Soldiers, Statesmen, and India's Security Policy

Abstract

This article argues the conventional wisdom on civil-military relations in India needs qualification. Whilst the military has not intruded in the formal machinery of politics, its institutional autonomy and assertiveness have progressively increased since 1947. This increase stems from two factors. First, a series of spikes in external threat–mainly a succession of wars and crises from the early 1960s to the early 1970s–altered the institutional balance of power between civilians and the military in favor of the latter. The second, and more analytically elusive, factor is a growing attitudinal divide between Indian society and its armed force–in other words an increasing civil-military gap. The article contends that the prevailing pattern of civil-military relations has already proved problematic in some important areas of security policy. Unless its more angular aspects are smoothened out, civil-military relations will continue to produce skewed security policies.