We don’t need a defence 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.
These were the words of India’s first Prime Minister in a response to Indian Armed Forces First Commander-in-Chief Gen Sir Robert Lockhart in 1946, on being briefed about the Paper on phased growth of the Armed Forces. Of what followed was downsizing the Army from its strength of over 2, 80,000 to about 1, 50,000. Pandit Nehru was not only of the opinion that the Armed Forces were not required in a peace loving country, but also reeled under the paranoia of a coup being transpired by the Army top Brass, as had happened in Pakistan a little later after independence. Him being pricky on the coup d’état issue was a nubbin of uneasiness that the Military would begrudgingly press by the sheer nature of its operations. India’s conflict with Pakistan soon after Independence was one such instance that presented a Catch-22 for Nehru, requiring him to empower and embolden the Army yet be cautious of its operational powers so to prevent an onslaught on democracy. However, his paranoia took the best of him as Pakistan came under military rule in 1958. This was the hammer to the nail and thus began a series of miscalculated measures that weakened the great Indian Army and set it into oblivion, however not without resistance.
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(Standing L to R) Defence Minister KV Krishna Menon, Pandit Nehru,Dy Defence Minister Majithia and Gen K S Thimayya
Nehru’s idea of a functional democracy was an unending tenure to his rule, aided by submissive and pusillanimous administrative and military officials to facilitate that idea. Unfortunately for this Cambridge affiliate, meekness was not an adage in the Military, and thus set the Army out from Nehru’s scheme of things. Pandit Nehru’s administration brought about radical changes to the security infrastructure of the country. One of them was to have multiple Police agencies, and weaken his own Army. His inward looking defense policy sought to counter the weight of the Army, and install ‘Yes Men’ in crucial places so as to place an untenable security infrastructure that would, in his own mind, help our democratic institutions. He raised multiple police agencies, lacking necessary training and discipline, and broadly functioning in a similar spectrum as the Army. The Central Armed Police Forces, as they are now known as, were constituted for specialized tasks, but were also tools to alleviate Nehru’s paranoia of a possible coup. He believed that the Police forces would quell any possible attempt by the Army to take over the government. As history came to realize in prospect, weakening the Army can have grave consequences, Nehru’s legacy remains to be stabbing soldiers in the back when they stood guard at the borders, both financially and tactically.
As the Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru not only downsized the Army, but also went as far as downgrading the status of the chief of Army by abolishing the Post of Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces that led to a huge dent in the Operational Efficacy of the functioning of the tri-services. The void created in the command structure was felt heavily in India’s defeat in the Indi-Sino war of 1962, and reverberates till date. Nehru also went onto reallocate the official accommodation of the Army Chief, the Tri-Murti Bhawan to himself, and brought all the serving chiefs way down in the Official Order of Precedence. His sadism had much flare, and was the bright spark in the eye of Indian Bureaucracy. Subduing the Armed Forces allowed the Bureaucracy to attain much more power, however without similar checks and balances as maintained in the Armed Forces. Cuts in salaries, diminishing allowances and many other measures set a precedent to browbeat the Army into submission by laying financial constraints, apart from playing favorites in promotions to grow a crop of Generals who would bow down before their political masters, disregarding professional and personal ethos and honour while doing so. Modernisation of the Army had been forestalled by red tape and morale of the forces took a bad hit. The Civil administration came to subsume the military under its dominion of corruption and inaction to resonate its myopic view on National Security. Pandit Nehru facilitated a restructuring of the forces wherein the civilian services in place became de-facto masters of the Army. Even today, many of the appointment committees responsible for selecting appointments at higher levels in the army are constituted by Civil Servants, who are known to discourage tenancy of higher appointments by Generals of resolute and upright demeanor.
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Nehru’s handling of the Army was not an administrative blunder put into effect in order to shunt the Indian Army off its colonial roots, but rather a whimsical persecution of the entire Army as a show of power. Many amongst the likes of Bipin Chandra have sung praises in galore about Pandit Nehru and have commended him for managing the onerous task of sustaining our nascent Democracy, but all have chosen to disregard how the edifice of our Army was chipped away gleefully and wilfully by Nehru.
In order to comprehend the expanse of poor policies in play with regard to the Armed Forces, let us take the case of the misadventure of 1962. The 1962 Indo-Sino War was an outcome of the hastily adopted Forward Policy that Nehru adopted in the face of the possibility of losing face as a leader. Nehru and his then defence Minister, Krishna Menon (of the Jeep Scandal fame) at the onset of the growing power in the East were of the thought that an attack on the eastern front of India was an impossible event, and any discussion on investment militarily or otherwise was treated as an anathema to political discourse. They chose to assume that China and India shared bonhomie that could not never be marred by a military standoff. Krishna Menon was in fact a communist Sympathizer, and his seemingly abject ignorance of the China issue was rather suspicious. The CIA too had noted his political views in its briefs over him in 1951,” V. K. Krishna Menon is a member of the extreme left wing of the Congress Party and has associated with known Communists and fellow travelers. He is highly ambitious and would probably cooperate with and accept support from any group which might enhance his prospects for becoming Prime Minister”. From the Chinese build up in Aksai chin in 1959, to their continued excursion in NEFA (present day Arunachal Pradesh), Nehru and his leftist Defence Minister sat of the Chinese issue despite continued warning from the Military Intelligence on a possible war in early 1960s. While Chinese had been building a road inwards through Aksai Chin, Nehru was unrelenting in his attitude to accept the advice of the Army Commanders that redeploying troops from the western borders to the eastern was a necessity in the face of an impending disaster. However, Nehru would insult and brush away Officers for he had a turpitude of humiliating Army Officers, and disregarding any of their advice while doing so. Many military strategists have noted that China was inching on the eastern sector, but till the last moment, Nehru was trying to pretend that any such action was not in the reckoning, and after the War, went onto show that it was not his political and personal misgivings that had cost India the War. Indian Army just wasn’t ready to fight the Chinese with its diminished strength and poor equipment, but the reality was hardly anything that an egoistic Prime Minister could swell up to. Such was the situation that just before the war, Indian forces in the Ladakh sector were outnumbered six to one. Specifically in the Chushul Sector, India had a strength of three companies (around 360 men) as against Chinese forces of the size of a brigade (around 2400 men). To aggravate issues, the Intelligence Bureau toed the official lines of appeasement and assuaged Nehru’s ego by reiterating his views on China. In 1959, things came to such an extent that finding no room for National Interests, Gen Thimayya, and the then Army Chief sent out his resignation in protest over Nehru’s short sightedness. However, he later withdrew his resignation on Nehru’s reassurances of cooperation. Nehru though, being a political zealot went onto fashion the events in a different sense in his Parliament Speech by painting the General as a soldier wanting to run away in the midst of the impeding Indo-Sino hostility. In early 1960, Nehru adopted the “Forward Policy” as a means of countering China’s buildup in Aksai Chin, thus, trying to consolidate Indian Positions in present day Arunachal and Ladakh areas. However, with a poorly maintained Army, and regressive military policies, Army did not have the capability to fight a full-fledged war. Moreover, Krishna Menon and Nehru were of the impression that their prowess in political play gave made them well placed to give out directives to the Army. They reprimanded many senior Army officers for speaking out their mind, and subjugated the Army into the role of a Blind-Marching Infantry. In 1962, Nehru broke the chain of command, by maintaining direct contacts with local commanders, and bypassing the Chiefs and Army Headquarters in the process. As the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report clearly showcases, many of the staff decisions were made in disregard to the ground situation of the army. As it has been uncovered by various findings by journalists across the globe, Nehru’s taking on China had political considerations and thus gave no room for rational thinking. Pandit Nehru had no military or national thought and his handling of the Indian Army is a clear example in that regard. He was the ‘Arm Chair General’ that the Indian Army did not deserve and who shall be remembered in history for holding out as an example to this quote by Alexander the Great:
I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.
Nehru was the Dark Sheep of India.