Amidst the political controversy surrounding the unpublished memoir by former Chief of the Indian Army General Manoj Mukund Naravane, titled 'Four Stars of Destiny', Indian Army veteran and military historian Colonel Ajay K. Raina (SM) made an appeal to everyone to ignore the "stupid, politically motivated noise."
In a long social media post, he said he finished reading the unpublished book and added that the rhetoric being stirred up by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has no basis. "It is a stupid, politically motivated noise," he claimed.
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According to him, except for a sentence where Gen Naravane, "went a bit too philosophical (...handed a hot potato!), nothing from that chapter deserves a controversy."
In his book, Gen Naravane had written that after his repeated requests to the government for an instruction in the wake of the movement of Chinese tanks towards Rechin La in eastern Ladakh, he was told that the prime minister said, “Jo uchit samjho, woh karo." Gen Naravane had written: “I had been handed a hot potato,” and that “With this carte blanche, the onus was now totally on me.”
However, Colonel Raina pointed out that a carte blanche given by the top leadership only illustrates the trust in the forces.
According to him, there is nothing in the book that violates secrecy. "Most of the operational details are already very well-known and are available in the public domain."
While the military historian noted that Gen Naravane's views on Agnipath, mentioned in the book, are "pretty balanced", he speculated that "A mention of the fact that some amount of undue push was given from the PMO (read bureaucrats) is perhaps why the book has been kept on hold."
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He further wrote that while reading the script, one can clearly discern Gen Naravane's "justified and well-meaning observations about the civil (and even military) bureaucracy and the system of keeping services chiefs out of the policy making on the defence issues".
"His (Naravane) observations on key issues and hurdles being interposed by the civil bureaucrats are fully justified and need to be looked into if any good is desired to be brought in. This may well also be the reason for delaying the permission," Colonel Raina further speculated.
He noted that the unauthorised publication and circulation need "serious investigation" and should be done by people authorised to do it.
Time to move on and ignore the motivated clamour, he concluded.
