Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Swaraj and Military Power

By George Joseph

In nearly all the current discussion about the attainment of Swaraj, there is a considerable gap. Whether Swaraj is conceived as Independence or on the basis of Dominion Status is a matter of little consequence. But neither Mr. S. Srinivasa Iyengar nor Pandit Motilal Nehru seems to have perceived or made allowance for the fundamental condition of all Government, viz, the right relation between the Civil Government and the Armed Forces of the State through whom Government protects itself and its people against external invasion and internal rebellion. But it goes to the root of the whole matter, and unless it is examined carefully and definite conclusions arrived at, there is danger for the future.

I

For, consider the matter in its most simple elements. Assume for a minute that the Secretary of State for India introduces a Bill into Parliament by which a Representative Assembly is created in Delhi and a Government responsible to that Representative Assembly is put in charge of all the affairs of India. There will be a Cabinet with a number of Ministers, to whom the Civil departments of Government will be subordinate. The responsibility and the power will be real because the men who go into the Legislatures and who form the governments of the future belong to the same class from which come the .officials and administrators of the Civil department. In one capital respect, however, their position will be difficult. The Army is not represented in the Legislature. The politicians are not acquainted with the temper of the Army or its mind. The Army in its turn is extremely suspicious of politicians, and we had the other day in the Memoirs of Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson a frank, and in places a cruel, exposure of the little regard in which politicians have been held by the fighting forces.

They are throughout referred to by the contemptible nickname of ‘Frocks’. Especially is this so under Indian conditions and the consequence will be that the Army which is trained in the unlimited use of force for achieving its purposes, it will not be inclined to accept the orders of the politicians. The intelligentsia, from which the politicians are drawn, does not furnish the leaders of the Armed forces of the Crown and there is complete lack of touch between them. If, therefore, under these circumstances, the Civil Government lays down policies and measures which the superior officers of the Army do not understand or approve of, the consequences will be disastrous. If their superior directing intelligences are wise and if they represent the public opinion more truly than the Legislature and the Government, the situation will resolve itself by the institution of a Military Dictatorship. If on the other hand, the Civil Government is overthrown by selfish soldiers and the country s the Government, you will be faced with anarchy. In any event there is no assurance that the Army will automatically and inevitably be loyal to the Civil Government. The ordinary assumption that the Army will always obey the Civil Government is historically false and is based upon a misappreciation of the English constitution. History is full of instances where Civil Governments, monarchical or representative, were over thrown by revolution. Revolutions have succeeded only when the Army failed in its loyalty to Government. Modern military forces are so efficient and machine-guns and cannon so destructive, that there is very little chance of a Government being overthrown in the old fashioned ways of mob-risings. To take the most recent instances, the Czar and Amanullah Khan were overthrown because the Army failed in royalty to both. Since the seventies of the last century, there had been a number of formidable risings against the Czardom, but they failed because the Army continued to be faithful to the House of Romanoff. In 1916, however, the dynasty fell because the Army became disaffected. The case of Amanullah Khan is more recent and points to the same moral.

II

The case of the supremacy of the Civil Government over the Army in England is peculiar and easily susceptible of misunderstanding. The doctrine that the Civil Government is supreme over the Army is no doubt well established. But close analysis yields a surprising result. The representative of Civil Government and its most characteristic instrument is Parliament. Once you proceed, however, to analyse the civil elements constituting Parliament, a different picture presents itself. The lawyers are there right from the beginning of historical times; the land-owning classes have also been there. Besides these two (before the coming in of Labour), the most important group was composed of Army men. Even in the matter of this classification it has to be noted that the land-owning classes themselves have had vital and continuous relations with the Army. The military group, then, was partly professional soldiers who had retired, and partly men who had been trained in the Militia and Volunteer and Territorial organisations. These latter were scions of the old families and the natural leaders of the people in war and in peace. The consequence then was this: even though Parliament was essentially an instrument of the Civil Government, it was equally representative of the fighting elements in the community. The men who created the law and carried on Government were themselves leaders of the Army. The rank and file of the Army might not have been represented in Parliament but military discipline did not permit of any conflict between the Army and its officers. Consequently, if Parliament arrived at a decision, it was the decision of the whole community and the doctrine of the supremacy of the Civil Government over the Army did not create any fundamental difficulty; But as it happens, there occurred in recent history an incident which strained the doctrine pretty drastically in England. In 1914, when political passions waxed high on the proposals of the Liberal Government to grant Home-Rule to Ireland, the supremacy of the Civil authorities was put to the test. Though the Army was supposed to have no concern with politics, the majority of officers belong to the great Conservative families or are themselves of a Conservative complexion in politics. There was the additional complication introduced by the fact that Ireland was dominantly Catholic and these Army Officers were mainly Protestants. As a result of these factors, there came into being a definite and serious cleavage of opinion between the Lawyer-Liberal elements in Parliament and the superior officers of the Army. General Gough who was at Curragh, as it now turns out, with the support of Sir Henry Wilson, in plain terms mutinied and declared that rather than permit himself to be used as an instrument for putting down the Ulster rebels headed by Lord Carson, he would resign his place in the Army. The seriousness of the situation arose from the fact that General Gough was representative of a considerable section of Army opinion and he was joined by a number of other officers in Curragh. The developments were grave enough to lead to the resignation of Col. Seely who was Minister of War and to the assumption of the Seals of the War Office by Mr. Asquith, the Premier. Fortunately or unfortunately, the ultimate danger to the British constitution from this conflict between the Civil authorities and the Army-forces did not develop itself to the ultimate consequence, because of the intervention of the Great War. If war had not intervened, it is quite on the cards that there might have been civil war in Ireland, a civil war in which sections of the British Army might have joined the rebels. Though the course of history was different, there was grave warning in the incident to statesmen and soldiers alike.

III

I mention this episode for the purpose of suggesting that the assumption ordinarily made that the Army is always bound to obey any Government with representative institutions is a little too easy and facile. Applied to Indian conditions, it is not merely facile, but also monstrous. If the Nehru constitution is accepted by Mr. Wedgewood Benn and is implemented in the terms of a Parliamentary Statute, it is highly likely that the forms of responsible Government would be observed and a Government might come into being. But the members of that Government will be lawyers, politicians of a purely peaceable type and without any kind of military experience. If orders are issued by such a Government to the Indian Army, they will have to be carried out by the officers, who are Englishmen, who are fighters, and who have an ill-disguised contempt for all politicians and the ‘Babu-tribe’. It will be quite the easiest thing for our statesmen to misunderstand the military temper and lay down policies and measures, which may, for aught they know, be regarded as objectionable by the Army. If under these circumstances there is conflict between the Government and the Army, the whole scheme of Swaraj will break down and it will be quite the easiest thing for a rash Commander-in-Chief to walk into the Assembly Chamber with a platoon of soldiers and disperse the legislators, as Cromwell dispersed the Rump, and assume the business of Government. And in such a case it will be little use looking to the Parliament of Great Britain to enforce the authority of the King as against these mutinous officers. Parliament might either refuse to interfere or agree to interfere. Refusal will be followed by anarchy or a Military Dictatorship. Agreement will be tantamount to the establishment of the English Government once more in this country.

This result, disastrous as it is, will be inevitable under existing conditions. There are no soldiers in the Legislature. At any rate the few there were like Col. Umar Hayat Khan were regarded by their fellow members as impossibles and reactionaries. I cannot see any peaceful future for responsible Government unless the Civil-organs of the State aspiring to supremacy manage to get among themselves representative elements from the Army. If in an assembly of 100 legislators, you have about 50 soldiers, the Civil Government will be able to function without serious peril of breaking down. These 50 will be there, not in their own capacity, but as indicative of the mood and spirit of the fighting elements of the population, who in the ultimate analysis will face the business of protecting Governments and peoples against slavery and tyranny.

Let it not be supposed that I suggest that the Army's representation in the Legislature should be by election. That is manifestly absurd. The Army should always be free from all political entanglements and it is important that the Army, which is the servant of the Government, should not be put in a position where it can compete for the ultimate loyalty with its own master. My proposal is different and more radical. What I want is that the intelligentsia which gives birth to politicians should have the opportunity of getting into close and intimate touch with the mood and realities of the fighters. The difficulty now is that the politicians, who come from the educated classes, legislate and carry on the Government, but since they are thoroughly ignorant of conditions of life in the Army, the Army has got a self-centered existence and it goes its way in utter contempt of the legislators. But if we can devise any means by which the educated classes can be made acquainted with the conditions of modern fighting and be put through the disciplines of military life, the gulf that now separates them from the Army will be bridged. As a result of such militarisation, the middle-classes will have the military atmosphere and they cannot go far wrong as to the relations that should exist between themselves as politicians and fighters. If under these conditions, the final danger of revolt by a professional Army against the considered decision of the State comes about, the task of putting down such military mutiny will not be beyond the capacity of the intelligentsia–because the educated classes themselves will know how to fight and maintain their rights.

There is a second aspect of militaristion which should not be ignored. I do not know whether Swaraj is going to come straightaway or not, in the form of a Parliamentary Statute. My suspicion is that it is not going to come in as great a hurry as some people imagine and would have us believe. The Fabian temperament is in all things Anglo-Saxon, and in Anglo-Saxon politics more than in anything else. Even under the Nehru scheme, the authority for the Army is not to pass into the hands of the Indian Government at once. It is, therefore, worthy of note that the militarisation of the educated classes will be a guarantee not merely of a well-ordered constitutional Government in days to come, but also an assurance that the achievement of the ultimate goal or Swaraj would not be postponed through design or incompetence. The educated classes who aspire to govern will themselves in the interval be shaping the instrument, which will secure for them full responsible Government.

IV

My scheme will be something like this: In what I should call militarisation of the educated classes, I would for the time being leave the professional Army alone. It has got its traditions with which it may not be wise to interfere, but I would go in for the creation and vigorous expansion of a National Militia, as a second line of defence and for the training of young men in the art of National defence. There is the Territorial Army, the University Training Corps, and now the Urban Unit. The present figures are not satisfactory and my proposal will consist in creating facilities for the training of 5,000 men every year in each province. In the nine provinces then, we shall have about 45,000 men trained in the course of a year, not necessarily to be professional fighters, but to be trained to know the most essential elements of National defence. Barring the essential minimum of trained instructors from the British Army, I would have the whole of these 45,000 composed of Indians belonging to the educated classes, officers and men alike. I would convert, if I can, the University Training Corps into Officers Training Corps, as in European Universities, a; certain number of them going, to the Territorial and Urban Units as officers, and a certain number trained to start as subalterns in the professional Army. If the scheme is faithfully carried out, we shall in the course of 10 years, have nearly half a million men more or less trained in the best features of Army discipline. At the end of 20 years, the number will be a million. But what is more important still, there will begin to trickle into the Legislatures at Delhi and in the provinces, men who will know what the Army means, something of its mood and with rich suggestion of its place in the Commonwealth. Not only the Legislatures, but the Government will also be composed of some of these men. The unity that will be postulated between the politician and the Army and the harmony necessary for the ordered system of Government will thus be achieved. The divorce between the Civil Government and the fighting men will be at an end. If at that time Parliament should entrust Indian politicians with the task of Government, we shall be able to go forward without misgiving and fairly certain that the machinery itself will not break down. The reaction on the Army by the slow percolation into it, as officers, of the representatives of the newly-militarised intelligentsia will be immense. The older officers will, by a series of adjustments to the new conditions, find it not a particularly hard thing to obey the orders of a Government composed at least partly of those who have fought by their side and learnt how to live and die.

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