Military Memoirs and 'Samvads': Quest for Relevance or a Race to the Top?

In 2025, a noticeable trend has emerged within India’s military community: a surge of brainstorming forums and book launches. This dual emphasis on public dialogue and personal narrative is becoming a defining feature of the year.

Recently senior officers, veterans and practitioners gathered at the Army War College in Mhow for ‘Ran Samvad 2025’ – literally, ‘War Dialogues’ or ‘Battle Dialogues’. According to the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the forum aims to sharpen the armed forces’ focus on war, encouraging frank exchange between serving officers and veterans and raising public awareness of military matters.

At the same time, the market has seen a flood of memoirs and books by high-ranking former officers including two retired army chiefs and several corps commanders. Titles range from Four Stars of Destiny and Alone in the Ring: Decision-Making in Critical Times to The Cantonment Conspiracy: A Military Thriller and Op Sindoor – An Open Source Analysis. Some promise “inside stories” of sensitive operations, though officials have repeatedly clarified that Op Sindoor remains in abeyance.

The allure and pitfalls of the public domain

As readers consume these discussions and writings, the common sentiment is that they raise more questions than answers. George Bernard Shaw’s quip that “all autobiographies are lies” feels apt. Many of these works, often ghostwritten, rehash material already in the public domain, while those hinting at classified details risk brushing up against the Official Secrets Act.

The rush to capitalise on current events has led to contradictions. While one book lauds Op Sindoor as a decisive blow to Pakistan’s terror networks and claims to be a detailed account of “successfully ensuring regional stability while delivering a powerful message against Pakistan and its terror infrastructure and suggesting the way forward”, the Army Chief himself admitted at its launch that it was “too early” to assess its impact, with infiltration attempts at the Line of Control still continuing.

Other memoirs lean on identity or self-justification rather than introspection, highlighting for instance the officer-author’s ethnicity rather than the institution’s collective ethos. or skimming past unanswered questions around Pulwama.

Another recently published book, with a title that downplayed the question of accountability for the supreme sacrifice of 40 CRPF soldiers at Pulwama in 2019, failed to reflect on the reasons behind such a devastating attack.

Many of these memoirs are an exercise in spin, crafted to justify a story until the author believes it.

From erosion of core values to the rise of the ‘Yes Man’

For many, the military’s enduring values of Imaandari, Wafadari, Bahaduri (Honesty, Loyalty, Bravery) remain a source of pride. Professional and personal honesty, loyalty to the nation and unit, bravery in the face of fear and respect for Naam, Namak, Nishan are seen as foundational and non-negotiable. Yet some believe a segment of the hierarchy has allowed these values to erode – replacing professional integrity with professional dishonesty, loyalty to personalities and the culture of the ‘Yes Man’. Otherwise, why would the Chetwode credo, followed in letter and spirit by generations of officers, be shown the door?

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw’s warning still resonates: “A Yes Man is a dangerous man. He is a menace. He will go very far. He can become a minister, a secretary or a Field Marshal, but he can never become a leader, nor ever be respected. He will be used by his superiors, disliked by his colleagues and despised by his subordinates. So, discard the Yes Man.”

When the focus shifts from safeguarding the institution to preserving an individual's public image, professional integrity is often compromised. We celebrated the surgical strikes but overlooked the systemic failures that led to the Uri attack. The Balakot airstrike was a powerful strategic response, but accountability for the 40 CRPF personnel who lost their lives in Lethapora (Pulwama) was never fully addressed. Similarly, the loss of lives in Galwan and the barbaric attack in Pahalgam have been marked by a lack of accountability.

Senior military commanders who, not long ago, accused Kashmiris of suffering from ‘selective dementia’ need to reboot their own memory. For personal glory and relevance, from Pulwama to Pahalgam, they failed to identify the real masterminds. Adil Ahmad Dar or Kamran Ghazi in Pulwama and Hashim Musa alias Suleiman Shah in Pahalgam were the perpetrators and not the masterminds of these dastardly and cowardly attacks. The real masterminds still sit comfortably, undeterred, at the epicentre of terror across the border.

Redefining the enemy, reframing the narrative

At Ran Samvad 2025, a serving major general offered a debatable perspective. After suggesting that the Pahalgam terror attack was part of a Pakistani trap “to incite India to react and do a surgical strike for which probably Pakistan may have been ready”, he went further and linked the attack to a pattern of unrest, citing the farmers’ protest, the anti-CAA movement and the continuing ethnic violence in Manipur as examples of events that he believed had been deliberately fostered or exploited by Pakistan. In other words, he suggested that Pahalgam was not an isolated strike but part of a broader attempt to destabilise the country’s progress toward becoming Viksit Bharat by 2047.

This assessment falters on some basic counts. First, it underplays India’s resilience and overlooks the government’s stated and demonstrated policy that acts of terror will be met with a decisive response, as seen in the surgical strikes, Balakot and most recently Op Sindoor.

Second, it ignores the reality that India today is a self-reliant and confident power, able to make mature decisions in the national interest without being “trapped.” Far from being lured into reaction, India has shown that it can “hunt the hunter” at a time and place of its own choosing. In the digital era, where information warfare is as real as conventional combat, narrative management must be treated not as a subset of war but as warfare itself.

Finally, he mixes up political protests against specific government policies (i.e. farm laws and the CAA) – which are an expression of the democratic rights of citizens – with ethnic disturbances that the government allowed to fester (Manipur) and goes one step further to link all of this to a Pakistani ‘plot’.

Looking ahead

Ran Samvad 2025 also revisited the contentious issue of theaterisation, with the CDS acknowledging “dissonance” between the services but affirming resolution in the national interest. On a positive note, the joint doctrine for Special Forces, Airborne and Heliborne Operations was released, an important step toward greater synergy.

Whether through samvads or memoirs, the armed forces are clearly seeking to redefine their voice in the public domain. The real test is whether these engagements strengthen institutional integrity or dilute it in the race for visibility.

Rajesh Kalia, a former Colonel in the Indian Army, served as Defence Public Relations Officer in the 3&4 Corps and 14&15 Corps of the Indian Army. His operational background includes service in Siachen, Jammu and Kashmir and Sri Lanka (as part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force). He retired in January 2025.

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