Is the Indian Army being communalised?

This was the article I received from a close aide of General VK Singh. I refrained from publishing it owing to the damage it could have caused to the secular fabric running across the Indian Army, something which is a matter of pride for every Indian.

Later the content of the article became a basis of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a set of retired officers said to be very close the incumbent Army Chief. The PIL was dismissed by the Supreme Court today. I thought of producing the article in full to give an insight to the readers as to what "malicious" and "mud-slinging" match is presently going on within the force.

It is for you to decide where these ensuing controversies will take the force. Here is the long article-

The Question Why

Almost six months have elapsed since General VK Singh took the unprecedented step of becoming the first Chief to seek redress through a statutory complaint to what appears to be one of the simplest of issues – the correction, not change of his date of birth (DOB) – in the records of the MS Branch in Army HQ. Given the fact that there was no confusion or ambiguity on the issue in the AG’s branch (the official record keeper of all Army officers’ personal details) it should have been an open and shut case. The Chief’s statutory complaint was met with howls of protest from the Ministry of Defence and other highly motivated quarters which talked of everything else but the actual issue at hand – the validity of the MS Branch over the AGs Branch in this one case only. Within a few days, the Defence Minister issued a statement in Parliament saying that the Army Chief’s age had been fixed by the Government as 10 May 1950 and that General VK Singh would have to accept it and retire on 31 May 2012. That there existed a pre-determined ‘Line of Succession’ was virtually confirmed by all statements ensuing through leaks planted by MOD in the press, and the final seal to this was given by the Attorney General who stated in writing that unless the Army Chief was forced to accept the date of 1950 and retire, the Government could be in trouble as it would be open to litigation from ‘affected parties’. 

In the prickly backdrop of political paranoia over the role of the Army in the subcontinent, civil-military relations in India have evolved in their own unique way. Since Independence the Indian Armed forces had watched their status whittle away as the bureaucratic establishment slowly but surely took control, abrogating to them selves more and more power. While there had been a few exceptions, most Service Chief’s had rarely stood up to the deep-rooted nexus of political and bureaucratic authority. Once the “Ministry” had spoken, it was usually the last word. The labyrinth of appeals (both statutory, non-statutory and legal recourse) though available on paper, usually were time consuming and more often than not resulted in aggrieved parties getting even more aggrieved and helpless. It is a game with a set of rules that brook no interference. So when General VK Singh refused to accept the arbitrary setting of his DOB as 1950, it stirred up a hornet’s nest.

The issue of the actual DOB itself – so painstakingly documented by various newspapers, magazines and television channels – is of little relevance in this article, the matter being sub-judice after its acceptance by the Supreme Court on February 3. What is of concern here is the manner in which the controversy was first stoked, then fanned and finally, brought into play. Who were the main characters in this unfolding drama and what exactly happened needs to be understood if we are to see the light beyond the smokescreen of the so-called ‘age issue’. Is it really a battle being fought only for one man’s honour or does it run much deeper? These are questions that will perhaps only be answered with the passage of time; but unless these questions are asked, the answers will be swept under the carpet.

The real story begins with General Joginder Jaswant Singh assuming command of the Indian Army on 1st February 2005. A Maratha Light Infantry officer, JJ was the first ever Sikh to rise to the top spot in the Army. In the preceding months, as General NC Vij’s tenure at the helm was coming to an end, there had been a fair amount of ‘langar talk’ in the Army that JJ would be superseded by General Shammi Mehta, an Armoured Corps officer. Though the Government of India by and large always followed the ‘seniority’ principle in selecting service chiefs (the only exception being General AS Vaidya who had been elevated over Lt Gen SK Sinha in 1983) there had been enough uncertainty resulting in the SGPC issuing a strongly worded statement which was published in a few newspapers in favour of JJ taking over as the first ever ‘Sikh’ chief. This statement came in for heavy criticism and nothing more was heard of it again but by his own admission JJ is said that there would have been a blood bath on the streets if he had been superseded.

Right on Target??

The SGPC’s statement probably had little or no bearing on the Appointment Committee which at the time was headed by the prime minister, Dr Man Mohan Singh. Yet the fact remains that for the first time in Independent India, the communal card had been played at the highest level in the Army. General JJ Singh’s own tenure was to run till the end of September 2007, but it is now a well known fact that he had, within months of taking charge, initiated the look down policy which would give a clear idea as to what the line of succession would or could be. That General Deepak Kapoor would take over from JJ himself was well known at the time, but Kapoor’s successor would depend on the board that would be held towards the end of 2005 to decide on which officers were to be cleared for the Lieutenant General rank. 

On 15 April 2006, the results for the board of officers who were promoted from the rank of Major General to Lieutenant General were declassified. At this stage JJ didn’t need the ‘look-down policy’ to tell him that Lt General VK Singh would in all probability succeed Deepak Kapoor. The matter should have ended there, but it obviously didn’t. The ‘look-down policy’ now allowed every officer above the rank of Brigadier who was still climbing the command pyramid to work out his own list where based on various permutations and combinations, the next three/four chiefs could be predicted. But the only list that mattered was JJ’s own list, for as the chief of the Indian army he could tweak events to clear the way for his immediate choice after General VK Singh. Commenting on the issue, Lt Gen (Retd) Satwant Singh questioned the validity of the 'look-down policy' brought into play by JJ, observing that this amounted to earmarking a man for the top job even before he had commanded a division, which was absolutely ridiculous.

At this stage, it was brought to JJ’s notice (by an officer in the MS Branch) that if the chief could truncate and restrict VK Singh’s tenure as the chief to a two year period, then the path could be created for Bikram Singh to take over in 2012. At that point of time, Bikram Singh was not a front-runner as there were other officers ahead of him, but they could be ‘eliminated’ at the COAS’s level itself with a bit of deft manoeuvring. A list was prepared, nick-named ‘Op MOSES’ which implied that the Chief would part the waters for Bikram Singh to smoothly sail through. Like a family tree in reverse, Op MOSES listed potential threats that needed to be neutralized. Heading the list was Brigadier Padam Budhwar and MM Chaudhary, followed by Major Generals Shujan Chatterjee, AK Singh, Ravi Arora and finally VK Singh himself. While all the others had to be ‘fixed’ by manipulating their Brigadier to Major General boards or by other delaying tactics that allowed Bikram Singh to overtake them, in the over all scheme of things it was imperative that VK Singh become the Chief, but only for a limited period.

Path paved for Lt Gen Bikram Singh?

It is common knowledge that after the initial listing of his DOB as 1950 in the UPSC form, the error had been corrected even before VK Singh had joined the NDA in 1966. Consequently his DOB had always been recorded and reflected as 1951. Even at the IMA, where he was ordered to fill his form as per the original UPSC form, the correction was noted and the IMA records sent to the Adjudant General’s branch reflected 1951. On commissioning into the Army, VK Singh’s year of birth was listed as 1951. Even in the MS branch from 2nd Lieutenant to Lieutenant, from Lieutenant to Captain, from Captain to Major, from Major to Lieutenant Colonel, to Colonel, to Brigadier, to Major General and even to Lieutenant General, VK Singh’s DOB was 1951. All records in the AGs branch said 1951, and other than the Army List (which had failed to reflect the correction from the original UPSC form and was based on data forwarded by the MS branch without the requisite verification or checks) everything listed the age as 1951. To further complicate matters, the Army List, considered to be fraught with errors and without any utility, had more or less been discontinued since 1990.

JJ was by then playing God to the hilt! Among Bikram’s contemporaries’, MM Chaudhary and Padam Budhwar had already been passed over from the Major General rank after deliberately playing havoc with their promotional boards, while Ravi Arora, the Gold Medalist from the same course, had been delayed to allow the favoured candidate to surge ahead. For Op MOSES to succeed, it was now imperative for VK Singh to be sent into a tail-spin. The timing was critical – to have created the age issue before his Lieutenant General board would have meant that VK Singh would not be the chief, thereby knocking out Bikram which would have been counter productive. So the moment he was cleared for Lieutenant General, at JJs behest, the then MS fired off the first missile barely two weeks after the declassification of the board results. On 3 May 2006, Lt General Richard Khare wrote to Lt General VK Singh, ‘hand picked’ by the then Chief to command the prestigious 2 Corps, that there was a discrepancy in his DOB and that it had to be resolved. At that time it could hardly have been any thing else but the reflecting of a correction that had not been made forty years ago. It was conveyed to VK Singh that the matter would be resolved after going through the records. However, he was told to reflect his date of birth as 1950 on the vague criterion that he cannot change his age from what was reflected in UPSC application form and resultantly shown as such in Army List. The desired letter having been obtained from the unsuspecting VK Singh, Op MOSES was now in full swing. 

Was the SGPC in on the loop is open to conjecture, but the seeds were sown for someone else to carry the can forward. JJ handed over the baton to Deepak Kapoor and within three months took over as the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh.

Don’t Rock the Boat

Though the epitaph of General Deepak Kapoor’s tenure as the COAS shall have the words ‘Adarsh’ and ‘Sukhna’ engraved on it, the fact of the matter is that the Indian Army was going through one of its lowest ebbs in the eyes of the public. Everyone was talking of ketchup colonels and a host of other scams. In Mumbai, in the wake of the Adarsh scam, people were gleefully pointing out that the Army Day newspaper supplement had advertisements from various building contractors. On the larger canvas, the UPA Government of Dr Man Mohan Singh was reeling under one scam after the other – CWG and 2G being the main headline grabbers. The Radia tapes had even blown the lid of the fourth estate, with senior journalists acting like copywriters while drafting editorials for newspapers and television channels!

JJ’s ‘look-down policy’ wanted VK Singh to be Deepak Kapoor’s successor. Deepak Kapoor on the other hand was desperate to shoot VK Singh down even before he was to be appointed Army Commander for the two officers were at the opposite end of the spectrum, both professionally and otherwise. The stick which JJ had planted in the cupboard to truncate VK Singh’s tenure was now taken out by Deepak Kapoor to cut VK Singh down to size altogether. Accordingly, the MS Branch was asked to rake up the age issue once again. However, two things came to VK Singh’s rescue: a) his professional standing was excellent and b) in the overall scheme of things initiated in 2006, it was imperative that he became the Chief so that the anointed successor could be appointed COAS in 2012. This clearly indicated that there was a higher power at work, which outranked the COAS. The Ministry of Defence, fully aware of all the machinations under both JJ and Deepak Kapoor, not only did nothing to sort out the mess, but like the political leadership of the country, watched from the sidelines as the drama unfolded. A third factor also probably came into play around the time – the then Vice Chief of the Indian Army was Lt General ML Naidu, who like VK Singh was also a Rajput officer and the Colonel of the Regiment to boot. In all likelihood, it would have been Naidu who would have had a moderating influence on Deepak Kapoor, shielding VK Singh from an all out assault from the COAS.

VK Singh was called to AHQ by Naidu who told him that the Chief of the Army Staff was determined to peg his year of birth as 1950. The move was calculated to provoke VK Singh into getting into a head-long confrontation which would have given Deepak Kapoor grounds to move against him for insubordination. Naidu, himself a straightforward and highly respected officer, in all probability advised VK Singh to sign an acceptance letter, especially since Deepak Kapoor had said he would fix the date after an internal enquiry was held. In any case, any such acceptance would hardly have any legal bearing and would shield the officer from a trumped up charge by Deepak Kapoor. Despite Naidu’s advice, VK Singh sent his letter with the rider ‘as directed by you’. This led to a sharp rejoinder from the Chief threatening him outright with displinary action. With the modified ‘acceptance letter’ in hand, the enquiry promised by Deepak Kapoor was promptly cancelled and the date of birth was fixed as 1950.

VK Singh moved to Calcutta where he took over as the Army Commander in 2009. Contrary to popular belief, no Army Commander is appointed on submission of their birth certificate. Only residual service is looked at keeping the DOB at the time of being promoted to Lt General. Almost immediately, the Sukhna land scam was unearthed and despite stiff opposition from Deepak Kapoor, VK Singh decided to order an internal enquiry against the 33 Corps Commander and other senior officers. At this stage a senior officer in the Deepak Kapoor hierarchy pointedly advised VK Singh not to rock the boat.

On his own front the promised enquiry had been called off. VK Singh, now the Eastern Army Commander, wrote to the MS, Lt General Avdesh Prakash asking him on what grounds had the MS branch advised Deepak Kapoor to ‘fix’ his year of birth at 1950. Prakash, by then realized that despite Deepak Kapoor’s efforts to stall the Sukhna enquiry, it was just a matter of time before his name came up in the deal and that he too would be implicated. Having failed to push VK Singh into a corner where he could have been court martialled for insubordination, Deepak Kapoor knew that VK Singh was not going to just lie down and let the matter be. Lt General Naidu had by then retired and had been replaced by Lt General Nobel Thamburaj, so one hurdle in the ‘fix VK’ project had been removed. It was then decided by Deepak Kapoor and the MS, Lt General Prakash, to make it look as if VK Singh was petitioning the MS branch for a ‘change of DOB’ rather than a correction to the redundant Army List. The MS by then needed little prompting, for his only chance of a defence in the Sukhna scam was to try and make it look as if he, an honest and upright officer, had stood in the way of VK Singh’s manipulation to change his DOB. His implication in the Sukhna land scam, he subsequently argued, was because he had thwarted VK Singh who as the Eastern Army commander then vindictively got after him.

Deepak Kapoor’s attempt to use the DOB issue to sack VK Singh before he moved as the Eastern Army Commander had alarmed JJ and the powers that be who did not want Deepak Kapoor to tamper with the line of succession. Apart from the Lt Gen Naidu factor, Deepak Kapoor also failed to get at VK Singh at that stage because the MOD did not blindly support him. But once the MS got into the act, it was always going to be a different story, for the fixing on 1950 was a crucial aspect in the overall game plan initiated in 2006. Lt Gen PC Katoch, in his article in Outlook titled ‘The Shikhandi Salvo’ writes that in 2008 the MS wrote to the MOD saying: “A detailed examination in consultation with AG’s branch with regard to verification of date of birth in respect of IC-24173W Lt Gen VK Singh, AVSM, YSM has been carried out and that date of birth in respect of the officer continues to be maintained as 10 May 1950.” The fact that the MOD neither asked for a the investigation report, nor did it ask the AG’s branch (knowing that it is the authority in the matter) for its views, suggests that by this stage the bureaucratic establishment had been ordered to cement the DOB issue as 1950.

The Appointments Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister for the third time (having earlier appointed JJ and Deepak Kapoor), cleared VK Singh as the 24th Chief of the Army Staff. That the relations between the Deepak Kapoor and VK Singh were frosty at the time of the handing over of the baton was clearly visible in the body language of the new Chief. Apart from the various scams associated with Deepak Kapoor’s tenure, the Chief’s handling of the Northern Army Commander, Lt General HS Panag who had openly accused Deepak Kapoor of being corrupt, had left a bitter taste. Hours after taking over, VK Singh promised the nation in a television interview outside South Block, that his first objective would be to tackle the internal health of the Army. 

According to Wikipedia “in October 2010, it was alleged that Kapoor fraudulently acquired a flat in the now infamous Adarsh Housing Society in Colaba, Mumbai, which was built fraudulently on the land under ‘de-facto’ possession of the Army, for the intended purpose of the welfare of Kargil heroes and their widows. This news brought a lot of adverse publicity to the Indian Army and dented its image. After this news was brought to public, Kapoor claimed that he cancelled his allotment for the flat.” Even in retirement, the former Chief continued to sully the image of the Army. But in the VK Singh saga, he was now a spent force.

As the Army Chief, VK Singh for the first time had the complete facts pertaining to his own ‘case’ before him and when viewed in totality, various pieces began to fall into place. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Ministry of Defence was doggedly sticking to VK Singh’s DOB as being 1950 with the intention of forcing the General to retire on 31 May 2012 as against 31 March 2013. The Defence Minister, Arackaparambil Kurien Antony who had assumed office on 26 October 2006, repeatedly let it be known that though he sympathized with VK Singh, his ‘hands were tied’ in the matter and that the pre-determined line of succession had to be maintained at all costs. The constant reference to ‘orders from above’ remained a baffling question; JJ Singh, despite being the chief architect of the ‘line of succession’ was the Governor of Arunachal with no direct authority over the Defence Minister. 

The orders from above virtually gave the bureaucrats in MOD the license to flex muscle; a series of selected leaks began to paint VK Singh as a conniving officer who was desperate to gain an additional ten months in office, either by hook or by crook. RTIs, television debates, magazine and newspaper articles, capitulated the ‘Age Issue’ into headline stuff – generating more inches of news than even perhaps the Chinese debacle in 1962. Field Marshal Montgomery in his book, A History of Warfare while analyzing Eastern Warfare had commented: “The Rajputs were tremendously brave – but equally stupid. Their only tactic appears to have been a rush forward in mass. For all their fury and courage, by advancing thus they were merely sacrificing their lives ‘like moths in a flame’”. The tactic, time and again seems to have been to provoke VK Singh, a Rajput officer, into a headlong confrontation. The first of the real ‘nasties’ first appeared in the magazine India Today wherein the Defence Correspondent wrote an article titled ‘lies of a General’. That the article was entirely based on MOD leaks was blatantly obvious and also glaringly inaccurate, had little or no meaning, for the objective was to provoke the General into accepting his DOB as 1950. 

What VK Singh was up against was slowly becoming obvious. The Principal Secretary in the PMO, TKA Nair told confidants that VK Singh had to go in May 2012 because the ‘Prime Minister had assured his wife that General Bikram Singh would be the next COAS’. The previous Defence Secretary, Vijay Singh, had in Deepak Kapoor’s time already assured the PMO that the ‘needful had been done’ and that VK Singh would not raise the DOB issue again. That VK Singh would make a few noises and eventually settle for a Governorship or some fancy post-retirement cushy job was a foregone conclusion in the GOI’s thinking. Besides, given the sensitivity of civil-military relations in the past, no chief had ever beyond a point rocked the boat. The Statutory Complaint filed by VK Singh shattered that belief. So taken aback was the GOI that Antony issued a statement in Parliament saying that the Government had fixed 1950 after due process the date would stand.

India Today’s earlier article was to look mild in comparison, when towards the end of 2011, the magazine ran a cover story emblazoned on which was the title “Self Before Service”. Not only was the story inside based on MOD leaks and inaccurate facts, the editorial under the hand of the editor Aroon Purie was even more inflammatory. After the rejection of the Statutory Complaint and VK Singh’s petitioning the Supreme Court, others followed, notable among them being Raj Chengappa’s 5-part article in the Chandigarh based Tribune that led observers to dryly observe that the Attorney General must have helped him write it. Most amazingly, on the 3rd of February, a former diplomat, KN Singh, blurted out on CNN-IBN that the Prime Minister himself had ‘authorized’ the articles written by the Tribune editor. 

In a meeting with the Janata Party president, the Defence Minister admitted that the Prime Minister was calling the shots in the age issue. Subramanium Swamy in a letter to the Prime Minister dated 14 January 2012 quotes this conversation with the Defence Minister and pleads with the PM to sort out the issue keeping the overall picture of National security in mind. Antony also subsequently admitted that he never looked at the Statutory Complaint, having simply passed it on to the Attorney General for him to find reasons to reject it out of hand. This fact has already been taken note of by the Supreme Court who on February 3 said that the principles of natural justice have not been adhered to and the procedure adopted for arriving at the rejection of the Statutory Complaint appears to have been vitiated. 

Says Lt General PC Katoch: “This is not a case of an apolitical military going political but deliberate politicizing of an apolitical military.” Whatever General JJ’s compulsions may have been, can the Prime Minister today allow the sordid drama to continue any further, especially since there is enough hints that JJ had the PM’s full support at every stage? On the other hand, having brazened it out thus far, the ‘line of succession’ lobby will try and push VK Singh into a corner, where regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the General be forced to step down just to prove that he is not after an extension.

On VK Singh’s shoulder rests an equally difficult task. Having insulated the Army from any negative feedback by declaring the fight over his age as being purely personal, his dogged stand for what is by and large considered to be a principled stance, has more or less burnt his bridges. The rank and file within the Army are watching, and the outcome could well decide if the country wants an entire generation of JJs and Deepak Kapoors or generals like VK Singh. It is but imperative that systems are put in place to ensure that a similar situation never arises again, and what is perhaps even more important, for the soldier, the bureaucrat and the politician to realize that all is not hunky dowry in the way civil military relations have evolved. This storm in a tea cup could be the best thing that would have happened to the Armed Forces if the right lessons are drawn from it and remedial action taken in the larger interest of National Security. For that to happen, VK Singh too has to step up to the plate and call a spade a spade! In the meantime, the ball is in the judiciary’s court.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely of the writer. The blogger is merely reproducing it and does not affiliate to any of the views whatsoever.)