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| India-Pakistan |
| 1947 Kashmir war saved Indian Army from being disbanded |
| 2006-08-21 |
| The Kashmir war saved the Indian Army from being scrapped, seems strange? Well, a biography of Major General AA "Jick" Rudra of the Indian Army by Major General DK "Monty" Palit claims so. According to the book, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru blew his top when Lt General Sir Robert Lockhart, the first commander in chief of India took a strategic plan for a Government directive on defence policy. "Shortly after independence, General Lockhart as the army chief took a strategic plan to the prime minister, asking for a government directive on the defence policy. He came back to Jick's office shell-shocked. When asked what happened, he replied, The PM took one look at my paper and blew his top. 'Rubbish! Total rubbish!' he shouted. 'We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army! The police are good enough to meet our security needs'," the Daily Times quotes the book as saying. According to the book, Jick believed the Kashmir war saved the Indian Army. "General Sir Douglas Gracie had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army and he and General Lockhart daily exchanged information about refugees traversing Punjab in both directions. One day in late October 1947, Gracie mentioned that he had had reports of tribesmen massing in the area of Attock-Rawalpindi. Both men knew that cross-border raids from Pakistan had been mounted against Poonch. Kashmir was not a part of the dominion of India and Lockhart felt that the tribesmen posed no threat to India. He did not pass on the information to the ministry or general staff," the paper said. "When confronted by Nehru three months later, he admitted this and added that he may have been remiss. Nehru turned to him and asked the general if his sympathies were with Pakistan? Aghast, Lockhart replied, 'Mr prime minister if you have to ask me that question, I have no business being the commander-in-chief of your forces. I know that there is a boat leaving Bombay in a few days, carrying British officers and their families to England. I shall be on it'," it added. According to the biography General Lockhart called up his Military Secretary Jick Rudra the next day, January 26 1948, and suggested he start looking around for a successor since he had resigned from his post. |
| Posted by:john |
| #2 If Pakistan had only waited a few years, they would have had all the territory they wanted... |
| Posted by: john 2006-08-21 20:02 |
| #1 "I remember many a time when our senior generals came to us, and wrote to the defence ministry saying that they wanted certain things... If we had had foresight, known exactly what would happen, we would have done something else... what India has learnt from the Chinese invasion is that in the world of today there is no place for weak nations... We have been living in an unreal world of our own creation." Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajya Sabha, 1963 The roots of politicisation of the army are to be found in Nehru's hatred for the man in uniform. Soon after Independence the first commander-in-chief of the Indian armed forces, General Sir Robert Lockhart, presented a paper outlining a plan for the growth of the Indian Army to Prime Minister Nehru. Nehru's reply: "We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. You can scrap the army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs." He didn't waste much time. On September 16, 1947, he directed that the army's then strength of 280,000 be brought down to 150,000. Even in fiscal 1950-51, when the Chinese threat had begun to loom large on the horizon, 50,000 army personnel were sent home as per his original plan to disband the armed forces. After Independence, he once noticed a few men in uniform in a small office the army had in North Block, and angrily had them evicted. Soon after Independence he separated the army, navy, and air force from a unified command and abolished the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, thus bringing down the status of the seniormost military chief. He continued to demote the status of the three service chiefs at irregular intervals in the order of precedence in the official government protocol, a practice loyally continued by successive governments to the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats. During the 1947-48 war with Pakistan in Kashmir, Nehru interfered with purely military decisions at will, which delayed the war and changed the ultimate outcome in Pakistan's favour. He developed a precedent to violate channels and levels of communications at that time. His penchant for verbal orders to the various army commanders, of which he kept no records, violated the chain of command. |
| Posted by: john 2006-08-21 19:59 |