AN ELEGY FOR INDIA’S
MILITARY HISTORY
By
Maj
Gen VK Singh
India’s military history is
presently comatose. Like a terminally ill patient, who can do little more than
wait for a miracle, it is slowly sinking. It is only a matter of time before
passes into oblivion, followed by certain death. Unless it receives urgent attention and aid,
the end is inevitable. Can nothing be done to reverse the course, and revive
it?
The last major fought by the Indian Army
was in 1971, exactly 40 years ago. In the first 25 years after Independence,
there were no less than four major wars – the Jammu & Kashmir operations in
1947-48; the Sino Indian conflict in 1962; the Indo-Pak war in 1965 and the
Indo-Pak war in 1971, which resulted in the liberation of Bangladesh. In addition
there were several smaller conflicts such as the police action in Hyderabad in
1948; the liberation of Goa in 1961; the clashes at Nathu La in 1967 and Kargil
in 1999. Some books describing the four major wars were written by officers who
took part in the operations. There are also some regimental histories, which
describe the role of certain units which participated in various conflicts.
Expectedly, these are confined to local actions at battalion or regimental
level. A comprehensive historical account is available only in respect of the
Jammu & Kashmir operations in 1947-48, in the form of an official history
published by the History Division of the Ministry of Defence in 1987, almost 40
years after the operations were conducted. Strange as it may seem, there are no
official accounts or histories of the major wars fought by the Indian Army in
1962, 1965 and 1971.
What is the reason for this drought in recording the post
Independence military history of India? Surely, it is not lack of information
or data. During operations, all
units maintain war diaries, which form an authentic record of actions and
activities during battle. These are the primary documents for military
historians and research scholars, which are relied upon in case of
discrepancies in accounts of the participants and between different levels of
command. They also form the basis for gallantry wards as well as disciplinary
action, if necessary. Along with after-action reports, war diaries are the
source documents for official histories of military operations. Supplemented by
personal accounts of the participants, they are also used for compilation of
regimental histories. After compilation, units and formation headquarters
forward copies of war diaries to Army Headquarters, regimental centres and the
archives maintained in the History Division of the Ministry of Defence, which
is also responsible for production of the official history of the Armed Forces.
After a certain period of time, these are transferred to the National Archives
of India.
If the data is readily available,
why has the History Division not brought out the official histories of the
1962, 1965 and 1971 wars? Actually, the accounts have been published, but not
printed. This conundrum needs to be explained. The History Division submitted
the official history of the 1971 war to the Government in 1988, followed by
those of the 1962 and 1965 wars in 1990 and 1992 respectively. However, their
publication was stopped by the Ministry of Defence, reportedly at the instance
of the Ministry of External Affairs. In September 2000, The Times of India
put the 1965 and 1971 histories on its website after a terse comment: “Official military histories of the 1962,
1965 and 1971 wars exist, but successive governments, obsessed with secrecy,
have refused to make them public"[1]
Subsequently, the official histories of 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars were also put
on the website of Bharat Rakshak. The title given on the first page clearly
shows that it is the ‘Official History’ with the copy right held by the History
Division, Ministry of Defence, Government of India. The histories of the 1962
and 1965 wars are graded ‘Restricted’ while that of 1971 does not bear any
security classification.[2]
It
would be interesting to dwell on the reasons for the reluctance of the
Government to clear the publication of the official war histories in book form,
even after they have already been ‘published’ on the Internet and are thus
available to the public. As is well known, a committee comprising Lieutenant
General Henderson-Brooks and Brigadier P.S. Bhagat, V.C. was constituted by the
Chief of Army Staff to enquire into various aspects of the 1962 war with China.
The Enquiry Report was submitted to the Army Chief who in turn forwarded it to
the Defence Minister in July 1963. The Ministry of Defence decided that its
contents should not be made public, and it was graded as Top Secret. This was
probably because it showed certain failings on the part of political leadership
and the higher echelons of the military. However, the Defence Minister, Y.B.
Chavan, made a statement in Parliament on 2 September 1963, in which he
referred to certain portions of the Report, and its recommendations. Though the
report was never made public, Neville Maxwell was somehow able to read it, and
he has written about it in his book 'India's China War'. Some idea of the
contents of the report can be gleaned from General Bhagat’s book, 'Forging the Shield: A Study of the Defence
of India and South East Asia.' Though he did not refer to the findings of
the NEFA Enquiry, his views on the subject of civilian control over the
military, and the division of responsibility between the political and the
military leadership are said to be based on the report, which he had drafted in
1963.[3]
Returning to the war
histories of 1962, 1965 and 1971, the Ministry of Defence, after giving the go
ahead for their publication in 1991, back tracked after objections from the
Ministry of External Affairs, which felt that making the 1962 war history
public would “damage relations with China”, with which the Government of India was
negotiating a border tranquility agreement. The Home Ministry added their bit
by opining that publication of the war histories would have security
implications. Of course, the military which should have been the one to worry
the most about security did not raise any objection. So a total of 75 copies of
the history were typed out and distributed to senior government departmental
heads, such as the home secretary, the foreign secretary, and a few
instructional establishments in India. It did not take long for complaints to
start coming in; the Air Force felt that it had not received its due and the
Ministry of External Affairs made its displeasure known again. So the 75 copies
were treated as highly classified documents and clapped into cupboards and
forgotten. [4]
Based on the Kargil Review Committee report, the
Government constituted a Group of Minister (GoM) on National Security in April
2000. Among the various issues considered by the GOM in the Chapter dealing
with Management of Defence was the publication
of war histories. The GOM Report stated:
The Ministries of Defence and External
Affairs may review the issue of publication of the official histories of the
1962 Sino-Indian war, the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars and a history of the
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) operations and finalise the decision within a
period of three months. While preparing the historical account of the 1965
Indo-Pak war, the events relating to Kutch should be included.[5]
In accordance with the recommendations of the GOM,
the Ministry of Defence constituted
a committee
to formulate recommendations on publishing the history of the 1962, 1965 and
1971 wars. The committee was headed by ex defence secretary N.N. Vohra, the other two members being Lieutenant
General Satish Nambiar and historian S.N. Prasad. The
Committee recommended that the three war histories should be published.
However, the Ministry of External Affairs again threw a spanner in the works, raising
fears about China’s sensibilities.
On
26 November 2007, replying a question on the publication of the war histories,
Defence Minister AK Antony told parliament, “A
committee to review the publication of war histories, constituted by the
Government, has given its recommendations. The recommendations of the committee
are being considered for arriving at a final decision on the issue.” This
was five years after the committee had submitted its recommendations. Another
four years have elapsed, but the government is still ‘considering’ the
recommendations.
It
is interesting to reflect the situation that prevails in other democracies, and
the manner in which they have dealt with the problem. In 1994, the USA
constituted the Commission on
Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, also called the Moynihan Secrecy Commission, to
conduct "an investigation into all matters in any way related to classified information and granting security clearances". Senator Moynihan reported that approximately
400,000 new secrets are created per year at the top level alone—Top Secret—the
disclosure of any one would cause, as defined by law, "exceptionally grave
damage to the national security." In 1994 it was
estimated that the United States Government had over 1.5
billion pages of classified material that was 25 years old and older. In 1995,
President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12958
regulating national security classification and declassification
which established a system to declassify automatically information more than 25
years old, unless the Government took discrete steps to continue classification
of a particular document or group of documents.
The Moynihan Commission’s
final report, issued on March 3, 1997, was unanimous. Among its key findings
were:-[6]
- that secrecy is a form of government regulation
- that excessive secrecy has significant
consequences for the national interest when policy makers are not fully
informed
- the government is not held accountable for its
actions
- the public cannot engage fully in informed
debate
In
keeping with its liberal attitude that places public interest upper most, the
USA has been the leader in enacting laws that give unrestricted access to the
citizen about public affairs. The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law
by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. Britain enacted a similar law with the
same name in 2000, while the Right to Information Act in India was enacted only
recently in 2005. However, in some respects, the British have overtaken their
American cousins in matter of public disclosure. In 2009, historian Christopher
Andrew’s The Defence of the Realm: The
Authorized History of MI5 was published in Britain. This was followed a
year later by the official history of MI6, which is the official title of
Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. Titled MI6: The History of the Secret
Intelligence Service 1909-1949, the
book was authored by Keith Jeffery, Professor of History at
Belfast University, who was given access to the top secret archives at MI6 to
enable him to write the history. Though India was only five years behind the UK
in enacting the Right to Information Act, it is difficult to imagine an
official history of the Intelligence
Bureau (IB) or the Research & Analysis Wing (&AW) coming out during the
next 10 to 20 years.
India’s has enacted laws to regulate the classification and
disclosure of public records, but these are vague and full of contradictions. Section
12 (1) of the Public Records Act 1993 mandates that: All unclassified public records as are more than thirty years old and are transferred to the National Archives of
India or the Archives of the Union Territory may be, subject to such exceptions
and restrictions as may be prescribed made available to any bona fide research
scholar.[7]
According to the Rule 5
of the Public Records Rules (1997), The
Director General or Head of the Archives, as the case may be shall accept for
deposit and preservation public records of permanent nature which have been
retained after recording by the records creating agency in its records room for
the last twenty five years or more.[8]So, what is the time limit for transfer of
public records to the Archives, 25 years or 30?
The Right to
Information Act 2005 has only added to the confusion. Section 8 (1) of the RTI
Act lists the categories of information that can be refused by a public
authority. Section 8 (3) stipulates: Subject
to the provisions of clauses (a), (c) and (i) of sub section (1), any
information relating to any occurrence, event or matter which has taken place,
occurred or happened twenty years
before the date on which any request is made under section 6 shall be provided
to any person making a request under that section.[9]
The
Right to Information Act in 2005 was an empowering piece of legislation that
has rattled the Indian bureaucracy, which considers it an encroachment in their
domain. Information about the manner in which the government functions has
always been a source of power, and making it accessible to the public has begun
to reveal not only the deficiencies in the system but also the dismal
performance of the people who run it viz. the bureaucrats. Not surprisingly,
measures have been instituted to reverse the trend, and move back a few paces.
One such step is the ban that the government has placed on publication of books
and articles by officers who have served in intelligence and security agencies,
even after they retire from service. Before they retire, the affected officers
have to give an undertaking that they will not write anything based on their
experiences while in service, and those who violate the law will forfeit their
pensions. The order was published in the Gazette of India on 31 March 2008.
The
legality of the order will no doubt be challenged in the courts, which in all
likelihood will strike it down. However, until it remains, it will have far
reaching implications. As it stands,
officers from organizations such as R&AW, IB, CBI, and the paramilitary
forces are covered by the ban, but not bureaucrats. Surely, officers who have
held the appointments of Cabinet Secretary, Defence Secretary and Home
Secretary are privy to much more than most officers in these organizations.
After publication of the Gazette, it was realized that it does not cover the
armed forces, whose gazettes are published by the Ministry of Defence. It is
learned that the Home Ministry has now asked the Ministry of Defence to publish
a similar gazette in respect of the Armed Forces.
An
important aspect that seems to have been missed is the far reaching effects
this will have on our military history. As is well known, military history forms
an important ingredient of military training of officers. It is from past
campaigns that present day military leaders draw lessons in tactics and
strategy. There is a paper on the subject in promotion examinations and the
entrance examinations for prestigious institutions like the Defence Services
Staff College. A ban on retired officers from writing about past campaigns will
virtually throttle discussion of military affairs in all forms. Books written
by Clausewitz, Mahan, Liddel Hart, Eisenhower and Slim are like Bibles for
officers of all armies and navies. In India, books written by D.K. Palit,
Harbaksh Singh, R.D. Palsokar, K.C. Praval, S.K. Sinha, P.S. Bhagat, S.L.
Menezes and Satyindra Singh form essential reading for all military officers.
If they had not written these books, would India have a military history?
An
amusing sidelight is the compilation of regimental histories. These are
published by respective regimental officers associations or regimental centres,
which provide the funds. In most cases, the author is a retired officer from
the regiment, who is given access to regimental records, secretarial assistance
and a suitable honorarium. According to the present guidelines, the draft
regimental history is submitted to the intelligence directorate of the service
headquarters for clearance. In keeping with the decision of the Ministry of
Defence not to declassify war records of 1962, 1965 and 1971, the regimental
history is cleared for publication with the security classification
‘Restricted’ or ‘Confidential’. As a result, veterans who have taken part in
these wars cannot purchase copies. In fact, even the author cannot keep a copy!
(The writer is one of those affected).
Isn’t
it time someone woke up to the Alice in Wonderland situation? If military history
is to remain classified, what is the point in writing it? As it stands, India
has no post Independence military history worth the name, in printed form. Everyone
agrees that something needs to be done and quickly. Here are some suggestions.
The
Government should permit the publication of the war histories of 1962, 1965 and
1971 wars in printed form, since these have already been published on the
websites of the Times of India and Bharat Rakshak. In fact, the history of the
1965 war has recently been published in printed form by S.R. Prasad and U.P.
Thapliyal, who were involved in its production while in the History Division. The material in the book is the same as that
in the official history, which is still graded ‘Restricted’. If the Ministry of
Defence can permit the publication of the history by the two authors in their
private capacity, is there any reason to block the publication of the official
history?
There
is also a need to review the rules for publication of regimental histories.
Books written by retired officers or civilians do not require clearance by
military intelligence. Of course, if any classified information is disclosed,
the authors face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Regimental
histories should also be treated in the same manner, since they are authored by
retired officers and published by regimental officers associations. There are
cases when regimental histories have been published either without obtaining
clearance or ignoring the instructions of military intelligence to grade them
as ‘restricted’. Interestingly, the Indian Navy follows a system different form
the Indian Army. Instead of the history being screened by Naval Intelligence,
it is cleared by a board of admirals, constituted by the Vice Chief of Naval
Staff. As a result, several volumes of the history of the Indian Navy authored
by a retired officer have been published, including one that covers the 1965
and 1971 wars, not to speak of several sensitive warship development projects.11 Surely, the operations of land forces
cannot be considered classified, when those of naval forces are not, during the
same period or in the same war or conflict. Perhaps the Army can take a cue
from the Navy, to get around the problem until the Ministry of Defence gets its
head out of the sand.
The
top brass of the three services would do well to deliberate on this issue, which
directly affects our training and morale. The bureaucracy, which does not have
any recorded ‘history’, cannot comprehend the importance it has in the
military. In fact, nobody else has any stake or interest in the preservation of
military history. Since it concerns only soldiers, sailors and airmen, why
should we permit others to decide how we record our history? If security is a
concern, surely those in uniform have a better understanding of the subject
than others. It is time we took things
in our own hands, and got rid of the yoke of the bureaucracy, at least in the
matter of military history.
End Notes
- The
Times of India; 6 September 2000.
- http://www.bharat-rakshak.com
3. P.S
Bhagat, Forging the Shield: A Study of
the Defence of India and South East Asia, (Dehradun), 1967.
4. Ajai
Shukla, “History….or mystery”, Business
Standard, 4 December 2007
5. Report of the Group of Ministers on National
Security (2001), p. 117
6. Wikipedia
article on Commission on Protecting and
Reducing Government Secrecy
- The Public
Records Act, 1993 No.69 of 1993
8. The
Public Records Rules, 1997.
9. The
Right to Information Act, 2005
10. S.N.
Prasad & U.P. Thapliyal, The India-Pakistan War of 1965: A History, Natraj Publishers, Dehradun, 2011
11. V.Adm. G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph – History of the Indian Navy 1965-1975, Lancer Publishers, New Delhi,
1999
(Published in the USI Journal, Jul-Sep 2011)
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