THE INDIAN ARMED FORCES have undergone a substantial metamorphosis since the emergence of India and Pakistan from the British Indian Empire in 1947. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), had deliberately limited the expansion and modernization of the armed forces. The rationale was twofold: Nehru was acutely concerned about the accelerating costs of defense spending, and he feared that an excessive emphasis on the armed forces would lead to the militarization of society and undermine the nation's fledgling democratic institutions. The disastrous performance of the Indian army during the 1962 border war with China, however, led to a reappraisal of defense strategy and spending. Nehru's legacy eroded rapidly as increasing emphasis was placed on defense needs. The success of the Indian military against Pakistan during their 1971 war contributed to restoring the morale and standing in society of the armed forces. During the rest of the 1970s and in the 1980s, India bolstered its regional preeminence with wide-ranging arms transfers from the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s, in an effort to reduce its dependence on Soviet weaponry, India began to diversify its arms sources. It purchased aircraft, submarines, and long-range artillery pieces from France, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Sweden, and Britain. Simultaneously, it continued its efforts to expand and strengthen domestic capabilities to manufacture a range of weaponry to maximize self-reliance. The results of these purchases and self-reliance efforts have been mixed.
The 1980s saw not only substantial growth in Indian defense expenditures but also the use of the armed forces in support of larger foreign and security policy goals. Specifically, the army saw action against Pakistani military personnel in disputed areas along the Siachen Glacier in Jammu and Kashmir, deployed at considerable cost as diplomatic efforts failed. All three branches of the armed forces, but particularly the army, were used to pursue India's security and foreign policy objectives in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s (see South Asia, ch. 9). More than 60,000 soldiers were deployed in Sri Lanka as part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to enforce the terms of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. Designed to serve as a neutral force between contending ethnic forces, the IPKF became enmeshed in operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In 1989 the new Sri Lankan president, Ranasinghe Premadasa, ended a five-and-a-half-year state of emergency and asked India to withdraw the IPKF. Accordingly, Indian army units returned home with most goals unmet.
In 1988 a smaller, much shorter-lived Indian expedition successfully ended a military coup attempt in Maldives and demonstrated the military's effective use of airborne and naval forces in a joint operation.
India is the preeminent military power in South Asia, but its margin of superiority over Pakistan--its principal South Asian rival--has eroded because the central government of India is faced with severe budgetary constraints. In addition, the armed forces are no longer able to obtain sophisticated weaponry at highly subsidized prices from Russia, and substantial numbers of army units are tied down in various internal security duties. Insurgencies in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab have necessitated the use of the army in "aid-to-the-civil power" when the local police and central paramilitary forces are unable to maintain public order. Increasingly frequent outbreaks of communal violence also have necessitated the use of the army to restore calm.
The increased reliance on the army for internal security duties generated concern among senior officers in the early 1990s. Then chief of army staff General Sunith Francis Rodrigues repeatedly expressed his misgivings about the inordinate use of the army to deal with civil problems because such actions increased the risk of politicizing the armed forces and reduced their battle readiness. Moreover, the very nature of counterinsurgent and counterterrorist operations exposed the army to charges of human rights violations. In 1993, at the insistence of the army, the government agreed to examine this growing problem. Discussions focused on improving the recruitment, training, and organization of the various central paramilitary forces.
The air force and the navy underwent considerable growth and modernization during the 1980s, although their plans for modernization and expansion, like those of the army, were hobbled by financial constraints. Nevertheless, the navy has adequate capabilities for coastal defense as well as the protection of offshore union territories in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. The air force is equipped with modern combat aircraft and has moderate airlift capabilities.
Human rights violations in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and other parts of the country have largely been attributed to the paramilitary forces. The army has willingly acknowledged that some lapses have occurred within its own ranks. It also has court-martialed officers and enlisted personnel charged with breaches of proper discipline and conduct. However, the army has refused to divulge any details about the extent of these problems. The numbers of individuals prosecuted, their ranks, and their names remain outside the public domain. Nevertheless, Amnesty International and Asia Watch have reported on incidents they have been able to document.
Colonial-Era Developments
Company Armies
The roots of the modern Indian army are traced to the forces employed by the English (later British) East India Company, chartered in 1600, and the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales), established in 1664. The French, headquartered at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) by the 1670s, were the first to raise Indian companies and use them in conjunction with European soldiers. Subsequently, in the 1740s, the British started to organize and train Indian units. British units were divided into three armies corresponding to the company's centers of Bengal (headquartered at Fort William in Calcutta), Bombay (or Mumbai in the Marathi language), and Madras (headquartered at Fort Saint George). In 1748 the East India Company armies were brought under the command of Stringer Lawrence, who is regarded by historians as the progenitor of the modern Indian army. Under his guidance, British officers recruited, trained, and deployed these forces. Although formally under a unified command, the three armies in practice exercised considerable autonomy because of the great distances that separated them.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the vast majority of the soldiers of each army was composed of Indian troops known as sepoys (from the Hindi sipahi , meaning police officer, or, later, soldier). Sepoy units had Indian junior commissioned officers who could exercise only low-level command. British officers held all senior positions. No Indian had any authority over non-Indians. In addition to these all-Indian units, the British deployed some units of the British Army.
The Indian Military under the British Raj
Post-Sepoy Rebellion Reorganization
Shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-58, the role of the presidency armies was reevaluated (see The British Raj, 1858-1947, ch. 1). In 1861 the Bengal Army was disbanded, and the total number of sepoys was reduced from 230,000 to 150,000 while the British element was increased from 40,000 to 75,000. Most Indian artillery units were disbanded, and artillery was placed under British control. Under the aegis of the imperial "divide and rule" policy, which had its inception at this time, the British ensured that a sense of nationality would not be allowed to develop among the sepoys. The growth of such feelings, it was feared, would undermine the prospects of imperial control. Accordingly, Indian regiments increasingly were organized on a territorial basis; individual companies--and in some cases entire regiments--were drawn from the same religious, tribal, or caste backgrounds. When companies from several regiments were grouped into battalions, considerable efforts were made to promote cultural and social distinctions among companies of different compositions.
"Martial Races" Theory
By the end of the nineteenth century, recruitment was confined to certain social classes and communities--principally those in the northern border areas and Punjab. The narrowing recruitment base was a response to the Sepoy Rebellion and reflected the needs of prevailing security requirements. The bulk of the rebels in the Bengal Army came from the Indo-Gangetic Plain while those that had remained loyal were mostly from Punjab.
The experience of the mutiny also gave rise to a pseudo-ethnological construction, the concept of "martial races" in South Asia. The popularization of this notion was widely attributed to Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Earl of Kandahar, Pretoria, and Waterford; Roberts was an Indian-born veteran of the British forces that put down the Sepoy Rebellion and the commander in chief of the British Indian Army from 1885 to 1893. Roberts believed that the most martial races were located in northwestern India. He regarded Bengalis, Marathas, and southern ethnic groups as lacking in martial virtues. Their warlike propensities, he contended, had dissipated because of the ease of living and the hot, enervating climate of these regions.
Roberts's views profoundly influenced the composition of the British Indian army in the last decades of the nineteenth century. For example, when the Bengal Army was reestablished in 1885, its new units were drawn from Punjab. In 1892 army policy was changed significantly. Units were no longer raised on a territorial basis but along what was referred to as "class" lines. In effect, regiments admitted only those having similar ethnic, religious, or caste backgrounds. Between 1892 and 1914, recruitment was confined almost entirely to the martial races. These modes of recruitment and organization created a professional force profoundly shaped by caste and regional factors and loyal and responsive to British command. The procedures also perpetuated regional and communal ties and produced an army that was not nationally based.
Administrative Reform and World War I
Administrative reforms in 1895 abolished the presidency armies, and command was centralized under the aegis of a single army headquarters at Delhi. In the early twentieth century, the process of centralization continued; and during this period, the separation between military and civilian spheres of influence and the ultimate primacy of civilian authority gained final acceptance in both civilian and military circles.
During World War I, India's contribution of troops, money, and supplies to the Allied cause was substantial. More than 1 million Indian soldiers were sent abroad, and more than 100,000 were either killed or wounded.
The mobilization for the war effort revealed a number of shortcomings in the military establishment. Officer casualties had a particularly pernicious effect on military formations because only the British officers assigned to a battalion had the authority and standing to exercise overall command. In addition, Indian officers from one company could rarely be transferred to another having a different ethnic, religious, or caste makeup. As a consequence, after the war most battalions were reorganized to ease reinforcement among component companies. Strong pressure from the Indian public also drove the British to begin training a small complement of Indians for commissions as a first step in the Indianization of the officer corps. The Royal Indian Air Force was established in 1932, and a small Indian marine unit was reorganized into the Royal Indian Navy in 1934. Indian artillery batteries were first formed only in 1936. Although the practice of limiting recruitment to the martial races had proved inadequate during World War I and entry had been opened to "nonmartial" groups, the traditional recruitment emphasis on martial races was nonetheless resumed after demobilization.
World War II
The political situation in India underwent a fundamental transformation at the time of Britain's entry into World War II (see Political Impasse and Independence, ch. 1). The viceroy and governor general of India, Victor Alexander John Hope, Marquis of Linlithgow, without consulting Indian political leaders, declared India to be at war with Germany on September 3, 1939. The legislature sustained the viceregal decree and passed the Defence of India Bill without opposition, as the representatives of the Indian National Congress (the Congress--see Glossary) boycotted the session. Between 1939 and mid-1945, the British Indian Army expanded from about 175,000 to more than 2 million troops--entirely through voluntary enlistment. The incipient naval and air forces were also expanded, and the Indian officer corps grew from 600 to more than 14,000. Indian troops were deployed under overall British command in Africa, Italy, the Middle East, and particularly in Burma and Southeast Asia. The great expansion in strength, the overseas service of Indian forces, and the demonstrated soldierly ability of Indians from all groups did much to dispel the martial races theory.
In Asia the Japanese sought to exploit Indian nationalism and anti-British sentiment by forming and supporting the Indian National Army (INA--Azad Hind Fauj), which was composed primarily of 25,000 of the 60,000 Indian troops who had surrendered to the Japanese in Singapore in February 1942. The army was led by Subhas Chandra Bose, a former militant president of the Congress, who also appointed himself head of the Provisional Government of Azad India (Free India). An unusual feature of the INA was an all-woman, intercaste regiment composed of some 1,500 Indian women from Burma, Malaya, and Singapore. Both the women and the 25,000-strong male contingent were organized to fight alongside the Japanese in Burma, but they actually saw little action. Only 8,000 were sent to the front. Japanese and INA troops invaded Manipur in March 1944 and fought and were defeated in battles at Imphal and Kohima (see fig. 1). By May 1945, the INA had disintegrated because of acute logistical problems, defections, and superior British-led forces. It is widely held that Bose was killed in an air crash in Taiwan as he fled at the end of the war. The British court martialed three INA officers. Nationalist-minded lawyers, including Nehru, defended them as national heroes, and the British, feeling intense public pressure, found them guilty but cashiered them without any further punishment. However, after independence Nehru refused to reinstate them into the Indian armed forces, fearing that they might sow discord among the ranks.
National Security Structure
Civil-Military Relations
The pattern of civil-military relations prevailing in India was created by the staff of Lord Mountbatten as a three-tier system extending from the prime minister to the three service chiefs. At the apex of this structure is the Political Affairs Committee of the Cabinet. The second level is the Defence Minister's Committee of the Cabinet, and the third level is the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Other committees, such as the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Defence Science Advisory Committee, and the Joint Planning Committee, assist the higher committees. There were proposals in the mid-1990s to establish a joint defense staff for better integration of interservice resources, programs, policies, and operations (see fig. 16).
In the immediate postindependence period, the Defence Minister's Committee of the Cabinet did not play an active role in policy formulation. The higher organization of defense was vested largely with the minister of defence. From 1957 to 1962, this position was held by V.K. Krishna Menon, whose authority far exceeded that usually accorded a minister of defence. A confidante of Nehru's through much of the late preindependence period, Menon functioned as Nehru's alter ego for national security and defense planning. Consequently, the locus of decision making shifted from the cabinet to the Defence Minister's Committee. Menon was in many ways responsible for laying the foundations of India's military-industrial base.
Among other endeavors, Menon was responsible for the development of ordnance facilities to manufacture the Ichapore semiautomatic rifle; a tank manufacturing complex at Avadi, Tamil Nadu; facilities to build frigates at the Mazagon Dock naval shipyard in Bombay; and the licensed manufacture of Soviet-designed MiG-23 fighter aircraft in Nasik, Maharashtra. However, his highly idiosyncratic manners, his high-handed ways, and his involvement in the tactical aspects of military decision making had negative consequences. For example, he quarrelled with the professional military, particularly India's third chief of army staff, General K.S. Thimayya, over Thimayya's attempt to warn Menon and Nehru about the emerging Chinese threat as early as 1959. When Thimayya resigned in protest, Nehru prevailed upon him to withdraw his resignation. Unfortunately, when questioned in the Lok Sabha (House of the People), the lower house of the Parliament, about Thimayya's resignation, Nehru offered a rather weak defense of the general's actions and sought to deflect the criticisms of his minister of defence (see The Legislature, ch. 8). When Thimayya retired as chief of army staff in May 1961, Menon passed over Thimayya's designated successor, Lieutenant General S.P.P. Thorat, and instead appointed a junior officer, Lieutenant General P.N. Thapar. The appointment not only created a rift between the professional military and political leadership but also alienated a number of high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Defence. Menon's actions also demoralized competent personnel in the civilian and military bureaucracies, which led to important gaps in defense preparedness and planning. Menon's dominance of the defense planning process significantly contributed to the military debacle of 1962.
The Indian defeat led to the establishment of a new Emergency Committee of the Cabinet. This committee introduced a system of "morning meetings" with the minister of defence and the three service chiefs. The morning meetings, which are conducted without a predetermined agenda, deal with current defense issues on a regular basis. The meetings are also attended by the cabinet secretary, the defence secretary, and the scientific adviser to the minister of defence. These morning meetings continue to take place.
In the Chiefs of Staff Committee, formal equality prevails among the three service chiefs despite the fact that the army remains the largest of the three branches of the armed services. This formal equality among the three services came about with independence.
To facilitate defense planning, the government established two organizations: the Defence Coordination and Implementation Committee and the Defence Planning Staff. The Defense Coordination and Implementation Committee is chaired by the defence secretary and meets on an ad hoc basis. Its membership includes the three service chiefs, representatives from civilian and military intelligence organizations, and the secretary of defence production. The Defence Planning Staff, a permanent body, was established in 1986. Composed of officers drawn from all three services, it is responsible for developing overall national security strategy. It is also charged with briefing the Chiefs of Staff Committee on long-term threats to national security.
Defense Spending
Until 1962 defense spending was deliberately limited. In the wake of the war with China, defense spending rose from 2.1 percent of the gross national product (GNP--see Glossary) in fiscal year (FY--see Glossary) 1962 to 4.5 percent in FY 1964. In FY 1994, defense spending was slightly less than 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary). In terms of dollars, FY 1994 total defense services expenditures were projected at US$7.2 billion (but are likely to have been close to US$7.8 billion). Proportionately, based on figures provided by the government, 48.4 percent of expenditures were for the army, 15.7 percent for the air force, 5.9 percent for the navy, and 30 percent for capital outlays for defense services and defense ordnance factories. The latter provide matériel to the armed forces through some thirty-nine ordnance factories and eight public-sector enterprises that build ships, aircraft, and major defense items. The defense budget for FY 1994 was 6.5 percent higher than the revised estimate for FY 1993. The allocation increased to 14.9 percent of the total central government budget, up from 13 percent in the previous two fiscal years. Nuclear energy and space research are not fully accounted for in the defense budget, but most paramilitary forces fall within the purview of the Ministry of Defence.
The Army
In 1994 the army had approximately 940,000 men and women in its ranks and more than 36,000 in reserve forces. The army is headquartered in New Delhi and is under the direction of the chief of the army staff, always a full general. The chief of the army staff is assisted by a vice chief, two deputy chiefs, a military secretary, and the heads of four main staff divisions: the adjutant general, the quartermaster general, the master general of ordnance, and the engineer in chief.
The army has five tactical area commands: the Northern Command headquartered at Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir, the Western Command headquartered at Chandimandir in Chandigarh, the Central Command headquartered at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, the Eastern Command headquartered at Calcutta, and the Southern Command headquartered at Pune in Maharashtra (see fig. 17). Each command is headed by a lieutenant general. The principal combat formations within the scope of these commands are armored divisions and independent armored brigades, infantry divisions, mountain infantry divisions, independent infantry brigades, airborne/commando brigades, and independent artillery brigades (see table 34, Appendix). These units are organized in twelve corps-level formations.
The army is equipped with some 3,400 main battle tanks. Of these, 1,200 are indigenously manufactured Vijayanta tanks. Additionally, the army has some T-55, T-72, and PT-76 tanks. The Arjun main battle tank has been under development by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) since 1983, and, in 1995, limited production was expected to begin in 1996.
To complement indigenous production, however, it was reported in 1994 that Russia had agreed to help India modernize its T-72 tanks and to sell and lease other types of weapons. It is generally understood that about 70 percent of India's military equipment is of Soviet origin. Some army officials continue to favor Russian-made equipment, such as the T-72 tank, over Indian adaptations of the same items, such as the T-72 MI tank developed by the DRDO.
The army also has substantial artillery forces. The best estimate places the army's towed artillery capabilities at more than 4,000 pieces. In addition to the towed artillery, the army has self-propelled artillery. Finally, it has substantial numbers of surface-to-air missile capabilities, the total number being more than 1,200. In 1986 air observation post units were transferred from the air force to the army to form the Army Aviation branch. Using nine helicopter squadrons, Army Aviation has supported ground units in the Siachen Glacier in Jammu and Kashmir and in Sri Lanka, as well as counterinsurgency operations in various parts of the country. Army Aviation has also participated in disaster relief.
Apart from its nine squadrons of helicopters, the army has eight air observation squadrons and six antitank/transport squadrons. It relies on the air force for air support, lift capabilities, and air supply (see table 35, Appendix).
An extensive body of schools and centers supports army operations. The officer corps is largely drawn from the National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla, Maharashtra, a joint services training institution that provides educational equivalents to the bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degrees to cadets for all three service arms. Cadets spend their first three years at the National Defence Academy and then are sent to their respective service academies for further training before being commissioned in the armed forces. A preparatory school, the Rashtriya Indian Military College, at Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, provides education to candidates for the National Defence Academy. After completing their studies at the National Defence Academy, army cadets are sent to the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. Other Indian Military Academy cadets are graduates of the Army Cadet College or are direct-entry students who have qualified by passing the Union Public Service Commission Examination. They spend between twelve and twenty-four months at the Indian Military Academy before being commissioned in the army as second lieutenants. Still other officer training occurs at the Officers' Training Academy in Madras, Tamil Nadu, where a forty-four-week session is offered to university graduates seeking a short-service commission.
In addition to the Indian Military Academy, the army runs a number of military education establishments. The more prominent ones include the College of Combat at Mhow, Madhya Pradesh; the High Altitude Warfare School at Gulmarg, Jammu and Kashmir; and the Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte, Mizoram. The army also operates the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu, which provides master of science-level joint-service training for mid-level staff appointments and promotes interservice cooperation.
In 1994 it was reported that there were 200 women in the armed forces. In the army, which employs women as physicians and nurses, the participation of women is small but growing. The Indian Military Nursing Service was formed in 1926 and has eight nursing schools (five army, two navy, and one air force) and one nursing college in Pune. Bachelor of science graduates are commissioned as lieutenants in the Medical Nursing Service and attached to the various components of the armed forces. Ranks as high as colonel can be attained by career officers. In the mid-1990s, a small but increasing number of women officers were being assigned to nonmedical services. In 1994, there were fifty women nonmedical army officers and another twenty-five in training. They are university graduates who have been put through rigorous training and are reported to be eager for combat unit assignments.
The Navy
The origins of the modern Indian navy are traced to a maritime force established by the East India Company in the seventeenth century. This force had a variety of names--the Bombay Marine, the Indian Navy, and the Indian Marine. In 1934 the Royal Indian Navy was established, with Indians serving primarily in lower-level positions. After independence the navy was the most neglected of the three services because the national leadership perceived that the bulk of the threats to India were land-based.
The first efforts at naval rearmament emerged in the 1964-69 Defence Plan, which called for the replacement of India's aging fleet and the development of a submarine service. Between 1947 and 1964, fiscal constraints had prevented the implementation of ambitious plans for naval expansion. Consequently, many of the vessels were obsolete and of little operational value. As part of this expansion program, the British helped develop the Mazagon Dock shipyard for the local production of British Leander-class frigates. The Soviets, however, were willing to support all phases of the planned naval expansion. Accordingly, they supplied naval vessels, support systems, and training on extremely favorable terms. By the mid-1960s, they had replaced Britain as India's principal naval supplier (see table 36, Appendix).
During the 1980s, Indian naval power grew significantly. During this period, the naval facilities at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, in the Nicobar Islands, and in Lakshadweep were significantly upgraded and modernized. A new line of Leander-class frigates was manufactured at Mazagon Dock in collaboration with Vickers and Yarrow of Britain. These frigates, redesignated as the Godavari class, have antisubmarine warfare capabilities and can carry two helicopters. During the 1980s, plans were also finalized for the licensed manufacture of a line of West German Type 1500 submarines (known as the Shishumar class in India). In addition to these developments at Mazagon Dock, the naval air arm also was upgraded. India purchased nearly two squadrons of the vertical and short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) Sea Harriers to replace an earlier generation of Sea Hawks.
In the mid-1990s, India was preparing for a major modernization program that was to include completion of three 5,000-ton Delhi-class destroyers, the building of three 3,700-ton frigates based on Italian Indian Naval Ship (INS)-10 design, and the acquisition of four hydrographic survey ships. Also to be built were an Indian-designed warship called Frigate 2001; six British Upholder-class submarines; an Indian-designed and Indian-built missile-firing nuclear submarine--the Advanced Technology Vessel--based on the Soviet Charlie II class; and an Indian-designed and Indian-built 17,000-ton air defense ship capable of carrying between twelve and fifteen aircraft. The air-defense ship will be, in effect, a replacement for India's two aging British aircraft carriers, the INS Vikrant , the keel of which was laid in 1943 but construction of which was not completed until 1961 and which was slated for decommissioning by 2000, and the INS Viraat , which entered service in 1987 and is likely to be decommissioned by 2005. The problems encountered with modernizing these and other foreign-source ships led India to decide against acquiring an ex-Soviet Kiev-class aircraft carrier in 1994.
In the spirit of international military cooperation, India has made moves in the early and mid-1990s to enhance joint-nation interoperability. Indian naval exercises have taken place with ships from the Russian navy and those of Indian Ocean littoral states and other nations, including the United States.
Naval headquarters is located in New Delhi. It is under the command of the chief of naval staff--a full admiral. The chief of naval staff has four principal staff officers: the vice chief of naval staff, the vice chief of personnel, the chief of material, and the deputy chief of naval staff. The total strength of the navy in 1994 was 54,000, including 5,000 naval aviation personnel and 1,000 marines (one regiment, with a second reportedly forming).
Women were inducted into the navy for the first time in 1992, when twenty-two were trained as education, logistics, and law cadres. In 1993 additional women were recruited for air traffic control duties. By 1994 there were thirty-five women naval officers.
The navy is deployed under three area commands, each headed by a flag officer. The Western Naval Command is headquartered in Bombay on the Arabian Sea; the Southern Naval Command in Kochi (Cochin), in Kerala, also on the Arabian Sea; and the Eastern Naval Command in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on the Bay of Bengal. Additionally, the navy has important bases in Calcutta and Goa.
The Southern Naval Command is responsible for naval officer training, which occurs at the Indian Naval Academy in Goa. Officer candidates are largely drawn from the National Defence Academy. After commissioning, officers are offered specialized training in antisubmarine warfare, aviation, communications, electronic warfare, engineering, hydrography, maritime warfare, missile warfare, navigation, and other naval specialties at various naval training institutions, many of which are collocated with the Training Command headquarters on Willingdon Island, near Kochi.
The Air Force
The air force was established in 1932. In 1994 it had 110,000 personnel and 779 combat aircraft. The air force, which is headquartered in New Delhi, is headed by the chief of air staff, an air chief marshal. He is assisted by six principal staff officers: the vice chief of air staff, the deputy chief of air staff, the air officer in charge of administration, the air officer in charge of personnel, the air officer in charge of maintenance, and the inspector general of flight safety. The air force is deployed into five operational commands: the Western Air Command, headquartered at New Delhi; the Southwestern Air Command, headquartered at Jodhpur, Rajasthan; the Eastern Air Command, headquartered at Shillong, Meghalaya; the Central Air Command, headquartered at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh; and the Southern Air Command, headquartered at Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala. Additionally, there are two functional commands: the Training Command at Bangalore, Karnataka, and the Maintenance Command at Nagpur, Maharashtra.
As of 1994, the air force was equipped with twenty-two squadrons of ground attack fighters. Five of these squadrons had a total of eighty-nine British Jaguar aircraft. Another five squadrons had 120 Soviet-origin MiG-27 aircraft. The air force also fielded twenty fighter squadrons, two of which were equipped with a total of thirty-five French-built Mirage 2000 H/TH aircraft. There were also twelve squadrons of transport aircraft in the inventory (see table 37, Appendix). Because of the large number of Soviet-origin aircraft, the air force is dependent on Russia for spare parts and equipment and weapons upgrades. In March 1995, Russia agreed to upgrade India's MiG-21 aircraft.
Aside from the Training Command at Bangalore, the center for primary flight training is located at the Air Force Academy at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, followed by operational training at various air force schools. Advanced training is also conducted at the Defence Services Staff College; specialized advanced flight training schools are located at Bidar, Karnataka, and Hakimpet, Andhra Pradesh (also the location for helicopter training). Technical schools are found at a number of other locations.
In 1991 the government approved the induction of women into nontechnical air force officer billets, such as administration, logistics, accounting, education, and meteorology. In 1992 opportunities for "pioneer women officers" were opened in the areas of transportation, helicopters, and navigation, and the first group of thirteen women cadets entered the Air Force Academy. During their flight training, they qualified on HPT-32 and Kiran aircraft to earn their air force commissions. After completing ten months' training, five of the seven successful course graduates received further training on various transport aircraft. By 1994, there were fifty-five women officers in the air force.
Recruitment and Training
Under the Indian constitution, as amended in 1977, each citizen has a fundamental duty to "defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so" (see The Constitutional Framework, ch. 8). However, the three services have always been all-volunteer forces, and general conscription has never proved necessary. Military service has long been deemed an attractive option for many in a society where employment opportunities are scarce. The technical branches of the armed forces, however, have experienced problems with recruitment. Since the 1980s, as a result of the growth and diversification of India's industrial base, employment opportunities for individuals with technical training have expanded substantially. Consequently, fewer trained individuals have sought employment opportunities in the armed services.
The army and navy maintain a combined recruitment organization that operates sixty offices in key cities and towns nationwide. The air force has a separate recruiting organization with twelve offices. Army and navy recruitment officers tour rural districts adjacent to their stations and also draw from nearby urban areas. The air force and the navy draw a disproportionate number of their recruits from the urban areas, where educational opportunities are adequate to generate applicants capable of mastering technical skills. The army also recruits outside India, admitting ethnic Gurkhas (also seen as Gorkhas) from Nepal into a Gurkha regiment.
Initial enlistments vary in length, depending on the service and the branch or skill category, but fifteen years is considered the minimum. The tour of duty is generally followed by two to five years of service in a reserve unit. Reenlistment is permitted for those who are qualified, particularly those possessing necessary skills. The minimum age for enlistment is seventeen years; the maximum varies between twenty and twenty-seven, depending on the service and skill category. The compulsory retirement age for officers also varies, ranging from forty-eight for army majors, navy lieutenant commanders, and air force squadron leaders and below, to sixty for army generals, navy admirals, and air force air chief marshals. On occasion a two-year extension is granted on the grounds of exceptional organizational needs or personal ability.
Candidates have to meet minimum physical standards, which differ among the three services and accommodate the various physical traits of particular ethnic groups. Since 1977 recruiting officers have relaxed physical standards slightly when evaluating the only sons of serving or former military personnel--both as a welfare measure and as a means of maintaining a family tradition of military service.
Educational standards for enlisted ranks differ according to service and skill category; the army requirement varies from basic literacy to higher secondary education (see Primary and Secondary Education, ch. 2). The other two services require higher educational levels, reflecting their greater need for technical expertise. The air force requires at least a higher secondary education, and the navy insists on graduation from a secondary school for all except cooks and stewards. Officer candidates have to complete a higher secondary education and pass a competitive qualifying exam for entry into precommission training. All services also accept candidates holding university degrees in such fields as engineering, physics, or medicine for direct entry into the officer corps.
Enlistment was legally opened to all Indians following independence in 1947. In 1949 the government abolished recruitment on an ethnic, linguistic, caste, or religious basis. Exceptions were army infantry regiments raised before World War II, where cohesion and effectiveness were thought to be rooted in long-term attachment to traditions. Some army regiments have a homogeneous composition; other regiments segregate groups only at battalion or company levels. Others are completely mixed throughout. In general, the army has steadily evolved into a more heterogeneous service since 1947. Regiments raised during and after World War II have recruited Indians of almost all categories, and the doubling of the army's size after the 1962 border war with China sped up the process. The armed forces have made a concerted effort to recruit among underrepresented segments of the population and, during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, reformed the recruiting process to eliminate some of the subjectivity in the candidate selection process. Since 1989 the government has sought to apportion recruitment from each state and union territory according to its share of the population. Both the air force and the navy are now almost completely "mixed" services and display considerable heterogeneity in their composition.
Paramilitary and Reserve Forces
Paramilitary Forces
In addition to the regular armed forces, India also has paramilitary forces. These forces have grown dramatically since independence. There are twelve paramilitary organizations, which have an authorized strength of around 1.3 million personnel. In 1994, their reported actual strength was 692,500. These organizations include the Coast Guard Organisation and the Defence Security Force, which are subordinate to the Ministry of Defence. Paramilitary forces subordinate to the Ministry of Home Affairs include the Assam Rifles, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and the Rashtriya Rifles (National Rifles). The National Security Guards, a joint antiterrorist contingency force, are charged with protection of high-level persons (the so-called very very important persons--VVIPs) and are subordinate to the Office of the Prime Minister (also sometimes known as the Prime Minister's Secretariat.) The guards are composed of elements of the armed forces, the Central Reserve Police Force, and the Border Security Force. The Special Frontier Force also is subordinate to the Office of the Prime Minister. The Railway Protection Force is subordinate to the Ministry of Railways. At the local level, there is the Provincial Armed Constabulary, which is controlled by the governments of the states and territories (see State and Other Police Services, this ch.).
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, local police forces could not deal with the mounting array of sectarian, ethnic, and regional conflicts, and paramilitary forces were increasingly called on for assistance. In addition to security and guard duties, paramilitary organizations assist local and state-level police forces in maintaining public order and shield the army from excessive use in "aid-to-the-civil-power" operations. These operations essentially involve quelling public disorder when local police forces prove inadequate to the task.
The Coast Guard Organisation was constituted as an Armed Force of the Union in 1978 under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defence (although it is funded by the Ministry of Home Affairs), following its 1977 establishment as a temporary navy element. Its principal mission is to protect the country's maritime assets, particularly India's 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and the marine resources contained in the area, which comprises nearly 2.8 million square kilometers. The coast guard is also responsible for the prevention of poaching and smuggling, the control of marine pollution, and carrying out search-and-rescue missions. Under the command of a director general, the coast guard is organized into three national maritime zones: the Western Maritime Zone, headquartered at Bombay; the Eastern Maritime Zone, headquartered at Madras; and the Andaman and Nicobar Maritime Zone, headquartered at Port Blair. The zones are further subdivided into district headquarters, one each for the eight maritime states on the mainland and two in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In times of emergency, the coast guard is expected to work with the navy. In the late 1980s, coast guard units from the eastern zone supported Indian peacekeeping efforts in Sri Lanka. The coast guard's equipment includes about fifty ships, nine helicopters, and thirteen fixed-wing aircraft (see table 38, Appendix).
Another Ministry of Defence paramilitary organization has a security mission. The Defence Security Force guards Ministry of Defence facilities throughout India.
The Border Security Force was established in the closing days of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict. Its principal mission involves guarding the Indo-Pakistani line of actual control in Jammu and Kashmir as well as borders with Bangladesh and Burma. It works in internal security and counterinsurgency operations in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab. The border force has also been used to deal with communal rioting.
Another Ministry of Homes Affairs paramilitary force deployed in Jammu and Kashmir is the Rashtriya Rifles. In 1994 it had 5,000 troops, all of whom served in Jammu and Kashmir. Some observers expected the force to grow to thirty battalions, with around 25,000 personnel. In March 1995, Indian television referred to the Delta Force of the "fledgling" Rashtriya Rifles. It was reported that the force was operating against "terrorists" and "foreign mercenaries" in Doda District in south-central Jammu and Kashmir.
Founded in 1939, the Central Reserve Police Force is the country's oldest paramilitary organization. It maintains internal order when local and state-level forces prove inadequate to the task. The Central Reserve Police Force in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab has worked in counterinsurgency operations. This force also was dispatched to Sri Lanka during India's 1987-90 involvement there. The Ministry of Defence's weekly armed forces magazine, Sainik Samachar , reported that the Mahila Battalion (Women's Battalion) of the Central Reserve Police Force had "proved its mettle in hot warlike conditions in Sri Lanka," and had established women as "a force to reckon with" in the paramilitary.
Another significant paramilitary organization is the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, established in 1962 in the aftermath of the war with China. It is primarily responsible for the security of the border with China.
The Special Frontier Force, established in 1962 in the aftermath of the war with China, is less well publicized by the government. Apparently it is an elite, parachute-qualified commando unit, nominally subordinate to the army and deployed along sensitive areas of the border with China, and recruited partially from among border-area hill tribes and Tibetan refugees. The Special Frontier Force also appears to have a domestic security role; members of the force were involved in the Golden Temple siege in 1984. In 1994 its reported strength was 3,000, making it one of the smallest paramilitary forces.
Reserve Forces
India's "second line of defense" is composed of several citizen mass organizations. These include the Territorial Army, a voluntary, part-time civilian force that receives military training and serves as a reserve force for the army "to relieve [it] of static duties, to aid the civil power, and to provide units for the regular Army, if and when required." It was raised in 1949 and has been used in times of war and domestic disturbances. Organizationally, Territorial Army personnel are raised from among employees of government agencies and public-sector enterprises and are formed into departmental units. Nondepartmental units are raised from other citizens, including former active-duty military personnel. In the early 1990s, Territorial Army units saw service in Jammu and Kashmir and along the northern and western borders of India and in support of paramilitary units subordinate to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The National Cadet Corps, which is open to young men and women, was established in 1948 to develop discipline and leadership qualities useful in life and particularly for potential service in the armed forces. The semiautonomous organization receives guidance from the ministries of education and defence at the central level and from state-level governments at the local level. It is organized into army, navy, and air force wings, and its ranks correspond to those in the respective armed forces.
Civil Defence Volunteers are under the leadership of a small paid cadre, who are trained to provide early warning communications at the town level. They also participate in civil works construction projects and natural disaster relief work. Subordination is through the local state or territory government and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Home Guards are a voluntary force raised by state and territory governments under the guidance of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Home Guards undergo minimal training and receive pay only when called for duty. They assist the police in crime prevention and detection; undertake watch and patrol duties; and aid in disaster relief, crowd control, and the supervision of elections. The central government reimburses the states and territories at varying rates for expenses incurred in the performance of Home Guard duties.
Space and Nuclear Programs
India detonated its first and only nuclear device at Pokharan in the Rajasthan Desert in May 1974. Subsequently and in all likelihood as a consequence of international pressure, India has chosen not to conduct any further tests. At a formal level, Indian officials and strategists deny that India possesses nuclear weapons and refer to India's position as an "options strategy," which essentially means maintaining the nuclear weapons option and exercising it should regional and international conditions so warrant. In pursuit of this end, India refuses to sign the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Formally, Indian officials argue that India's refusal to sign the treaty stems from its fundamentally discriminatory character; the treaty places restrictions on the nonnuclear weapons states but does little to curb the modernization and expansion of the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapons states.
The Indian ballistic missile program has some elements in common with the nuclear program. Under the aegis of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, India is developing rockets of varying ranges: the Agni, the Prithvi, the Akash, the Trishul, and the Nag. The Agni, which former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi referred to as a "technology demonstrator," was first test fired in May 1989 and again in May 1992. In 1995 it was not yet operational, but it has intercontinental ballistic missile potential. The Prithvi--which some sources reported had an operational unit raised in 1995 and deployed along the Pakistani border--is a tactical, short-range surface-to-surface missile designed by the DRDO as part of India's antimissile defense system. Based on the Soviet Scud missile, its 250-kilogram payload can be launched from a mobile launcher. The Trishul is a sea-skimming short-range missile. The Akash is a multitarget surface-to-air missile that was being test fired in 1994 and 1995. The Nag is essentially an antitank missile.
The Indian missile program has been of concern to the United States, which, under the terms of the Missile Technology Control Regime, imposed sanctions against the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in June 1992. In July 1993, the United States prevailed upon the Russian space agency, Glavkosmos, not to transfer cryogenic rocket engines to India (see Russia; United States, ch. 9). The ISRO decided it would develop the engine on its own by 1997 while continuing to seek purchase of modified versions of the engines from Russia. Seven such cryogenic engines were scheduled for delivery by Glavkosmos between 1996 and 1999. In keeping with its agreement with the United States, Glavkosmos was not going to transfer additional technology for cryogenic engines. However, cryogenic engine technology transfer had begun in 1991, and hence leading ISRO officials were confident about their 1997 projection.
Intelligence Services
The first post-independence military intelligence service was the Intelligence Bureau established in 1947 under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Until 1962 the Intelligence Bureau had wide-ranging responsibilities for the collection, collation, and assessment of both domestic and foreign intelligence. The failure of the Intelligence Bureau to assess adequately the nature of the Chinese threat, however, led to a reevaluation of its role and functions in the early 1960s. Military Intelligence, which in the words of one retired Indian general was "little more than a post office," was reactivated and given the task of reporting to the revamped Joint Intelligence Committee. The Joint Intelligence Committee is the key body coordinating and assessing intelligence brought to it by the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, and the Research and Analysis Wing of the Office of the Prime Minister. Established in 1968, the Research and Analysis Wing is primarily responsible for gathering external intelligence. Despite a substantial budget and extensive foreign postings, the wing's efforts to gather intelligence even in South Asia are inadequate according to some foreign analysts (see Role of the Prime Minister, ch. 9).
Each of the armed services has a directorate charged with the collection and dissemination of intelligence. Critics have charged that there is inadequate cooperation and coordination among the service intelligence directorates, the Intelligence Bureau, and the Research and Analysis Wing. There is, however, an interservice Joint Cipher Bureau, which is in charge of cryptology and signals intelligence. The Research and Analysis Wing includes officers from the armed services and also has a chief military intelligence adviser.
Military Justice
The Manual of Military Law and Regulations spells out rules and procedures for the investigation, prosecution, and punishment of military offenses and crimes in the armed forces. Basic authority rests in the constitution, the Army Act of 1954, the Air Force Act of 1950, and the Navy Act of 1957.
The army and air force have three kinds of courts. They are, in descending order of power, the General Court, which conducts general courts-martial; the District Court; and the Summary General Court. Additionally, the army has a fourth kind of court, the Summary Court. Local commanding officers conduct this court with powers similar to nonjudicial punishment in the United States armed forces. The navy uses general courts-martial in addition to the nonjudicial powers established for commanders in the Navy Act.
Courts-martial can be convened by the prime minister, minister of defence, chief of staff of the service concerned, or other officers so designated by the ministry or the chief of staff. There are channels of appeal and stages of judicial review, although procedures differ among the three services.
Members of the armed forces remain subject concurrently to both civilian and military law, and criminal courts with appropriate jurisdictions assume priority over military courts in specific cases. With the approval of the government, a person convicted or acquitted by a court-martial can undergo retrial by a criminal court for the same offense and on the same evidence. Once tried by a civilian court, however, one cannot be tried by a military court for the same offense.
Each of the three services has its own judge advocate general's department, relatively free and independent of the other branches in the discharge of its judicial functions. The various departments have officers among the adjutant general's staff at army headquarters, in the chief of personnel's staff at navy headquarters, and in the administration staff of the air force headquarters.
The 1980s saw not only substantial growth in Indian defense expenditures but also the use of the armed forces in support of larger foreign and security policy goals. Specifically, the army saw action against Pakistani military personnel in disputed areas along the Siachen Glacier in Jammu and Kashmir, deployed at considerable cost as diplomatic efforts failed. All three branches of the armed forces, but particularly the army, were used to pursue India's security and foreign policy objectives in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s (see South Asia, ch. 9). More than 60,000 soldiers were deployed in Sri Lanka as part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to enforce the terms of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. Designed to serve as a neutral force between contending ethnic forces, the IPKF became enmeshed in operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In 1989 the new Sri Lankan president, Ranasinghe Premadasa, ended a five-and-a-half-year state of emergency and asked India to withdraw the IPKF. Accordingly, Indian army units returned home with most goals unmet.
In 1988 a smaller, much shorter-lived Indian expedition successfully ended a military coup attempt in Maldives and demonstrated the military's effective use of airborne and naval forces in a joint operation.
India is the preeminent military power in South Asia, but its margin of superiority over Pakistan--its principal South Asian rival--has eroded because the central government of India is faced with severe budgetary constraints. In addition, the armed forces are no longer able to obtain sophisticated weaponry at highly subsidized prices from Russia, and substantial numbers of army units are tied down in various internal security duties. Insurgencies in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab have necessitated the use of the army in "aid-to-the-civil power" when the local police and central paramilitary forces are unable to maintain public order. Increasingly frequent outbreaks of communal violence also have necessitated the use of the army to restore calm.
The increased reliance on the army for internal security duties generated concern among senior officers in the early 1990s. Then chief of army staff General Sunith Francis Rodrigues repeatedly expressed his misgivings about the inordinate use of the army to deal with civil problems because such actions increased the risk of politicizing the armed forces and reduced their battle readiness. Moreover, the very nature of counterinsurgent and counterterrorist operations exposed the army to charges of human rights violations. In 1993, at the insistence of the army, the government agreed to examine this growing problem. Discussions focused on improving the recruitment, training, and organization of the various central paramilitary forces.
The air force and the navy underwent considerable growth and modernization during the 1980s, although their plans for modernization and expansion, like those of the army, were hobbled by financial constraints. Nevertheless, the navy has adequate capabilities for coastal defense as well as the protection of offshore union territories in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. The air force is equipped with modern combat aircraft and has moderate airlift capabilities.
Human rights violations in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and other parts of the country have largely been attributed to the paramilitary forces. The army has willingly acknowledged that some lapses have occurred within its own ranks. It also has court-martialed officers and enlisted personnel charged with breaches of proper discipline and conduct. However, the army has refused to divulge any details about the extent of these problems. The numbers of individuals prosecuted, their ranks, and their names remain outside the public domain. Nevertheless, Amnesty International and Asia Watch have reported on incidents they have been able to document.
Colonial-Era Developments
Company Armies
The roots of the modern Indian army are traced to the forces employed by the English (later British) East India Company, chartered in 1600, and the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales), established in 1664. The French, headquartered at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) by the 1670s, were the first to raise Indian companies and use them in conjunction with European soldiers. Subsequently, in the 1740s, the British started to organize and train Indian units. British units were divided into three armies corresponding to the company's centers of Bengal (headquartered at Fort William in Calcutta), Bombay (or Mumbai in the Marathi language), and Madras (headquartered at Fort Saint George). In 1748 the East India Company armies were brought under the command of Stringer Lawrence, who is regarded by historians as the progenitor of the modern Indian army. Under his guidance, British officers recruited, trained, and deployed these forces. Although formally under a unified command, the three armies in practice exercised considerable autonomy because of the great distances that separated them.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the vast majority of the soldiers of each army was composed of Indian troops known as sepoys (from the Hindi sipahi , meaning police officer, or, later, soldier). Sepoy units had Indian junior commissioned officers who could exercise only low-level command. British officers held all senior positions. No Indian had any authority over non-Indians. In addition to these all-Indian units, the British deployed some units of the British Army.
The Indian Military under the British Raj
Post-Sepoy Rebellion Reorganization
Shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-58, the role of the presidency armies was reevaluated (see The British Raj, 1858-1947, ch. 1). In 1861 the Bengal Army was disbanded, and the total number of sepoys was reduced from 230,000 to 150,000 while the British element was increased from 40,000 to 75,000. Most Indian artillery units were disbanded, and artillery was placed under British control. Under the aegis of the imperial "divide and rule" policy, which had its inception at this time, the British ensured that a sense of nationality would not be allowed to develop among the sepoys. The growth of such feelings, it was feared, would undermine the prospects of imperial control. Accordingly, Indian regiments increasingly were organized on a territorial basis; individual companies--and in some cases entire regiments--were drawn from the same religious, tribal, or caste backgrounds. When companies from several regiments were grouped into battalions, considerable efforts were made to promote cultural and social distinctions among companies of different compositions.
"Martial Races" Theory
By the end of the nineteenth century, recruitment was confined to certain social classes and communities--principally those in the northern border areas and Punjab. The narrowing recruitment base was a response to the Sepoy Rebellion and reflected the needs of prevailing security requirements. The bulk of the rebels in the Bengal Army came from the Indo-Gangetic Plain while those that had remained loyal were mostly from Punjab.
The experience of the mutiny also gave rise to a pseudo-ethnological construction, the concept of "martial races" in South Asia. The popularization of this notion was widely attributed to Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Earl of Kandahar, Pretoria, and Waterford; Roberts was an Indian-born veteran of the British forces that put down the Sepoy Rebellion and the commander in chief of the British Indian Army from 1885 to 1893. Roberts believed that the most martial races were located in northwestern India. He regarded Bengalis, Marathas, and southern ethnic groups as lacking in martial virtues. Their warlike propensities, he contended, had dissipated because of the ease of living and the hot, enervating climate of these regions.
Roberts's views profoundly influenced the composition of the British Indian army in the last decades of the nineteenth century. For example, when the Bengal Army was reestablished in 1885, its new units were drawn from Punjab. In 1892 army policy was changed significantly. Units were no longer raised on a territorial basis but along what was referred to as "class" lines. In effect, regiments admitted only those having similar ethnic, religious, or caste backgrounds. Between 1892 and 1914, recruitment was confined almost entirely to the martial races. These modes of recruitment and organization created a professional force profoundly shaped by caste and regional factors and loyal and responsive to British command. The procedures also perpetuated regional and communal ties and produced an army that was not nationally based.
Administrative Reform and World War I
Administrative reforms in 1895 abolished the presidency armies, and command was centralized under the aegis of a single army headquarters at Delhi. In the early twentieth century, the process of centralization continued; and during this period, the separation between military and civilian spheres of influence and the ultimate primacy of civilian authority gained final acceptance in both civilian and military circles.
During World War I, India's contribution of troops, money, and supplies to the Allied cause was substantial. More than 1 million Indian soldiers were sent abroad, and more than 100,000 were either killed or wounded.
The mobilization for the war effort revealed a number of shortcomings in the military establishment. Officer casualties had a particularly pernicious effect on military formations because only the British officers assigned to a battalion had the authority and standing to exercise overall command. In addition, Indian officers from one company could rarely be transferred to another having a different ethnic, religious, or caste makeup. As a consequence, after the war most battalions were reorganized to ease reinforcement among component companies. Strong pressure from the Indian public also drove the British to begin training a small complement of Indians for commissions as a first step in the Indianization of the officer corps. The Royal Indian Air Force was established in 1932, and a small Indian marine unit was reorganized into the Royal Indian Navy in 1934. Indian artillery batteries were first formed only in 1936. Although the practice of limiting recruitment to the martial races had proved inadequate during World War I and entry had been opened to "nonmartial" groups, the traditional recruitment emphasis on martial races was nonetheless resumed after demobilization.
World War II
The political situation in India underwent a fundamental transformation at the time of Britain's entry into World War II (see Political Impasse and Independence, ch. 1). The viceroy and governor general of India, Victor Alexander John Hope, Marquis of Linlithgow, without consulting Indian political leaders, declared India to be at war with Germany on September 3, 1939. The legislature sustained the viceregal decree and passed the Defence of India Bill without opposition, as the representatives of the Indian National Congress (the Congress--see Glossary) boycotted the session. Between 1939 and mid-1945, the British Indian Army expanded from about 175,000 to more than 2 million troops--entirely through voluntary enlistment. The incipient naval and air forces were also expanded, and the Indian officer corps grew from 600 to more than 14,000. Indian troops were deployed under overall British command in Africa, Italy, the Middle East, and particularly in Burma and Southeast Asia. The great expansion in strength, the overseas service of Indian forces, and the demonstrated soldierly ability of Indians from all groups did much to dispel the martial races theory.
In Asia the Japanese sought to exploit Indian nationalism and anti-British sentiment by forming and supporting the Indian National Army (INA--Azad Hind Fauj), which was composed primarily of 25,000 of the 60,000 Indian troops who had surrendered to the Japanese in Singapore in February 1942. The army was led by Subhas Chandra Bose, a former militant president of the Congress, who also appointed himself head of the Provisional Government of Azad India (Free India). An unusual feature of the INA was an all-woman, intercaste regiment composed of some 1,500 Indian women from Burma, Malaya, and Singapore. Both the women and the 25,000-strong male contingent were organized to fight alongside the Japanese in Burma, but they actually saw little action. Only 8,000 were sent to the front. Japanese and INA troops invaded Manipur in March 1944 and fought and were defeated in battles at Imphal and Kohima (see fig. 1). By May 1945, the INA had disintegrated because of acute logistical problems, defections, and superior British-led forces. It is widely held that Bose was killed in an air crash in Taiwan as he fled at the end of the war. The British court martialed three INA officers. Nationalist-minded lawyers, including Nehru, defended them as national heroes, and the British, feeling intense public pressure, found them guilty but cashiered them without any further punishment. However, after independence Nehru refused to reinstate them into the Indian armed forces, fearing that they might sow discord among the ranks.
National Security Structure
Civil-Military Relations
The pattern of civil-military relations prevailing in India was created by the staff of Lord Mountbatten as a three-tier system extending from the prime minister to the three service chiefs. At the apex of this structure is the Political Affairs Committee of the Cabinet. The second level is the Defence Minister's Committee of the Cabinet, and the third level is the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Other committees, such as the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Defence Science Advisory Committee, and the Joint Planning Committee, assist the higher committees. There were proposals in the mid-1990s to establish a joint defense staff for better integration of interservice resources, programs, policies, and operations (see fig. 16).
In the immediate postindependence period, the Defence Minister's Committee of the Cabinet did not play an active role in policy formulation. The higher organization of defense was vested largely with the minister of defence. From 1957 to 1962, this position was held by V.K. Krishna Menon, whose authority far exceeded that usually accorded a minister of defence. A confidante of Nehru's through much of the late preindependence period, Menon functioned as Nehru's alter ego for national security and defense planning. Consequently, the locus of decision making shifted from the cabinet to the Defence Minister's Committee. Menon was in many ways responsible for laying the foundations of India's military-industrial base.
Among other endeavors, Menon was responsible for the development of ordnance facilities to manufacture the Ichapore semiautomatic rifle; a tank manufacturing complex at Avadi, Tamil Nadu; facilities to build frigates at the Mazagon Dock naval shipyard in Bombay; and the licensed manufacture of Soviet-designed MiG-23 fighter aircraft in Nasik, Maharashtra. However, his highly idiosyncratic manners, his high-handed ways, and his involvement in the tactical aspects of military decision making had negative consequences. For example, he quarrelled with the professional military, particularly India's third chief of army staff, General K.S. Thimayya, over Thimayya's attempt to warn Menon and Nehru about the emerging Chinese threat as early as 1959. When Thimayya resigned in protest, Nehru prevailed upon him to withdraw his resignation. Unfortunately, when questioned in the Lok Sabha (House of the People), the lower house of the Parliament, about Thimayya's resignation, Nehru offered a rather weak defense of the general's actions and sought to deflect the criticisms of his minister of defence (see The Legislature, ch. 8). When Thimayya retired as chief of army staff in May 1961, Menon passed over Thimayya's designated successor, Lieutenant General S.P.P. Thorat, and instead appointed a junior officer, Lieutenant General P.N. Thapar. The appointment not only created a rift between the professional military and political leadership but also alienated a number of high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Defence. Menon's actions also demoralized competent personnel in the civilian and military bureaucracies, which led to important gaps in defense preparedness and planning. Menon's dominance of the defense planning process significantly contributed to the military debacle of 1962.
The Indian defeat led to the establishment of a new Emergency Committee of the Cabinet. This committee introduced a system of "morning meetings" with the minister of defence and the three service chiefs. The morning meetings, which are conducted without a predetermined agenda, deal with current defense issues on a regular basis. The meetings are also attended by the cabinet secretary, the defence secretary, and the scientific adviser to the minister of defence. These morning meetings continue to take place.
In the Chiefs of Staff Committee, formal equality prevails among the three service chiefs despite the fact that the army remains the largest of the three branches of the armed services. This formal equality among the three services came about with independence.
To facilitate defense planning, the government established two organizations: the Defence Coordination and Implementation Committee and the Defence Planning Staff. The Defense Coordination and Implementation Committee is chaired by the defence secretary and meets on an ad hoc basis. Its membership includes the three service chiefs, representatives from civilian and military intelligence organizations, and the secretary of defence production. The Defence Planning Staff, a permanent body, was established in 1986. Composed of officers drawn from all three services, it is responsible for developing overall national security strategy. It is also charged with briefing the Chiefs of Staff Committee on long-term threats to national security.
Defense Spending
Until 1962 defense spending was deliberately limited. In the wake of the war with China, defense spending rose from 2.1 percent of the gross national product (GNP--see Glossary) in fiscal year (FY--see Glossary) 1962 to 4.5 percent in FY 1964. In FY 1994, defense spending was slightly less than 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary). In terms of dollars, FY 1994 total defense services expenditures were projected at US$7.2 billion (but are likely to have been close to US$7.8 billion). Proportionately, based on figures provided by the government, 48.4 percent of expenditures were for the army, 15.7 percent for the air force, 5.9 percent for the navy, and 30 percent for capital outlays for defense services and defense ordnance factories. The latter provide matériel to the armed forces through some thirty-nine ordnance factories and eight public-sector enterprises that build ships, aircraft, and major defense items. The defense budget for FY 1994 was 6.5 percent higher than the revised estimate for FY 1993. The allocation increased to 14.9 percent of the total central government budget, up from 13 percent in the previous two fiscal years. Nuclear energy and space research are not fully accounted for in the defense budget, but most paramilitary forces fall within the purview of the Ministry of Defence.
The Army
In 1994 the army had approximately 940,000 men and women in its ranks and more than 36,000 in reserve forces. The army is headquartered in New Delhi and is under the direction of the chief of the army staff, always a full general. The chief of the army staff is assisted by a vice chief, two deputy chiefs, a military secretary, and the heads of four main staff divisions: the adjutant general, the quartermaster general, the master general of ordnance, and the engineer in chief.
The army has five tactical area commands: the Northern Command headquartered at Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir, the Western Command headquartered at Chandimandir in Chandigarh, the Central Command headquartered at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, the Eastern Command headquartered at Calcutta, and the Southern Command headquartered at Pune in Maharashtra (see fig. 17). Each command is headed by a lieutenant general. The principal combat formations within the scope of these commands are armored divisions and independent armored brigades, infantry divisions, mountain infantry divisions, independent infantry brigades, airborne/commando brigades, and independent artillery brigades (see table 34, Appendix). These units are organized in twelve corps-level formations.
The army is equipped with some 3,400 main battle tanks. Of these, 1,200 are indigenously manufactured Vijayanta tanks. Additionally, the army has some T-55, T-72, and PT-76 tanks. The Arjun main battle tank has been under development by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) since 1983, and, in 1995, limited production was expected to begin in 1996.
To complement indigenous production, however, it was reported in 1994 that Russia had agreed to help India modernize its T-72 tanks and to sell and lease other types of weapons. It is generally understood that about 70 percent of India's military equipment is of Soviet origin. Some army officials continue to favor Russian-made equipment, such as the T-72 tank, over Indian adaptations of the same items, such as the T-72 MI tank developed by the DRDO.
The army also has substantial artillery forces. The best estimate places the army's towed artillery capabilities at more than 4,000 pieces. In addition to the towed artillery, the army has self-propelled artillery. Finally, it has substantial numbers of surface-to-air missile capabilities, the total number being more than 1,200. In 1986 air observation post units were transferred from the air force to the army to form the Army Aviation branch. Using nine helicopter squadrons, Army Aviation has supported ground units in the Siachen Glacier in Jammu and Kashmir and in Sri Lanka, as well as counterinsurgency operations in various parts of the country. Army Aviation has also participated in disaster relief.
Apart from its nine squadrons of helicopters, the army has eight air observation squadrons and six antitank/transport squadrons. It relies on the air force for air support, lift capabilities, and air supply (see table 35, Appendix).
An extensive body of schools and centers supports army operations. The officer corps is largely drawn from the National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla, Maharashtra, a joint services training institution that provides educational equivalents to the bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degrees to cadets for all three service arms. Cadets spend their first three years at the National Defence Academy and then are sent to their respective service academies for further training before being commissioned in the armed forces. A preparatory school, the Rashtriya Indian Military College, at Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, provides education to candidates for the National Defence Academy. After completing their studies at the National Defence Academy, army cadets are sent to the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. Other Indian Military Academy cadets are graduates of the Army Cadet College or are direct-entry students who have qualified by passing the Union Public Service Commission Examination. They spend between twelve and twenty-four months at the Indian Military Academy before being commissioned in the army as second lieutenants. Still other officer training occurs at the Officers' Training Academy in Madras, Tamil Nadu, where a forty-four-week session is offered to university graduates seeking a short-service commission.
In addition to the Indian Military Academy, the army runs a number of military education establishments. The more prominent ones include the College of Combat at Mhow, Madhya Pradesh; the High Altitude Warfare School at Gulmarg, Jammu and Kashmir; and the Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School at Vairengte, Mizoram. The army also operates the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu, which provides master of science-level joint-service training for mid-level staff appointments and promotes interservice cooperation.
In 1994 it was reported that there were 200 women in the armed forces. In the army, which employs women as physicians and nurses, the participation of women is small but growing. The Indian Military Nursing Service was formed in 1926 and has eight nursing schools (five army, two navy, and one air force) and one nursing college in Pune. Bachelor of science graduates are commissioned as lieutenants in the Medical Nursing Service and attached to the various components of the armed forces. Ranks as high as colonel can be attained by career officers. In the mid-1990s, a small but increasing number of women officers were being assigned to nonmedical services. In 1994, there were fifty women nonmedical army officers and another twenty-five in training. They are university graduates who have been put through rigorous training and are reported to be eager for combat unit assignments.
The Navy
The origins of the modern Indian navy are traced to a maritime force established by the East India Company in the seventeenth century. This force had a variety of names--the Bombay Marine, the Indian Navy, and the Indian Marine. In 1934 the Royal Indian Navy was established, with Indians serving primarily in lower-level positions. After independence the navy was the most neglected of the three services because the national leadership perceived that the bulk of the threats to India were land-based.
The first efforts at naval rearmament emerged in the 1964-69 Defence Plan, which called for the replacement of India's aging fleet and the development of a submarine service. Between 1947 and 1964, fiscal constraints had prevented the implementation of ambitious plans for naval expansion. Consequently, many of the vessels were obsolete and of little operational value. As part of this expansion program, the British helped develop the Mazagon Dock shipyard for the local production of British Leander-class frigates. The Soviets, however, were willing to support all phases of the planned naval expansion. Accordingly, they supplied naval vessels, support systems, and training on extremely favorable terms. By the mid-1960s, they had replaced Britain as India's principal naval supplier (see table 36, Appendix).
During the 1980s, Indian naval power grew significantly. During this period, the naval facilities at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, in the Nicobar Islands, and in Lakshadweep were significantly upgraded and modernized. A new line of Leander-class frigates was manufactured at Mazagon Dock in collaboration with Vickers and Yarrow of Britain. These frigates, redesignated as the Godavari class, have antisubmarine warfare capabilities and can carry two helicopters. During the 1980s, plans were also finalized for the licensed manufacture of a line of West German Type 1500 submarines (known as the Shishumar class in India). In addition to these developments at Mazagon Dock, the naval air arm also was upgraded. India purchased nearly two squadrons of the vertical and short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) Sea Harriers to replace an earlier generation of Sea Hawks.
In the mid-1990s, India was preparing for a major modernization program that was to include completion of three 5,000-ton Delhi-class destroyers, the building of three 3,700-ton frigates based on Italian Indian Naval Ship (INS)-10 design, and the acquisition of four hydrographic survey ships. Also to be built were an Indian-designed warship called Frigate 2001; six British Upholder-class submarines; an Indian-designed and Indian-built missile-firing nuclear submarine--the Advanced Technology Vessel--based on the Soviet Charlie II class; and an Indian-designed and Indian-built 17,000-ton air defense ship capable of carrying between twelve and fifteen aircraft. The air-defense ship will be, in effect, a replacement for India's two aging British aircraft carriers, the INS Vikrant , the keel of which was laid in 1943 but construction of which was not completed until 1961 and which was slated for decommissioning by 2000, and the INS Viraat , which entered service in 1987 and is likely to be decommissioned by 2005. The problems encountered with modernizing these and other foreign-source ships led India to decide against acquiring an ex-Soviet Kiev-class aircraft carrier in 1994.
In the spirit of international military cooperation, India has made moves in the early and mid-1990s to enhance joint-nation interoperability. Indian naval exercises have taken place with ships from the Russian navy and those of Indian Ocean littoral states and other nations, including the United States.
Naval headquarters is located in New Delhi. It is under the command of the chief of naval staff--a full admiral. The chief of naval staff has four principal staff officers: the vice chief of naval staff, the vice chief of personnel, the chief of material, and the deputy chief of naval staff. The total strength of the navy in 1994 was 54,000, including 5,000 naval aviation personnel and 1,000 marines (one regiment, with a second reportedly forming).
Women were inducted into the navy for the first time in 1992, when twenty-two were trained as education, logistics, and law cadres. In 1993 additional women were recruited for air traffic control duties. By 1994 there were thirty-five women naval officers.
The navy is deployed under three area commands, each headed by a flag officer. The Western Naval Command is headquartered in Bombay on the Arabian Sea; the Southern Naval Command in Kochi (Cochin), in Kerala, also on the Arabian Sea; and the Eastern Naval Command in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on the Bay of Bengal. Additionally, the navy has important bases in Calcutta and Goa.
The Southern Naval Command is responsible for naval officer training, which occurs at the Indian Naval Academy in Goa. Officer candidates are largely drawn from the National Defence Academy. After commissioning, officers are offered specialized training in antisubmarine warfare, aviation, communications, electronic warfare, engineering, hydrography, maritime warfare, missile warfare, navigation, and other naval specialties at various naval training institutions, many of which are collocated with the Training Command headquarters on Willingdon Island, near Kochi.
The Air Force
The air force was established in 1932. In 1994 it had 110,000 personnel and 779 combat aircraft. The air force, which is headquartered in New Delhi, is headed by the chief of air staff, an air chief marshal. He is assisted by six principal staff officers: the vice chief of air staff, the deputy chief of air staff, the air officer in charge of administration, the air officer in charge of personnel, the air officer in charge of maintenance, and the inspector general of flight safety. The air force is deployed into five operational commands: the Western Air Command, headquartered at New Delhi; the Southwestern Air Command, headquartered at Jodhpur, Rajasthan; the Eastern Air Command, headquartered at Shillong, Meghalaya; the Central Air Command, headquartered at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh; and the Southern Air Command, headquartered at Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala. Additionally, there are two functional commands: the Training Command at Bangalore, Karnataka, and the Maintenance Command at Nagpur, Maharashtra.
As of 1994, the air force was equipped with twenty-two squadrons of ground attack fighters. Five of these squadrons had a total of eighty-nine British Jaguar aircraft. Another five squadrons had 120 Soviet-origin MiG-27 aircraft. The air force also fielded twenty fighter squadrons, two of which were equipped with a total of thirty-five French-built Mirage 2000 H/TH aircraft. There were also twelve squadrons of transport aircraft in the inventory (see table 37, Appendix). Because of the large number of Soviet-origin aircraft, the air force is dependent on Russia for spare parts and equipment and weapons upgrades. In March 1995, Russia agreed to upgrade India's MiG-21 aircraft.
Aside from the Training Command at Bangalore, the center for primary flight training is located at the Air Force Academy at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, followed by operational training at various air force schools. Advanced training is also conducted at the Defence Services Staff College; specialized advanced flight training schools are located at Bidar, Karnataka, and Hakimpet, Andhra Pradesh (also the location for helicopter training). Technical schools are found at a number of other locations.
In 1991 the government approved the induction of women into nontechnical air force officer billets, such as administration, logistics, accounting, education, and meteorology. In 1992 opportunities for "pioneer women officers" were opened in the areas of transportation, helicopters, and navigation, and the first group of thirteen women cadets entered the Air Force Academy. During their flight training, they qualified on HPT-32 and Kiran aircraft to earn their air force commissions. After completing ten months' training, five of the seven successful course graduates received further training on various transport aircraft. By 1994, there were fifty-five women officers in the air force.
Recruitment and Training
Under the Indian constitution, as amended in 1977, each citizen has a fundamental duty to "defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so" (see The Constitutional Framework, ch. 8). However, the three services have always been all-volunteer forces, and general conscription has never proved necessary. Military service has long been deemed an attractive option for many in a society where employment opportunities are scarce. The technical branches of the armed forces, however, have experienced problems with recruitment. Since the 1980s, as a result of the growth and diversification of India's industrial base, employment opportunities for individuals with technical training have expanded substantially. Consequently, fewer trained individuals have sought employment opportunities in the armed services.
The army and navy maintain a combined recruitment organization that operates sixty offices in key cities and towns nationwide. The air force has a separate recruiting organization with twelve offices. Army and navy recruitment officers tour rural districts adjacent to their stations and also draw from nearby urban areas. The air force and the navy draw a disproportionate number of their recruits from the urban areas, where educational opportunities are adequate to generate applicants capable of mastering technical skills. The army also recruits outside India, admitting ethnic Gurkhas (also seen as Gorkhas) from Nepal into a Gurkha regiment.
Initial enlistments vary in length, depending on the service and the branch or skill category, but fifteen years is considered the minimum. The tour of duty is generally followed by two to five years of service in a reserve unit. Reenlistment is permitted for those who are qualified, particularly those possessing necessary skills. The minimum age for enlistment is seventeen years; the maximum varies between twenty and twenty-seven, depending on the service and skill category. The compulsory retirement age for officers also varies, ranging from forty-eight for army majors, navy lieutenant commanders, and air force squadron leaders and below, to sixty for army generals, navy admirals, and air force air chief marshals. On occasion a two-year extension is granted on the grounds of exceptional organizational needs or personal ability.
Candidates have to meet minimum physical standards, which differ among the three services and accommodate the various physical traits of particular ethnic groups. Since 1977 recruiting officers have relaxed physical standards slightly when evaluating the only sons of serving or former military personnel--both as a welfare measure and as a means of maintaining a family tradition of military service.
Educational standards for enlisted ranks differ according to service and skill category; the army requirement varies from basic literacy to higher secondary education (see Primary and Secondary Education, ch. 2). The other two services require higher educational levels, reflecting their greater need for technical expertise. The air force requires at least a higher secondary education, and the navy insists on graduation from a secondary school for all except cooks and stewards. Officer candidates have to complete a higher secondary education and pass a competitive qualifying exam for entry into precommission training. All services also accept candidates holding university degrees in such fields as engineering, physics, or medicine for direct entry into the officer corps.
Enlistment was legally opened to all Indians following independence in 1947. In 1949 the government abolished recruitment on an ethnic, linguistic, caste, or religious basis. Exceptions were army infantry regiments raised before World War II, where cohesion and effectiveness were thought to be rooted in long-term attachment to traditions. Some army regiments have a homogeneous composition; other regiments segregate groups only at battalion or company levels. Others are completely mixed throughout. In general, the army has steadily evolved into a more heterogeneous service since 1947. Regiments raised during and after World War II have recruited Indians of almost all categories, and the doubling of the army's size after the 1962 border war with China sped up the process. The armed forces have made a concerted effort to recruit among underrepresented segments of the population and, during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, reformed the recruiting process to eliminate some of the subjectivity in the candidate selection process. Since 1989 the government has sought to apportion recruitment from each state and union territory according to its share of the population. Both the air force and the navy are now almost completely "mixed" services and display considerable heterogeneity in their composition.
Paramilitary and Reserve Forces
Paramilitary Forces
In addition to the regular armed forces, India also has paramilitary forces. These forces have grown dramatically since independence. There are twelve paramilitary organizations, which have an authorized strength of around 1.3 million personnel. In 1994, their reported actual strength was 692,500. These organizations include the Coast Guard Organisation and the Defence Security Force, which are subordinate to the Ministry of Defence. Paramilitary forces subordinate to the Ministry of Home Affairs include the Assam Rifles, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and the Rashtriya Rifles (National Rifles). The National Security Guards, a joint antiterrorist contingency force, are charged with protection of high-level persons (the so-called very very important persons--VVIPs) and are subordinate to the Office of the Prime Minister (also sometimes known as the Prime Minister's Secretariat.) The guards are composed of elements of the armed forces, the Central Reserve Police Force, and the Border Security Force. The Special Frontier Force also is subordinate to the Office of the Prime Minister. The Railway Protection Force is subordinate to the Ministry of Railways. At the local level, there is the Provincial Armed Constabulary, which is controlled by the governments of the states and territories (see State and Other Police Services, this ch.).
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, local police forces could not deal with the mounting array of sectarian, ethnic, and regional conflicts, and paramilitary forces were increasingly called on for assistance. In addition to security and guard duties, paramilitary organizations assist local and state-level police forces in maintaining public order and shield the army from excessive use in "aid-to-the-civil-power" operations. These operations essentially involve quelling public disorder when local police forces prove inadequate to the task.
The Coast Guard Organisation was constituted as an Armed Force of the Union in 1978 under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defence (although it is funded by the Ministry of Home Affairs), following its 1977 establishment as a temporary navy element. Its principal mission is to protect the country's maritime assets, particularly India's 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and the marine resources contained in the area, which comprises nearly 2.8 million square kilometers. The coast guard is also responsible for the prevention of poaching and smuggling, the control of marine pollution, and carrying out search-and-rescue missions. Under the command of a director general, the coast guard is organized into three national maritime zones: the Western Maritime Zone, headquartered at Bombay; the Eastern Maritime Zone, headquartered at Madras; and the Andaman and Nicobar Maritime Zone, headquartered at Port Blair. The zones are further subdivided into district headquarters, one each for the eight maritime states on the mainland and two in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In times of emergency, the coast guard is expected to work with the navy. In the late 1980s, coast guard units from the eastern zone supported Indian peacekeeping efforts in Sri Lanka. The coast guard's equipment includes about fifty ships, nine helicopters, and thirteen fixed-wing aircraft (see table 38, Appendix).
Another Ministry of Defence paramilitary organization has a security mission. The Defence Security Force guards Ministry of Defence facilities throughout India.
The Border Security Force was established in the closing days of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict. Its principal mission involves guarding the Indo-Pakistani line of actual control in Jammu and Kashmir as well as borders with Bangladesh and Burma. It works in internal security and counterinsurgency operations in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab. The border force has also been used to deal with communal rioting.
Another Ministry of Homes Affairs paramilitary force deployed in Jammu and Kashmir is the Rashtriya Rifles. In 1994 it had 5,000 troops, all of whom served in Jammu and Kashmir. Some observers expected the force to grow to thirty battalions, with around 25,000 personnel. In March 1995, Indian television referred to the Delta Force of the "fledgling" Rashtriya Rifles. It was reported that the force was operating against "terrorists" and "foreign mercenaries" in Doda District in south-central Jammu and Kashmir.
Founded in 1939, the Central Reserve Police Force is the country's oldest paramilitary organization. It maintains internal order when local and state-level forces prove inadequate to the task. The Central Reserve Police Force in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab has worked in counterinsurgency operations. This force also was dispatched to Sri Lanka during India's 1987-90 involvement there. The Ministry of Defence's weekly armed forces magazine, Sainik Samachar , reported that the Mahila Battalion (Women's Battalion) of the Central Reserve Police Force had "proved its mettle in hot warlike conditions in Sri Lanka," and had established women as "a force to reckon with" in the paramilitary.
Another significant paramilitary organization is the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, established in 1962 in the aftermath of the war with China. It is primarily responsible for the security of the border with China.
The Special Frontier Force, established in 1962 in the aftermath of the war with China, is less well publicized by the government. Apparently it is an elite, parachute-qualified commando unit, nominally subordinate to the army and deployed along sensitive areas of the border with China, and recruited partially from among border-area hill tribes and Tibetan refugees. The Special Frontier Force also appears to have a domestic security role; members of the force were involved in the Golden Temple siege in 1984. In 1994 its reported strength was 3,000, making it one of the smallest paramilitary forces.
Reserve Forces
India's "second line of defense" is composed of several citizen mass organizations. These include the Territorial Army, a voluntary, part-time civilian force that receives military training and serves as a reserve force for the army "to relieve [it] of static duties, to aid the civil power, and to provide units for the regular Army, if and when required." It was raised in 1949 and has been used in times of war and domestic disturbances. Organizationally, Territorial Army personnel are raised from among employees of government agencies and public-sector enterprises and are formed into departmental units. Nondepartmental units are raised from other citizens, including former active-duty military personnel. In the early 1990s, Territorial Army units saw service in Jammu and Kashmir and along the northern and western borders of India and in support of paramilitary units subordinate to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The National Cadet Corps, which is open to young men and women, was established in 1948 to develop discipline and leadership qualities useful in life and particularly for potential service in the armed forces. The semiautonomous organization receives guidance from the ministries of education and defence at the central level and from state-level governments at the local level. It is organized into army, navy, and air force wings, and its ranks correspond to those in the respective armed forces.
Civil Defence Volunteers are under the leadership of a small paid cadre, who are trained to provide early warning communications at the town level. They also participate in civil works construction projects and natural disaster relief work. Subordination is through the local state or territory government and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Home Guards are a voluntary force raised by state and territory governments under the guidance of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Home Guards undergo minimal training and receive pay only when called for duty. They assist the police in crime prevention and detection; undertake watch and patrol duties; and aid in disaster relief, crowd control, and the supervision of elections. The central government reimburses the states and territories at varying rates for expenses incurred in the performance of Home Guard duties.
Space and Nuclear Programs
India detonated its first and only nuclear device at Pokharan in the Rajasthan Desert in May 1974. Subsequently and in all likelihood as a consequence of international pressure, India has chosen not to conduct any further tests. At a formal level, Indian officials and strategists deny that India possesses nuclear weapons and refer to India's position as an "options strategy," which essentially means maintaining the nuclear weapons option and exercising it should regional and international conditions so warrant. In pursuit of this end, India refuses to sign the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Formally, Indian officials argue that India's refusal to sign the treaty stems from its fundamentally discriminatory character; the treaty places restrictions on the nonnuclear weapons states but does little to curb the modernization and expansion of the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapons states.
The Indian ballistic missile program has some elements in common with the nuclear program. Under the aegis of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, India is developing rockets of varying ranges: the Agni, the Prithvi, the Akash, the Trishul, and the Nag. The Agni, which former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi referred to as a "technology demonstrator," was first test fired in May 1989 and again in May 1992. In 1995 it was not yet operational, but it has intercontinental ballistic missile potential. The Prithvi--which some sources reported had an operational unit raised in 1995 and deployed along the Pakistani border--is a tactical, short-range surface-to-surface missile designed by the DRDO as part of India's antimissile defense system. Based on the Soviet Scud missile, its 250-kilogram payload can be launched from a mobile launcher. The Trishul is a sea-skimming short-range missile. The Akash is a multitarget surface-to-air missile that was being test fired in 1994 and 1995. The Nag is essentially an antitank missile.
The Indian missile program has been of concern to the United States, which, under the terms of the Missile Technology Control Regime, imposed sanctions against the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in June 1992. In July 1993, the United States prevailed upon the Russian space agency, Glavkosmos, not to transfer cryogenic rocket engines to India (see Russia; United States, ch. 9). The ISRO decided it would develop the engine on its own by 1997 while continuing to seek purchase of modified versions of the engines from Russia. Seven such cryogenic engines were scheduled for delivery by Glavkosmos between 1996 and 1999. In keeping with its agreement with the United States, Glavkosmos was not going to transfer additional technology for cryogenic engines. However, cryogenic engine technology transfer had begun in 1991, and hence leading ISRO officials were confident about their 1997 projection.
Intelligence Services
The first post-independence military intelligence service was the Intelligence Bureau established in 1947 under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Until 1962 the Intelligence Bureau had wide-ranging responsibilities for the collection, collation, and assessment of both domestic and foreign intelligence. The failure of the Intelligence Bureau to assess adequately the nature of the Chinese threat, however, led to a reevaluation of its role and functions in the early 1960s. Military Intelligence, which in the words of one retired Indian general was "little more than a post office," was reactivated and given the task of reporting to the revamped Joint Intelligence Committee. The Joint Intelligence Committee is the key body coordinating and assessing intelligence brought to it by the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, and the Research and Analysis Wing of the Office of the Prime Minister. Established in 1968, the Research and Analysis Wing is primarily responsible for gathering external intelligence. Despite a substantial budget and extensive foreign postings, the wing's efforts to gather intelligence even in South Asia are inadequate according to some foreign analysts (see Role of the Prime Minister, ch. 9).
Each of the armed services has a directorate charged with the collection and dissemination of intelligence. Critics have charged that there is inadequate cooperation and coordination among the service intelligence directorates, the Intelligence Bureau, and the Research and Analysis Wing. There is, however, an interservice Joint Cipher Bureau, which is in charge of cryptology and signals intelligence. The Research and Analysis Wing includes officers from the armed services and also has a chief military intelligence adviser.
Military Justice
The Manual of Military Law and Regulations spells out rules and procedures for the investigation, prosecution, and punishment of military offenses and crimes in the armed forces. Basic authority rests in the constitution, the Army Act of 1954, the Air Force Act of 1950, and the Navy Act of 1957.
The army and air force have three kinds of courts. They are, in descending order of power, the General Court, which conducts general courts-martial; the District Court; and the Summary General Court. Additionally, the army has a fourth kind of court, the Summary Court. Local commanding officers conduct this court with powers similar to nonjudicial punishment in the United States armed forces. The navy uses general courts-martial in addition to the nonjudicial powers established for commanders in the Navy Act.
Courts-martial can be convened by the prime minister, minister of defence, chief of staff of the service concerned, or other officers so designated by the ministry or the chief of staff. There are channels of appeal and stages of judicial review, although procedures differ among the three services.
Members of the armed forces remain subject concurrently to both civilian and military law, and criminal courts with appropriate jurisdictions assume priority over military courts in specific cases. With the approval of the government, a person convicted or acquitted by a court-martial can undergo retrial by a criminal court for the same offense and on the same evidence. Once tried by a civilian court, however, one cannot be tried by a military court for the same offense.
Each of the three services has its own judge advocate general's department, relatively free and independent of the other branches in the discharge of its judicial functions. The various departments have officers among the adjutant general's staff at army headquarters, in the chief of personnel's staff at navy headquarters, and in the administration staff of the air force headquarters.
