Air Chief Marshal Asks Officers to Express Grievances Privately Amid Military Politicisation Row

Chandigarh: Addressing military veterans recently in New Delhi, Air Chief Marshal (ACM) A.P. Singh highlighted the growing disaffection amongst retired service officers over debatable happenings in the country’s armed forces, and counselled them against airing their displeasures publicly.

Likening all military personnel to one big family and speaking familiarly in Hinglish, ACM Singh urged the gathered retirees at the Manekshaw Centre in Delhi cantonment on the ninth Armed Forces Veterans Day on January 14, to only ‘privately’ air their perspectives over ‘wrong’ goings-on in the services, in order to facilitate debate and eventual resolution. Broadcasting them only rendered their peeves valueless, he said.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) chief appealed to veterans to ‘come back’ on these matters, after which ‘We,’ he said, would strive to rectify these mistakes, if any, and to ‘correct’ misperceptions. But he did not elaborate on whether ‘We’ was just the IAF, or the other two services and more importantly, the government, as well. The ACM ended his speech by assuring the gathered veterans that the ‘basic ethos of the defence forces’ would remain intact but yet again, failed to expound on what this embodied.

The ACM’s remarks were aimed obviously at combative reactions from innumerable veteran online chat groups to a series of recent services-related events.

One such episode was the recent video clip featuring senior uniformed Indian Army (IA) personnel, including a two-star officer of major general rank and a one-star brigadier, serving pilgrims food at an army-sponsored langar at the ongoing Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj.

“Proudly serving food in uniform,” fumed one veteran adding, “but did they serve this for their own troops.” Another appositely declared that henceforth the IA should organise similar langars for all festivals, including Ramadan (for Muslims) and Gurpurab (for Sikhs). One more said that such langars could create a ‘dangerous precedent’ and were best avoided.

The IA’s past involvement in the Kumbh Mela has evolved over decades from providing engineering and logistic support to the local civil administration, ensuring the event’s smooth functioning. This expanded participation included erecting medical facilities, assistance in crowd management and sundry other contributions, but many veterans claimed that hosting a langar manned by senior uniformed personnel seemed a recent phenomenon, corresponding to other Hindu religious events involving service personnel, which had collectively provoked their secular ire.

One such episode occurred last month, in which the IA Chief of Staff General Upendra Dwivedi, dressed in a saffron-coloured dhoti and sporting a similarly coloured gamcha, offered prayers at the Shiva Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, alongside similarly attired defence minister Rajnath Singh. Television news reports and social media video clips of the event triggered a barrage of acerbic veteran outbursts, critiquing the army chief for so obviously displaying his religiosity, despite heading a hitherto acknowledged secular and areligious force.

But senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, like former minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar stoutly defended Dwivedi’s actions. “Nobody should have a problem with the Raksha Mantri or the army chief, or anybody celebrating their own faith,” Chandrasekhar told Times Now, soon after the Ujjain temple visit. Anyone who has a problem, should look for a hole and bury themselves in it, he added.

Thereafter, veteran anger flowed following a clip from the IA’s X handle earlier this month, in which the Southern Army Commander Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth was seen accompanying Maharashtra’s newly elected BJP chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in a jeep, to inaugurate the Army Mela in Pune. The three-star officer stood demurely by the chief minister’s side at the back of the vehicle which, in turn, was being driven by a two-star major general, with a one-star brigadier sitting bashfully beside him.

“This shameless demonstration of zero pride and substandard professionalism is an open invite to the undeserving to join the army,” declared one veteran in response to the clip. Even the president does not stand at the back (of the jeep) with officers driving, remonstrated another.

And, then there was the controversy over replacing the historic painting depicting the Pakistan Army’s surrender after the 1971 war, which had hung in the army chief’s office in South Block in Delhi for decades, with a bewildering ‘semi-mythological’ artwork inspired by the Mahabharata.

“It takes a special kind of jaundiced thought process to remove your own military’s victory from the public eye,” declared one veteran, who like the others mentioned earlier, requested anonymity. Pandering to political whims has happened earlier in India’s military, but never at this scale, he said, but this was an insult to all those who fought and died in the 1971 war.

Also read: Should the Army Be Faithful to Its Country or the Government?

One other veteran boldly stated that politics was behind the painting swap, as the BJP government wanted to erase the memory of this significant military victory from public view, as it had been secured under then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Some said that the IA chief had demurely acquiesced in the painting changeover.

Veterans are also privately opposed to politicians appearing at public events in military uniforms or using services imagery during election campaigns and public events. They fear that such symbolic association diminished the sanctity of the uniform and risked conflating the armed forces with political agendas.

Such continuing acerbic criticisms and snarky veteran responses, centred primarily on the overt politicisation of the armed forces after the BJP-led government assumed power in 2014 and the consequential decline in service professional standards, deteriorating civil-military relations and the ad hoc manner in which defence-related decisions were executed.

This latter aspect included the appointment of service chiefs and the chief of defence staff and new promotion criteria for sundry senior ranks based on ‘merit’ and not seniority. Other vital issues, including the Agnipath (Fire Path) scheme for temporary recruitment of personnel below officer rank and the snail-paced force modernisation due to complex bureaucratic procedures, were also on the veterans’ radar.

Increasingly, veterans are also agitated over politicians appearing at public events in service  uniforms and using military imagery during election campaigns and public events to emphasise their seemingly robust security policies. Many fear that such symbolic association ‘diminished’ the uniform’s sanctity and risked conflating the armed forces with political agendas.

Articulating their views in limited public forums, but more widely on social media chat groups like WhatsApp, a cross-section of veterans also highlight the gradual erosion of institutional neutrality in the services and the misuse of military achievements for political gain. Whilst acknowledging the importance of public awareness of soldierly successes, these veterans argue that such accomplishments had, over the past decade been ‘gratuitously’ leveraged to garner political mileage, undermining the armed forces’ apolitical ethos. Alongside, many retired senior officers, preferring privacy, also state that the Faustian covenant  between soldier and politician for mutual benefit had intensified in recent years.

According to Admiral Arun Prakash, former chief of staff of the Indian Navy (IN), the most serious development in this regard was related to the assumption of ownership and credit for military operations, and their subsequent inclusion in election campaigning by political parties. Writing in the June 2019 edition of the bi-monthly Vayu Aerospace and Defence Review, published from Delhi, he stated that while governments may legitimately take credit for ordering military operations, it is when political parties brazenly exploit them for votes and personal aggrandisement, that the plot starts (negatively) unraveling.

The veteran went on to make a thinly disguised reference to the BJP profiting politically from the 2016 ‘surgical strikes’ against militant launch pads in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the IAF’s bombing of an Islamic terrorist training centre at Balakot in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in February 2019 ahead of general elections that same year, which it resoundingly won.”Equally damaging,” he said was the public perception that serving officers were making statements to comply with a ‘party (BJP) line’.

Furthermore, the former IN chief stated that over the previous five years, since 2014, hints of political patronage had served to unsettle the officer corps with misgivings about quid pro quo bargains being struck. Moreover, when bemedaled veterans, sporting star-studded caps, were seen saluting or genuflecting before politicians, he stated, they sent a message of subservience which was contrary to India’s proud martial tradition. Besides, political parties “eagerly enlisting veterans, without a long-enough cooling period, cannot but send negative signals to serving personnel regarding the benefits of acquiring political connections early on in one’s career,” Admiral Prakash warned.

Also read: Installation of Shivaji Statue in Pangong Tso Sparks Veterans’ Backlash Over Political Symbolism

However, this ‘new normal’ in the services, ironically presented a paradox in this debate, for almost to a man-and now woman-military personnel posit themselves as being distinctive and ‘superior’ to others in society, guided by an elevated ethical and moral code which merited pedestalising. Simply put, servicemen were inclined to set the moral tone for others by spurning double standards except, it seems when it suited them to do so otherwise, by quietly lobbying politicians not only for promotions, but also employment and patronage, or both after retirement.

It’s also a truism in the military that collectively, it believes it does little or no wrong, and that all its myriad operational and administrative inefficiencies and shortcomings stem from being a powerless and neutered pawn of the scheming civilian bureaucrats at the Ministry of Defence (MoD). And while it’s nobody’s case that the hidebound and largely ill-informed MoD’s bureaucracy is overbearing and regressive, it is equally relevant that in reality, the military remains a victim of its insularity, inflexible procedures and bureaucracy which it refuses to either modify or acknowledge. Oddly, becoming a part of the services decision-making process since late 2019, following the creation of the department of military affairs headed by the chief of defence staff (CDS) had also failed to usher in any perceptible reforms.

In conclusion, many veterans also believe that the military’s steady politicisation risks creating divisions within the ranks, as soldiers are recruited from diverse backgrounds and embody a wide range of political beliefs. And, if the military brass is seen as being aligned with a particular political ideology, they cautioned it could lead to internal dissent and weakening of the armed forces esprit de corps guided by the immutable dictum of ‘naam, namak, nishan (honour, loyalty and identity)’.