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Tuesday, June 23rd 2015

Why there has never been a military dictatorship in India
BOOK REVIEW (/TAGS/171/BOOK-REVIEW)

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Stephen Wilkinson looks at this question in his new book, Army and Nation.
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A true story: In 1957, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, visiting the office of General Thimayya, the
Chief of Army Staff, saw a steel cabinet behind his desk, and asked the General what it contained.

The General replied that the top drawer contained the nations defence plans. And the second drawer
contained the confidential files of the nations top generals.

And what about the third drawer, enquired Nehru.

Ah, said the General with a straight face, the third drawer contains my secret plans for a military coup
against you.

Nehru laughed, but there was apparently a tinge of nervousness to his laughter.

Military dictatorships have been a common phenomenon in the post-colonial states of Asia and Africa,
and in the 1950s and 1960s, a dictatorship in India was not an impossibility. In fact, while covering the
1967 general elections, The Times correspondent, Neville Maxwell, prophesied that these might well be
the last elections ever in the country. And he was not the only one who believed that sooner or later,
India would fall under military rule.

But that eventuality, of course, never happened.

Why not?

The question why the Indian army never attempted to seize power has sometimes been attributed to
the fact that it is a disciplined, highly professional army, steeped in proud 250-year old traditions
inherited from the British. But this theory doesnt work, because the Pakistani army was born out of
the same traditions and that didnt seem to stop it from assuming power.

Indeed, one could argue that it was precisely because the Pakistan army was such a highly
professional force that there came a time when it felt it could no longer stand by and watch the
country slide into chaos, and felt it was its duty to step in.

So clearly this is a question one needs to look at more closely. Which is what political scientist Steven
Wilkinson has done with his excellent new book, Army and Nation.

In order to understand what didnt happen in India, it is perhaps useful to first look at what did
happen in Pakistan. The military dictatorship in Pakistan has had an interesting pre-history. It begins
in undivided India, where the largest single component of the army was drawn from the undivided

Punjab. Hence at the time of Partition, of all the institutions that Pakistan inherited, the most
substantive was its army.

Moreover, while in India the Congress Party was a highly evolved, durable organisation, in Pakistan
the Muslim League was not much more than Jinnah and his Private Secretary. Hence, there was a
dangerous structural imbalance in Pakistan, especially after Jinnahs death in 1948.

Mashallah ho gaya

The Military dictatorship in Pakistan did not come out of the blue. In the early 1950s, for example,
there were riots in Lahore that raged on because the civilian authorities were unable to control them.
Finally the army was called out, and it swiftly and firmly put down the trouble.

Then the commanding officer made an unusual request: he asked for another couple of days before
withdrawing his troops to the barracks. In those few, quick days, the army proceeded to clean up the
city, paint public buildings, repair roads, pull down unauthorised structures and plant trees. Then,
having performed all these long neglected civic tasks, the army quietly withdrew, leaving Lahore
looking as clean and well-ordered as an army cantonment.

This earned the army a great deal of respect among the public: it had managed to do for the city in a
few days what the civilian authority had failed to do over the years. Hence, when in 1958, the
Governor-General of Pakistan responded to a state of political chaos in the country by declaring
martial law, and calling out the army, there was a section of the public that rejoiced at the news. In
fact, a saying that went around at the time was, Pakistan mein ab toh mashallah ho gaya, playing on
the term martial law, and translating, roughly, as By the grace of God, things in Pakistan are well
now.

What followed over the next few years was a period of remarkable national development in Pakistan,
under the presidency of General Ayub Khan before the military government began to get corrupted
by its own power (as always, inevitably, happens in such a system).

Ring-fencing the Indian army

The Indian Army was born out of the same tradition as Pakistans. In British India, the army enjoyed a
prominent position in Indian life, and even played a role in policy matters. The Commander-in-Chief,
was also the de facto Defence Minister, and was the second most powerful person in the hierarchy

after the Viceroy himself. But after Independence things began to change.

Prime Minister Nehru believed that the new India needed to re-think the role of the army, and
initiated a policy that would firmly subordinate it to the civilian authority. One of the first things that
happened after Independence, for example, was that Teen Murti House, traditionally the grand
residence of the army chief, was assigned instead to the Prime Minister: a small matter by itself,
perhaps, but a clear indicator of the way the wind was blowing.

Next came a series of budget cuts (resulting, among other things, in hefty cuts in army officers
generous Raj-era salaries). And when Indias first army chief, Field Marshall Cariappa, publicly
criticised the governments economic performance, he was immediately rapped on the knuckles, and
told not to meddle in matters that did not concern him.

Over the years a systematic programme was pursued to ring-fence the armed forces, and their
influence in Indian society a program that was given fresh urgency in 1958 by the military coup in
next-door Pakistan (an occurrence that was worryingly praised by Field Marshall Cariappa, who had
recently retired as Army chief). A highlight or, rather, lowlight of that ring-fencing programme was
the appointment of Krishna Menon, a powerful, abrasive, leftist intellectual, as Defence Minister. It
was an attempt to put the armed forces unambiguously in their place. Unfortunately, it also had the
unintended side effect of leading to the stinging defeat of 1962, but that is a different story.

An unrecognised achievement

By the 1970s, the Indian armed forces had finally been rendered coup-proof by a comprehensive
system of checks and balances that had been put in place. And that might be considered to be one of
the major achievements of the Nehru era: ensuring the durability of Indian democracy. Its an
achievement that is not sufficiently recognized; an achievement underscored by the fact that all our
South Asian neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka have experienced military
coups, actual or attempted.

Wilkinson explains how this coup proofing was implemented, through a package of carefully thoughtout measures, ranging from diversifying the ethnic composition of the armed forces to setting up
rugged command and control structures, re-casting the order of precedence between civil and military
authorities, paying close attention to promotions, disallowing army officers from making public
statements, creating a counter-balancing para-military force, and topping off this entire effort with
little touches like ensuring that retired chiefs of staff are usually sent off as ambassadors to faraway

countries.

The end result of all this is that when, in 2012, newspapers breathlessly reported that there had been a
coup attempt, with army units being surreptitiously moved towards Delhi in the wake of the General
V.K. Singh affair, people like you and I, merely shrugged, said, What nonsense, and turned to the
sports page.

We perhaps dont realise what a luxury that kind of certainty that is.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in (mailto:?

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Even Google Maps knows how dys

India-Pakistan relations are
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I sacrificed my health and teenage

study at the IITs but was it worth

Alankar Jain, qz.com Yesterday 03:30 p

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FACTIONAL SQUABBLES (/TAGS/23157/FACTIONAL-SQUABBLES)

Rani Padmini and four other Hind

myths exploded

Is the BJP defending Vasundhara Raje only because it's afraid

( /article/698006/rani-pa
of what would happen without her?
and-four-other-hindutv
Girish Shahane Dec 31, 2014 05:45 am

Weathering the impropriety storm might turn out to be safer than ruffling feathers
in the local
history-myths-exploded
unit.
Rohan Venkataramakrishnan (/authors/396) Today 09:27 pm

An open letter from Riya Somani t

Bhagat
Devapriya Roy Nov 09, 2014 12:30 am

( /article/688660/an-ope
from-riya-somani-to-ch
bhagat )

Lalit Modi declares war, targets Ja

will be casualties and collateral da
Scroll Staff Today 09:14 am

( /article/735952/lalit-m

Photo Credit: Sam Panthaky/AFP

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the- the- the- the- the- thebjp- bjp- bjp- bjp- bjp- bjpdefendingdefendingdefendingdefendingdefendingdefendingvasundharavasundharavasundharavasundharavasundharavasundhararaje- raje- raje- raje- raje- rajeonly- only- only- only- only- onlybecausebecausebecausebecausebecausebecauseitsitsitsitsitsitsafraid- afraid- afraid- afraid- afraid- afraidofofofofofofwhat- what- what- what- what- whatwould-would-would-would-would-wouldhappenhappenhappenhappenhappenhappen-

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her) her) her&title=Is%20the%20BJP%20defe

Times Nowis known to be a bit belligerent, but when it flashed "#LalitGate, fire one or both?" on
screen for much of the last week, it wasn't being bombastic. At the time it seemed like a good
possibility that both External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister
Vasundhara Raje would have to step down, after both were found to have allegedly provided favours

to Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi, accused of many illegalities, including money
laundering.

Because of her prominence, Swaraj accused of assisting Modi with British travel documents though
his passport at the time remained revoked by India was always on steadier ground. Still for a while it
seemed as if the government might consider asking her to leave for propriety's sake anyway.

Raje, meanwhile, was never going to have an easy time. She has enough enemies in the Bharatiya
Janata Party itself, and the allegations against her go beyond just favours. Instead, the chief minister is
accused of hiding the support she provided to Modi in helping him with his immigration status, while
her son was loaned crores of rupees by the IPL founder in a transaction that is being investigated by
the Enforcement Directorate.

Who else?

Yet the BJP has rallied behind both of them, with top leaders supporting Swaraj from the get-go, and
now union minister and former BJP President Nitin Gadkari signalling the same backing would be
extended to Raje. There are lots of reasons the Modi government may have decided to do this, not least
the danger of admitting any impropriety for a government that has promised to be corruption-free.

But one simple reason comes to mind, particularly for Raje: if not her then whom?

Party heads have to consider a complicated matrix of factors, from political importance to efficiency to
expertise to visibility, when they pick politicians for particular posts. The final choice is often the
result of comp ...

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TECH TALK (/TAGS/26405/TECH-TALK)

The 'dreams' of Googles computers are equal parts amazing

and disturbing
Googles image recognition software is not only identifying images. Its generating them as well.
Adam Epstein, qz.com (/authors/1368) Today 08:30 pm

Photo Credit: Google

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disturbing)
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American sci-fi novelist Philip K Dick once famously asked,Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep?While he was on the right track, the answer appears to be, no, they dont. They dream ofdogheaded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynocephaly)knights atop horses, of camel-birds and pig-snails,
and of Dali-esque mutated landscapes.

Googles image recognition software, which can detect, analyse, and evenauto-caption images
(http://qz.com/298471/watch-googles-new-auto-caption-program-nail-all-kinds-of-images/), uses
artificial neural networks to simulate the human brain. In a processtheyre calling inceptionism,

(http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html)Google
engineers sought out to see what these artificial networks dream of what, if anything, do they see
in a nondescript image of clouds, for instance? What does a fake brain thats trained to detect images
of dogs see when its shown a picture of a knight?

Google trains the software by feeding it millions of images, eventually teaching it to recognise specific
objects within a picture. When its fed an image, it is asked to emphasise the object in the image that it
recognises. The network is made up of layers the higher the layer, the more precise the
interpretation. Eventually, in the final output layer, the network makes a decision as to whats in the
image.

But the networks arent restricted to only identifying images. Their training allows them
togenerateimages as well. Heres what it outputs when it was asked to create images of the following
objects:

(Google)

Cool, right? And it gets a lot more interesting. Google engineers decided that instead of asking the
software to generate a specific image, they would simply feed it an arbitrary image ...

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WOMEN'S WORLD CUP (/TAGS/33674/WOMENS-WORLD-CUP)

The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup is even more exciting than
the men's version
Upsets, controversies and tooth-and-nail competition, this edition has it all. And Brazil are not
the favourites.
Angikaar Choudhury (/authors/1369) Today 07:30 pm

Photo Credit: Andy Clark / AFP

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2015- 2015- 2015- 2015- 2015- 2015fifa- fifa- fifa- fifa- fifa- fifawomenswomenswomenswomenswomenswomensworld- world- world- world- world- worldcupis-

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even- even- even- even- even- evenmore- more- more- more- more- moreexcitingexcitingexcitingexcitingexcitingexcitingthan- than- than- than- than- thanthe- the- the- the- the- themens- mens- mens- mens- mens- mens-

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While millions are tuning in to watch the exploits of Messi and No-mar at the Copa America, a much
bigger football tournament is taking place elsewhere in the world. The seventh 2015 FIFA Womens
World Cup is currently underway in Canada. But dont be too hard on yourself if you werent aware of
it. No Indian TV channel is broadcasting the event, while the Indian media has largely ignored it.

However, if you do make the effort, theres a lot to enjoy about the 2015 Womens World Cup. Unlike
the Copa America, the headlines are not dominated by headbutts and disciplinary bans. The football
has been great, with some amazing underdog stories. As the quarter-final stage gets under way, here
are some of the highlights from the event:

It's setting attendance and viewership records

The old myth that womens football doesnt have an audience has been well and truly broken. The
statistics are indicating the level of interest in the event. Five out of six venues during the group stage
were sold out (https://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/women-s-world-cup-continues-to-impress4082533). The opening game saw an attendance of 53,058, a Canadian record
(http://soccer.tsn.ca/news/wwc-opener-sets-attendance-record-for-canadian-national-team) for any
national team playing at home.

Even the viewership figures have been astounding. Figures range in the millions over five million
fans tuned in (http://www.torontosun.com/2015/06/19/womens-world-cup-reaching-massive-audiencefifa-bell-media) to watch the United States take on Nigeria on Fox, while the corresponding figure for
Canada was around 2.3 million. Its not as if its a North American trend alone even China and Japan
have recorded (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/record-viewers-womens-world-cup-215830696-sow.html) huge viewership numbers.

The underdogs are punching above their weight

There can ...

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STUDENTS SAFETY (/TAGS/34570/STUDENTS-SAFETY)

Why India did not endorse a crucial UN declaration to halt

the military using schools
The latest report by Human Rights Watch says the security forces continued to use schools all
over the country in 2013.
Dilnaz Boga (/authors/2106) Today 06:30 pm

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Arjumand Yusuf, headmistress at BPS Batapora School in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir,
retired a fortnight ago. She fought hard to ensure that her 70 students could continue to receive an
education after Indian security forces occupied her primary school in 2003.

Her task would have been easier if New Delhi had agreed to endorse the new Safe Schools Declaration
at the United Nations Security Council debate on children and armed conflict last month. But India was
among the 38 countries that chose not to.

Saving schools

Beginning in 2011, the UNSC has requested increased monitoring of attacks on schools and teachers,
and military use of schools. In 2014, it encouraged all member countries to consider concrete
measures to deter the use of schools by armed forces and armed non-State groups in contravention of
applicable international law.

Said Zama Coursen-Neff, childrens rights director at Human Rights Watch:Hundreds of thousands of
children worldwide find their schools under attack or used by fighting forces to wage war. The Safe
Schools Declaration provides a concrete way for countries to commit to protecting childrens

education, even during armed conflict.

Since 2005, schools and universities have been used for military purposes by government forces and
non-state armed groups in at least 26 countries (http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/12/respect-civiliannature-schools-and-universities),including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Myanmar the
majority of the worlds countries where there is an armed conflict.

Schools have been used as bases, barracks, detention centres, weapons depots, and sniper posts. This
practice endangers students and teachers by turning their schools into targets for enemy attack.
Students and teachers have been injured and ...

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT (/TAGS/10895/FOOD-FOR-THOUGHT)

Haleem: How Hyderabad cafes made a Muharram dish

synonymous with Ramzan

The city was changing and the restaurateurs wanted assured business for a month.
Sriram Karri (/authors/2072) Today 05:30 pm

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how- how- how- how- how- howhyderabadhyderabadhyderabadhyderabadhyderabadhyderabadcafes- cafes- cafes- cafes- cafes- cafesmade- made- made- made- made- madeaaaaaamuharrammuharrammuharrammuharrammuharrammuharramdish- dish- dish- dish- dish- dishsynonymoussynonymoussynonymoussynonymoussynonymoussynonymouswith- with- with- with- with- with-

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When Aurangzeb undertook the conquest of the Deccan, while his army was busy conquering the
lands and subduing the Qutb Shahis, it was a customised Arab dish that travelled out from the
cantonments, won the hearts of the people of Hyderabad and lived on a living legacy. It was called
Harisah, Harissa or Harees.

Even today most popular anecdotes in Hyderabad credit the haleem or the harissa to the Alamgir,
though history points to the Yemenis in the army of Bahadur Shah, the Sultan of Gujarat in the 16th
century, for first serving it to Hyderabad Nizams. Either way, it was a pure-play soldier dish.

The alchemy started with the slaughter of lambs the skull and breasts were cooked as nihari, while
the meat, mixed with wheat, lentils or cereals and sometimes sweetened with jaggery, was cooked for
eight-odd hours. What magic got produced was eaten together as a community. Already a heavy dish,
it was made richer over time by adding dry fruits and ghee.

Thats the creation we also see today. Unlike today, however, it was not a traditional Ramzan dish.

Camel, emu variants

It was a dish that was consumed during Muharram, said Ashar Farhan, cultural curator of
Lamakaan, whose family has been in Hyderabad for generations. It was a dish created to serve the
energy needs of the soldier-like fiery mourners. It was cooked for hours, often for seven to eight, and
hence the dish took the name of Haleem Persian for patience but close to the Arabic Harissa. Since
it was never a domestic dish, it was cooked for large numbers of people, it was a dish associated with a
special occasion.

It is a tough dish, though a delicacy, Farhan further explained. The richness of the dish and its
appeal lies in it being cooked for hours, and beaten and mashed. It becomes like a rich paste, the spices
and herbs used are thoroughly mixed with the wheat-flour and meat. It takes a tough stomach to
digest it. It was also u ...

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BOOK EXCERPT (/TAGS/1584/BOOK-EXCERPT)

Govind Nihalani, Farah Khan and Santosh Sivan talk about

their first films
In the book Directors Diaries, three filmmakers retrace the steps they took towards getting
their debut features off the ground.
Rakesh Anand Bakshi (/authors/2152) Today 04:30 pm

Photo Credit: Main Hoon Na/Red Chillies Entertainment

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Govind Nihalani on Aakrosh

Rakesh Bakshi: Was the story of your first film as director, Aakrosh, inspired from a true story?
Govind Nihalani: The story does not refer to any particular incident as such. It just reflected the state
of socio-political affairs at that time. Vijay Tendulkar, the playwright and film writer, was researching
for a Homi Bhabha Fellowship at the time and his subject was The emerging patterns of violence as
reflected in Indian theatre. One day he narrated an incident to me that had taken place around

Bhiwandi, Maharashtra. A man was found dead with an arrow wound; he was an adivasi. Another
adivasi loitering around, or maybe just going about his regular day, was arrested as a suspect. What
happened to this allegedly innocent man, I do not know, but the circumstances of the murder and how
he was arrested impacted me. I felt sad that a poor man, who is uneducated, has no knowledge of the
law, and has no means to access lawyers, has just no hope!

Your films are known for the actors performances. How do you create a good rapport with your
actors? Do you conduct workshops before beginning principal photography?
GN: I love my actors. And every actor is unique and therefore there is no standard method of working
with them. However, in my experience, I have realized that to get the best out of an actor, one thing
that usually works the best for me is to push him or her out of their comfort zone. I try to persuade my
actors to abandon their comfortable way, and attempt the difficult way in. And when they do that, the
results are far more exciting.

For example, Om Puri. I had heard about two student actors, Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, from
Girish Karnad, who had noticed their extraordinary talent while he was the director at FTII [Film and
Television ...

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