Articles By Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee
India's hollowness and Pak’s perpetual war path
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 29 Aug , 2014
“Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from defeat” – Jean-Paul Sartre After many years, the nation’s retrieval of some lost territory astride the Kargil...
Internal Security: The Maoist Dimension
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 29.2 Apr-Jun 2014 | Date: 13 Aug , 2014
The Maoist rebellion is a phenomenon, an adverse one of course, in which bands of armed local inhabitants, led by firebrand ‘area commanders’, assume a role that should truly lie within the...
Chief of Defence Staff: A Debilitating Dilemma
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 29.1 Jan-Mar 2014 | Date: 18 May , 2014
It will take years to streamline the archaic system of higher defence management in India. Meanwhile, trapped in the complexities of the geo-political adversities, India’s compulsion of...
Empowerment of a Power House: The Infantry Battalion
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 28.4 Oct-Dec 2013 | Date: 31 Jan , 2014
By age-old convention, most wars have various forms of tactical operations undertaken under one overall plan – set-piece, irregular and Special Operations, for example. Indeed, the so called...
The Economics of Defence: Investment vs Deterrence
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 28.3 Jul-Sep 2013 | Date: 16 Nov , 2013
Alongside the troubles concurrent and brewing, there are hopeful signs of matured realisation and some improvements in the situation. History proves that such improvements in inter-state...
The Fall of Maoist Revolution
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 15 Jul , 2013
Having murdered the leading Congress party functionaries in Chattisgarh and celebrating that macabre act like the savages do, the Maoists have now elaborated their ‘hit list’ of politicians...
Maoists: Whence to the Land of Freedom...
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Book Excerpt: Reign of the Red Rebellion | Date: 27 Jun , 2013
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high … Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.” —Tagore India is a millennium old civilisation of diverse...
Veneration of a fallen enemy: A Missionary View
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 21 Jan , 2013
Professional soldiers mutilate none, dead or alive, enemy or friend. Indeed, a martyred enemy is an object of sombre empathy and deep veneration. Pakistan Army soldiers – most of them – are highly...
Just Missiles are not Enough
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Courtesy: CLAWS | Date: 07 Jan , 2013
It was a red letter day for the DRDO when the Agni V ICBM was successfully test fired on 19 Apr 2012. Indeed, it was a landmark event for the country as far as its military security is concerned....
Pretending “Soldiers”
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 27.4 Oct-Dec 2012 | Date: 19 Dec , 2012
Playing a ‘soldier’ has always been a very enticing engagement amongst children. Even grown-ups of prominent status like the tag of being a ‘military- man’, as evidenced by their urge to...
India, Tibet, China: The contending triumvirate
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 20 Oct , 2012
“When there is everything to fear, be unafraid. When without resources, depend on resourcefulness”, – Sun Tsu. The territorial dispute in the Trans-Himalayan Region is a legacy of the eternal...
1962: Celebrating the Golden Jubilee of a National Blunder!
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol 27.3 Jul-Sep 2012 | Date: 03 Oct , 2012
Our narrative of the 1962 border conflict is but a list of self-deprecating ‘never dos’. A force of just three weak Brigades in the Eastern and two in the Western Sectors out of forty odd in...
Preserving the Military Institution
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 27.1 -Mar 2012 | Date: 06 Apr , 2012
Military leaders at all levels have to girdle up to protect the exclusivity of the military establishment from attempts of misguided, even if unintentional, dilutions from within the fraternity...
PLA: Thrust on Integrated Joint War-Fighting
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 26.4 Oct-Dec 2011 | Date: 26 Dec , 2011
“Therefore, soldiers do not have a constant position, water does not have a constant shape, and to be able to attain victory in response to the change of the enemy is called miraculous”,...
Indian Army: Demilitarisation and Civilianisation I
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 26.3 July - Sept 2011 | Date: 04 Oct , 2011
A Case of Sleep-walk? Recently, the ‘Ajay Vikram Singh Committee (AVSC) Report Part II’ was implemented in the armed forces amidst much satisfaction among the military hierarchy. Thus a large...
Indian Army: Demilitarisation and Civilianisation - II
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 26.3 July - Sept 2011 | Date: 11 Aug , 2011
Personnel Management: As discussed above, misplaced notions of ‘equivalency’ between the soldiery and the civilian establishment has led to the Army becoming top heavy and aged. Rather than...