When Kaul had been putting his team together, picking the best and the brightest for his staff, he had nominated Jogi Dhillon as his Deputy CGS. Originally an Engineer officer, Jogi had been specially selected for command of an infantry brigade. Thereafter, having come to the notice of higher authorities (including, it is said, the Prime Minister) he progressed along the command and General Staff chain. His last appointment before being posted at Army HQ had been that of Chief of Staff to Lieutenant General Kulwant Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command, whence he had been sent to attend a course at the Imperial Defence College, London. He possessed all the qualifications for assured advancement.
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Kaul was unwise in selecting so high-powered an officer for a Job that was one of the least glamorous or challenging in General Staff Branch. The Deputy CGS did not figure in the chain of interaction in sensitive matters such as Operations and Intelligence. By tradition and usage these key functions, as well as policy matters on Staff Duties and Military Training, were dealt with between the directors and the CGS. The Deputy CGS supervised the more routine directorates such as those of Armour, Artillery, Signals, Infantry, the Territorial Army and the Security Corps. Furthermore, even in the absence of the CGS he was not admitted into the mainstream of events; it was the DMO who dealt with the Army Chief on operational matters, as did the DMI on intelligence. The DCGS was not even routinely kept informed on these matters; by definition he was not a member of the inner circle.
My one great thrill was the experience of being catapulted up on an Alisee aircraft and then violently jerked to a landing on a deck that seemed no larger than a postage stamp from the air.
It would have been unusual for someone as high profile as Jogi not to have resented relegation to a side stream while a junior colleague conducted the main flow of crucial operational transactions. I had sensed this resentment, though to be fair to Jogi he had never allowed it to surface or to affect our formal relationship. Nor had he ever explicitly expressed his dissatisfaction with the system. Despite his well-built and impressive physique, and a seemingly strong and fearsome mien, he was by nature too compliant a subordinate to say or do anything that Kaul might construe as criticism.
When I tried to ring up Thapar on the evening of 8 September to convey the news about Dhola post I was told that he was busy entertaining dinner guests, so I telephoned Jogi instead, mainly to inform him that I intended to cancel my cruise on the Vikrant just in case the Dhola incident led to graver consequences. Jogi reacted forcibly; he expressly forbade me to do this, saying that he could handle the situation adequately and that I was to fulfil my obligation to the parliamentary delegation. When I suggested that we consult Thapar about my departure, he said that I need not worry, he would see to that himself.
When I told my wife what had transpired on the telephone, she at once suspected Jogi’s injunction as a manoeuvre to pack me off and get into the act himself. She strongly urged me to go and see Thapar, the rear gate of whose residence was not a hundred yards down Dupleix Lane from our house. My wife had had occasion to experience Jogi’s brusque and captious nature and enjoined me not to be too complaisant in the matter. She argued that I would be letting Bijji Kaul down if a crisis developed in his absence and Thapar were left without either adviser.
Even if it were in my nature to disobey a direct and lawful order from a superior officer, I would have been constrained by doubts about whether Thapar would in fact have asked me to cancel my tour in order to stay at my post. During the past two years, he had not drawn me into his confidence. On the few occasions, I had gone to him directly to discuss operational matters he had been distant and matter-of-fact, as though wishing to make it clear that there was to be no return to our former closeness of association. In the circumstances, I decided that I had no option but to go on to Cochin to join the cruise and hope that a demarche would not develop during the next week.
The cruise on the Vikrant was enjoyable even if the so-called naval exercise was little more than a demonstration of naval gunnery, resupply at sea and other routine functions. My one great thrill was the experience of being catapulted up on an Alisee aircraft and then violently jerked to a landing on a deck that seemed no larger than a postage stamp from the air.I put Delhi out of my mind and threw myself into discovering something about the navy and, of course, its aircraft carrier. During after-dinner walks on the flight deck I met and had long talks with many naval ratings, and I came to realise that in our navy a great gulf existed between the men and their officers. Unlike in the army, man-management did not appear to be part of the value system of the navy.
I never saw an officer take a walk on the long flight deck – only the ratings did this – and the latter’s obvious pleasure in seeing a senior army officer (and an occasional member of parliament) mingle and talk with them informally was almost embarrassing. I recall an occasion when I asked the captain if I might dine with the ratings some night, my request ‘was regarded with total amazement, even disbelief. Although it might be an unconscious exaggeration, my recollection is that he replied that he didn’t even know on which deck in that multi-level ship the men’s dining-room was located. I never got my dinner.
It was not until the drastic switchover to Russian equipment in the late 1960s that this imperial subservience at last faded.
I remember wondering at the time if the same culture prevailed in the British Navy, of which (at that time) the Indian Navy seemed to be an of Tshoot – at least, it deported itself as though it wert. Whereas we in the army had merely retained anglicised ways in speech, dress, professional procedures and messing customs, the Indian Navy virtually operated as part of the ‘parent’ arm in Britain. Its ships regularly attended the Royal Navy’s exercises, and training courses, visited their home and overseas bases and (unless, again, I am unconsciously exaggerating in retrospect) shared common training systems and even codes and ciphers. It was not until the drastic switchover to Russian equipment in the late 1960s that this imperial subservience at last faded.
During the voyage I received no news about the NEF A incident, because on the few occasions I could persuade a naval officer to tune in his set to the AIR news bulletin, there was nothing on border incidents. Also, of course, we received no newspapers, not even when we put in for a few hours at Marmagao harbour in Goa. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that officers of the Indian Navy seemed to be unaware that there was a crisis along our northern borders.
The Vikrant berthed at the naval docks in Bombay on the morning of 15 September and I caught the next plane to Delhi. As soon as I arrived home, I rang up Kaul’s house, to be informed that he was still on leave in Srinagar. This was somewhat reassuring. If he were still on, long leave, no critical steps could have been taken by Army HQ – or so I consoled myself. Just how wrong I was I found out when I went to my office early next morning.
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