The Credo for army officers stands displaced from its pride of place in the Chief’s office annexe, where it was inscribed on a plaque on the wall opposite to the one that once graced the famous painting of the Surrender at Dacca.
While the Surrender has been replaced by a painting – christened here ‘The Brahmin’ – the Credo has been replaced by a self-congratulatory and delusional stanza from a Hindi poem.
Recall, the prime minister pitched for decolonising the military at the combined commanders’ conference held in his home ground, Kevadia, early in his second term, ‘advising the Services to rid themselves of legacy systems and practices that have outlived their utility and relevance.’
Most recently, the supreme commander in her Republic Day address, reiterates this, thus:
… many relics of a colonial mindset persisted among us for long. Of late, we have been witnessing concerted efforts to change that mindset… Reforms of such magnitude require an audacity of vision… There has also been a fresh engagement with our civilisational heritage… An exciting array of initiatives is underway in the domain of culture to preserve and revitalise our traditions and customs.
The Credo under threat
Does the Credo, articulated first by a colonial master, number among the threatened ‘array of initiatives’?
Hopefully, it doesn’t figure among the ‘75 legacy laws, practices and procedures that date back to the British times,’ identified by the army.
To refresh memory, the Credo is an extract from the then Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshall Sir Philip Chetwode’s inaugural address at the Indian Military Academy (IMA), 92 years ago. It reads:
First, the safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time.
Second, the honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next.
Third, your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.
Reproducing the inaugural address in its journal, a little prior to the Modi era, the army’s think tank added, ‘The Chetwode adage echoes in every military establishment of India and beckons the officers to their duty.’
Also read: What Moving a Painting From Army Chief’s Office Says About Indian Military’s Hindutva Shift
Now well into the Modi era, an Army Chief not finding a place for it in his office, implies an erasure, not so much of a colonised past as his political masters wish, but a revision of Indian army officers’ definition of duty.
The dissing of the Surrender is clear from the explanation that it is now gracing a ‘most befitting place’. That it now serves as backdrop to where VIPs sip tea during seminar intervals at the Manekshaw Center shows up another lie.
Is the Credo next?
As any intelligence hand knows, running an ‘asset’ involves incremental tests, with nondescript errands early in the engagement progressing to significant demands.
Likewise, the military has first been put to unexceptionable actions – change the beats at Beating Retreat, rework an insignia, rename a guest room, re-designate IMA companies etc.
Progressively, it has proved responsive to graver calls, including tweaking accounts of operational actions, such as the calling off of the 2019 Amarnath Yatra; Balakot; and Ladakh, with the latest being percentages of Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir. Also, remember how the non-descript Tour of Duty proposal metamorphosed to the monster Agniveer!
The military having cleared these, is it now to be initiated into the regime’s fold with a final assault on its professional ethic?
Is a similar exercise of wresting control over the military, as was in pre-war Hitler’s Germany, underway, only one informed by Chanakyan stealth, in slo-mo?
Hitler seized control with some blatant moves, such as the stratagem that displaced Generals Fritsch and Blomberg. Hitler, speedily personalising command, had the German military then take an oath to his person.
In contrast, the regime – imbued as it is with Kautilyan cunning – would subdue the army to its purpose in a manner as to not open up credible allegations of fascism, imitative of inter-war Germany.
The explanation for displacing Surrender has a clue. A ‘source’ had it that The Brahmin was a reminding of the dharma.
By all accounts, the Credo has served as army officers’ dharma thus far and well enough at that, if the trust in the army is anything to go by.
But then, for the regime, unless you ring out the old, you cannot usher in the new.
What’s the beef with the Credo?
The regime can have no issue with the Credo’s second and third strictures. Both stand reinforced by the motto of the feeder institution to the IMA, the National Defence Academy: ‘Service before Self’.
It’s the first that perhaps gives the regime cause for worry: ‘First, the safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time.’
What constitutes the ‘country’ in the military mind?
Nominally, ‘country’ comprises a people and territory, the preserving of which is the foremost duty of any military. On the other hand, the ‘state’ in political theory comprises, alongside the two, a government.
Conceivably, the lack of mention of government – perhaps as a missing second line – has caught the eye of the regime.
However, it needn’t have worried.
The Credo is but the second piece of advice Chetwode had for the officer candidates of the first course IMA, the Pioneers.
The first bit of advice reads in part:
It is the paid servant of the people, and is at the disposal of the Government of the day…
This should normally dispel any lingering doubts on subordination; but the regime, as is its wont and though into its third term, instead wishes for domination in perpetuity.
Its apparatchiks will likely be exercised by the first bit also carrying the timeless stricture:
May I urge you to remember that politics do not, and cannot, find any place in Army life. An Army can have no politics. It is the paid servant of the people, and is at the disposal of the Government of the day, whatever may be the political complexion of that Government.
The regime that believes it is in saddle till Bharat gets viksit and led by one who cannot even share poster space, is unlikely to countenance an apolitical army.
Instead, it would prefer an army pervaded by its ideology, through a shift to ‘subjective civilian control’.
In military sociology, ‘subjective civilian control’ implies a military is imbued with the dominant ideology.
Thankfully, the last naval chief attaining a sinecure, the navy appears to have weathered the inducement.
The army’s turn now to prove itself, the balance of the first bit of advice is to fore:
Once there is any suspicion that an Army, or any part of it, is biased politically, from that moment the Army has lost the full confidence of the nation who pays for it. It is no longer impartial, and that way lies chaos and civil war.
By all accounts, a part of the army is by now biased politically.
Also, a regime that has emasculated the army in face of an enemy at the gates by foisting the Agniveer scheme on it, can be expected to chance ‘chaos’.
The threat ahead
In the context of his times, Chetwode predicated his advice, saying, ‘the young Indian man of education seems very attracted by politics.’
However, with the regime’s revivalist ideology resonating in a military recruiter’s primary catchment area today, his appraisal of the Indian context continues to ring true.
The Credo remains relevant, if not more so, considering even Independence Day is subject to threat of reset.
A softening blow has already been struck.
The cohesion and integrity of the officer corps has been targeted by the quantification bug hitting the upper ranks.
The army would be well advised (p. 214) to take a leaf out of the experience of the Wehrmacht, that was once in similar, if more tangible, straits.
It must ensure that the likes of operationally proficient Blaskowitz, Manstein and Zeitzler survive; that its professionally thorough Rundstedts and Rommels also develop their critical faculties; that no Jodl gets that high; while, alongside, ensuring against any Kluge and von Stauffenberg, of Operation Valkyrie fame.
This would be uphill, given that the doctrine of ‘deep selection’ for higher ranks militates against an Indian Mark Milley.
Whose army is it anyway?
Even so, the military might like to reprise the universal and perennial debate on what the military lodestar should be. It’s been visited before.
A thinking general once wrote: ‘The army belongs to the people, never to the government, accordingly, the army is answerable only to the people.’
This echoes MacArthur:
the new and here-to-fore unknown concept that members of the armed forces owe
primary allegiance and loyalty to those who temporarily exercise the authority of the executive branch of government rather than to the country and its constitution which they are sworn to defend.
There are three problems with this proposition.
One, if political masters depart from the Constitution, who is to judge?
Second is, if in doing so, the Constitution is changed, albeit incrementally and through Chanakyan subterfuge, does the military continue to standby, apolitically?
The vice president is already on record questioning the basic structure doctrine, while the president’s Republic Day address has a word in favour of ‘one nation, one election.’
An opposition leader has already faulted the regime for arraigning the state’s institutions against the democratic opposition, that has consistently, collectively commanded a higher percentage of the vote than the regime.
Last but not least is deification of the Constitution. The new Constitution must then command the military’s allegiance.
General Mark Milley’s words in retirement suggest as much:
We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it… each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price… And we are not easily intimidated.
Notable is that Milley presumes a certain permanence of and political consensus over the Constitution.
Here, a Constitutional makeover implies jettisoning a liberal, secular, federation, that breaths equality and fraternity. The ‘idea of India’ shifts to that articulated by Hindutva’s Bharat.
Such change would entail two easily predictable consequences: fracture of the ‘country’, preservation of which is the officer corps’ first duty; and second, a possible ‘civil war’, that Chetwode warns of in case of politically biased military, even one partially so.
To prevent the dauntingly foreseeable, the military could arrive at a way station: the military should be apolitical, where it can; it should be political where it must.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack account. It has been edited slightly for style.
Ali Ahmed is a strategic analyst.
