Lok Sabha polls 2014: BJP does harm when it uses army as poll fodder

A key facet of India’s democracy is that the army stays subservient to civilian control and does not dabble in politics. This is more than can be said about the army in India’s major neighbours, or other fledgling democracies worldwide. And this is how the army should stay. However, in the ongoing election campaign, the BJP has sought to play politics with the army, charging the UPA government with weakening the army and protesting against the ongoing process to appoint a new chief of the army staff. This goes beyond the regrettable. Playing politics with the army deserves outright condemnation, as it erodes the institutional integrity not just of the armed forces but of democracy itself.

The implicit assumption in the charge — that the routine process of selecting a new army chief should be abandoned because to appoint the new chief is the prerogative of the new government — is that the army chief ’s appointment is a political choice. This assumption marks a departure from tradition and seeks to set a new tradition that would encourage senior soldiers to curry political favour. In India, the rule of seniority applies in selecting the successor to the outgoing chief. The only procedural intervention is clearance of the name of the senior-most Lt General, and of a few more of the senior-most soldiers, by Vigilance. If only the outgoing UPA government tries to depart from tradition is there a case for anyone to raise any protest? That is not the case. It sticks to the very tradition that saw the NDA appoint a naval chief five days before bowing out in 2004.

While there is no bar on a former army chief entering politics, Gen V K Singh has set a poor precedent. If a freshly retired general can aspire to hold political office, senior soldiers might be tempted to start politicking. This would be an unkind blow to the Indian army, on par with the BJP’s charge that it has been weakened over the last decade, merely to score a political point against its rival. Politicians should discuss the army in Parliament’s standing committee, not on the electoral battlefield.