The military needs to realise that courage lies in confronting one’s shortcomings and overcoming them
Cdr S Shrikumar (retd)
In the military much is made, correctly, of ‘naam’ (name), ‘namak’ (salt), and ‘nishan’ (the flag/ensign). The naam represents the pride and the legacy associated with the individual soldier and the unit. It emphasises the importance of maintaining the reputation and dignity of the military. Namak symbolises the soldiers’ loyalty and commitment to their duty and to the country. It reminds the soldiers of the sacrifices of those who served before them and the responsibility that is now theirs to discharge. Nishan refers to the flag, the ensign, and the colours that represent the military. It symbolises the honour, the values, and the traditions associated with serving in the military.
The latter half of 2024 has not been good for the military. More specifically, for the military’s ‘naam’. The news of the unseemly fracas between a military officer (and his fiancée) and the Orissa police, the charge of molestation of a junior lady air force officer by her senior in J&K, the assault by civilians of trainee army officers in Mhow, and the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji’s statue in Maharashtra—all contributed to sullying the military’s ‘naam’.
While probes have been initiated to identify the circumstances that led to these incidents, fix accountability, and bring the guilty to book—that the military found itself in the news for ‘such’ reasons is cause enough for worry and serious introspection.
Economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their acclaimed 2012 book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, used a wide range of historical case studies to understand the wide variation in the journeys nations take enroute to development, with some nations succeeding in achieving power and prosperity and some others failing.
According to the authors, the decisive role in the development of nations is played by their institutions. The authors divide institutions under two broad groupings—political and economic. Political institutions are those that regulate the distribution of powers between the various authorities in the country and lay down the process for the formation of these bodies. Economic institutions regulate the economic incentives of citizens—the incentive to seek education, save, invest, etc.
The quality of the political and economic institutions, and the manner in which they interact, determine whether a country succeeds in developing or not. As proof of their hypothesis, among the many examples they provide in their book, the authors point to the divergent paths of North and South Korea. According to the authors, ‘the economic disaster of North Korea, which led to the starvation of millions, when placed against the South Korean economic success, is striking: neither culture nor geography nor ignorance can explain the divergent paths of North and South Korea. We have to look at institutions for an answer.’
The military, together with the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and a free press, is a key political institution. Given the decisive role that institutions play in a nation’s development, the military ought to reflect deeply on the underlying causes of the institutional infirmities that led to the recent ‘incidents.’
Public Perception
In 2018, Azim Premji University (APU) and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) undertook a study to assess people’s trust in India’s institutions. The study found that of the various Indian institutions, the one that is most trusted is the army/ military. In the study, the army/ military scored the highest on ‘effective trust’ with a score of 77 per cent.
The APU-CSDS study defined effective trust for any given institution as the difference between the percentage of respondents who, during the study, marked ‘a great deal of trust’ at one end of the scale and ‘no trust at all’ at the other end of the scale.
The Supreme Court came in second with an effective trust score of 54.8 per cent and the high courts were third with a score of 48 per cent. If the study is repeated today, the military, in all likelihood, will again top the rankings. People’s trust in the military is not unique to India. A 2020 Gallup poll in the USA found that 72 per cent of Americans said they had ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in the military.
To win and keep people’s trust, the military expends significant effort. The military, through carefully thought-out training programmes, instils in its personnel the values of duty, service, ethical conduct, and self-sacrifice. It trains its men and women to imbibe the right values—for the military to always live up to the trust that the people repose in it.
Any impropriety, howsoever minor, by service men and women erodes people’s trust in the military. Writing for the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses’ (IDSA) journal in 2013, Former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Arun Prakash opined that, ‘Traditionally perceived as an entity which stood tall above the civil society, the armed forces were seen as an embodiment of order and discipline, and were held, by their compatriots, in respect and admiration. Today we find, to our great dismay, that due to a tangible erosion of values and frequent displays of venality, the armed forces, too, are rapidly slipping in the estimation of their countrymen.’ This rings as true today as it did a decade ago.
An expedient justification often offered, to play down and sometimes even condone transgressions by military personnel, is to suggest that holding military personnel to a higher standard of conduct is misplaced in the first instance. It is argued, rather speciously, that since military personnel are drawn from the same society and polity that they serve, it is only to be expected that their conduct will mirror the polity from which they are drawn. In his article for the IDSA, Admiral Prakash rightly rejected this argument and asserted that, ‘for the armed forces to fob off blame for this decay on society and polity is not acceptable. After all, it is the Services who invented phrases such as “an officer and a gentleman” and “officer-like conduct”. It were these attributes rather than any Warrant of Precedence which earned them respect and a high place in society.’
The recent instances of transgressions by military personnel and the several, more serious, earlier instances such as the bribes-for-recruitment scams, the navy war room leaks case, the Tehelka sting on military personnel, the revelation of bribes to serving and retired officers for information on submarine repair plans, etc., are an indictment on the quality of training in ethics imparted in the military.
The military serves as the guardian of the nation’s values and principles, embodying the ethical standards that uphold its democracy and system of justice. Even in times when the society exhibits signs of moral decay, the military must uphold the highest ethical standards.
A decline in ethical standards within the military would lead to a loss of legitimacy and respect—eroding people’s trust in the military as an institution. Upholding high ethical standards not only strengthens the military but also reinforces the ideals of justice and honour within society.
A Higher Standard
In Shakespeare’s, ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’, Hamlet, tormented by questions of moral integrity, amidst a decaying court, laments, ‘Give me that man that is not passion’s slave.’ Hamlet’s plea underscores the struggle to make sense of the dilemmas and emotions agitating him and not be overwhelmed by passions under morally ambiguous circumstances. His lament highlights the salience of moral integrity and holding fast to one’s ethical standards—regardless of external or internal turmoil.
Media attention around the Orissa incident of September 2024 involving the army officer, his fiancée, and the local police escalated thanks to frenzied and sharply partisan social media posts—with the army and the police putting out differing accounts of the circumstances that led to the hullabaloo. Retired military officers, many of them senior, in their utterances on social media, ill-advisedly, called for reprisal against the errant police officials. Predictably, this led to retired senior police officers coming out in support of their colleagues.
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