Service chiefs were raring to have a crack at Pakistan after the Parliament attack, but strategic restraint won the day. Jaswant Singh’s new book elaborates on this incident and on other contentious issues
The partition of India and the occupation of Tibet by China are at the heart and root of our current national security challenges. Add to this the inherited legacy of coercive cartography, and India is trapped between the Durand and McMahon lines and the line of Control and the line of Actual Control. The collapse of four empires — the Qing Dynasty of China, the Ottomans, the British and the Soviets — has had a profound effect on the Indian subcontinent. Coupled with the ‘strategic confinement’ of India were the ‘illiterate and untrusting civilian control of the military’, the absence of strategic ideas (not just thought) and a sense of geography, often mistaken with territory. The birth of Bangladesh, the second Partition was the ‘revenge of geography over history’. These are salient vignettes from Jaswant Singh’s new book, India at Risk: Mistakes, Misconceptions and Misadventures of Security Policy. I would have placed misconceptions before the other two Ms and added a fourth M: Missed opportunities.
The book encapsulates the defence and security dilemmas India has faced in the last 67 years and the way wars, insurgencies, mutinies, and hijackings have been dealt with. Hindsight has meshed easily with foresight to present a politico-military canvas that blends history, geography and strategic thought in the right proportion. There is one regret though — Mr Singh suddenly ends the book a decade prematurely and ‘leaves the rest to the Gods’ in his inimitable style.
Britain’s perceived post-Empire concerns prevailed over all other considerations, despite the warnings on Partition and the creation of Pakistan, issued through several military assessments including the one in 1946 by Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck recommending that “only a united India can promote Britain’s strategic interests”. Viceroy Field Marshal lord Wavell’s February 1947 report to the King emphasises the decline in Britain’s prestige and powers following the wars. Governor of Punjab, EM Jenkins, in his despatches to lord louis Mountbatten writes, “there is complete absence of enthusiasm for the partition plan.” Jawaharlal Nehru’s own conversations with lord Mountbatten and letters to the Nawab of Bhopal mention misgivings about Partition and how it “robbed us of peace”. What Mr Singh does not mention is how Partition, the cardinal sin, could have been prevented.
Similarly the prevention of China’s occupation of Tibet was urged by lieutenant General Sir Francis Tuker of Eastern Command in his essay on The Mongol Frontier, in which he stressed that Tibet was the vital area or launch pad for ingress into north and north-east India. He recommended that “rather than see a Chinese occupation of Tibet, India should be prepared to occupy the plateau.” How could India pre-empt or even prevent this, as the defence of Indian land, till 1947 and even afterwards, was in British handsIJ Further, even after independence Nehru ignored the warnings on China given by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and military leaders of the time. In July 1962, then Army chief General KS Thimayya wrote that one “can’t envisage India taking on China in an open conflict on its own... it must be left to politicians and diplomats to ensure own security.” In 1950, was it then feasible to implement the Tuker planIJ Did Nehru allow China a free run or was the loss of Tibet inevitableIJ
In 1947, the Kashmir war we fought was “the first unnecessary war”, strangely with British Commanders-in-Chief on both sides. A winnable war was lost by Nehru under lord Mountbatten’s influence, by taking the Kashmir issue to the UN. The Himalayan conflict of 1962 is deftly narrated, tracing its roots to the annexation of Tibet in 1950, the flight of the Dalai lama in 1959, and India’s Forward Posture in 1962. The provocation for China teaching India a lesson was provided by New Delhi’s misconception that China would never attack India. The rest was criminal negligence and leadership failures leading to a humiliating defeat.
The 1965 war is described as a stalemate conflict with the ranging round fired in Kutch whereas the target was Kashmir. Again, a premature ceasefire it was, and back to the UN. The great gains at Haji Pir and Kargil were lost at Tashkent. The inconclusive first two rounds over Kashmir, climaxed in the defeat of the Pakistani Army in East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh. Mr Singh relies mainly on lieutenant General JFR Jacob’s accounts of a war that, according to him, the Pakistanis were badly trapped in. Regrettably, 93,000 prisoners of war and 5,000 sqkm of territory in the west could not be traded for a political solution on Kashmir. All India extracted was the conversion of the ceasefire line into the line of Control. A secret agreement at Shimla between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Bhutto over converting the line of Control into the international boundary was extinguished after the assassination of one and the execution of the other. India’s victory in battle produced renewed calls for revenge in Pakistan and fresh calls for proxy war. Was the ‘revenge of geography over history’ in the creation of Bangladesh strategically wiseIJ
The chapter on ‘India’s Destructive Decades’ contains a plethora of complex security issues: Emergency, Operation Blue Star, the Indian Peace Keeping Force, Rubaiya Sayeed’s abduction, assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the insurgencies in Assam, Punjab and Kashmir, and the anti-Sikh riots. It is the despatch of IPKF to Sri lanka that Mr Singh calls the “third error” of the 1980s. This was a clear misadventure and, not just the failure of coercive diplomacy, but also a reflection that India does not have the stamina for power projection.
There are first-hand accounts of lahore, Kargil, the Kandahar hijacking, the Agra summit and Operation Parakram (Parliament attack), but there is no mention of 26/11. This is because the Mumbai attack was also a terrorist attack like the one on Parliament. Kargil is a signal victory for the betrayal of “territory of trust” at lahore. The IC814 hijacking was a choice between two rights (or, as the political opposition will have it, two wrongs) — saving 166 lives or fighting terrorism. Mr Singh says he has no qualms over his decision to exchange terrorists for Indian citizens, and that he would do it again.
Operation Parakram was another attempt at coercive diplomacy to end terrorism and infiltration. That the writer was not in favour of mobilisation and was instrumental in preventing escalation of conflict and war, is not well-known. Service chiefs were raring to go and have a crack at Pakistan but strategic restraint won the day. Is strategic restraint of the mind any different from strategic confinement imposed by artificial linesIJ India at Risk makes you ask questions and think.