It is rare to come across good news during these difficult times. It is understandable as the government is kept busy handling the fallouts of the Covid-19 pandemic and does not have time to undertake in-depth changes or reforms.
A few days ago, I was pleasantly surprised to read a PBI communiqué announcing that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had approved a new policy “on archiving, declassification and compilation/publication of war/operations histories by the Ministry of Defence.”
The release added: “The policy envisages that each organisation under the Ministry of Defence (MoD) …will transfer the records, including war diaries, letters of proceedings & operational record books, to the History Division of Ministry of Defence for proper upkeep, archival and writing the histories.”
Further, for the first time, the Government agrees to follow the law (and not to have a few babus sailing above the rules under usual pretexts such as protecting ‘national security’, putting a blanket ban on declassification). The communiqué clearly mentioned: “The responsibility for declassification of records rests with the respective organisations as specified in the Public Record Act 1993 and Public Record Rules 1997. According to the policy, records should ordinarily be declassified in 25 years. Records older than 25 years should be appraised by archival experts and transferred to the National Archives of India.” Today, hardly any transfer takes place to the National Archives and India is paying a price for it by not studying her own history.
This will be a significant shift the day India will be able to become a ‘normal’ modern State, functioning under the law; the newly created History Division will be responsible “for coordination with various departments while compiling, seeking approval and publishing of war/operations histories.” The new scheme caters to a committee headed by the Joint Secretary, MoD, and comprising of representatives of the Services, and other ministries and organisations.
This move is important for several reasons. At a time India is facing a hostile power on its Northern border, it is crucial to have precise knowledge of what has happened during the previous confrontations. It is particularly vital for the defence personnel who are supposed to study wars and conflicts, during their training at military academies or colleges.
Today’s officers and soldiers need to know why India fared well (in 1971 for example) or less well (in particularly in 1962 against China) and learn from the victories as well as the defeats— it is a fact of life that one always learns more from routs than triumphs.
In this perspective, it will be necessary to have a holistic approach to the studies of wars and conflicts, and consequently, other ministries will have to be taken on board.
To give an example, the official History of the Conflict with China (1962) published by the Ministry of Defence, did not get any inputs from the Ministry of External Affairs or other agencies, while it is a known fact that BN Mallick the Intelligence Bureau Chief had his fingers in many pies before the war and misled the government on every front.
One of the first tasks of the Historical Division will be to declassify existing reports such as the Henderson-Brooks-Bhagat Report.
The report prepared by Lt Gen Henderson-Brooks and Brig (later Lt Gen) Prem Bhagat deals with some of the reasons for the defeat of the Indian Army in 1962. Discussed in Parliament in 1963, the report has since then been unnecessarily kept under wraps.
In 2012, Sandeep Unnithan wrote in India Today: ‘Officials who have read it say this is because the report squarely indicts senior army generals for the country’s worst-ever military defeat…’
The crux of the report is said to a 40-page summary by Gen Chaudhary, the Army Chief after the war, who observed that the Army gave “a better account of itself in the Ladakh sector by resisting the Chinese advance, because of better leadership.”
According to the same source, the three main findings of the report were the failure of the Army’s higher command, the organisation of the Army, and finally the appointment of “the glib but militarily unsound corps commander Lt Gen Brij Mohan Kaul.” Only two copies of the report are said to exist: one is with the defence secretary; the other deep in a vault at the directorate general of military operations.
It is not the only ‘secret’ report to remain in the drawers of the ministries of defence or external affairs. Perhaps more crucial for the present tense northern borders is the Himmatsinghji Committee Report of 1951. This committee, known as the North and North East Border Defence Committee, sent its findings in two parts. The interesting aspect of the committee was that all the branches of the Indian State dealing with the borders were represented.
Besides Maj Gen. Himmatsinghji, Deputy Minister of Defence (Chairman), it included Lt Gen. Kulwant Singh, K. Zakaria, head of the MEA’s Historical Division, S.N Haksar, Joint secretary, MEA, Group Capt. M. Chaturvedi from the Indian Air Force, and Waryam Singh, deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau, the Committee was initiated by Sardar Patel before he passed away on December 15, 1950.
The first part of the main Report consisting of recommendations regarding Sikkim, Bhutan, NEFA, and the Eastern frontier bordering Burma was submitted in April 1951. The second part, submitted in September 1951, pertained to Ladakh and the frontier regions of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Nepal.
Based in the findings of the first Report, the takeover of Tawang by Maj Bob Khathing was ordered in February 1951. Nobody can access this report today.
Apart from these inaccessible reports, the massive loss of the Sikkim Papers, pertaining to the Office of the Political Officer (1890-1975) which recorded the entire history of India’s relations with the Himalayas, particularly Tibet and Bhutan, is a great tragedy. Four lakhs of vital files concerning India’s Northern borders have been misplaced between South Block and North Block; since then, they are MIA (‘missing in action’ to use a military term).
The MoD move is also important because it will hopefully trigger a similar move in other important ministries, first and foremost the Ministry of External Affairs, which for decades had a Historical Division before it was closed in the 1990s by a bright diplomat who thought he could dispense with the nitty-gritty of history— or more probably to bury forever some of South Block’s ‘errors of judgments’.
But errors, blunders, or mistakes are part of history and need to be studied, analysed, and discussed to avoid those unwelcome situations occur again.
A first step has been made by the MOD, let us hope that the good intentions will not be lost in the bureaucratic corridors.
Incidentally, it would be good if the Joint Secretary in charge of the new Division, is a lover of history, not just a passing bureaucrat.
The writer is a noted author, journalist, historian, Tibetologist and China expert. The views expressed are personal.