India’s Wars

Review by Jon P. Dorschner

India’s Wars (A Military History 1947- 1971) by Arjun Subramaniam, Harper Collins India:
New York, 2016, ISBN 978-93-5177-749-6, 576 pp., $39.99 (Softcover).

Since I was teaching at West Point, it has struck me that there are a paucity of courses available
for American military personnel on the Indian military, the world’s fourth largest. To rectify
this, I put together such a course, but had difficulty finding a textbook. During my last trip to
India I ran across India’s Wars, which was being widely read and discussed by Indian
government officials and military officers. When I picked it up and started reading it, I knew I
had the ideal book for my students. In his introduction Subramaniam states that he felt
compelled to write this book because India’s younger generation is profoundly ignorant
regarding the role of the Indian military in the country’s history. The book assumes that the
reader has little or no prior knowledge and aims to fill in the gaps.

Subramaniam is a serving officer in the Indian Air Force with the rank of Air Vice Marshall
(Major General in the American Air Force). In the American Army, officers called “Army
intellectuals,” try to analyze military issues, seek higher education, conduct research, teach, and
publish. Subramaniam is the Indian equivalent. With a PhD in defense and strategic studies, he
currently teaches at the National Defence College of India.

Subramaniam rightly ascertained that much of the existing Indian literature on the Indian
military falls into two categories, “memoirs” by retired officers, which are heavy on personal
remembrances and exploits, and “lionizing works,” which take a jingoistic tack and portray the
Indian Armed forces as superheroes that have never made a mistake. Books from these two
genres have limited scholarly value, leaving a huge gap in the literature. Subramaniam’s work,
by contrast, is a straightforward historical work that strives for objectivity. He praises the Indian
armed forces when they perform well, and does not hesitate to catalog their mistakes. This book
does an admirable job of addressing a serious shortcoming.

This work is valuable for students because it places the Indian armed forces in their historical
context. Before plunging into India’s post-independence conflicts, he takes the time to document
the origin of the modern armed forces in the Indian medieval period. India was, at that time, a
patchwork of princely states rather than a unified nation. Long protected from invasion by the
Himalayan mountain chain, Indian rulers did not devote much time or resources to the
development of capable armed forces. This changed when Muslim invaders from Central Asia
penetrated the mountain barrier and started to conquer the subcontinent. This compelled Indian
armies to adapt to an existential challenge. Subramaniam points out that while India produced
great military leaders and brave rank and file soldiers, its nascent armies were often defeated
because of a lack of proper military doctrine and tactics and an inability to overcome deep
political divisions.

These same problems plagued India when it faced a new invader in the shape of the British East
India Company. Initially granted permission to engage in trade and commerce, the Company
took advantage of Indian weakness to embark on a war of conquest with the intent to strip India
of its resources. British colonial accounts of this conquest were strongly biased, presenting a
picture of inherent British superiority. Subramaniam correctly asserts that that Indian forces at
times presented real challenges to the East India Company Army and at several points came
close to inflicting defeat on the British. This was because several of India’s indigenous armies
were capably led by charismatic leaders who successfully inspired their troops. Over the course
of time, Indian armies became more adept and more sophisticated, but failed to sufficiently
master modern military skills or overcome inherent disunity.

Subramaniam rightly points out that the Indian soldiers of the East India Company Army fought
for the Company for a wide variety of reasons. After these troops rebelled in 1857, the British
Crown took over India from the Company. Most of the Company’s Indian troops did not
participate in the rebellion, but this did not mean that they transferred their loyalty to the British
Empire. Historians agree that their principal loyalty was to the Army itself. Most Indian soldiers
and officers in the colonial Army ignored the nationalist movement and focused on maintaining
military discipline. This did not work to the advantage of the Indian armed forces after
independence.

The long and close tie between the Indian military and the British was reflected in the armed
forces. The Indian Officer Corps was English speaking and anglophile and revered British
regimental culture and the British military legacy. This caused India’s nationalist leadership to
look on India’s military professionals with suspicion. They attempted to craft an idealistic
foreign policy that downplayed the role of military power and routinely underfunded the armed
forces.

Subramaniam documents that in all its conflicts, the Indian armed forces faced equipment and
infrastructure shortages that presented severe obstacles. As a result, Indian soldiers, airmen, and
sailors became adept at “doing more with less.” Lack of access to sophisticated weaponry forced
Indian military personnel to become self-reliant. The emphasis was on overcoming shortages by
cultivating steadfastness and courage on the battlefield. Indian military officers continued to
“lead from the front,” resulting in a higher rate of officer casualties than found in western
militaries. The British provided the Indian military with a strong emphasis on military
professionalism. This enabled Indian military personnel to successfully meet these challenges,
make the transition to Indian national forces after Independence, and overcome the innate
suspicion of India’s leaders.

The story of the Indian armed forces was thus initially dominated by the gradual shift from
colonial forces to national forces and the forging of a new identity. It is amazing to note that the
first commanders of the Indian armed forces were British rather than Indian and that because of
an initial officer shortage, British officers continued to serve in the Indian armed forces in the
years following independence.

The book is valuable because it treats the Indian armed forces as a unified whole. India’s
military was long dominated by the Army, which was an infantry-centric force. The literature
reflects this Army centric view and Subramaniam corrects it, by describing the development of
India’s three major services in detail. His portrayal of the Indian Air Force is particularly
enlightening. He points out that in colonial India few Indians had the opportunity to fly and, as a
result, many Indian Air Force pilots were initially Anglo Indians or Indian Christians. Time and
time again, Indian pilots with English names make their appearance in the narrative.

This is a reflection of the robustly non-communal nature of the Indian Armed forces, which is
one of its strongest points. In a multi-religious society with competing religious groups, the
Indian Armed forces is a meritocracy, which does not discriminate on the basis of religion.
Throughout the account, Indians from every religious community work closely together to
defend the nation, and succeed in carving out an Indian nationality that supersedes religious
identity.

Several British policies from the colonial era worked to the detriment of the Indian armed forces.
The British did not see any need to create an Indian Air Force or Navy. They developed the
Indian Army as an infantry dominated force meant to put down tribal revolts in Northwest India
(present day Pakistan and Afghanistan) and to protect the Northwest border from possible
incursions by the Russian Empire. This dominance by the Indian Army over the other services
inhibited inter service cooperation. The Indian armed forces had difficulty conducting joint
operations and the Army and Air Force had difficulty embracing the concept of close air support
of Indian ground forces.

The Indian Armed forces also inherited a regimental system based on ethnically-based
regiments. This reflected a British insistence that “martial races” were best suited for the
military. The British recruited actively from a few ethnic groups deemed “martial races” and
discouraged enlistments by other Indians. To its credit, the Indian armed forces have largely
dismantled this overtly racist system and created regiments free of ethnic identity, providing
opportunities for Indians from all ethnic groups. This has opened up the military and made it
more representative of Indian society.

Subramaniam’s insistence on objectivity is reflected in his depiction of the Pakistani armed

forces. Except for a brief war with China in 1962, all of India’s conventional conflicts have been
fought against Pakistan. The two armies share the same military heritage, but face off against
each other over and over again. Most Indian accounts of Indo-Pakistan military conflicts are
black and white narratives depicting a battle between good and evil. By contrast Subramaniam
does not hesitate to praise the performance of the Pakistanis when praise is due, or to point out
incidents when the Pakistanis performed better than the Indians.

This relative balance in performance and capabilities resulted in wars with no clear-cut victors.
This situation was finally resolved in India’s favor in 1971, when the Indian armed forces
decisively defeated Pakistan and liberated Bangladesh. By 1971, Subramaniam argues, Indian
military professionals had learned from their previous mistakes, while the Pakistan military had
lost its professional edge.

Subramaniam points out that:

“The defeat further shattered the martial myth of the Punjabi and Pathan-dominated Pakistan
Army as it crumbled in the face of a secular and diverse Indian armed forces and the non-martial
Bengalis….The slow normalization of relations between India and Pakistan since the 1971 war
can mainly be attributed to the obsession of the Pakistan Army to ‘get even’ with India and
avenge the loss of 1971. (page 426)”

Other Indian works have emphasized American patronage of Pakistan and its armed forces and
the resulting hostility felt by Indians toward the United States. Subramaniam takes a more
nuanced view, pointing out that the US-Pakistan relationship was not as beneficial to the
Pakistan military as previously portrayed. He also rightly points out that the United States was
not nearly as pro-Pakistan as Indian authors liked to assert.

For example, Subramaniam dismisses the deployment of the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of
Bengal by President Nixon during the 1971 war as insignificant, a strong contrast with the usual
hyperbole shown by Indian authors. He writes that:

“Seeing that India refused to blink and somewhat reassured by the Russians that India would
agree to a ceasefire soon after the fall of Dacca, the Seventh Fleet called off its coercive
deployment in the Bay of Bengal. In retrospect, the diversion of the fleet was a much hyped up
non-event, played up even more by a raucous media. (page 391)”

This work is almost ideal as a primer regarding the Indian armed forces. An American reader
can read only this one book and fill in almost all the gaps in his knowledge. Of course, much has
happened in Indian military history since 1971 and Subramaniam hopes to address this era in a
second volume.

No book is perfect. If there is a shortcoming in this work, it is Subramaniam’s failure to address

the role of the Indian Army in counter-insurgency. His work treats war in limited terms, defining
it primarily in terms of conventional war between the armies of nation states. However, the
Indian Army has a long and checkered history of counterinsurgency warfare against separatist
insurgents in Northeastern India and Punjab, Islamist insurgents in Kashmir, and Tamil
separatists in Sri Lanka.

These wars are more problematic and more controversial than India’s conventional conflicts, but
no account of the Indian armed forces is complete unless it deals with them. India currently
faces an indigenous Maoist insurgency. There have been serious proposals to deploy the Indian
armed forces to this conflict. It would have been interesting to read Subramaniam’s depiction of
the performance of the Indian armed forces in this area.

American Diplomacy is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely
granted with credit and a link back to American Diplomacy.