Maj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere (Retd.), strategic affairs commentator, speaks with Col Anil Bhat (Retd.) on applying India's ancient military wisdom to address its security challenges | SAM Conversation - video Dailymotion

South Asia Monitor

Maj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere (Retd.), strategic affairs commentator, speaks with Col Anil Bhat (Retd.) on applying India's ancient military wisdom to address its security challenges | SAM Conversation

Transcript

00:00Welcome to SAM Conversation, a program of South Asia Monitor, to discuss Project Udbhav,

00:17which was a collaboration between Indian Army and the United Service Institution of India

00:23to explore India's military heritage. It is our pleasure to welcome Major General Sudhir

00:31Vambedkare, an Army Sapper's or Engineer's Officer, who was commended by the Guinness

00:40Records for designing and executing the construction of the Khardung La Bridge in 1982. At 18,380

00:52feet, it was then the highest bridge in the world and he had it made on an ice foundation. That is

00:59not his only talent. He has been a very active Strategic Affairs Analyst, who has been commenting

01:17on many vital issues. Welcome to South Asia Monitor, Sir. Thank you, Colonel Anil Bhatt.

01:29Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. Sir, actually, I think we can say it's a case of

01:40when you start exploring the military treatises or war literature, ancient war literature in India.

01:59We have the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Pautilya's Arthashastra, Bhanu Bhatta's Harsha Charitra,

02:10Chanakya's Neeti, Chanakya Neeti with its seven principles, the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda,

02:18Sam Veda, Atharva Veda and the seven principles of Chanakya's Neeti. Knowledge is power,

02:33discipline and focus, plan strategically, adaptability, choose associates wisely,

02:41learn from failure and hard work and patience. The principles of war in the Western world are

02:50as framed by the British Army which raised the Indian Army. They are about exactly the same,

03:02only in different words. The question that comes up is, did we at all use any of these

03:16principles? Did any of our founding leaders think of delving into this literature, these treatises?

03:29Let's look at the 1947-48 war, the first one with Pakistan, the 1962 India-China war, the 1965

03:42India-Pakistan war, the 1971 India-Pakistan war and the very long low intensity war or export of

03:57terrorism that has been on from Pakistan. I request you to throw light on all of these.

04:12Okay, I have got that but before I answer your question, I would like to just make a few

04:25observations on the title of this event today, this program and on the project Udbhav. The title

04:37of today's interview is applying India's ancient military wisdom to address its security challenges.

04:47Now, it is about India's ancient military wisdom. I just would like to say that wisdom is something

05:00which only a person possesses and knowledge is different. Knowledge can be possessed by people,

05:08it can be possessed by society but wisdom can only be possessed by people and Chanakya definitely

05:17possessed wisdom and he put down from his wisdom, he set out the Arthashastra, he wrote it and the

05:26Arthashastra is a body of knowledge and that body of knowledge is Artha means on economic and

05:34political issues and this Shastra in this case, it means book or manual or a compendium of the

05:45principles which he has expounded. Now, a knowledge as I said can be with people, it can be in books,

05:54it can be with society but wisdom is something which transcends time and space or time and place.

06:02So, to say that the wisdom, the military wisdom of Chanakya belongs to India or belongs to Hindus

06:14is not right. It transcends time and space and it belongs to humanity. Similarly, the art of war,

06:24the Chinese general Sun Tzu, now his art of war also shows wisdom. He has set it down in his book

06:33Art of War. It belongs not to Chinese but to humanity as a whole and while it belongs to

06:41humanity, let us understand that neither the knowledge nor the wisdom gives us any ownership

06:48over it. Anybody can use it and coming to Chanakya's wisdom, it is overarching. It overarches

06:58many subjects and the four subjects which are the major subjects which he talks about in Arthashastra

07:05are statecraft, economics, politics and the military. Military is also one of the issues in

07:15Arthashastra. Now, coming to the strategy, what Chanakya says in his Arthashastra is really

07:28what is called real politic. It is being able to run politics or run diplomacy through

07:38particular case circumstances rather than based only on ideology or on some particular code.

07:49So, this Arthashastra is real politic and therefore it is not Hindu. It belongs, as I said,

07:56to humanity. Now, coming to Project Udbhav, its objective is limited. It is not strategic.

08:07It is rather limited and it has got some way to go before it becomes strategy. Now, to go to your

08:19question on how this military wisdom, if I may call it that, it is not military wisdom. It is

08:28the principles of war. The principles of war were used by our armed forces in 1947-48, in 1962 but

08:39the failure happened somewhere else and if that failure happened somewhere else, it is strange.

08:46We don't learn from successes. We only learn from failures and why is it that the Henderson

08:53Brooks report has not been made public even though it is 60 plus years since it was written.

09:05In all the subsequent operations also, the principles of war of Arthashastra were used

09:15whether it is following Arthashastra or not is not important. The point is those principles were

09:20used and those principles as I pointed out in my article were also used by the Muslim invaders.

09:27They were also used by the British and they were used very successfully. So, we have also in 1971,

09:34for example, one of the points of Arthashastra is that you have to choose the time of the war

09:44or the battle and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked then General Sam Manek show to take action

09:54to go into East Pakistan in June 1971. But he said no, if I go in now, I will run into

10:02trouble with the monsoon. So, I will choose my time and he chose a time and he made it December

10:10and that's how we won. So, you see the points with Arthashastra is not that why we didn't use

10:20Arthashastra, we did use it. It is not that the military principles of the 10 principles of war

10:28which we have learnt from the Western is nothing but the same as the Arthashastra principles of

10:35war. It is the same as Sun Tzu's principles of war. So, we have been very successful in using it.

10:42There have been failures of course, but then its shortcomings are there everywhere. Back to you.

10:50Thank you, sir. Thank you. Sir, you come up till 1971

10:58and you very pertinently brought out all the points.

11:07I would like to put across a point of our relationship with the Chinese,

11:13our military relationship with the Chinese on the very long line of actual control.

11:20In 1967, there were some skirmishes at Nathula Chola for a few weeks. We lost 67 personnel,

11:33they lost about 400 or more. The exact figure is not known, but they pressed very hard for us to

11:45come to an agreement of never firing at each other.

11:50They did not stop breaking all the rules of all the agreements that they made, but

11:59they made us or let's say we have been too soft in dealing with them, sir.

12:11What do you say? Where have we been? Too soft in dealing with them.

12:17No, I do not think so. In 1967, in fact, when the Chinese forces came up,

12:27they came south. It was General Sagar Singh who gave them a bloody nose and they have not forgotten

12:37that. Yes, sir, but after that, they said let's not fire at each other and then in 2020

12:43at Galwan, when they killed 20 of our personnel, we still dealt with them without any firearms.

12:52No, we must understand that the army, the armed forces, they execute the operations based on

13:03political will, political orders. So, the army went in without firearms because there must have

13:17been some instructions from Delhi, from the army headquarters perhaps and where army headquarters

13:24got their instructions from, we know. Sir, with all that happened, we are still

13:34following in the period between 1967 and you can say for 50 years. In 75 October, they killed

13:514 personnel of 5 Assam Rifles by torture, not by bullets. They made a mockery of keeping

14:04this relationship without bullets but otherwise, it was often managed, is managed by pushing,

14:15pulling and by fisticuffs. Our army is no less than any other army in the world.

14:23If we are given a free hand, I am sure we will give the Chinese a bloody nose on the border

14:29but the point is not on the border. There is further, it should not escalate where we may

14:35be at a disadvantage. So, there are reasons for us not pursuing these things further

14:44and it is about the encroachments that China is doing all along the border, some 3,400

14:51kilometers of LAC. They are encroaching in several places and they have got demand of the whole of

14:59Arunachal Pradesh, at least the northern part of Arunachal Pradesh and we have got to keep

15:07swallowing it because we are trying to handle it by diplomacy

15:11and the diplomacy is not working.

15:15Well, it just remains to be seen. The Indian soldier has shown tremendous

15:24patience and by not getting provoked even in 2020, there was a great reaction at the level of

15:36soldiers but it was done without firearms and the official figure was I think 43. I think the

15:43actual figure they say could go into almost 100. It is very sad, yes and after that affair was over

15:55and China decided to pull back and we also pulled back. They are following their policy

16:05of two steps forward and one step back and then they established a post little higher up in the

16:11Galwan Valley and we vacated the Kailash Heights. Why did we vacate the Kailash Heights?

16:21Very good question, sir. Why did we vacate those? They were giving us tremendous advantage.

16:26Exactly, exactly. So, it is not that the corps commander or the div commander

16:34didn't know what the hell he was doing. He must have been asked to vacate it.

16:41After all, he is a man with so much experience and he knows the advantage of occupying a height,

16:48overseeing the Chinese position and then after that, after we vacated the Kailash Heights,

16:55the Chinese have built a whole bridge across Pangong Tso.

16:58Yes, sir and it is not only that, sir. Even after the recent big, it was made much of

17:08that Dipsang and Demchok, they are withdrawing or we don't really know what it has amounted to

17:18because there are many questions regarding the patrolling, which is a part of managing

17:25this line of actual control. Yes.

17:28And there are maybe about 600 or 700 villages, which they made, which have military applications

17:36also. I mean, there are so many ways they are breaking the rules. We have had corps commander

17:45meetings, 24 of them, which are long, very long affairs, which amounted to nothing, sir.

17:55And it is just, it is not that this army lacks, like in two world wars, it got

18:06acknowledged as about the best army in the world and it is functioning like that. But

18:12up till the first many decades, when the Congress was in power, you could say, okay, they were soft.

18:23But as we see that since 2014 also, the capability of the Indian armed forces is certainly not being

18:36exercised and not with the aim of having a full-fledged war, but certainly to keep

18:47things in check, so to speak. Yes, you are right.

18:52Because unfortunately, both the Chinese and the Pakistanis understand the language of force

19:00much, much better than any other. I think they understand very well the

19:06language of force by the Indian army or by the Indian Air Force. They understand it very well.

19:13But in the case of Ladakh, where we had the Dalban incident, all those encroachments in

19:23Pangong Tso area also, all those areas, their encroachments were, they were very happy with

19:30what our Prime Minister said. He said, koine gosa. And that is what the Chinese are saying,

19:39then what are you complaining about? You said it, sir. In fact, it is the

19:44Defence Minister, who made this statement number of times, ki ek inch bhi nahi humne diya, ek inch

19:56bhi humne nahi liya, which became a little bit of a mockery because during the BRICS summit,

20:05finally, it came to light that there is some territory which they have taken and which they

20:13now say they will disengage from. These are all the smaller points. But my main

20:22thrust of my article and my argument is that China has, by using their strategy and expanding their

20:31influence into South Asia, they have, and you know, the meeting that happened on the 4th of

20:39October 2023 in Lhasa, the Chinese called the Pakistan top officials of Pakistan, of Bhutan,

20:48of Sri Lanka, of Bangladesh, they all came, they attended the meeting. And they said,

20:53we are calling this meeting in order to expand our economic, political and military influence

21:00in South Asia. So, they had a strategy, they are doing that. And 17 days, one seven days later,

21:08we had this Project Udbhav, which says that we are trying to improve our national security.

21:15I mean, why do we have such a limited aim? And in Project Udbhav, in the launching of Project Udbhav,

21:24there was the chief of air staff was present, the vice chief of the naval staff was present.

21:31And they didn't pull in the Navy and the Air Force into the Project Udbhav. It is only the army which

21:39has made this so-called, what do they call it, initiative, this foreseeing, yeah, some such word

21:53they used. And it is a vision of great foresight. But the point is that they did not call the Navy

22:09and the Air Force, they are not involved in this. And also, if it is a matter of national security,

22:16they should be also looking at other relevant ministries, because today the nation goes to war,

22:24not only the armed forces. So, you have to have the other key ministries also involved.

22:31The external affairs ministry, the home ministry, the finance ministry,

22:36the telecommunications ministry, all these key ministries have got to be involved.

22:45So that we can look at national security. Now, if you are looking at national security,

22:50do we have a national security policy? Do we have a strategy? We have the National Security Council,

22:58which was formed in Prime Minister Vajpayee's days. And it is still there. They haven't

23:05dissolved the National Security Council. And the chairperson of the NSC is ex officio,

23:12the Prime Minister of the country. And the National Information Advisor is the

23:22ex officio secretary of the NSC. But have you got a document? Have you created a document?

23:30And why is there no armed forces officer at a high level in the NSC? So, these are all questions

23:37that we need to address before we talk really about strategy. But in any case, we can see that

23:45they have limited it to linking up ancient wisdom with modern military practices to create a new

24:03new military pedagogy. That means they are going to be using it for training.

24:08What about actual fighting? So, these are the concerns which I have. It is very troubling

24:15to see that we are not facing up to the Chinese as we should be facing up to them.

24:22They have surrounded us in the north and from the west, north and east,

24:28and in the south through their string of pearls. We are completely surrounded.

24:36And now we had that port, Javahar port, we were using it. And today's morning's news,

24:44President Trump has put the sanctions back on Javahar port for us.

24:49So, we will have trouble in getting oil from there. So, we are getting pushed about the place.

25:00In fact, the Javahar port was going to be advantageous with the Afghan Taliban,

25:09you know, getting closer to India and also our relations with Iran.

25:17Iran where the Javahar port which has been developed by India.

25:25Yes, we have spent two billion dollars on Javahar port.

25:29Yes, yes. And all three countries would have benefited,

25:37and particularly Afghanistan, which, you know, needs a lot to be done for it.

25:43No, we were able to resist it so far by various means. But I hope we will resist this also.

25:50This morning, sir, you can check it out.

25:56It's not surprising because when you start talking about Trump sanctions, from whatever

26:02we've heard him, you know, say, whatever is being expected, it's fantasia, you know, it's

26:15part fantasy, which we never know he's trying to put into practice. Would you like to add

26:24anything more about what we should be doing?

26:28Yeah, what we could be doing is very important. According to Arthashastra,

26:34you have to go from within to out, you have to have a stable and wealthy state.

26:42And that comes through good governance, which is also part of Arthashastra.

26:49And we have got, we have got and it means that all the people should be satisfied in a good

26:56frame of mind, there should be social harmony and peace within the country,

27:02all part of Arthashastra. But we have got people who are trying to actively break fraternity.

27:11And the social unrest is not reducing, if at all it is increasing. And with that condition,

27:19how are we going to face an external enemy?

Maj Gen Sudhir Vombatkere (Retd.), strategic affairs commentator, speaks with Col Anil Bhat (Retd.) on applying India's ancient military wisdom to address its security challenges | SAM Conversation

Category

Transcript

Recommended