‘Jo uchit samjho, woh karo’ not the only embarrassment in Naravane’s book

As is well known, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fond of donning an armed forces uniform at every opportunity. It is also known that he claimed to have been in the war room and supervised the airstrikes at Balakot in 2019. He had then famously told an interviewer that he advised the Air Force to take advantage of the cloud cover in order to avoid radar detection, a claim that nobody has officially contradicted.

Similarly, ahead of Operation Sindoor, the PM’s publicity team shared photographs of him discussing operational details with the military brass. For such a hands-on prime minister to say "do what you deem fit" to an Army chief — that too through the defence minister and after nearly two hours of Gen. M.M. Naravane (retd) seeking instructions during the Chinese incursion of August 2020 — was uncharacteristic. It was also embarrassing, because it seemed like an abdication of responsibility.

However, that is not the only embarrassing reference in the ‘unpublished’ book, which has not been cleared for publication by the government, claims strategic affairs analyst Sushant Singh — whose article citing the book has been at the centre of a political storm of late — in a conversation with Karan Thapar for The Wire.  

Unlike Operation Bandar in 2019 — as the airstrike on Balakot was codenamed and Operation Sindoor in 2025 as the four-day clash with Pakistan was called — there has been little or no information shared on the Chinese incursions in eastern Ladakh in 2020, Singh points out. Operational details of both the former missions have been shared by the Indian military, and access granted to retired Army officers who were encouraged by the government to write books.

However, the same government has been reticent about sharing details of the clashes with China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). That is the reason why the allegedly ‘unpublished’ memoirs of Naravane assume greater significance, Singh points out.

In a response to the Indian Express in September 2024, the ministry of defence revealed that 35 book titles and manuscripts were submitted for approval since 2020. All the books barring Naravane’s were cleared and published. Indeed, one of the clearances given was to former Northern Command chief Lt Gen. Y. Joshi, who wrote a glowing account of the Indian Army’s operations against the Chinese in 2020. Naravane’s account, though, differs significantly from Joshi’s.

Singh told Thapar that had Naravane also written a hagiography and praised the political and military leadership, he believed the former Army chief’s memoirs would have been cleared for publication. The memoirs, however, appear to have embarrassed both instead.    

One of the most startling revelations by Naravane, Singh maintains, is the admission that the Chinese troops had entered Indian territory in May 2020 and not June, as is popularly believed. As per the former Army chief’s recollection, the Chinese had pitched their tents in Galwan Valley a month before the hand-to-hand skirmish in which 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives.

The Northern Command and the 14th Corps commanders knew about the incursion but downplayed its significance, submitting that once the snow melted and the water level rose at that point, the Chinese tents would get submerged.

However, on 15 June 2020, Indian troops were ordered to go and pitch their own tents where the Chinese had already pitched theirs. This is what led to the skirmish in Galwan Valley. Who gave the order to the Indian troops — unarmed as per protocol — to pitch tents is, however, not known. Naravane also does not disclose who passed the order.

The then Army chief, however, was scathing in his criticism of local commanders and wrote that they were unprepared to deal with the Chinese incursion and underplayed the gravity of the situation.

The incursion of May 2020 was wrong and provocative, Singh argues, but the Indian decision to react after a month, without adequate preparation, planning or coordination, turned out to be a disaster. Apparently, no accountability has been fixed so far.        

The memoirs also reveal that the Army was not allowed to record the minutes of meetings held at the level of corps commanders on the border. The ministry of external affairs (MEA) argued that border talks were its remit and the Army should not keep minutes. As a result, on several occasions, the Chinese proposed steps that the Indian side agreed to ‘consider’, but which were taken to be ‘consent’. It was only in the ninth round of talks, when a joint secretary from the MEA joined in, that minutes began to be recorded, Singh claimed.

We may never know how much territory India lost in 2020 to the Chinese, Singh maintains, because of yet another embarrassing ‘mistake’ by the negotiators who hammered an agreement with the Chinese for a buffer zone in Ladakh. The Indian government does not call it a buffer-zone, describing the agreement as withdrawal by both sides. Naravane, however, does describe it as a buffer zone and points out in the memoirs that the Indian negotiators agreed for both sides to retreat five kilometres.

However, while the Chinese withdrew five kilometres from the point they had come up to in 2020, Indian troops retreated a further five kilometres into their own territory. It is, therefore, entirely possible that the entire buffer zone agreed to is in Indian territory, Singh points out.