Naravane Book - FOUR STARS OF DESTINY

 

General Manoj Mukund Naravane PVSM AVSM VSM SM is a retired Indian Army General who served as the 28th Chief of the Army Staff, as well as the temporary Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from 15 December 2021 until his superannuation on 30 April 2022.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL YOGESH JOSHI, the chief of the Indian Army’s Northern Command, received a phone call at 8.15 pm on 31 August2020. The information he received alarmed him. Four Chinese tanks, supported by infantry, had begun moving up a steep mountain track towards Rechin La in eastern Ladakh. Joshi reported the movement to thechief of army staff, General Manoj Mukund Naravane, who immediately grasped the severity of the situation. The tanks were within a few hundred metres of Indian positions on the Kailash Range, the strategic high ground that Indian forces had seized, hours earlier, in a dangerous race with China’s People’s Liberation Army. In this terrain on the disputed Line ofActual Control—the de facto border between the two countries—every metre of elevation translates to strategic dominance. The Indian soldiers fired an illuminating round, a kind of warning shot. Ithad no effect. The Chinese kept advancing. Naravane began making franticcalls to the leaders of India’s political and military establishment, including Rajnath Singh, the defence minister; Ajit Doval, the national security advisor; General Bipin Rawat, the chief of defence staff; and S Jaishankar,the minister of external affairs. “To each and every one my question was,‘What are my orders?’” Naravane writes in his as-yet-unpublished memoir Four Stars of Destiny.The situation was deteriorating dramatically and demanded clarity. Therewas an existing protocol. Naravane had clear orders not to open fire “till cleared from the very top.” His superiors did not give any clear directive. Minutes ticked by. At 9.10 pm, Joshi called again. The Chinese tanks continued to advance and were now less than a kilometre from the pass. At9.25 pm, Naravane called Rajnath again, asking “for clear directions.” Nonecame. Meanwhile, a message arrived from the PLA commander, Major Generally Lin. He proposed a cooling down of sorts: both sides should stop further movement, and local commanders would meet at the pass at 9.30am the following morning, with three representatives each. It seemed like reasonable proposition. For a moment, it appeared that an off-ramp was emerging. At 10 pm, Naravane called Rajnath and Doval to relay this message. Ten minutes later, Northern Command rang again. The Chinese tanks had not stopped. They were now only five hundred metres from the top. Naravane recalls Joshi saying that the “only way to stop them was byopening up with our own medium artillery, which he said was ready and waiting.” Artillery duels were routine on the Line of Control with Pakistan, where divisional and corps commanders had been delegated the authorityto fire hundreds of rounds per day without asking anyone up the chain. Butthis was China. This was different. An artillery duel with the PLA couldescalate into something far larger.“My position was critical,” Naravane writes. He was caught between “theCommand who wanted to open fire with all possible means” and a government committee “which had yet to give me clear-cut executive orders.” In the operations room at army headquarters, options were being considered and discarded. The entire Northern Front was on high alert.Areas of likely clash were being monitored. But the decision point was atRechin LaNaravane made yet another call to the defence minister, who promised tocall back. Time stretched. Each minute was a minute closer to Chinesetanks reaching the top. Rajnath called back at 10.30 pm. He had spoken toPrime Minister Narendra Modi, whose instructions consisted of a singlesentence: “Jo uchit samjho, woh karo”—do whatever you deem appropriate.This was to be “purely a military decision.” Modi had been consulted. Hehad been briefed. But he had declined to make the call. “I had been handeda hot potato,” Naravane recalls. “With this carte blanche, the onus was nowtotally on me.”It was a moment of profound isolation. Naravane sat “with the map of J &K and Ladakh on one wall, Eastern Command on another.” He could visualise “the location of each and every unit and formation” even on theunmarked maps. A hundred different thoughts flashed through his mind.The country was reeling under COVID-19. The economy was faltering.Global supply chains had fractured. “Would we be able to ensure a steadysupply of spares, etc., under these conditions, in case of a long-drawn-outaction? Who were our supporters in the global arena, and what about thecollusive threat from China and Pakistan?”They had the requisite reserves, he concluded. “We were ready in allrespects,” Naravane writes, “but did I really want to start a war?”GOING TO WAR can never be a purely military decision. It is taken bydemocratically elected political leadership. During the 1999 Kargil conflict,under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, every action was debated and approved inmeetings of the cabinet committee on security—India’s final decisionmaking body on national security, chaired by the prime minister. Memoirsfrom that period show the CCS being able to own its decisions and issueclear directives to military commanders. The same was true of IndiraGandhi during the 1971 war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh.But, in August 2020, according to Naravane’s account, there was neither anyauthorisation to fire nor any restriction. No guardrails. No contingencyframework. By handing such a monumental decision to the army, the primeminister had effectively abdicated the responsibility of initiating, oravoiding, a military conflict with China. It is not the army chief’s role toweigh India’s political and economic situation, assess potential USdiplomatic backing, factor in the COVID-19 crisis, or calculate the risk of Pakistan and China combining forces. Those assessments are meant to bemade by the government. Political instructions to the military on suchmatters must be precise and unambiguous, not reduced to a vagueinjunction to act at one’s discretion.Modi’s abdication stands in sharp contrast to the public image he hascultivated since 2014. In limited skirmishes with Pakistan, the Indian media—and later films and web series—have portrayed him as a bold, decisive,hands-on leader. Modi himself has claimed that he personally cleared the Balakot air strikes, in February 2019, despite poor weather, suggesting thatthe air force could take advantage of cloud cover to “escape the radar” ofthe enemy. The Modi government did enough Pakistan-bashing and usedthe Central Reserve Police Force troops killed in Pulwama to successfullycampaign for a second term. China does not lend itself to suchgrandstanding. It is, in all respects, a far more formidable antagonist. But,for a government deeply invested in narrative control, Naravane’s accountposes a serious problem.