakes as a man.
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'The fact of the matter is that Nehru felt a gnawing of conscience throughout this episode. He knew that the blame for the disaster was more his than that of his loyal friend [defense minister V K Krishna Menon],' says journalist and historian Durga Das.
'The decision-making system during 1959-62 was starkly ad hoc and designed primarily to suit the personality of the Prime Minister -- who preferred to deal with these matters personally -- even Krishna Menon seldom took a stand on any point or even made a contribution when the Prime Minister was in the chair... in the Army Headquarters, it was General Kaul who had caught the Prime Minister's eye... It was not Krishna Menon who was primarily culpable for the practice of General Officers establishing direct access to politicians... It was Nehru who, many years previously, first established this irregularity,' says the then director general of military operations, Brigadier (later Major General) D K Palit, in his book War in High Himalayas.
After the 1962 war, Nehru wrote to General B M Kaul ('Untold Story by Kaul) lamenting about Kaul having been blamed and having had to resign from the army for no fault of his.
This indicates Nehru's poor sense of judgment even after the event. Practically all military experts agree that Kaul was responsible for the debacle in NEFA in many ways. He showed utter lack of the knowledge of the higher-level conduct of war. More often than not, he was found away from his HQ flying in a helicopter personally doing things best left to his staff, while crucial battles were in progress on the borders. Though he displayed personal courage and dash of very high degree, he fully justified the doubts about his efficiency then expressed by many senior officers on account of his lack of operational experience.
The roots of politicization of the army are to be found in Nehru's hatred for the man in uniform. Soon after Independence the first commander-in-chief of the Indian armed forces, General Sir Robert Lockhart, presented a paper outlining a plan for the growth of the Indian Army to Prime Minister Nehru.
Nehru's reply: 'we don't need a defense plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. You can scrap the army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs.'
He didn't waste much time. On September 16, 1947, he directed that the army's then strength of 280,000 be brought down to 150,000. Even in fiscal 1950-51, when the Chinese threat had begun to loom large on the horizon, 50,000 army personnel were sent home as per his original plan to disband the armed forces.
After Independence, he once noticed a few men in uniform in a small office the army had in North Block, and angrily had them evicted.
It was only after the 1947-48 war in Jammu and Kashmir that he realized that the armed forces are an essential ingredient of any independent, sovereign nation. But he still wanted a compact army rather than great volume, whatever that meant. Defense requirements worked out after a careful assessment of threats carried no weight with him.
For some reason, he disliked Field Marshal K M Cariappa despite his excellent leadership during the 1947-48 war that saved Kashmir. But his attempts to supersede him and make General Rajendrasinhji the first commander-in-chief of India failed when Gen Rajendrasinhji declined.
Soon after Independence he separated the army, navy, and air force from a unified command and abolished the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, thus bringing down the status of the senior most military chief.
He continued to demote the status of the three service chiefs at irregular intervals in the order of precedence in the official government protocol, a practice loyally continued by successive governments to the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats.
During the 1947-48 war with Pakistan in Kashmir, Nehru interfered with purely military decisions at will, which delayed the war and changed the ultimate outcome in Pakistan's favour. He developed a precedent to violate channels and levels of communications at that time. His penchant for verbal orders to the various army commanders, of which he kept no records, violated the chain of command.
The army thereafter reversed this trend, as there was no direct interference from any of the defense ministers in the army's job and Nehru was totally engrossed in his statecraft.
That is until V K Krishna Menon arrived on the scene.
Menon, along with Nehru, caused havoc in the army's working, disregarding professional opinion and advice, violating all channels and levels of communication and encouraging the same within the army hierarchy, which ended with disastrous results in the Sino-Indian conflict. Like his boss, Menon believed in giving verbal orders and disliked records.
Krishna Menon probably would have done better as foreign minister, but he proved to be a bad boss for defense. He disliked the set army procedures and tried to short-circuit them at every stage in every matter. He had a bad habit of treating his subordinates as if they were children. He took an immense pleasure in throwing files at the faces of senior officers. He often liked to summon his subordinates at odd times of the night to his residence for no work of importance. Insulting people came easily to him.
But the proud defense services officers refused to be cowed down. There were instances of the files getting thrown out of the office or back on the table. Some abruptly walked out on Menon without taking his permission.
So, to assert the civilian superiority over the military, Menon began to play favorites, tried to supersede capable commanders with pliant, weak-willed officers, and create protégés with, in all probability, Nehru's tacit approval. These officers naturally proved to be short on self-respect also and failed to stand up for their convictions when occasion demanded.
Generals Thapar, Sen and Kaul were literally forced by the Nehru-Menon combine to undertake actions that the military found unsound. But eventually trusting the judgement of intelligence chief B N Mullick and foreign affairs experts Nehru and Menon (in any case the highest decision-making body) that the Chinese were not serious about war and would not fight, these generals not only carried out their orders meekly but often with active co-operation.
Finally, there came a time when these generals realized that 'an armed conflict with China was inevitable'. They also knew that our army was unprepared, ill-clothed and ill-armed and that the supply lines just didn't exist in that inaccessible terrain. If war broke out, our defeat was guaranteed. It must have also become clear to them that war meant sacrificing the officers and men under their command on their direct orders. They must have also clearly understood then that the battles they were getting forced into would bring disgrace to the nation and dishonor to the army.
Later, during the 1947-48 war with Pakistan, Major General Thimayya gave an excellent account of himself. He was, without doubt, the most popular general, loved by one and all in the army. In due time he became chief of army staff. To his bad luck, that time happened to coincide with Krishna Menon's entry into the ministry of defense.
Krishna Menon was a master in the art of one-upmanship, with many tricks up his sleeve. The writer Khushwant Singh has narrated many a humorous anecdote about this habit of Menon's. To get one up on General Thimayya and the military top brass, Menon employed a unique trick. On ceremonial occasions, he would often go and sit in the front seat of the car next to the driver, putting the accompanying army chief in a dilemma. How could he sit at the back while his boss, the defense minister/chief guest, was sitting in the humble front seat?
General Thimayya found a diplomatic answer to this. He would ask the driver to sit behind and take the wheel of the car himself, and engage the defense minister in casual chat. Engrossed in his self-importance, Krishna Menon never grasped the essence of this tactic. Perhaps he felt elated that he was making the general drive him around, as he made a habit of it and extended this practice to all times, everywhere.
The differences between Menon, the defense minister, and General Thimayya, chief of army staff, grew over the former's interference in military matters and promotions and postings of officers, as Thimayya refused to be browbeaten. There came a time when he resigned in protest (possibly on the matter of promoting Gen Kaul out of turn). Nehru worked his charm and managed to get Thimayya to withdraw his resignation, but eventually spoke in Parliament criticizing the general, contrary to what he had promised.
Thimayya, the soldier, who had no public voice, was greatly pained at having been let down in this manner. The episode also showed that Nehru was capable of doublespeak and could go back on his word. There were pro and contrary views on the resignation episode. Thimayya was a recipient of considerable criticism for his resignation as well as its retraction. In the bargain, the nation was the loser.
In the short term, pliant officers got promoted. The depressing effect of this on the previously highly promoted officer-like qualities, such as fearless expression of opinion and initiative and dash, was incalculable. The era of mediocrity was hastened in the defense services on account of the politicization, which, to our good fortune, the services did make an honest effort to resist then and have continued resisting till date. With mixed results.
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