India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 05 :: Feb. 27 - Mar. 12, 1999

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CONTROVERSY

The Admiral speaks out

Weeks after his controversial dismissal, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat breaks his silence at a press conference in New Delhi, raising disturbing questions about forces that threaten the integrity of the military and endanger national security.

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN
in New Delhi

AFTER weeks of seclusion, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, the Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) whose dismissal from service on December 30 caused a storm of controversy, broke his silence about the events leading to the dramatic denouement to his military career. The occasion was a media conference at the capital city's Press Club on February 22. At his combative best, the Admiral took on the political establishment that had victimised him, pulling few punches and sparing few sensitivities. In equal measure, his fire was directed at those sections of the media that had played the indispensable function of justifying the Government's decision with supposed evidence of his wrongdoing.

"I have not come to the media earlier, though there were tremendous pressures on me to do so," said Bhagwat in his introductory remarks. But he had assured the nation on January 14, two weeks after his ouster and just prior to his departure from Delhi, that he would not let the "tissue of lies" that had been fabricated by the Government to stand. This was a duty that he owed to the armed forces, and his appearance before Delhi's press corps was his settlement of accounts with political forces which threatened the integrity of the military and endangered national security.

Bhagwat took on the allegations of wrongdoing that had been levelled against him. When the tension began rising between him and the Government, he asserted, an inquiry was ordered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Intelligence Bureau. The senior police officers who were assigned this mission were, he said, "ashamed" of the sordid task that they had to do. And their final report was a certain "desperate question" to the Government: "How will this Naval Chief live after retirement?"

The Admiral chose to put on record this fact in evident indignation at a report featured in a daily newspaper published from Delhi on the morning of his media conference. With no effort at subtlety, the report made out a case that Bhagwat had been unduly solicitous of a junior officer, Rear Admiral S.V. Purohit, despite evidence of his alleged malfeasance. He had allegedly appointed the Rear Admiral to the pivotal position of Chief of Logistics in naval headquarters, allegedly sought to deflect an official probe into his alleged wrongdoing, and then allegedly falsified records to recommend his promotion to the next higher rank.

These were supposed to be damning allegations; they left Bhagwat unfazed. The charges against Purohit had first surfaced in an anonymous note circulated widely in October 1997. It had subsequently been put through a departmental scrutiny and then referred to the CBI. Crucially, neither exercise had turned up the slightest corroborative evidence against the officer. The sudden re-emergence of these allegations in the media on the morning of Bhagwat's meeting with the media was evidently an effort to doctor opinion to his disadvantage. And Bhagwat did not conceal his disgust with the stratagem.

The former Navy Chief's main indictment was, however, reserved for Union Minister of Defence George Fernandes. His actions, which culminated in the unlawful removal of a military commander on December 30, were clearly a "politico-military coup", said Bhagwat. The supposed ground for his dismissal was his deliberate defiance of the established principle of Cabinet control over the defence services. But no such defiance could be proved. "Civilian control," said Bhagwat, is defined within a policy framework: "It relates to issues of war and peace; it relates to matters of strategic consequence. It prohibits day-to-day interference in matters of appointment, posting and promotion."

The immediate cause of his dismissal was his refusal to accept the appointment of Vice Admiral Harinder Singh, Fortress Commander in the Andamans, as Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff (DCNS). His grounds for doing so, said Bhagwat, had been spelt out in a detailed note sent to all members of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on December 10. In all, they ran to 23 counts - from the damning charge that Harinder Singh had sought to foment communalism in the armed forces to basic questions about his competence and commitment to duty.

Fernandes, said Bhagwat, took none of his reservations into account. In complete disregard of the offensive tone that Harinder Singh had employed in a "redressal of grievance" petition against the Chief of the Naval Staff, the Defence Minister chose to describe him as a "decent and competent" officer and actively championed his appointment as DCNS. In the process, he entered into a series of direct communications with the Vice Admiral. A parallel channel of communication was also set up concurrently, between the then Defence Secretary Ajit Kumar and Vice Admiral Sushil Kumar, chief of the Southern Naval Command.

Bhagwat's summing up of these events was dramatic: "Never in the fifty years of our history since 1947 has the subversion of the chain of military command been carried out in such a blatant manner - destroying the entire civil-military relationship, undermining the disciplinary framework of an armed force of the Union."

There must evidently have been a purpose behind the extraordinary actions of the Defence Minister and his top bureaucrat. Bhagwat's conclusions on this were crisp and clear: "The Minister has supported a senior officer who has employed a communal appeal to divide the armed forces of the Union. For George Fernandes' mandate is identical."

Beyond this, there are suggestions of a deep and menacing nexus between the political establishment, top naval commanders and a flourishing arms brokerage business run by a former CNS. Admiral S.M. Nanda, best remembered as the CNS during the 1971 Bangladesh war, today runs a multi-crore rupee arms business in partnership with his son Suresh, also a former naval officer. Harinder Singh has acknowledged that he accepted the hospitality of this firm on a visit to Moscow and London in 1997. This fact was entered into his confidential report, only to be later expunged at the intervention of the Defence Ministry.

SUNIL MALHOTRA/ REUTERS
Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat at the press conference in New Delhi on February 22.

This was, in Bhagwat's reading, highly irregular. And despite his repeated requests, the adverse observations against Harinder Singh were not restored. Part of the reason, he now suggests, is that Admiral Nanda and Fernandes were in "direct communication" and met both before and after the recalcitrant CNS was dismissed.

Bhagwat's reading of the Nanda nexus is little short of alarming. The Indian Navy, he says, has the highest capital expenditure component of all the defence services. It is for this reason a favoured target of the global arms brokerage firms. A single deal could mean a big payoff for them.

Further, the Navy is the only one among the three wings of the military which has the "potential to extend a nation's influence beyond its borders and extend its reach up to its strategic frontiers". International interests have, on this account, targeted the Indian Navy in two principal ways. First, "by diverting it from its strategic purpose to limit its objective to that of a mere 'coastal' force." And secondly, "by subverting the outlook of its personnel, by encouraging them to be members of a cosy club," the officer corps is transformed into a self-serving bunch who will sacrifice the cause of their force for personal aggrandisement.

Still more damning are Bhagwat's revelations on the nexus between the political establishment and an arms smuggling operation that flourishes in the Andamans Sea, with a direct nexus to insurgents in India's north-eastern region. In February 1998, the Navy had along with the Army and the Coast Guard launched a major operation to interdict a shipment of contraband in the Andamans area. The operation yielded a rich haul of arms and narcotics. Surveillance and seizure operations have since continued in the maritime region around the Andamans.

On July 27, Defence Secretary Ajit Kumar conveyed Fernandes' instructions to the service commanders. They were that the interception of vessels suspected of carrying narcotics and arms should not be done without the prior approval of the Ministry. "One such shipment," says Bhagwat, "could mean a division of troops being tied down in counter-insurgency operations for a year." Moreover, the interdiction operations against operations that threaten national security are sanctioned by the United Nations and have been proceeding since 1996 on the basis of joint military intelligence inputs. On August 8, the three service chiefs jointly told the Defence Minister that the interdiction operations in the Andamans were "mandated operations" which did not require the "prior approval" of the Ministry.

The Defence Secretary then reportedly followed up with a communication that operations should be confined within India's exclusive economic zone. The concept itself was absurd, says Bhagwat, since the economic zone has little to do with the zone of operation of arms and narcotics smugglers. But the sequence of dubious interventions leads the former Navy Chief to a question that perhaps cuts Fernandes rather close to the bone and suggests a possible reason for his undue interest in the Andamans operations: "Why are LTTE, Burmese and the northeastern rebels operating from the house of the Defence Minister?"

S. SUBRAMANIUM
Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat and Niloufer Bhagwat outside the Navy House, New Delhi, the official residence of the Chief of the Naval Staff, in January.

Clearly, Fernandes now has much to explain about his conduct in office. Sheltering an officer who sought to introduce the communal virus into a force that prides itself on a secular credo was bad enough. The nexus with gun-runners and arms brokers makes things still more sticky for him.

The challenge from Bhagwat has now been forcefully articulated. His blunt speaking on the professional performance of a section of the media is guaranteed to make him some enemies but none can question the fierce sense of integrity and professional commitment that drives him. Nor can the former Navy Chief's belief in secularism, in fair play between communities and equal opportunity for all be challenged. After weeks of enigmatic silence, Vishnu Bhagwat has surfaced with a renewed force as a participant in the public discourse. The questions he poses could well spell the death of the unsavoury political coterie that believed it had administered the final solution on December 30.