Surely, the General Doth Protest Too Much
Last Friday, according to a front-page story in the Times of India, our Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, had made a few rather critical observations about the Indian corporate entities dabbling in producing weapons and ammunition for defence forces. The good general was upset that the domestic industries were making misleading claims about their indigenous capabilities and were indulging in “profit-driven endeavours”.
And, rather assertively, the CDS observed that the armed forces expected “a bit of nationalism and patriotism” from these entrepreneurs. Harsh words. Necessary words. Correct words.
General Chauhan, it be noted, is no dissident general. As everyone knows in our Naya Bharat, no disgruntled or disloyal soul gets tapped on the shoulder, however crucial or insignificant the job may be. He has not displayed any hint of the contrived flamboyance of a General Bipin Rawat. If anything, many purists have been disappointed that he has often departed from the protocol of professional aloofness and equanimity expected of a soldier. Nor is he a flaming radical, who may have an ideological knife out for private industry.
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Yet it is difficult to recall when another serving officer felt so persuaded as did General Chauhan to call a spade a spade. It will be useful to remember that one of the major grouses Indian corporate entities had with the Manmohan Singh regime was that the United Progressive Alliance government did not allow desi entrepreneurs a free run of the extremely lucrative defence industry (a sector in which no questions are asked because “secrecy” is sacred and necessary.)
The doors got unlocked after 2014; as the Modi crowd deepened its mutually dependent ties with (mostly) crony capitalism. The Make in India policy regime became the profiteers’ dream come true.
Arguably, wars and armed conflicts have always been a time for profits and fortune-making; but capability and efficiency were still needed.
Why should the general be surprised at this gimcrackery? Has not cheating and short-changing been elevated as a working proposition for the entire ruling class?
Cheating, false claims, plain and deliberate dishonesty have been deeply embedded in almost all walks of life. Old-fashioned honesty and integrity are deemed to be signs of weakness and infirmities. Exaggeration, wild and wilful, was celebrated and valued as signs of strong leadership. Over-selling and under-performing are serenaded as “chankaya niti”.
Even places of worship do not seem to be beyond this national malady. Take, for instance, the so-called laddoo scandal atop the Tirupati hills, one of the holiest of all sites in this ancient land. The trail of adulterated ghee, procured for making the prasadam, stretches all the way from Tirupati to Uttarakhand. To be sure, the gods get no exemption from the profiteer’s greed.
Even more soul-scalding is the organised way the real-estate tycoons are working overtime to make moolah in the newly consecrated land of Ayodhya. The nation was told that the consecration of the Ram temple was the beginning of our collective moral and spiritual renewal; instead, it has been reduced to a profit-making enterprise by the real estate moguls, with politicians and priests as the junior partners.
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It can perhaps be safely asserted that there is no area of national endeavour that has remained untouched by institutionalised falseness. The partisan politician protects crooks in his corner – and the rival defends thieves in his party. We have lost the capacity to tell what is right from what is wrong. We are complacently content to reject any international standard; the far and few in-between Indian achievements in the global arena are invariably stories of personal dreams, ambitions and perseverance. A sort of inward-lookingness has corroded whatever little quest we had for global excellence.
The Indian businessman has prospered under benign protectionism. The allure of a vast Indian market itself keeps him away from pitting his products and wares in the global arena. The old neta-businessman nexus of the licence raj days has now been revived with a vengeance. We read about the kind of trouble industrialist Anil Ambani is having with the Enforcement Directorate. It is the same business that was involved in the deal of the century – the purchase of Rafale aircraft from France.
So, the crucial question that needs to be addressed is why is the good general protesting? The good general could not be unaware that, over the years, particularly after 2014, the virtuous ‘nationalism’ has been over-invoked – blatantly and cynically – by a host of voices, from shabby politicians to cement manufactures, to sell their shoddy wares.
The nobility of “nationalism” or patriotism has been vastly devalued as the partisan policeman flings the anti-national charge at anyone and everyone who dares to displease the Sultan and his Pashas. On the other hand, so many unappetising politicians and other public figures have wrapped themselves up in the colours of patriotism that it has ceased to be a virtue – or its lack a failing. Demagogues and their henchmen have reduced nationalism to a mere legal “offence”, to be deployed not to preserve the nation but to be exploited for base electoral calculations.
It also needs to be noted that the CDS spoke with the authority of a general basking in the glow of public acclaim, aided and abetted expediently by a calculating political crowd in the wake of the Operation Sindoor, with all its exaggerations. There was an edge to the general’s indignation. In this age of the war-making and war-mongering, it is difficult to challenge a soldier’s formulations. Patriotism has its obligations.
Harish Khare was editor of The Tribune.
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