Bhaskar Menon
www.undiplomatictimes.blogspot.com
General V.K. Singh as Mir Qasim
The leaking of Chief of Army Staff V.K. Singh's top secret
letter to the Prime Minister is more than the action of "a frustrated
individual" as UPA minister Vayalar Ravi told reporters.
It is not a case of the General going "berserk" as former National
Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra put it on a television panel.
It is also more than a liar hoping to escape entrapment in his own
inconsistencies by creating a diversionary alarm.
If it is proved that General Singh is the source of the leak -- and none of the
four or five men involved has any reason to release it -- he should be charged
with high treason. The publication of the letter can have potentially
disastrous consequences for the country.
Opposition parties in Parliament have demanded that General Singh be sacked,
but that does not deal with the situation he has precipitated. His bizarre
trajectory over the last year signals deeper systemic problems and we must
understand what they are to deal with an unquestionably serious national
crisis.
To understand the situation it is essential to see General Singh's
actions in the proper context.
First, the matter of his age. He told the media the revision of his age was a
"matter of honor," but the fact that he made himself a laughing stock
in pursuing it to the Supreme Court suggests that honor was probably not a high
priority.
If the revision had been accepted, he would have led the Indian Army for
another year, and that must be seen as the objective of his graceless ambition.
Considering that heavyweight interests abroad are invested in manipulating our
military decision-making, it is safe to assume that his bid to stay longer in a
key post was not driven purely by ego.
Several facts suggest who might have encouraged his unseemly pursuit of an
extra year in office. Perhaps the clearest indicator is that immediately after
the Supreme Court declined to support his bid to grow younger, he rushed off to
Britain.
(A subsequent visit to Israel
was vetoed by the Ministry of Defence.)
Britain
is home to the world's largest arms corporation, BAE Systems, and is a
major beneficiary of Indian military procurement. It does not take kindly to
losing major deals in India.
In 1987, when it lost the Indian contract for field mortars to the Swedish
company Bofors, the repercussions were heavy.
Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who had lobbied Rajiv Gandhi on the deal was
assassinated.
The Indian Prime Minister was hit with charges of corruption originating from
a Geneva-based NRI stringer for The Hindu. She suddenly developed an
anonymous source who provided a steady stream of entirely unsubstantiated
innuendos and suggestions that led the Indian media a merry chase for over a
decade.
That campaign of disinformation led to Rajiv Gandhi's defeat in the General
Election of 1989 and his assassination weeks before he would have returned to
power in a mid-term poll.
India
finally got the Swedish mortar but by then Bofors had gone bankrupt
and become a holding of BAE Systems.
A quarter century after The Hindu launched the "Bofors scandal"
General Singh's peculiar antics have as background another major Indian arms
deal gone sour for Britain:
the Indian Air Force decision to buy the French-built Rafaele fighter
jet instead of the Eurofighter Typhoon in which BAE Systems has
a major stake.
The General's allegations of being offered a bribe and the letter to the Prime
Minister about Indian military unpreparedness are calculated to cast doubt on
the probity of the Indian procurement process, which the British, if we go by a
statement Prime Minister David Cameron made in parliament, are now set on
overturning. (A particularly interesting sentence in the General's letter notes
that 97% of Indian Air defence is obsolete; I wonder how he arrived at that
precise figure!)
Meanwhile, the slavishly pro-British elements of Indian "elite" media
have been shouting from the rooftops about the need for mid-term polls: quite
clearly, the Bofors game book is in use again.
But history is being replayed as farce.
General Singh has become a pathetic figure, almost clownish with cravat and
swagger stick in looped television footage.
Instead of the rest of the media leaping on The Hindu's corruption
bandwagon as in 1987, there is considerable scepticism about the General's
allegations.
Cameron's assertion in parliament that the Eurofighter case continues
to be pressed in New Delhi
takes on a decidedly comic aspect when it turns out that his primary agent is
Telegu Desam Rajya Sabha member M.V. Mysura Reddy, who was talking of retirement
in January and has never before shown the slightest interest in military or
foreign affairs. In February Reddy wrote a semi-literate letter to Defence
Minister Anthony pushing for the Typhoon and explicitly raising the
ghost of Bofors. It was publicized by the Gunga Dins at India
Today/Headlines Today.
This is not to say that General Singh's mischief is innocuous.
There is talk of his political ambitions, most probably in Rajasthan, where the
Cairns/Vedanta "Creating Happiness" death's head is the new face of
British rapacity in India.
On a recent visit to Jaipur I was told that the state had become home to
mafiosi from all over the world, that Dawood Ibrahim came and went as he
pleased, and that the local government seemed quite powerless.
General Singh is behaving "as if he were in Pakistan"
(to quote Brajesh Mishra again), because powerful forces want India to be the
next South Asian banana republic.
In a period of global economic slow-down, with China
on the skids, the managers of the multi trillion dollar global black market
need India
to be "friendly" to their poisonous investments.
General Singh is their Mir Qasim in waiting.