When operations started (in 1971, in Bangladesh), the splitting of Pakistan was only a remote possibility
- In Interviews
- 12:27 PM, Aug 24, 2016
- Myind Staff
MyInd Interview with Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam
Arjun Subramaniam is a serving Air Vice Marshal in the Indian Air Force and is currently a faculty member at the National Defence College, New Delhi.
This interview offers a peek into the Mind of a Soldier-Scholar-Historian & the Author of ‘India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971’
What prompted you to write” A Military history of India's wars (1947-1971): https://harpercollins.co.in/book/indias-wars/ ? Was John Keegan one of the motivating factors?
At the outset I want to clearly mention here that the views expressed in this interview are solely mine in the capacity of a military historian and do not reflect the views of India’s armed forces or the Government of India.
While John Keegan was certainly an inspiration in terms of his commitment to the recording and narration of military history, the main catalyst for writing the book was the absence of a smooth flowing narrative of India’s contemporary wars from a joint perspective. I really wanted to reach out to a readership that went beyond the military and strategic community. It was music to my ears when I heard a group of Bajaj Auto executives discussing my book as I was waiting to catch a flight from a departure terminal at Pune airport, or when the wife and dentist son of a senior military officer said that they have the book on their bedside table.
You mention that one of the objectives of the book was to convince policymakers of the need to adopt a progressive approach towards declassifying material about national security and to learn from mistakes of the past. A noble objective but is India ready to be honest with itself?
It is a slow process, no doubt, but I think the current government realises the need to do so as part of an overall process of introspection. As India realises the importance of comprehensive national security, there is a lot more focus being given to the study and chronicling of contemporary military history. The very fact that a serving officer has written a book such as this is testimony to the process of encouraging analyses and critiques of past military performance. The writing of this book actually gained momentum after the current government took office in 2014 as I was enthused by a series of pronouncements from the MoD that writing of contemporary military history was important. Declassification is a work in progress and I think you will hear more on this front in the coming years.
What was your Ph.D. in and can you share with us the subject of your thesis? Can you please narrate the experience of Mig 21 pilots converting over to Mi-25 during the IPKF days?
My Ph.D. thesis was on the employment of air power in fourth generation warfare. I started it in 2007 while I was posted at the Defence Services Staff College and completed it in 2011. It was a new area when I commenced and in the absence of much research in that domain, I had to validate much of my material through submitted articles in professional military journals at home and abroad and then expand them into chapters for my thesis. Yes! The mid-1980s were interesting times and the IAF felt that it would be good idea to improve the combat orientation of its attack helicopter fleet by inducting a few experienced fighter pilots into the fleet for a few years. It was an innovative move that was a one-off experiment and it is to the credit of a large number of helicopters pilots in the IAF that they adapted very quickly to the combat environment during the Indian Peace Keeping Force operations in Sri Lanka. The IAF did not need to convert any more fighter pilots to the attack helicopter stream thereafter.
You attest that the DNA of the Indian Armed forces originate from a period when two martial communities - the Marathas and the Sikhs were contesting the Mughals and the Afghans for the control over the subcontinent. Was it because they holed out against the invaders the most or because they provided stable and contiguous administration to large swathes of people?
Though this argument of mine has been contested by a few people and that there is a large constituency of historians in India who assert that the Mughals left a stronger military legacy, I maintain my position that the Marathas and the Sikhs occupy pole position. Except in the case of Babar in the First Battle of Panipat, the Mughals mainly used overwhelming force and relied mainly on mass, attrition and firepower to overwhelm adversaries who were far inferior in their military capability. The Marathas and the Sikhs were more manoeuvre oriented and relied heavily on stealth, speed and excellent leadership on the battlefield against stronger enemies. Yes, they were ultimately defeated, but do not forget the exploits of Shivaji, the Peshwas and generals of the Sikh empire like the great Dogra general, Zorawar Singh, all of whom fought campaigns at great distances from the heart of their respective empires.
Was General Harbaksh Singh wrong in not joining the INA led by Bose? Today, it is a well known fact that the British didn't leave India just because of Quit India Movement but because of the prospects of yet another INA taking shape after WW II, the revolts by Naval and Army personnel and the overall decline of the European colonial powers?
Joining the INA or not was a deeply personal issue and I would not like to fault Harbaksh Singh for not joining the INA. You must also remember that Harbaksh was operating behind Japanese lines in Malaya with British Special Forces when the British surrendered. He was not at Singapore where the bulk of the Indian force was abandoned by their British officers, leaving them deeply disillusioned and convinced by Netaji that the Azad Hind Fauj was preferable to imprisonment and the only way to evict the British from India. Harbaksh on the other hand was part of a main British fighting force and felt a sense of comradeship with his fellow prisoners and refused to abandon them and join the INA, and not because he was any less of a patriot. Gen W.A.G. Pinto of Shakargarh fame, is someone I have spoken to about this as he was part of a Baluch regiment in Burma that had many personnel defecting to the INA and he recollects that it was very hard to reconcile to what happened and judge the actions of those who joined the INA. I have no doubt that the INA and the other military expressions of dissent like the Naval Revolt of 1946 had a significant coercive impact on the British when it came to their final decision to leave India.
Why wasn't the IAF used during the conflict with China in 1962?
I think your question is only partially correct. The transport and helicopter fleet of the IAF were used extensively in the 1962 conflict. They were, in fact, the lifeline of all the forward posts for both logistics support and casualty evacuation. It is the offensive arm of the IAF that was not used and this was for two main reasons. First, Nehru was incorrectly advised by a British Operations Research expert, Blackett, and the US ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, that any offensive use of air power by India would result in a massive retaliation by the Chinese, an assumption that was factually incorrect, not validated by Nehru with any kind of robust intelligence assessments, nor contested by India’s army and air force leadership. Second, my conversation with senior IAF officers like Air Chief Marshal Tipnis and Air Marshal Patney – both young fighter pilots in 1962- points at a fact that IAF fighter aircraft were armed and ready for action, but there was inaction at the top that the IAF fighter fleet could play an important role in any ensuing conflict. Air Marshal Bharat Kumar (Retd) has written a detailed account of the IAF in battle in the 1962 war in his book ‘Unknown and Unsung: Indian Air Force in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 (http://www.amazon.in/Unsung-Indian-Force-Sino-Indian-1962/dp/B00BG78JKE/ref=sr_1_3/253-1436368-8067162?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471807139&sr=1-3)
The public today blames Smt Indira Gandhi for taking India towards socialism but if India hadn't signed the Friendship pact with the Soviets in early 1971, would India have succeeded in splitting Pakistan into two?
That is really a tough question to answer and I will stay away from the socialism, democracy and capitalism bit part as I am neither a political scientist, nor a political commentator – I will look at your question from a military historian’s perspective. Yes, the Indo-Soviet Friendship treaty did strengthen her hand and give her the added confidence to launch military operations, but when operations started, the splitting of Pakistan was only a remote possibility – Dacca and the surrender of 93,000 troops was never in the plans. The maximum PM Gandhi expected was that with swift operations, the Pakistanis would negotiate for peace, stop their genocide and allow India to repatriate the refugees while the UN and other countries would urge the military dictatorship to honour the result of the elections of March 1971 that had swept the Awami League to power.
My research reveals that it is only when Sagat Singh’s 4 Corps and formations from the north led by 2 Para and other units of 101 Communication Zone threatened to envelope Dacca that Indira Gandhi and Manekshaw scaled-up their expectations of complete surrender at Dacca. This is when the American Seventh Fleet made its threatening moves towards the Bay of Bengal and the Soviets responded with their own submarine and fleet manoeuvres in the region as what was later assessed as a counter-veiling set of manoeuvres to prevent the Seventh Fleet from coercing India to cease operations. In the absence of an Indo-Friendship Treaty, would the Seventh Fleet have pressed-on into the Bay of Bengal to threaten the INS Vikrant led task force? Probably yes! Would the Soviets have made their move? The probable answer is yes, because they would not have stopped wooing India and who knows, India would have signed the treaty in gratitude after the war!!
Would that have coerced Indira Gandhi and Manekshaw sufficiently to settle for a premature cease-fire? Probably not, because they were too close to victory and also because the US ambassador was himself surprised at this move and had sent a dissenting cable to Washington on this move! So let us give ourselves some credit, rather than attributing every move of that era to great power rivalry.
Who would you rate as the greatest commander the Indian Army has produced in modern times and why?
a) Field Marshal KM Cariappa
b) General Harbaksh Singh
c) Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw
Asking me this question is like asking an American military historian to choose between Eisenhower, Marshal, Bradley or Patton as America’s most accomplished WW II general.
I will also restrict myself to the period I have written about (1947-1971). Each one of them has a special place in contemporary Indian military history and I would add Gen Thimayya’s name to this list and to be fair to the other two services, I will add Marshal of the IAF, Arjan Singh and Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal from the Indian Air Force and Admiral S.M. Nanda from the Indian Navy. Let us look at each one of them and highlight their special contribution to India’s post-independence armed forces. If there was anyone who laid the foundation for an apolitical armed forces that was committed to civilian control in a democracy, it was Field Marshal Cariappa. His insistence on discipline, the honour code and an officer ethos of leading by example has stood the Indian well over the years. Gen Thimayya can well claim to be being the first Indian general to execute multiple campaigns across varied terrain in India’s first war after independence in Jammu and Kashmir. He was also one of the early Indian Army officers to have understood the importance of joint operations as he involved the limited effort of the Royal Indian Air Force in all his campaigns, be it in the Leh operations, the Skardu operations, or the operations in the Kashmir Valley. If there was an inspirational general to learn from, it was Thimayya. Despite an exceptional operational record of rebuilding Eastern Army Command after the 1962 debacle and decisively dealing with the Mizo insurgency and the Nathu La skirmish with the Chinese in 1962, Manekshaw was a much under-rated general till he took over as Chief of the Army Staff prior to the 1971 war with Pakistan. His decisive leadership during the conflict and his deft handling of Indira Gandhi made him a talismanic leader across the nation. If there was an Indian general who came closest to someone like Patton in his obsessive desire for success on the battlefield, it was the hard-driving Harbaksh Singh. It was his brigade that made the most progress in the Tithwal and Kishenganga sectors of the Kashmir Valley during Thimayya’s Spring offensive in 1948. Had it not been for his timely interventions across the Western Sector, the Indian Army may not have recovered as well as it did during the 1965 war.
While Marshal of the Indian Air Force, Arjan Singh shaped the contours of a modern air force with his inspirational leadership of 1 Squadron during the Burma campaign and his cool leadership during the trying initial days and the quick recovery of the IAF during the 1965 war with Pakistan, it was Air Chief Marshal Lal who transformed the IAF into a ‘campaign impacting’ force during the 1971 war. His clarity of the roles and missions of the IAF along with the application of air power in joint operations proved to be a decisive factor particularly in the Eastern Theatre.
Admiral S. M. Nanda can be credited with transforming the Indian Navy into a truly offensive force with his deft management of fleet resources prior to the 1971 war. Employing the OSA class missile boats in the western theatre and switching the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, to the eastern theatre was a master-stroke that paid rich operational dividends. He was truly the transformational leader that the Indian Navy was looking for to claim its rightful place within India’s armed forces.
This online interview is by kind courtesy of Harper Collins (India).
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