Loaded comments: Serving defence officials should avoid political remarks

Within a week, two senior serving army officers have chosen to enter the lists of political discourse, setting troubling precedents for the well-settled relationship between the defence forces and civilian power. First came comments by Chief of Army Staff Bipin Rawat at a seminar in New Delhi. Talking about security threats in the Northeast, he suggested that Pakistan and China were fighting a proxy war in the region by encouraging illegal immigration. In that context, he referred to a local party, the All India United Democratic Front, or AIUDF, growing at a quicker pace than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam. From a politician, this statement would have been par for the course. From the chief of the largest branch of the armed forces, it is a faux pas.

That one party represents mostly Muslim migrants and another follows a Hindu majoritarian ideology is the least of the general’s improprieties. In a region where the issue of illegal immigration has become ultra-sensitive, and the process of preparing a National Register of Citizens is under way, the statement is indiscreet and risky. It is likely to tarnish the well-earned reputation of the armed forces for impartiality and raise the challenges for soldiers fighting in some of the world’s most hostile terrains. Mr Rawat’s decision to award a medal to an officer who used a local civilian as a human shield for operations in Kashmir indicated a disdain for human rights in a state where the army’s reputation is under a cloud.

The army chief’s disregard for the proprieties of his office has evidently acted as a signal for loquaciousness down the ranks. On Tuesday came an observation, again at a seminar, this time in Chandigarh, from the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of Army Training Command M M Naravane. Restoring the ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir demanded statesmanship, not brinkmanship, he said. This analysis would sit well with any civilian commentator. The problem is that the GOC-in-C is a representative of an institution that is subordinate to the civilian authorities. It is not his brief to pass public judgements on the government of the day. Since Jawaharlal Nehru’s time, civilian power over the armed forces has been a founding principle of Indian democracy; that is why the commander-in-chief of the armed forces is the President of India. This is the nature of the best in all reputed democracies, including the US.

So far, serving army chiefs have scrupulously followed this precept, whatever their private reservations about government policies. Those who enter politics — from the current chief minister of Punjab to former defence minister Jaswant Singh — do so only after they leave the army. Today, however, a dire example of military encroachment on civilian power is too close to home for the Indian establishment to view recent statements from senior army personnel with indulgence.