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17 July 2016 | E-Paper

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Review: Steve Wilkinsons Army


And Nation
Why are there so many army coups in Pakistan, and none in India?
58

Siddharth Singh

Sikh infantry soldiers. Photo: Wikimedia Commons


On a cold January night three years ago, India experienced shivers of a
different kind. There were large-scale troop movements in the vicinity of
Delhi and fears of an alleged coup could not be dismissed outright. These
troops were moving in violation of established procedures that require the

army to notify the ministry of defence. It was the closest India came to the C
word.
The controversy generated by that story did not die for a long time. There
was considerable disbelief at the suggestion. Then army chief V.K. Singh,
now a Union minister of state, denied the report strongly. Whatever the truth,
it is unlikely that India will see a coup. Even before independence was
gained, Indias leaders took care to put in place a series of coup-proofing
strategies that made any adventurism by the army difficult, if not impossible.
In Army And Nation: The Military And Indian Democracy Since Independence,
Yale University political scientist Steven I. Wilkinson casts a careful look at
what these strategies were and why they have been so effective. He
compares India with its neighbour Pakistan, which has been a coup country
par excellence for most of its existence. It is an important comparison.
From the advent of British rule in the late 18th century until 1947, India had
a single army. The partitioned army had the same customs and habits, and
similar recruitment patterns. Barely a decade later, Pakistans army took
over the countrys reins; the Indian Army, in contrast, remained securely
within the barracks, with its reputation as an effective and apolitical
organization intact.
Wilkinson argues that Pakistan never undertook the steps that Indian leaders
did after 1947. Jawaharlal Nehrus hostility to the army is well-known. In
1955, the army chief was redesignated from commander-in-chief to chief of
army staff. This was not a symbolic change.

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The Indian Armys autonomy was reduced considerably over the decades.
The army has no direct role in defence policymaking. It is merely
consulted, if at all. Then, owing to a series of internal security upheavals,
India created a number of paramilitary forces, including the Border Security
Forcethe worlds largest paramilitary forcewhich acted as a hedge
against the army. India also tried to diversify the ethnic mix of officers and

ensured that no single caste, religion or region dominated senior positions in


the army. The air force and navy, forces of more recent vintage, never faced
diversity issues.
Nothing comparable was attempted in Pakistan. When an opportunity
presented itself after the armys disastrous defeat to India in 1971, it was
frittered away by then president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who used a newly
created paramilitary as his personal retainers, giving the army breathing
room to make a comeback.
This is a believable story.
Army And Nation has a wealth of data on recruitment and the changing
composition of the army. When tested against this data, however, Wilkinsons
assertions offer something more mixed. The danger in 1947 was from an
overwhelmingly Punjabi-dominated army; the same Punjabi-dominated army
would wreak havoc in Pakistan. To be fair, as Wilkinson points out, Pakistans
legacy problems imposed far tougher challenges than India has ever faced.
In 1951, 42% of Indian Army officers in the rank of colonel and above came
from Punjab (page 93). By 1981, this number had not changed much and had
actually increased by two percentage points (page 179). What had changed
was the religious composition of officers from Punjab: By 1981, Sikh officers
formed just 18% of this set (down from 26% in 1951), while Hindus went up
from 16% to 26%. This picture becomes complicated when one considers the
geographic factors that determine the composition of Indias army.
If one ignoresfor the moment1947 as a starting point and looks at where
Indias soldiers come from, a different picture emerges. Since Mughal times,
Indias military labour markets have been dominated by soldiers from the
arid agricultural zones in its west and north-western corners. After harvesting
the kharif (summer) crop in October, or soon after sowing the rabi (winter)
crop, these peasants would turn soldiers and offer themselves for service in
Indias armies.

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Historically, most campaigns were waged during these intervening months.
The composition of these armiesfrom Akbars campaigns down to the
British Rajwas dictated by Indias ecological frontiers.
The so-called martial races thesisnow discredited by nationalist
historiographyhad at its base a geographic fact of life. These factors have
been studied by Mughal military historians (for example, Mughal Warfare:
Indian Frontiers And High Roads To Empire, 1500-1700 by Jos Gommans,
Routledge, 2002). Very few officers joined the army from Indias rainy and
humid areas in its east and extreme south (with the exception of Kerala).
The British inherited this pattern and did little to change it. The figures
Wilkinson cites on pages 93 and 179 then take on a very different colour. If
you add up the figures of Punjabi officers and those from arid zones such as

Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Garhwal, these officers


constituted no less than 62% of Indias army in 1951. In 1981, this officer
corps still stood at a dominant 60%. In the decades since, this number has
come down. In Punjab, for example, the more heavily recruited Jat Sikhs
have gone down in the same period from 11.2% to 7.2%, probably a
reflection of the booming agricultural economy in Punjab (page 252).
To be sure, Sikh militancy in the 1980s dampened recruitment, but the stamp
of long-term ecological factors is clearly visible. In Punjab, artificial irrigation
since the 1960s has ensured year-round agricultural operations, disrupting
the old patterns of availability of soldiers.
So were Indias founding leaders needlessly suspicious of the army and its
intentions? It is hard to answer this. Those were Indias most dangerous
decades, to quote American journalist Selig Harrison. Not only the army,
Indias leaders were anxious about many other matters.
From the threat of Jammu and Kashmir secedingsomething that led to
wrong interventions thereto excessive centralization, these fears
dominated our national life. The army was no exception.
Siddharth Singh

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