Army Chief, Gen Naravane’s Legacy
STORIES, ANALYSES, EXPERT VIEWS
General Manoj Mukund Naravane will retire in April and already there is speculation if the government will appoint him as Chief of Defence Staff. Snehesh Alex Philip (Senior Associate Editor, ThePrintIndia) writes about the legacy that he will leave behind.
“Gen Naravane’s tenure has been an action-filled one. From the ongoing standoff with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to the reiteration of the ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan, from rewriting of the Order of Battle (ORBAT) to focusing on conventional warfare rather than just counter-terrorism operations, his tenure as Army chief has seen it all, including focused modernisation.”
Gen Naravane has been both a “dove and a hawk” and an “antithesis Gen Bipin Rawat.”
The dove
At his first press conference on the occasion of Army Day, celebrated on 15 January, on the students’ protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), Gen Naravane said the Army’s role is to “uphold the core values” of the Constitution.
Later on the possibility of a war with China in the near future, he said: “Army people are the last people who want to go to war. It is always better, (to have) the whole of nation approach and have a good relationship with all neighbours, a stable relationship with all neighbours, because if you have stable relations, the country prospers, and that should be the aim. That should be done at the political level, diplomatic level but you need the army… If you want to ensure peace, be prepared for war.”
The hawk
As the Eastern Army Commander and Vice Chief designate in August 2019, called China a “regional bully” while asserting that if China transgressed the “grey zone” at the LAC a 100 times, the Indian Army did so on 200 occasions.
It was clear then. Writes says Philip “that his focus was on the ‘China challenge’. In his first press conference, Gen Naravane said that the Army is “re-balancing” its deployment and strategy along the western, northern and northeastern borders to deal with any kind of threat — be it from Pakistan or China. “Earlier the focus was only on the western front. We feel now that both the western and northern fronts are equally important and that is why we are re-balancing,” he had said.
On China
As the stand-off with China took place I’m Ladakh, government sources say it was Gen Naravane who led the planning of the operation with his key commanders to seize the heights of the southern banks, an operation that surprised the Chinese.
During his tenure, writes Philip the “Army has rewritten the Order of Battle and carried out key changes in deployment patterns, including ramping up numbers for India’s only Mountain Strike Corps that have been neglected for long.
"As Defence Minister Rajnath Singh handed over free financial powers to the three Service chiefs, the Army went in for multiple immediate and long-term procurements, from high altitude clothing to new rifles, vehicles, boats, surveillance kits, and drones, among many others.’
