India’s first lesson from Independence was that of the heavy price to be paid for it. Because with that independence came a war waged by the new country very bloodily partitioned from it. How well the lesson was learnt and how often forgotten, is more than obvious as we look at India close to six-and-a-half decades after its hard-won freedom, following 10 centuries of being marauded and ruled. Continuously, for over six decades to date, the Indian Army has been honed — while mostly not being equipped well enough — fighting in the world’s highest, harshest, coldest and hottest of regions and on all kinds of terrain, to prevent any further cartographic changes to India’s frontiers than those which happened owing to lack of political will and policy. That was not all. Thanks to internal security problems, which the state and the Central police forces have not been able to tackle, the Indian Army has been used, or rather, misused, to “manage” insurgencies, which degenerated into terrorism through external linkages. After failing to wrest Jammu and Kashmir despite three wars, the Pakistan Army began a proxy war since the late 1980s by inducting terrorist groups to the state, which spread countrywide and have been setting new records of terror. “Engagement” with China, which “assisted” in adding substantially to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is quite another story.
This book, Gagandeep Bakshi’s 20th, is indeed a pathbreaker, attempting probably a first scientific analysis of Indian military history in terms of a series of Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) that had profound implications in the socio-political sphere. This systematic approach to the study of history enables us to isolate the key techno-economic triggers that brought about significant political phase — transitions in South Asia. Radical changes in the way of waging war ushered in major political and economic transitions and dramatically altered the course of history. The author has identified three critical RMAs that changed the course of Indian history. The first RMA was engendered by the Mauryans who used war elephants en masse to generate “shock and awe”. This, for the first time, helped to unite almost the whole of South Asia into a highly centralised and prosperous empire.
The Mughals under Babar introduced the Second RMA in South Asia. The Mughal RMA was based on an intelligent combination of field artillery, flintlock muskets and horse-based archers. The new explosive paradigm of war terrified the Indian war-elephants and panicked them to a degree that made them a liability on the battlefield. The Mughals, thus, unified India for the second time into a magnificent empire that at one stage was generating 40 per cent of the world’s GDP of that era.
The British introduced the third RMA of Indian military history by raising well-drilled infantry regiments that could manoeuvre on parade-ground words of command and shoot collectively in a disciplined rhythm. An infantry battalion could thus generate sustained rates of fire of a thousand shots a minute. This high volume of fire simply decimated the Mughal style cavalry from the battlefields of South Asia. The third RMA led to the third Empire of India. The British now unified the subcontinent for the third time. The present Indian Republic is a successor entity of the British Empire. The non-revolutionary transfer of power enabled it to inherit intact the instrumentalities of empire in terms of the armed forces, a civilian bureaucracy and the police.
The prime focus of this book, however, is on the post-Independence period of Indian military history. It tries to answer the seminal questions — is there an Indian strategic culture? Is there an Indian way of war-fighting? Western scholars have opined that India lacked a strategic culture. The author disagrees strongly. Kautilya’s Artha Shashtra, he feels, constitutes the essence of an Indian strategic culture that has tended to resurface unconsciously whenever India was united. This military culture is premised upon mass armies, attrition and a major emphasis on covert operations and information dominance. This Kautiliyan paradigm of war resurfaced unconsciously in India’s liberation of Bangladesh in the 1971 war which resulted in a resounding victory of historic proportions. The shock and awe generated by the Indian Air Force’s complete domination of the skies over Bangladesh , paved the way for a classic “blitzkrieg” that (for the first time after World War II) created a new nation state with the force of arms. In just 14 days, India emerged as a major regional power. In 1974, India demonstrated its nuclear capability. By 1990, however, the Indian economy was on the verge of collapse. India had perforce to give precedence to its economic reconstruction and modernisation. The Afghan jihad once again brought in extra-regional powers into South Asia. Pakistan achieved nuclear and conventional military parity with India with the help of China and the USA. It used this parity to wage a relentless asymmetric war against India by using non-start actors. India is now well on its way to becoming a major economic power. It must now translate this economic potential into usable military power that can deter its adversaries from such provocative adventurism. India will have to field dominant war-fighting capabilities if it wishes to deter. It will have to usher in the fourth RMA in South Asian military history. This will be based upon air power and transparency and the capabilities to exploit the air-flank, assault capabilities and the capability to exploit the sea-flank through operational manoeuvre from the sea.
India’s defence ministry has admitted in its annual reports that diplomacy remains India’s chosen means of dealing with its challenges, but that effective diplomacy has to be backed by credible military power and that India’s strategic and security interests require a mix of land based, maritime and air capabilities with minimum credible deterrent to thwart the use of nuclear weapons against it. More than ever before, the Indian establishment needs to shake out of its preconceived notions/stupor/“we know and are prepared” rhetoric to matters military and formulate policy and expedite urgent long-overdue changes and most important, prove that it has the political will and spine to use force whenever necessary. Lack of will to use force has already been disastrous enough.
This book must be read and revisited often by all related to national security.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi