Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Thank God, V.K. Singh, the former Chief of the Army Staff, retired just when he did. A little later, given the backdrop of today’s political churning and turmoil, we might have seen the retired General translating his known political ambitions into a dangerous reality. I am not suggesting that the marching columns of that might nearly two years ago in Delhi’s neighborhood were some kind of a dress rehearsal for a military coup or at the very least an alleged attempt at one. The front-paged ominous report in a national daily that day had given graphic details of how army units were on the move nearer Delhi than anywhere else, more than suggesting a sinister manoeuver.
The report was duly given the burial it deserved and Gen. Singh continued to be the Chief and the report dismissed as nothing more than a routine manoeuver. The General had just prior to that been involved in his controversial claim regarding his date of birth which was settled only after it reached the nation’s top court. Had his claim been upheld by the court he would have continued to be the Chief probably a little longer, enough to stall the promotion of his successor.
What followed was even more bizarre; the Chief accused a senior General of having offered him a multi-crore bribe on behalf of an arms dealer. And post his retirement the General never ceased to hide his political ambitions which, mind you, is not a crime.
And not to mention here the case of the lost and found missives in the Defence Ministry and Army Headquarters which was a sort of prelude to his handing over of his charge to his successor, Gen, Bikram Singh, a man whom he disliked. And post his retirement, some say even before that, he had more than given a fair indication of his political proclivities, not a crime, indeed, which was eminently clear when after retiring, in one of his earliest moves, he joined Anna Hazare’s campaign where he shared the stage with the likes of Hazare and his men, most of whom are now to be seen in the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal. From there to his sharing the dais at an ex-servicemen’s rally in Haryana where the General comes from, with the BJP’s Prime Ministerial hopeful, Narendra Modi was but a short haul.
I have no doubt the General was perhaps being truthful when he says that his presence at the Modi rally need not necessarily be interpreted as his having joined the BJP. As a retired citizen he has every right to be identified with politics and political parties except for the fact that as a man who has only recently handed over command of one of the largest Armies in the world, one may perhaps not have expected him to take the political plunge so soon.
This time over Gen. Singh has virtually raised a storm with the revelation that he had created a supra secret cell, the Technical Support Division, which had not only tried to subvert the Omar Abdullah Government in Jammu and Kashmir but had also bribed through an NGO one of Omar’s senior Ministers to topple his Government.
The news report raised a storm, one that acquired significance the next day when the General himself told a news channel that the Army has been giving money to all Kashmir Ministers to ensure that the people “stay together”.
“The Army transfers money to all the Ministers in Jammu and Kashmir……… there are various things to be done………. May be not all Ministers but certain Ministers, people who are given certain sums to get a particular thing done. That job involves bringing stability to particular areas”. The former Army Chief went onto argue that if the Chief Minister was not aware of this fact he “was not running the State”. A shocking observation by the man who was holding overall charge of Army operations not just in Kashmir but in the rest of the country as well. Somewhat petulantly the former Army Chief went onto name one or two ‘projects’ undertaken by the Army, such as its sponsorship of the an IPL like cricket league restricted to the State, a pretty harmless initiative which Gen. Singh now makes look sinister.
That almost all mainstream parties in the State, the valley in particular, are wary of the Army’s presence in heavily populated towns and cities seems to have been lost on him. They are nearly unanimous in demanding that the Army be confined to the barracks in all civilian dominated areas. The Army presence they believe has become a constant irritant. Particularly unhappy are they with the indefinite imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which they want to be withdrawn or at the very best to be confined to conflict areas like LOC or the international boundary.
Gen. Singh’s revelation that almost all Ministers of the Kashmir Government are on the payroll, as it were, of the Army has made the mainstream parties’ position untenable. Their cover, if at all the General is telling the truth, is blown and they stand damned in the eyes of the people, particularly those with grouses against the Army. He has also given the separatists a pre-Diwali gift of sorts with his accusation.
Moreover his somewhat rash observation in a TV interview earlier makes nonsense of all the so-called people-friendly initiatives taken by the Army, some of these very laudable but now very suspect. Gen. Singh has unwittingly perhaps rendered the task of the Army, deployed along the cease-fire line in the State, more difficult.
He has, for one thing, deepened the suspicions harbored by many in the valley against the Army and strengthened those who have made it their business to politicize every stray incident which involves the jawans and civilians living cheek by jowl in vulnerable areas.
So much so that the militants and separatists have learnt to make a common cause of deaths along the cease-fire line even when militants are killed or caught, along with their arms, attempting to slip into the valley. In the process he may well have queered the pitch for his successor, Gen. Bikram Singh, whose appointment as the Chief he resented, a man who in his earlier incarnation as a Brigadier in the valley, had faced some serious allegations of his own.
Gen. Singh has, of course, denied any political ambitions (as of now) without ruling these out, but the thrust of his counter-attack after the latest accusations against him of having tried to topple the Omar government, suggests he has already thrown his hat into the ring. That’s why he, perhaps, refuses to see any wrong in money being offered to Ministers. This does not amount to interfering with the democratic practices “if a civilian Government is unable to get the people together”, he says.
The probe that has brought the latest crisis involving Retired Gen. V. K. Singh into the open was completed in March this year and was headed by the Director General of Military Operations. Why the Defence Ministry sat on the report for six months may have made many suspicious of the government’s motives. But then we have the word of another former Chief, Gen. Shankar Roy Chowdhury, who also served a term in the Rajya Sabha, post-retirement, that the DGMO’s report should be rated as totally “credible”. All said and done the V.K. Singh episode must be considered as an unsavoury one which has neither helped the Army’s nor the country’s cause, not to speak of the harm it may have done to the Army’s standing in an already charged atmosphere in the valley. The retired Chief could at the very least have kept quiet. After all he knew that he had set up a special intelligence cell with direct access to funds and answerable only to him.
Looking back on this sordid episode I can only pray for the mainstream parties, mainly in the valley, for their being put in a very awkward position by the unwarranted “disclosures” made by the former Army Chief. His motivation may seem to be mysterious to a casual observer but he does owe an apology to the mainstream parties whom he has brought into disrepute. Armies are known to have made payments to those willing to help them in their military campaigns but rarely have we seen an Army Chief of a country accusing Ministers functioning in one of the States of the self-same country of having accepted bribes from his Army. You do not pay Ministers, even in a place as troubled as Kashmir, to quote Gen. V.K. Singh, “bring the people together”. That surely could not have been the General’s brief from his Government. It does betray certain lacks of character. Duly elected Ministers of the State cannot be treated as vassals of an Army Commander, even Retired Gen. V.K. Singh.
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