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This article argues the conventional wisdom on civil-military relations in India needs qualification. Whilst the military has not intruded in the formal machinery of politics, its institutional autonomy and assertiveness have progressively increased since 1947. This increase stems from two factors. First, a series of spikes in external threat–mainly a succession of wars and crises from the early 1960s to the early 1970s–altered the institutional balance of power between civilians and the military in favor of the latter. The second, and more analytically elusive, factor is a growing attitudinal divide between Indian society and its armed force–in other words an increasing civil-military gap. The article contends that the prevailing pattern of civil-military relations has already proved problematic in some important areas of security policy. Unless its more angular aspects are smoothened out, civil-military relations will continue to produce skewed security policies.
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Acknowledgments
I should like to thank Kanti Bajpai, Rudra Chaudhuri, Nimmi Kurian, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, C. Raja Mohan, Vipin Narang, Paul Staniland, Krishnappa Venkatshamy, and Jayashree Vivekanandan for their comments on an early version of this article at a workshop organized by the Center for Policy Research. Anit Mukherjee has been a reliable intellectual sparring-partner on this topic and has helped sharpen my arguments even as he disagreed with them. The research and writing of this article was supported by a generous grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
Notes
1. Harsh V. Pant, “India's Nuclear Doctrine and Command Structure: Implications for Civil-Military Relations in India,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2007), p. 243.
2. Paul Staniland, “Explaining Civil-Military Relations in Complex Political Environments: India and Pakistan in Comparative Perspective,” Security Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (April 2008), p. 323. For earlier assessments see, Veena Kukreja, Civil Military Relations in South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh and India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991); Kotera Bhimaya, Civil Military Relations: A Comparative Study of India and Pakistan (Santa Monica: Rand, 1997); and Apurba Kundu, Militarism in India: Army and Civil Society in Consensus (London: IB Taurus, 1998).
3. The term was coined by Richard Kohn. See his, “How Democracies Control the Military,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct 1997), p. 141. For an engaging sweep of India's experiment with democracy see, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy (London: Macmillan, 2007).
4. Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming Without Aiming: India's Military Modernization (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2010); Anit Mukherjee, “Failing to Deliver: Post-Crises Defence Reforms in India, 1998–2010,” IDSA Occasional Paper No. 18 (New Delhi: Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, March 2011).
5. Cohen and Dasgupta, Arming Without Aiming (see note 4 above), p. 147, 161.
6. Ibid., pp. 147, 150.
7. At the risk of oversimplification, these traditions may be summarized as follows. The institutional tradition focuses on the institutional setting in which civil-military interaction occurs. It considers the forms of institutional design, norms, and material structures of incentive that influence the nature and pattern of civilian control of the military. The key texts in this tradition are Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981. Originally published in 1957) and Peter Feaver: Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). The sociological tradition, by contrast, focuses on the social composition of the military organization, its links with the wider society from which the soldiers are drawn and its implications for the prospects of civilian control. The key text is Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (Glencoe, IL.: The Free Press, 1960).
8. Peter Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter 1996), pp. 149–78.
9. Michael Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1999), p. 5.
10. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 56, No. 4 (1962), pp. 947–52.
11. Pant, “India's Nuclear Doctrine,” (see note 1 above), p. 242.
12. Jaswant Singh, Defending India (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 44–45.
13. Chandar Sundaram, “The Indian National Army, 1942–1946: A Circumstantial Force,” in Daniel Marston and Chandar Sundaram, eds., A Military History of India and South Asia: From East India Company to the Nuclear Era (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), pp. 128–29.
14. Cited in Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (London: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 423–24.
15. “Note on Defense Policy and National Development,” February 3, 1947, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 363–68.
16. Cited in Srinath Raghavan, “Liberal Thought and Colonial Military Institutions,” Unpublished Paper presented at IFS-IDSA Conference on India's Grand Strategy, Oslo, September 2010.
17. Cited in Guha, India After Gandhi (see note 3 above), p. 760.
18. Srinath Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years (London: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 44–46.
19. Ibid., pp. 193–97.
20. Guha, India After Gandhi (see note 3 above), pp. 760–61.
21. Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India (see note 18 above), 267–69
22. Srinath Raghavan, “Civil-Military Relations in India: The China Crisis and After,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2009), pp. 149–75. The next two paragraphs draw on this article.
23. D. K. Palit, War in High Himalaya: Indian Army in Crisis, 1962 (London: Hurst, 1991), pp. 386–87, pp. 411–19.
24. P. V. R. Rao to Additional Secretary Ministry of Defence, May 18, 1973; “Note on Incident” in Y.D. Gundevia Papers, Subject File 7 (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, September 5, 1965).
25. P. V. R. Rao, India's Defense Policy and Organizations since Independence (New Delhi: United Services Institute, 1977), pp. 15, 19, 21.
26. B. C. Chakravorty, History of the Indo-Pakistan War, 1965 (New Delhi: Ministry of Defense, 1992), pp. 333–34.
27. R. D. Pradhan, Debacle to Revival: Y. B. Chavan as Defense Minister (London: Sangam Books, 1999), p. 299.
28. Interview with Manekshaw in Quarterdeck (1996) reproduced in Lieutenant General J. F. R. Jacob, Surrender at Dacca: Birth of a Nation (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), pp. 18183.
29. Note for Prime Minister by P. N. Haksar, March 27, 1977; P. N. Haksar Papers, NMML; P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency” and Indian Democracy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 157.
30. P. R. Chari, “Civil-Military Relations in India,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1977), p. 13.
31. Arun Prakash, “Keynote Address,” in Proceedings of the United Services Institute Seminar on Higher Defense Organization (New Delhi: United Services Institute, 2007), p. 10.
32. H.M. Patel to General Roy Bucher, February 23, 1951, in Roy Bucher Papers, 7901/87-33 (London: National Army Museum, 1951).
33. Cited in A.G. Noorani, “The Doctrine of Civilian Control,” in A. G. Noorani, ed., Constitutional Questions and Citizens' Rights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 392.
34. Cited in Mukherjee, Failing to Deliver (see note 4 above), p. 20.
35. Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 65.
36. Lieutenant General M.L. Chibber, Military Leadership to Prevent Military Coup (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), Table 4.3, p. 139.
37. Steven P. Rosen, Societies & Military Power: India and its Armies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 222–25.
38. Ibid., p. 223.
39. “Budget Bounty Lifts Spirits at Sainik Schools,” Economic Times, March 5, 2008. Available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-03-05/news/28460784_1_sainik-schools-defence-ministry-defence-forces.
40. Interview with senior Indian army officer serving in the Military Secretary's Branch, Army Headquarters, New Delhi, August 11, 2010.
41. On the Rashtriya Rifles see, Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Innovations in Counterinsurgency: The Indian Army's Rashtriya Rifles,” Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2004), pp. 25––37.
42. Hew Strachan, “The Civil-Military ‘Gap’ in Britain,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2003), pp. 47–48.
43. “Top Military Brass Against Permanent Commission to Women,” Times of India, March 13, 2010. Available at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-13/india/28146714_1_women-officers-permanent-commission-ssc.
44. “Women in Forces Get Permanent Commission,” Times of India, March 13, 2010. Available at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-03-13/india/28138931_1_permanent-commission-women-officers-short-service-commission.
45. “Government Agrees to give Women Permanent Tenure in Army,” Daily News & Analysis, August 2, 2010. Available at http://www.dnasyndication.com/dna/article/DNMUM180590.
46. “Army Once Again Sets Its Face Against Demilitarizing Siachen,” The Hindu, November 12, 2006, p. 13.
47. Lieutenant General V.K. Oberoi, “Ninth Round on Siachen: The Freeze Continues,” The Tribune, June 9, 2005, p. 10.
48. George Fernandes, “Opening Address” [at a conference in January 2000] in Jasjit Singh, ed., Asia's New Dawn: The Challenges to Peace and Security (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2000), pp. xvi–xvii.
49. V. K. Sood and Pravin Sawhney, Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003), p. 73.
50. “Armed forces weighing all possibilities,” The Hindu, December 19, 2001, p. 12.
51. Praveen Swami, “Gen. Padmanabhan mulls over lessons of Operation Parakram,” The Hindu, February 6, 2004. Available at http://www.hindu.com/2004/02/06/stories/2004020604461200.htm.
52. Ibid.
53. Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram (see note 49 above), pp. 80–83.
54. Cited in A. G. Noorani, “Vajpayee's Pakistan Policy,” Frontline, Vol. 20, No.11 (May 24—June 06, 2003). Available at http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2011/stories/20030606000907500.htm.
55. Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India (New Delhi: Rupa, 2006), p. 268.
56. Cohen and Dasgupta, Arming Without Aiming (see note 4 above), p. 63.
57. General V. P. Malik, “Revisiting AFSPA: Don't Blame it on Kashmir Problems,” The Tribune, September 20, 2010. Available at http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100920/edit.htm.
58. “AFSPA has been Demonized: Army Chief Designate,” Hindustan Times, March 11, 2010. Available at http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NortheastIndia/AFSPA-has-been-demonized-Army-chief-designate/Article1-517738.aspx.
59. “Govt, army disagree on changing harsh law,” Hindustan Times, March 29, 2010. Available at http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/India/Govt-army-disagree-on-changing-harsh-law/Article1-524432.aspx.
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