Bharat Rakshak

THE TV ANCHOR BUFFOONS NOT KNOWING THEIR PLACE AND POSITION
____________________________________________________________

I am sure other BR members would have noticed the disgraceful lack of courtesy on the part of our TV jockeys when they were interviewing the COAS General V. K. Singh in the last two days.

I refer, specifically, to the interviews on TIMES NOW and CNN-IBN. The insufferable poseur, Arnab Goswami, insulted the Indian Army, the Indian armed forces, the finest soldier this country has seen in many decades, and the country itself, when he persisted in his disrespectful behaviour with the good General. He continued to address the Chief throughout the programme as "General", whereas the correct appellation would have been "Sir" and / or "General Sir". If I recall correctly, he used the proper terminology only once or twice (at the most) during the 58 minute programme. There too, he slurred over the honorific word. I have recorded the programme and am sure of the grievous misconduct on the part of this Goswami upstart.

He badly needs "six of the best" , as we used to call it in our school days. The swish of the cane on his posterior.

CNN-IBN was in the same dismal league. The difference - it was a woman who committed the discourtesy. Anubha Bhosle was as egregious and intolerable as Goswami.

It is high time that our ex-service personnel registered the strongest protest with the TV channels concerned.

There's nothing wrong with calling him 'General'. 'Sir' in India is an affectionate mannerism, certainly not a requirement.

Jaybhatt,
I feel that you are overreacting here. I personally found no problems with the interviews.

Gaur : I did not comment on the interviews, per se. Of course, there were no "problems" with the interviews. The General was scintillating and forthright, as usual.

What I found most objectionable was the supercilious attitude of the two persons, when addressing a much more senior person. And a person who possesses the most sterling attributes that one could think of.

If you and Nikhil feel that the two TV persons were kosher, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion. The overwhelming majority of the people I have spoken to clearly shared my assessment.

I also meant the attitude of the two anchors. As Sanku said, an interviewer is required to be firm but polite. In fact, it will be disadvantageous for Gen VK Singh if his interviewers are "too" polite, respectful and demure. Then, it would look as if the anchors are tilted to his side and thus his statements will not carry the same impact. On the other hand, if the anchors are firm and ask seemingly hard and difficult questions, the interviewee (if he answers satisfactorily) would come out looking like he is above anything you can throw at him. He will gain much more respect of the viewers.


Fair enough. There is no fixed answer to this as it is after all a matter of personal opinion. So, we can politely agree to disagree.

but why did the chief wait till the very end to tie the loose ends

Hear hear ! Of course.

I trust we are on the same side as far the principal issue is concerned. That, a few days before hanging up his uniform, an outstanding soldier and an exemplary citizen of the Republic was saying his adieu, to the people and the country he served and defended so faithfully and capably. And what an incredibly inspiring farewell message !

but why did the chief wait till the very end to tie the loose ends

did he ? would you have liked him to throw procedure to the winds and nail whom he felt like ?
there are well laid down procedures and he has to follow those, and that takes as long as it does.

Of Matters Military: New Chief and the Challenges

Major General Mrinal Suman


Human memory may be short but institutional memory is eternal and highly sensitive to all issues that affect its health and standing. Therefore, institutional history is most unforgiving and never condones any act of transgression that brings disrepute to its character. Indian army as an institution is proud of its non-partisan disposition and well-evolved merit-based promotion system.

Devious tweaking of the system by a parochial Chief to ensure elevation of his protégé will always be remembered as a black episode in the history of the Indian army. In a hierarchy based organisation like the army, such transgressions have a complex cascading effect – the complete line of succession for higher ranks has been distorted. Many deserving officers have got left out.

End of May 2012 will see a change of guard at the apex of the Indian army. Assumption of the appointment by the Chief-designate will mark the triumph of parochialism over justice. Therefore, he will have to carry the burden of an acute guilt-complex. He knows that the environment is aware of the manipulations that facilitated his rise – the current incumbent has been deceitfully deprived of his full tenure and the careers of many brilliant officers who could have posed a challenge to his advancement were ruthlessly ruined.

To be trusted is the greatest compliment that a leader can earn. It flourishes on the credibility that a leader enjoys in his command. On the other hand, partisanship is an impropriety of the worst kind and erodes credibility of leaders and undermines their standing in the eyes of the led. Being a beneficiary of partisan dispensation, the new Chief will have to work hard to prove his impartial credentials. One wonders as to how he would muster moral courage to exhort troops to trust the organisation and have faith in the justness of the system. For a military leader, it is the most unenviable situation to be in.

Additionally, the new incumbent will be hard pressed to put up with many disconcerting situations. How will he face the outgoing Chief to accept the baton? Similarly, having usurped the appointment that should have rightfully gone to the Northern Army Commander, it will be tough for him to interact with him.

The present Chief will be going out on a moral high. Despite a massive slander campaign launched by the purchased media and some inimical elements, his reputation as an incorruptible leader and a professionally upright commander remains intact. Having faced the wrath of a corrupt, manipulated and prejudiced environment, he will be long remembered for his attempts at cleansing the system. The new Chief will have to contend with his predecessor’s unblemished reputation and live up to it.

Two serious cases are pending finalisation. A writ petition is pending in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court seeking an enquiry into his alleged involvement in a fake encounter that resulted in the death of an innocent person. He is also being accused of command failure during his tenure with the UN peacekeeping force in Congo and a court of enquiry is in progress. Conviction under either of the cases will make his position untenable.

Finally, one wonders if it has ever crossed the mind of the Chief-designate that it would have been far more honorable to retire as an upright Army Commander than to become the Chief through questionable means. History will never forget the conspiracy and the subterfuge that facilitated his elevation – turning the national motto ‘Satyamev Jayate’ on its head. It should never be forgotten that when history judges key players in retrospect, it is always unsparing and ruthless in exposing their misdemeanors.

Strange that it took till the last 2-3 months for all the procedures to be set in place, and thus opening him to charges of being vindictive by the manipulative media & others.
Hope we have more men with guts like the General.

arnab was playing the devil's advocate, he fielded questions that his critics would have asked and gave him an opportunity to clear the air.

the cnn ibn lady OTOH was quite disrespectful in body language, almost mocking the general.

Yes, we are. I admire the Gen VKS for all that he has done and especially his fortitude in his last few interviews, but I really feel he erred in releasing this controversial book written by R K Anand, a convicted manipulator of the law. There are two reasons:

1) The book itself talks about nepotism in Army, favors by politicians, bureaucrats to officers etc. To VKS's credit he did distance himself from the contents “Releasing a book does not mean anything in the world.", but propriety would demand that he should've waited until his retirement to release a book that talks about the malaise affecting his currently-held office. I could've understood if the book was actually a scholarly discourse, written by a well-known expert, but from reading the book's cover it seems very similar to a Ram Jethmalani outburst.

2) Secondly, sharing the stage with shady characters like Sajjan Kumar and RK Anand is to put it mildly, a very bad idea. Gen VKS has the country's respect for uprightness. Compounding the fact was Gen VKS's comments about RK Anand at the function "He is a respected man. I have released his book and I am happy about it.” How is RK Anand respected if his own professional fraternity disowned him ? By this logic, tomorrow we would call (former) Gen Avadesh Prakash 'respected'.

So its a non-issue.
Enough, Lets Move On (ELMO)

arnab was playing the devil's advocate, he fielded questions that his critics would have asked and gave him an opportunity to clear the air.

the cnn ibn lady OTOH was quite disrespectful in body language, almost mocking the general.

Maj Gen retd Mrinal Suman eloquently establishes the precariousness of the incoming Army Chief's position.

http://mrinalsuman.blogspot.in/

BAPORA VILLAGE ( BHIWANI, HARYANA):
...
Reach Bhiwani and ask anybody where is General Sahab’s village and one will be automatically guided to his modest pink and yellow house, equipped with bare minimum things. Only his drawing room seemed to have got a new sofa few years ago.
“What did he (the Army Chief) get for being honest? See his home; he has not added any property in his career, everything is ancestral. Had it not been the case, politicians would have fixed him by now for standing up against corruption,” his other cousin Honorary Captain (retd) Krishan Pal Singh chipped in.
...
The village is proud of the General’s achievement as he is the first to have risen to the highest rank; earlier his father Col Jagat Singh was the highest-ranking army officer from the village. In his career spanning 42 years, the Army Chief has always topped the merit list. He is a graduate of the Wellington-based Defence Services Staff College as well as the US Army War College at Carlisle. He also did a Rangers Course, a prestigious commando training, at Fort Benning in the US
....
“I had asked the General to get my son recruited in Army as jawan. He said if somebody is fit, he will get chance on his own. I will not recommend anybody. He is that honest,” Tejbir Singh added.
...
End of an Era

When Army Chief General V K Singh hangs his boots on May 31, an era of Indian military history will come to an end —as he would be the last of the Army Chiefs to have seen action in India’s last full-fledged war of 1971. His successor Lt Gen Bikram Singh was commissioned into the force in 1972.
As a young Sub Lieutenant in the Rajput Regiment in 1971, General Singh had started training the Mukti Bahini army for the liberation of former East Pakistan on June 19. The experience in the 1971 war laid down the foundations of a keen strategist that he is known as presently. “Just before the war, Vijay had come to the village on leave. And he especially went and bought a lungi so that he can easily mix with the Mukti Bahini troops he was going to train,” said his cousin Krishan Pal Singh.

Also during 1971 war, one of his fellow officers had stepped on an anti-personnel mine and got blown up. He was severely injured and the General—then a young Sub-Lieutenant—carried him on his shoulder all the way to hospital. The officer lost a limb but survived to tell the tale of General Singh’s dedication towards his troops and fellow officers.

In 2011 when V K Singh again set foot on Bangladeshi soil as the Indian Army Chief, he carried along with him some “relics of 1971 war” to gift his Bangladeshi counterpart.

“Participating in an operation gives an army officer an experience which no amount of theory or courses can impart. So in that sense this experience will definitely be missed in the higher echelons of the Indian Army,” said an officer. The Army Chief, first commando to rise to the highest rank, later took part in Operation Pawan of the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Sri Lanka against LTTE. “He is an expert in operations and planning and using the arms to their maximum. He turned all the rifles into LMG (Light Machine Guns) in Sri Lanka; even the LTTE guerillas were scared of him,” said Krishan Pal who had accompanied him as part of the troops who had gone to the island nation.

The Army Chief had learnt his first lessons of the war in 1971. The 13-day Bangladesh Liberation war in 1971 is one of the shortest wars in the modern history that also resulted in the formation of a new country. During the war, the Indian armed forces fought in both the eastern and western frontier before the Pakistani Army signed an Instrument of Surrender, and over 90,000 Pakistani soldiers were taken as Prisoners of War by India.

As a build-up to this, thousands of Bangladeshis were given shelter in refugee camps on the Indian side. These camps were used for training the fighters of the Mukti Bahini.

increasingly it looks like the age row was manufactured to sideline him before he exposed the mafia

Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 29th May 12

On April Fools’ Day 2010, while taking over as Chief of Army Staff, General V K Singh identified his foremost goal as restoring the army’s “internal health”. On Thursday, in what surely will be a frosty ceremony, he will hand over to his successor, General Bikram Singh, an army whose generals are badly divided. Not even in the 1950s and 1960s, when the ambitious Lieutenant General B M Kaul exploited his proximity to Jawaharlal Nehru to split the officer community into pro-Kaul and anti-Kaul factions, did India witness the sorry spectacle of an army chief publicly denigrating his top commanders.

Where did V K Singh go wrong? Many argued (including this columnist) that the army chief was within his rights to take his government to the Supreme Court. This after the defence ministry rejected his petition to adjust his date of birth, and thereby allow him another 10 months in office. But once the Supreme Court judges rubbished his case in court, forcing him to withdraw his petition, V K Singh faced the prospect of an anonymous retirement just four months away.

His desperate riposte was ill-judged from the start. Soon after his setback in the Supreme Court, a group of illustrious citizens, including a retired navy chief, Admiral Ramdas, filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court that rested on the communal narrative of a Sikh conspiracy to get General Bikram Singh into office. While the petitioners cannot be conclusively linked with V K Singh, the evidence suggests that they were at least manipulated by him. On February 10, the day V K Singh withdrew from the Supreme Court, the general’s henchmen approached me with a detailed briefing on “Operation Moses”. Reduced to its cringe-worthy essentials, this had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife; Planning Commission Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and his wife; former army chief General J J Singh and his wife; and the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (every Sikh down the chain, you get the drift?) in cahoots to get V K Singh out of office on May 31, 2012, when Bikram Singh would be poised to take over from him. I declined to pursue these improbable and slanderous allegations. Regrettably, Admiral Ramdas & Co approached the Supreme Court, challenging Bikram Singh’s appointment.

Perhaps this communalism should not have been a surprise. After all, the Rajput card was played without compunction whilst V K Singh was fighting his date of birth battle. A group of Rajput parliamentarians was dispatched to the prime minister to plead on his behalf. When a proxy was needed to file a Supreme Court writ petition on the general’s date of birth, the “Rohtak Grenadiers’ Association”, packed with the general’s fellow-Rajputs, was conveniently at hand.

Sadly for V K Singh, nothing worked. The PM politely reminded the Rajput MPs that the army must remain apolitical. The Supreme Court, less politely, dismissed the Rohtak Grenadiers’ Association writ petition. And the apex court, while throwing out the “Operation Moses” writ petition in end-April, scolded the petitioners for communalising the issue.

With avenues closing fast, V K Singh apparently decided to use his office to launch himself into politics. By end-March, he had donned the garb of an anti-corruption crusader. First an earlier interview was dusted out in which he described turning down a Rs 14 crore bribe by one of his senior generals; that was followed in short order by the leak of his letter (still a whodunit!) to the PM warning about the army’s poor state of operational readiness. The insinuation was clear: with corruption below him and indifference above, V K Singh alone was a bastion of morality. Last month, in an unabashedly political move, the chief travelled to Ballia for a Samajwadi Party function to unveil a statue of former prime minister Chandra Shekhar.

Last Friday, the outgoing chief proved that he had lost any lingering trace of judgement. Sharing a platform with R K Anand – a disreputable lawyer who the Supreme Court convicted for contempt of court after an NDTV camera caught him buying off a key witness in the notorious BMW kill-and-run case – V K Singh launched a public tirade against one of his corps commanders, Lt General Dalbir Singh Suhag, ironically accusing him of making public a show-cause notice issued to him. Suhag was apparently being targeted as the army chief who would take over from Bikram Singh. Earlier that day, V K Singh had attended an ex-servicemen’s rally in Dharamsala, where he sat listening as former Congressman Vijay Singh Mankotia flayed the government.

The young and mid-ranking officers, and the rank and file, remain untouched by V K Singh’s shenanigans. Bikram Singh has his task cut out for him: to apply a healing touch and to visibly and conclusively bury the vendettas that V K Singh pursued. The corrosiveness of the outgoing chief will itself make his successor look good. Above all, Bikram Singh must embrace the virtues of silence. An army chief expresses himself with tanks and guns, not in lengthy interviews on news television.

Thank God that's over...



Shukla-sir really seems to have turned 180 degrees on his view about Gen.Singh within 2 months!

Hardly surprising. Shows how fickle the hacks are. And that is putting it very diplomatically.