Bastion of Free Speech

When a general as distinguished as KV Krishna Rao reminisces, we hope for more than what is already on record. We expect great insights and vignettes hitherto unrevealed. Krishna Rao's career spans five decades and covers the most tumultuous period of independent India. More often than not Krishna Rao was in the thick of events and in pivotal positions where he served the nation with determination and despatch. His varied and rich experiences make for a great story to inspire those who aspire to follow. In the Service of the Nation (575 p. Viking Penguin India) is a detailed record of General KV Krishna Rao's long march that had taken him through all of independent India's major challenges to its integrity and security. But Krishna Rao, in keeping with the fashion and now the seeming tradition of the service he served, deals with this with abundant caution rather than flair, preferring avoidance to confrontation, and uncalled for timidity where assertion is more appropriate. This probably owes as much to Krishna Rao's hallmark self-effacing and cautious nature, both qualities that apparently served him well on the road to greatness. In peacetime, an ironical word to apply to an army that has continuously seen action somewhere or the other all these last fifty years, it is these attributes that open pathways to high office. Only war produces a Patton or Rommel or Giap or even a Maneckshaw, men with huge and somewhat reckless personalities who because of it leave their indelible imprint on history.

But Krishna Rao's story spans much more than events in a mere theatre. It is an entire aspect of free India's story. This was a great opportunity for an exciting storyteller. Instead we are left with the sanitized reminisces of a soldier who saw it all and did it all but prefers not to tell it all. His reminisces not surprisingly read like that of a pen pusher who knew how to fight, rather than a fighting man who wields a swashbuckling pen. It is like a travelogue that merely records the points traveled through and the innocuous things of the journey like what was eaten when and where the traveler bedded down. But this may not be his failing as much as that of the editor who could have been more true to his or her calling and sculpted a book of outstanding quality instead of rendering outstanding material and an outstanding career into a soulless narrative in the blandest prose. It is the job of the editor to coax more out of the writer, especially from one who has a duty to bequeath to us not just a recital of facts but matter for discussion and debate.

The book has other failings as well. Krishna Rao just is not willing to dwell on aspects of his experience and share with his intimate thoughts and knowledgeable insights. For instance he dismisses the episode of SK Sinha's supercession in just a few lines, when SK Sinha used it to carve an after life for himself and in the process showing that Indira Gandhi's fears about him being more of a politician than a general in the Indian Army should be were merited. Why must a system that rigorously prunes its higher echelons on the basis of merit suddenly lapse to the seniority rule when it comes to choosing a Chief? Sinha the politician has hurled all manner of imprecations at Krishna Rao, most of which are unworthy of response. But surely Krishna Rao must have views on the right of the elected government to choose persons it considers most appropriate for the highest positions in the land, be that of the military chiefs or even Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

Its not even as if the military's service review and promotion system is without problems. Krishna Rao humorously recalls the letter written by a junior officer congratulating him on becoming Chief of Army Staff which, obviously an error, concludes: "Please accept my wife and congratulations!"

But is this a Freudian slip for our courts too are getting clogged with petitions of military officers who believe that they were unfairly overlooked for promotions. Many an outstanding officer has suffered due to the capriciousness of his immediate superior. I know of one top officer who was condemned to retirement on the basis of a patently inadequate assessment by his superior only to be rescued when the Tehelka sting showed his superior in poor light giving cause for his reviews to be reviewed. I know of another general who suffered for not getting a golf course ready in time for his immediate senior's visit. During Gen. Sunil Rodrigues tenure a major general was turfed out of the army for demanding the affections of the wives of junior officers in return for favorable ACR's. Clearly there is much whimsicality and venality within the military that has corroded the allure of service life that merits a discussion?

In his post Army career, the General was governor of troubled Nagaland and then graduated to even more troubled Jammu and Kashmir. The first casualty in an insurgency-ridden area is good government. The carefully crafted system of checks and balances collapses. Accountability is the first to go. In the absence of a truly popular government a self-seeking and self-aggrandizing elite captures power. The government's books in Jammu and Kashmir have not been audited for over ten years. In another state well founded rumors insist that a dead governor left behind cash filled trunks, a true embarrassment of riches. This in itself suggests that elements of the state may often have a vested interest in the non resolution of an extraordinary situation because doing so will restore them to the drudgery of routine work with routine rewards.

Maladministration in turn results in more alienation and discontent, and hence violence. As ordained by the guerilla's manual the state, at least the civil state withers away. Then thanks to the extra-ordinary capacity of the Indian Army to stoically accept punishing and often degrading duties a degree of order far short of the stability required for good government is often established. And so it all starts again, and the army never really returns to the barracks. It's a pity that the general does not deem it fit to discuss this. Surely even a routine recital of facts that his reminisces have become, could have had some instances of the routine degradation of administration and corruption that especially characterizes government in states besieged by insurgents?

Counter-insurgency in India has not been without success. We have normalcy now in Punjab making it along-with Malaysia one of the few instances where a reasonably popular and well-organized insurgency was defeated. How was this achieved? Is there something that Gerald Templar and KPS Gill had in common? If commanding a successful campaign makes a commander a hero, like Maneckshaw, why is KPS Gill whose victory under much more trying circumstances and against much greater institutional constraints not considered a hero of that dimension? The critical question whether an armed assault against the state from within can only be combated by an equally dirty campaign merits a discussion. Can you fight an insurgency without a single-minded commonality of purpose among all arms of the state? Why has Jammu and Kashmir not been able to get a truly unified Unified Command directing counter insurgency instead of the many competing militarized bureaucracies often more intent on damaging each other than the adversary? Krishna Rao should know. He served in the state at various levels before becoming the Army Chief and then Governor. Why were the lessons learnt in Punjab where KPS Gill unilaterally fashioned out a Unified Command, even if it were informal, not applied in Kashmir? Very few can speak as authoritatively on this than Krishna Rao who served in all the hotspots of independent India. Yet the general prefers to skirt this issue like he does others.

A discussion on the failure of the DRDO to even in some small measure to fulfill its extravagant promises of modern indigenous weapons, be it the Arjun not so main Main Battle Tank, or very late Light Combat Aircraft, or long submerged plans to develop a nuclear powered submarine, would have been in order. Why is it that the DRDO has not been able to productionise even a basic combat rifle? Is there something lacking in its organization? And how is it that the DRDO, which in reality is a bit of a white elephant, has also become somewhat of a sacred cow? Surely this was one unfought battle that has troubled our military for so long that needed to be joined? If a great man like Krishna Rao shirks confronting this major impediment to defence preparedness, why would anyone less distinguished do so? Is there a story in this?

The general has an eye for detail and there are many funny anecdotes. One pertains to an officer who emptied a revolver magazine on a brother officer who had stolen the affections of his wife. All the shots missed. This brings to mind the episode caught by Tehelka's hidden camera where an officer after unsuccessfully trying get mind and body work in unison to enjoy the procured favors of a professional lady cries off. One wonders if the inability to shoot straight is an endemic problem in the army? At another place he blandly recounts, imagine the poker face, a meeting with Prime Minister Morarji Desai who wonders why the senior commanders have called on him and then goes on to lecture them not to be warmongers! This is not in the same league as Morarji telling Dr. Raja Ramanna that he did not need a briefing on the Atomic Energy Commission's activities as he too had studied physics as an undergraduate! The general could have told us about how people without the intellectual wherewithal to have opinions have time an again imposed their opinions on our institutions doing great disservice to the nation in the process. Once again the general prefers to be kind or even discretion to valor. That then is the real problem with "In the Service of the Nation - Reminisces". Instead of being a distinguished general's reminiscences it is just general reminiscing. Interesting up to a point, but not telling.

Copyright(c) Mohan Guruswamy, 2001. All rights reserved.