The military’s implementing of Prime Minister Modi’s decolonisation dictum was on display yet again, this time in the renaming of Fort William as Vijaydurg.
Possible hypotheses on the name change are:
- A benign view of the military’s alacrity is that India’s is an obedient military, subordinate to the civilian masters.
- The army has read the tea leaves and is selective of the battles it picks. It perhaps intends to ride out such punches, if not the regime itself; bowing to the wind better than being blown away.
- Its strategic in allowing the regime some leeway, for the regime’s attention for its organisational projects. The three services are in a competition to bend. When the navy has been rather supple, can the army be far behind? Though the air force came up with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ tune for the Beating Retreat, it is not quite neck-in-neck, since the air chief is against airing dirty linen.
- Maybe the army is periodically throwing the regime some bones.
- It’s also not impossible that its leadership comprises believers, over-eager as are nascent converts.
- Perhaps the commanding general in Kolkata is currying the regime’s favour, quite like the current chief of defence staff did once from the same perch, pronouncing on a student agitation.
Why fret?
Irrespective of which of these holds water, the army’s alacrity can be laid down to the army leadership being from the Great Indian Middle Class. It’s been brainwashed for some 30 years, the duration the army incubated the current leadership.
It appears the regime may be close to having the military leadership it wished for and the budding Hindu rashtra, a military it deserves.
Sensibly, the regime is proceeding post-haste to redo the military. It wishes the military to first shed its past skin, so that it can slip into the one it has in store.
The regime having time on its side, it is not possible to expect the military to take a stand.
It can be expected to continue down its ‘apolitical’ road, oblivious that under the circumstance of the Chanakyan – surreptitious, stealthy, subterranean, surely – assault on India’s verities, to be apolitical is political.
For now, the military is best advised to be go slow, shirk, disrobe leisurely.
What’s at play?
If ‘Vijaydurg’ is its substitute for ‘Fort William’, then it must engage more intimately with alternatives thought up for it.
The alternate chosen is out of sync with the people and the place, as pointed out by a former army chief, a local to boot.
Linked as Vijaydurg is to the great warrior general, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, it is of a piece with the army installing statues of the Maratha king at two other places, neither of which the legendary patriot had any connection with – Kupwara and Ladakh.
For its part, the navy’s statue of the Maratha king – later felled by strong winds – was at least mitigated by the navy’s roleplay as legatee to the king’s exploits at sea. (Never mind that an admiral, Kunjali, was Muslim, prompting the navy to change the name of a Colaba helipad that bears his name – and that too in the pre-Modi era!)
There is no such redeeming feature in the army’s action, with locals – less in Kupwara where they are understandably muted – querying it.
The then-Maharashtra chief minister inaugurating of the one at Kupwara suggests where the funds come from, providing a clue to the intent.
It’s clear the military is being put to furthering an agenda. Its leadership – with bios invariably touting alma mater National Defence College – cannot be so naive as to not know what that is.
The proliferation of Shivaji’s likeness in unlikely places owes to the appropriation of a secular, progressive, modernist and humanist historical figure by the right wing. (Never mind that they stand for precisely the obverse, or rather, the appropriation owes precisely to that variance.)
Shivaji’s resolute fight against Aurangzeb – Hindutva’s Darth Vader – forced the wily Emperor to spend the rest of his life campaigning austerely in the Deccan.
Shivaji’s challenge is interpreted – in the right wing’s worldview – as the first blow against India’s initial colonisers, its Muslims.
Thus, the name change in Kolkata is a double-blow: more obviously against British colonisers, but also, more subtly, against Muslims.
Further, in Kolkata, it helps the onslaught on a stronghold against Hindutva: Bengal, the other being the deep South.
Ideologues know best erasure is a preliminary and necessary step to rewriting history.
By erasing the part of history of Bengal and its people that gave Bengal a head-start into modernity over the rest of India, they hope to subdue it. The insertion of the Hindutva icon is to recreate Partition’s divide.
On a wider note, the privileging of Shivaji is the regime’s way of ‘unifying’ India. It assumes diversity is a threat. Therefore, the emphasis on ‘One this, One that, and the ‘Other’’.
Unifying narratives, as one woven round Shivaji, are supplemented around historical figures as Mahabir Borphukan in Assam and Bhagwan Munda in Adivasi India.
The former is to build the ferment against ‘illegal immigrants’ which even Trump could envy; while the latter is against Christians, explicable when ‘British’ is collapsed with ‘Christian’.
It places a Christian ‘Other’ on par with the Muslim Other – in order to construct a Hindu identity and, in turn, unity (‘ek hai toh safe hai’).
This is increasingly necessary, troubled as the regime is by the imminent exposure, heralded by the Telangana caste census, of the Grand Indian 15:85 Faultline, wherein 15% lord it over the 85% majority.
A DIY kit
There are two possibilities, neither of which are edifying: one, either the army is acting in connivance; or, two, it is being dictated to.
Rajnath Singh has a former military general as principal adviser in his office, a post created for him.
The incumbent ordinarily ought to have alerted the Raksha Mantri, since he would know the military ethic, even if it evidently escapes Singh.
Its possible that the army furnishes the list of 75 prospective decolonisation initiatives, while the replacement draws on back links with the right wing behemoth.
When confronted with criticism on his redecoration of his office annex, that witnessed the relegation of the iconic 1971 War victory painting and the plaque with the army’s leadership credo, the army chief apologetically accepted three ‘golden ages’: the British, the Moghul and the era before that.
However, the fort’s renaming soon thereafter suggests that while his heart is in the right place, demonstrating spine might be needed.
For that, the military must engage Ali-like in a ‘rope-a-dope’ trick, resorting to a theaterisation-like merry-go-round.
The military must vet the Replacement Dharma for any repositioning entailed in relation to the constitution.
The regime’s innumerable protests to the contrary only aggravate suspicion that these serve as cover for its designs on the constitution, a pre-requisite for formalising Hindu rashtra.
Simultaneous steps to politicise the army are a dead give-away, since these but ensure the army does not rally to a guardianship role.
Reduction of the salience of the army in the national security scheme and in national esteem is evidence.
Diminution is visible in the army being at butt of memes (‘not a game changer but a name changer’) and brasshats as bookend for politician photo ops.
Worse is in placing the military afoul of the national security interest, such as in renewed jollity with China without a reckoning over the three ‘buffer zones’ in Ladakh.
Such undercutting of the military contradicts Rajnath Singh’s homily: ‘A robust security system relies on a strong military. No nation can develop unless its military is powerful.’
The regime must be apprised to the three paradoxes its actions bestir, in order that, hopefully, it treads more gingerly:
- The more it hollows out the military, the more likely it will seek to preserve itself.
- The closer it gets to constitutional tinkering, the more the military’s guardian role comes into play.
- Disempowering the military internally, necessarily militates against empowering it externally.
Notwithstanding that, the military will do well to check on which of the hypothesis behind its name changing binge holds water, and shore up against keeling over.
Ali Ahmed is a strategic analyst. This post first appeared on the author’s Substack and has been lightly edited for style.
