Why India has never seen a military dictatorship.

[Crixus]

Are they still dumping opium in China ????

The answer is simple: The British has not taught them how to do it yet.

 

[EyelessInGaza]

Simple answer: In any nation, if the political class lacks legitimacy, other institutions will step in. India's struggle for independence was led by a deep cadre of political leaders who acquired legitimacy, from the national to the district level. This left no space for the military or any other institution to take the leadership space that, if a democracy is to flourish, belonged to the politicians.

Pakistan's political leadership - as a class- prior to independence did not have the depth or expertise or legitimacy in organized, mass based sustained politics, except for a few notables such as Jinnah. Hence the military stepped in, once they were gone.

Pakistan is going through that political process now- 2 or 3 more national elections without military intervention and they'll have a string foundation.

Reputation in people will also the reason Indian army Generals are as corrupt as politician and they are not much popular in masses.

I hope you're still a teenager, because anyone over 19 who uses such reasoning isn't going to be very successful in life.

 

[thesolar65]

India is a country of 10s or 100s of language, religion, race, different history, geography, weather etc. etc. Countries with only one language and that too with one religion are more susceptible to coups, Army rule, dictatorship, one party rule!!

 

[Crixus]

There are some popular generals also who got dismissed on charges of corruption in our neighborhood , and still they become popular the only reason is populace in our neighborhood enjoys living under fauji boots so much that dont value democracy or independence.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1253497

Reputation in people will also the reason Indian army Generals are as corrupt as politician and they are not much popular in masses.

 

[Delnavaz B]

There are some popular generals also who got dismissed on charges of corruption in our neighborhood , and still they become popular the only reason is populace in our neighborhood enjoys living under fauji boots so much that dont value democracy or independence.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1253497

Yes they dismissed because rest of the Fauj is not corrupt unlike India where there is no accountability of crore commanders.
You want links of Tehalka operation.

 

[SrNair]

The answer is simple: The British has not taught them how to do it yet.

Japanese taught you something in Nanking and your CCP applied that successfully during Cultural revolution and also in Tibet .

 

[MKC]

States with most number of infantry regiments:
Punjab: 3 (Sikh Regt., Sikh Light Infantry, Punjab Regt.)
J&K: 3 (J&K Light Infantry, J&K Rifles, Dogra Regt.)
As you can see, Punjab shares the honour with J&K.

States with the highest representation in the army:
Himachal Pradesh: 0.6% of India’s population, 4.68% of the armed forces = an over representation by 680%
Punjab: 2.4% of India's population, 16.6% of the armed forces = an over representation of 538%.
Haryana: 2.2% of India's population, 7.82% of the armed forces = an over representation of 255%.
As you can see, Punjab may dominate in terms of absolute numbers, but percentage-wise Himachal Pradesh takes the crown.

States with the highest number of 'Officers':
Punjab: 12.32%
Haryana: 10.90%
Punjab, again dominates the narrative, but Haryana comes in at a close second.

https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Indian-Army-have-a-disproportionate-number-of-Punjabis-If-yes-why

One of the big reasons being this percentage

I saw that quora answer but these figures are wrong, people from these states, Uttarakhand & Northern Rajasthan join army but these figures are wrong may be calculated on number of soldiers in different regiments.
But army never provided ethnic or religious composition of army.

It is an interesting concept but armed forces comes under federation or federal units means if there is a problem in Kashmir then other regiments from areas also moves similarly for other states it applies . One of the reason for no coupe is Punjab being less in population have a massive number in armed forces as compared to others so technically if there is a coupe so every 6 th soldier or officer will be from Punjab so all of India can live under this ?

You are right, now Madras regiment is stationed in Siachen.

Simple answer: In any nation, if the political class lacks legitimacy, other institutions will step in. India's struggle for independence was led by a deep cadre of political leaders who acquired legitimacy, from the national to the district level. This left no space for the military or any other institution to take the leadership space that, if a democracy is to flourish, belonged to the politicians.

Pakistan's political leadership - as a class- prior to independence did not have the depth or expertise or legitimacy in organized, mass based sustained politics, except for a few notables such as Jinnah. Hence the military stepped in, once they were gone.

Pakistan is going through that political process now- 2 or 3 more national elections without military intervention and they'll have a string foundation.



I hope you're still a teenager, because anyone over 19 who uses such reasoning isn't going to be very successful in life.

Yes, I think people of Pakistan don't remember anyone's name except Jinnah & Iqbal.
Because there wasn't much educated personalities.

Another thing is soldier also are transferred from one place to another where they are stationed for maximum two year at same place.

Other major factors
Decentralisation of power
Federal system, if Delhi is taken over by military then state govts will function independently
Large number of officers of central govts won't come under military who are working in states so they also will work under central govt indirectly
Size of central armed police forces is bigger than army which include CRPF, BSF, NSG, ITBP, CISF, SSB also railway police & NDRF apart from state police.
Strong judicial system & supremacy of suprem court.
& People...

 

[SrNair]

Reputation in people will also the reason Indian army Generals are as corrupt as politician and they are not much popular in masses.

Stupidity at its bottom level
Have you heard about Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash .?
Shall I post the link of Pak media article that instructs your leadership to learn something about his CM?

 

[Shardul.....the lion]

Had Nehru died early after Sardar Patel death, Coup was a possibility.
.
Secondly Nehru himself could have become dictatorship, he had all qualities and massive public support... But he was staunch supporter of democracy

 

[G0dfather]

Another important thing is that seeds of democracy and civil institutions are sown very early in student life. Kids from class fifth are taught about these things, and as one grows up his/her confidence in concept like adult franchise etc grows even more.

 

[Crixus]

You can share what ever you want to it will be nice but we dont worship them like your country men ... t one of the most useless Army who had lost half of country still find cheer leaders ... is not a small achievement at all

We are one who decide their accountability not some one else so better concentrate on your swollen generals

Yes they dismissed because rest of the Fauj is not corrupt unlike India where there is no accountability of crore commanders.
You want links of Tehalka operation.

 

[Sinnerman108]

NO SECRETS HERE-


A true story: In 1957, the then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, visiting the office of general Thimayya, the chief of the army staff, saw a steel cabinet behind his desk, and asked the general what it contained.

The general replied that the top drawer contained the nation’s defence plans. And the second drawer contained the confidential files of the nation’s top generals.

And what about the third drawer, enquired Nehru.

Ah, said the general with a straight face, the third drawer contains my secret plans for a military coup against you.

Nehru laughed, but there was apparently a tinge of nervousness to his laughter.

Military dictatorships have been a common phenomenon in the post-colonial states of Asia and Africa, and in the 1950s and 1960s, a dictatorship in India was not an impossibility. In fact, while covering the 1967 general elections, The Times correspondent, Neville Maxwell, prophesied that these might well be the last elections ever in the country. And he was not the only one who believed that sooner or later, India would fall under military rule.

But that eventuality, of course, never happened.


Why not?
The question why the Indian Army never attempted to seize power has sometimes been attributed to the fact that it is disciplined, highly professional, and steeped in proud 250-year-old traditions inherited from the British. But this theory doesn’t work, because the Pakistani army was born out of the same traditions and that didn’t seem to stop it from assuming power.

Indeed, one could argue that it was precisely because the Pakistan army was such a highly professional force that there came a time when it felt it could no longer stand by and watch the country slide into chaos, and felt it was its duty to step in.

So clearly this is a question one needs to look at more closely. Which is what political scientist Steven Wilkinson has done with his excellent new book, Army and Nation.

In order to understand what didn’t happen in India, it is perhaps useful to first look at what did happen in Pakistan. The military dictatorship in Pakistan has had an interesting pre-history. It begins in undivided India, where the largest single component of the army was drawn from the undivided Punjab. Hence at the time of Partition, of all the institutions that Pakistan inherited, the most substantive was its army.

Moreover, while in India the Congress Party was a highly evolved, durable organisation, in Pakistan the Muslim League was not much more than “Jinnah and his Private Secretary.” Hence, there was a dangerous structural imbalance in Pakistan, especially after Jinnah’s death in 1948.

Mashallah ho gaya
The military dictatorship in Pakistan did not come out of the blue. In the early 1950s, for example, there were riots in Lahore that raged on because the civilian authorities were unable to control them. Finally the army was called out, and it swiftly and firmly put down the trouble.

Then the commanding officer made an unusual request: He asked for another couple of days before withdrawing his troops to the barracks. In those few, quick days, the army proceeded to clean up the city, paint public buildings, repair roads, pull down unauthorised structures and plant trees. Then, having performed all these long neglected civic tasks, the army quietly withdrew, leaving Lahore looking as clean and well-ordered as an army cantonment.

This earned the army a great deal of respect among the public: It had managed to do for the city in a few days what the civilian authority had failed to do over the years. Hence, when in 1958, the governor-general of Pakistan responded to a state of political chaos in the country by declaring martial law, and calling out the army, there was a section of the public that rejoiced at the news. In fact, a saying that went around at the time was, “Pakistan mein ab toh mashallah ho gaya,” playing on the term ‘martial law,’ and translating, roughly, as “By the grace of God, things in Pakistan are well now.”

What followed over the next few years was a period of remarkable national development in Pakistan, under the presidency of General Ayub Khan—before the military government began to get corrupted by its own power (as always, inevitably, happens in such a system).

Ring-fencing the Indian Army

The Indian Army was born out of the same tradition as Pakistan’s. In British India, the army enjoyed a prominent position in Indian life, and even played a role in policy matters. The commander-in-chief, was also the de facto defence minister, and was the second most powerful person in the hierarchy after the viceroy himself. But after Independence things began to change.

Prime minister Nehru believed that the new India needed to rethink the role of the army, and initiated a policy that would firmly subordinate it to the civilian authority. One of the first things that happened after Independence, for example, was that Teen Murti House, traditionally the grand residence of the army chief, was assigned instead to the prime minister: A small matter by itself, perhaps, but a clear indicator of the way the wind was blowing.

Next came a series of budget cuts (resulting, among other things, in hefty cuts in army officers’ generous Raj-era salaries). And when India’s first army chief, field marshal Cariappa, publicly criticised the government’s economic performance, he was immediately rapped on the knuckles, and told not to meddle in matters that did not concern him.

Over the years a systematic programme was pursued to ring-fence the armed forces, and their influence in Indian society—a programme that was given fresh urgency in 1958 by the military coup in next-door Pakistan (an occurrence that was worryingly praised by field marshal Cariappa, who had recently retired as army chief). A highlight—or, rather, lowlight—of that ring-fencing programme was the appointment of Krishna Menon, a powerful, abrasive, leftist intellectual, as defence minister. It was an attempt to put the armed forces unambiguously in their place. Unfortunately, it also had the unintended side effect of leading to the stinging defeat of 1962, but that is a different story.

An unrecognised achievement

By the 1970s, the Indian armed forces had finally been rendered ‘coup-proof’ by a comprehensive system of checks and balances that had been put in place. And that might be considered to be one of the major achievements of the Nehru era: Ensuring the durability of Indian democracy. It’s an achievement that is not sufficiently recognised; an achievement underscored by the fact that all our South Asian neighbours—Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka—have experienced military coups, actual or attempted.

Wilkinson explains how this ‘coup-proofing’ was implemented, through a package of carefully thought-out measures, ranging from diversifying the ethnic composition of the armed forces to setting up rugged command and control structures, re-casting the order of precedence between civil and military authorities, paying close attention to promotions, disallowing army officers from making public statements, creating a counter-balancing paramilitary force, and topping off this entire effort with little touches like ensuring that retired chiefs of staff are usually sent off as ambassadors to faraway countries.

The end result of all this is that when, in 2012, newspapers breathlessly reported that there had been a coup attempt, with army units being surreptitiously moved towards Delhi in the wake of the general V. K. Singh affair, people like you and I, merely shrugged, said, “What nonsense,” and turned to the sports page.

We perhaps don’t realize what a luxury that kind of certainty is.

Huh.

The reason, and the only reason there wasn't a coup was because of Mr Nehru.

Mr Nehru introduced land reforms, and practically clipped the feudal and royalty feathers right at the start of the game.
Thus allowing a government to form and for it to exercise authority.

Unlike Pakistan, whereby the feudal lords actually took hostage and still control the state.

Thus the military from time to time, out of frustration tried to restore balance of power away from feudal lords.

 

[Delnavaz B]

You can share what ever you want to it will be nice but we dont worship them like your country men ... t one of the most useless Army who had lost half of country still find cheer leaders ... is not a small achievement at all

We are one who decide their accountability not some one else so better concentrate on your swollen generals

We worship (respect) them because they deserve to be respected. We love military people because we (Majority Pakistanis) belongs to martial race. I am Butt Kashmiri converted Muslim from Brahmin Pandit my great great grandfather converted and thanks to him.

 

[A.M.]

Because Military officials overstep their bounds only in Banana Republics.

If there were any repercussions expected in coups, the officers would stay in their barracks the entire time. All the more reason to appreciate what Turkey did on Friday!

 

[Indika]

the armed forces are seperated and its for he reason to avoids coups. as opposed to most countries where they are all joined.
so if hypothetically the indian army started a coup the navy and airforce would still be there to prevent it

To add to that India is too big a country to attempt a coup. Just taking over the capital is not going to be enough.

Had Nehru died early after Sardar Patel death, Coup was a possibility.
.
Secondly Nehru himself could have become dictatorship, he had all qualities and massive public support... But he was staunch supporter of democracy

Another important thing is that seeds of democracy and civil institutions are sown very early in student life. Kids from class fifth are taught about these things, and as one grows up his/her confidence in concept like adult franchise etc grows even more.

True.
Post independence leadership in india had impeccable integrity & honesty. The word politician simply did not exist then. Its only after Shastri, with advent of indira the degrading politics set in. Not to say that Nehru is spotless , his kashmir handling & chinese fiasco were blunders. They were more due to inexperience but the intentions were good.

More ever the "steel frame" aka bureaucracy that we inherited from british helped us out. The bureaucratic institutions did exactly what is required nothing more nothing less.