Postscript

As I conclude, I cannot help but draw a relationship between India’s post-Independence strategic culture and the importance given to the study of military history. The yearlong 1947–48 war with Pakistan gave India’s fledgling strategic community an opportunity to study three operational scenarios for posterity, and derive strategic lessons, which it did not. The siege of Poonch from November 1947 to November 1948 was not only a remarkable saga of resilience, it was also the first opportunity to study civil–military relations as the Indian Army and Indian Air Force created an environment of trust and faith among the 40,000 civilians and created a template for governance in a combat environment. It was also the first time that the fledgling RIAF embarked on a sustained aerial campaign to keep Poonch supplied in the absence of a road link for almost a year. The fine print of the operation has not been narrated and preserved for posterity. As against this, look at the manner in which the West has told the story of the Berlin airlift as a saga of the triumph of democracy in the form of numerous narratives.

The second example I want to offer is that India lost a golden opportunity to record and study the origins of Pakistan’s proxy war as an instrument of state policy. The tribal invasions of 1947 and 1965 were orchestrated by Pakistan’s military and supported by the Pakistani political establishment, and yet, when Pakistan unleashed its proxy war in J&K in the early 1990s, India was underprepared! The reason was quite simple – the narrative of extremism and subversion was lost in the interim years as India grappled with much more and basked in the limelight of the 1971 victory.

The third set of operational lessons from 1947–48 that were lost to India’s strategic planners for decades were the difficulties faced by General Thimayya as he first attempted to save Skardu and Leh, and then force the raiders to retreat along the Indus to Skardu. Years of strategic lethargy thereafter meant that the problems of high-altitude infrastructure creation and logistics supply were not factored in prior to the 1962 war as India attempted to string together a line of vulnerable defences against the Chinese as part of the ill-fated Forward Policy.

All the three themes that I have talked about are right up the street of a military historian to create interesting narratives. Sadly these stories only formed part of biographies and campaign descriptions. Many such examples are available from both the 1965 and 1971 wars. I will highlight two of them which point to an evolving strategic culture of status quo, compromise, diffidence and misplaced generosity. In 1965, despite having captured the Haji Pir Pass and some other areas in Tithwal and Kargil sectors with some difficulty after losing them in 1947–48, India vacated them without adequate pay-offs and relatively unmindful of the sacrifices involved during their recapture. In 1972, Indira Gandhi’s one moment of weakness after Bhutto pleaded with her not to include the resolution of the Kashmir problem in the Simla Agreement still haunts India today. An anxiety to occupy a moral high ground, however divorced from realpolitik, has resulted in India’s inability to translate military lessons into strategic ones.

From an Indian perspective, the 1971 war with Pakistan was the last full-blown multi-front war fought by the Indian armed forces. I thought it would be a good idea to take a breather here. There is a flip side though when you take a breather – you see a glass that is half-filled. Now, whether you look at it as half-filled or half-empty depends entirely on you. If you see an opportunity, or a space to be filled, it is half-filled; that is exactly where I see my narrative. My greatest worry as I called a halt to this narrative was whether I had done justice to all the three services – I for one can cross my heart and say that I have tried my ‘darn best’ and donned a ‘purple’ uniform as I wrote the book. Interestingly, purple is a colour in India’s modern armed forces that depicts ‘jointness’ and emerges from a fusion of the army’s olive green, navy’s white and air force’s blue. I knew I was on the right track when a young group captain who read my manuscript during the early days told me: ‘As I read along, I forgot that you wore the blue uniform of the IAF.’

Over a cup of coffee with Ramachandra Guha at Koshy’s, Bangalore, and with Sugata Bose at the National Defence Academy, I expressed my apprehension that writing a book on all the wars and conflicts that India has experienced since Independence, and squeezing it into one volume would be a Herculean task. I also wondered whether a young civilian military history enthusiast, or a captain in the Indian Army on a lonely post at Siachen, would really prefer reading a slimmer volume (something I have failed to achieve as 500-plus pages can hardly be called slim!) from times gone by and digest it thoroughly before moving on to wars and conflict that he or she is more familiar with. Both Guha and Bose agreed with the readership and the rationale I was looking at, and suggested that I split my work into two volumes. Ram Guha, however, cautioned that a second volume would always be more difficult to write. Getting back into the rhythm would be challenging, he said, also adding that I had to be prepared for the long haul. A point of six to eight years is what he said was a reasonable time frame for both volumes to see the light of day. My wife, Mowthika, though, was aghast at hearing about this time frame as it would mean a continuation of the many spells of complete hibernation. It has been over three years since we met at Koshy’s and Ram’s prediction seems to be right. All I can tell Mowthika now is: ‘Hang in there for my sake; it will be worth the effort!’ As I wrapped up the book between September and November 2015, I started getting the traditional pre-publication jitters that afflict first-time authors when they see a lot of good writing emerge on a subject that is similar to theirs. In my case the writing emerged from Delhi’s various military think tanks on the 1965 war with Pakistan as the country dissected it threadbare fifty years later. However, I was relieved that like much of Indian military history writing so far, it remained service specific. I knew that I could rest easy!

Jai Hind! As we march ahead with blue skies and calm seas around us.