With Ideological Fusion, the Military Marches from National Defence to Regime Security

Departures from the normal have been coming in fast and furious lately. The latest instance is in the army’s think tank, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, providing a forum for BJP MP Tejasvi Surya to speak at a youth event inaugurating it’s month-long annual flagship program. General Upendra Dwivedi, the army chief, was also present there. Interestingly, there is no reference to this event on the CLAWS website. The same institution had earlier collaborated with Republic TV, the doyen of godi media, on a forces’ conclave.

What was incipient three decades back is now quite in the open. Thirty years ago, at a Republic Day event at Shivaji Park, the arrival of Bal Thackeray, of the then-in-recent-memory Mumbai riots infamy, on the invite of the southern army commander, witnessed fellow commanders of sister services walk off.

Till very recently, such instances of over political behaviour of the armed forces, tending towards the new normal, were highlighted as trends. Earlier it was important to apprise the military of the trajectory of its actions, with an intention to embarrass it into course correction. Now it is wasted breath. The time for calling out the military for departures from professional distance from political sphere is now past. Now, the ‘new normal’ is the reality.

The onset of the new normal can be seen a press release on a southern command military exercise. Its first sentence atypically quotes yet another forgettable prime ministerial acronym. The exercise itself appears a leaf out of Pakistan’s 1965 playbook, a diversion towards Kutch from the primary theatre to the north. Unseen is the aim-plus of providing military deterrent cover for a crony capitalist’s oil refinery in close vicinity  a refinery at the centre of the Indo-American bust-up over Indian refining of Russian oil. The safety of the same refinery was one of the conditions of India’s interlocutor with Pakistan under the Vajpayee government, at the turn of the century. 

In contrast, the first tri-service amphibious exercise was held some four decades back. That exercise entailed a last-minute change in planned location from the eastern to western seaboard, with the lead planner presenting the exercise duly rewritten up within two days to the chiefs of staff committee, headed by Admiral R.H. Tahiliani. No hype, these were professionals engaging quietly with their mandate.

Hype is the defining characteristic of the new normal. Hype is complemented by serving of police summons to those who pop the question: yeh kya ho raha hai bhai? 

The latest media salvo has the army chief, Gen. Dwivedi acceding to a choreographed return-of-the-war-hero civic reception on the tarmac upon his arrival in his hometown. Since an air force plane provides the backdrop, presumably his was an official trip to some obscure military post there; Rewa not being known as a consequential military station. The notion of conflict of interest being alien in general to the current lot, it is best to leave it at that.

Even if we are to ignore the prominent role of a Brahmin priest in the welcoming party as part of the new culture of that ruling-ideology dominated state, it would appear that the army chief genuinely believes info-war spiel. And if we are not to ignore the Brahmin in the welcoming ceremony, then the army chief is signalling, as is his wont going a step further than a predecessor in that such visits are now boldly in uniform, his is a bid for elevation mid-next year as chief of defence staff.

Fusion can only be taken further if believers are in the chair. This entails auditioning by self-selected candidates to unseen national security minders ensconced in locales ranging out to Keshav Kunj. It appears that the regime’s rewiring over the past decade of the military is complete. The regime finally has the military it wishes for. Fusionism, called for by the chief of defence staff, Gen Anil Chauhan in his recent book (p. 44), is in hand.

General Chauhan defined it as the infusion into the military of political ideologies rather than merely a collaborative interface with civil structures for the optimal utilisation of national resources for securing the nation. When the fusion of other agencies is already self-evidently complete, it is only incumbent on the military bandwagon. In any case, in an incipient authoritarian milieu, its leadership cannot be expected to be martyr.

What does this imply for the defence of the realm?

The regime has indicated Op Sindoor continues and the army chief has claimed Op Sindoor 2.0 is ongoing, and only up until recently, the regime had placed India also at odds with a far mightier neighbour. Such a strategic circumstance suggests that it must wish for a thoroughly professional military and that fusionism enhances professionalism somehow.

Fusionism implies the apolitical plank of the military has withered. As for secular, the army chief’s rather visible temple going does not hold out much promise. Since being apolitical and secular are indicators of professionalism, perhaps the regime is sanguine with merely a professional military, so long as it is ideologically fused within it.

In other words, the lack of professionalism is compensated for by the compliance that ideological fusion implies. Such militaries are not unknown, such as in present-day China, and precedence of their efficacy exists even among great powers, such as Stalin’s Russia that beat another military of equal worth and with similar structural links backward to a genocidal autocrat, the Wehrmacht.

To Huntingtonian purists that might be sacrilege, but a military apex fused with the regime allows for subjective civilian control of the military (p. 80). This may not be as facilitative of military effectiveness in a democratic setting as its opposite, objective control (p. 83), but for the regime’s purposes it suffices. Huntington’s model did not dwell on military effectiveness as much on the manner of its subordination. Also, in any case, a plural, civic democracy is under replacement here by electoral autocracy and cultural nationalism.

Arguably, since there is no existential threat to the country, the premium on military effectiveness can be downgraded, at least temporarily till atmanirbharta plays out in full by mid-next decade or so; with the Sudarshan chakra dome taken as milestone. India has not only generated at long last a two-front dilemma for Pakistan, but thanks to the advent of Trump 2.0, the Modi government has also cozied up to China lately.

In regard to the latter, disengagement is done with, reportedly at a cost in territorial concessions kept from the voting public, with the military complicit in this charade. Follow-up de-escalation is not on the cards at all.

As regards Pakistan, the prime minister, assuming Op Sindoor was ‘war’, says, ‘the remarkable coordination of all three forces forced Pakistan to surrender so quickly during Operation Sindoor.’ Trump’s self-touted intervention - for sure on the Pakistani side - belies this narrative.

Notwithstanding this, the illusion must be kept up for electoral purposes. It’s a separate matter that just as Op Parakram was wrapped up mildly, so might the successor Operation Sindoor 2.0 fizzle away after the Bihar elections.

Reflexively, it would appear that fusionism entailing a dilution in military professionalism does not secure India. However, such a conclusion is when security is viewed in the traditional lens. Instead, India’s giantism is its external security guarantee. This dilutes the military’s centrality. Consequently, the military can be trifled with to the extent of enervation of its professionalism.

Instead, regime security is the appropriate security referent. The regime’s ambitious ideology-ordained course necessitates the military keep in step. For this fusionism has been thought up and subscribers suitably positioned. This facet of the ‘new normal,’ otherwise referring to India’s supposed strategic shift, implies the strategic gaze must not hereon fixate on the military’s pliability but rest on the meaning of the regime’s ideology-inspired portentous next steps for national security. As the bard said in Hamlet, “For some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away.”

The original version of this essay first appeared on the author's Substack. It has been edited and republished with permission.

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