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Author: Ashok K Mehta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 19, 2005
October 27 is Infantry Day. On this day in 1947, soon after independence, Indian soldiers belonging to 1 Sikh battalion landed in Srinagar to prevent the desecration of Kashmiriyat and pillage of Jammu & Kashmir by tribal raiders called Kabailis from Pakistan. The Pakistan Army had called it Operation Gulmarg. The first war for J&K against Pakistan lasted 14 months but in fact, has never ceased till today.
The new war is by proxy carried out by terrorists and militants called jihadis. The Infantry had saved the day in 1947. It continues to remain in the forefront of the war against terrorism, not just in J&K but also across the Northeast. Whatever the mission, rarely if at all, can it be accomplished without the foot soldier.
Whether in Siachen or Kargil, the infantryman is in the lead on these snowy and craggy heights. Not just that, come floods, earthquakes or tsunami, he is right there. Rifleman Hindustan Singh is a soldier for all seasons. Former Chief of Army Staff, Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury, who is a fan of Field Marshal Montgomery, described Infantry as the Army. But such is the versatility of the marching soldier that the coinage could be reversed. Yet there is a problem sometimes of self-image and self esteem. Infantry is to the Army what the heart is to the body. It keeps the system ticking. The Infantryman is a versatile, self-contained weapon system that requires to be kept ship-shape and technologically contemporary so that it is not found wanting in low and hi-intensity conflict. In essence, he is still a cat-burglar, poacher and sharpshooter.
This deadly mix of stuff that wins battles sculpted in bronze shows a quartet of gutsy infantrymen with unsheathed bayonets, hoisting the national flag. This Infantry Memorial enriches the Malwa landscape in Mhow, once the military headquarters of war. The Infantry has marched a long way since and is constantly on the move. India may not have fought a war since 1971 but the Army has not stopped waging battles for peace, mainly internal. The Infantry has held the Western and Northern borders fighting occasional skirmishes that have turned into border wars like Kargil in 1999.
In 1984 at Wangdung in Arunachal Pradesh, the Army scored its first psychological victory over the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), which paved the way in 1988 for a resumption of dialogue with China. But it was Kargil which was the jewel in the Infantry's crown. It was here in 1965 that a commanding hill feature (Point13620) that overlooked the Srinagar-Leh highway was captured twice and returned to the Pakistani Army. In 1971, it was recaptured and kept. No other real estate in the annals of war has ever changed hands so many times. Only the Infantry can reach any top, keep it or give it away.
But despite the Infantry's versatility, it is still bulky, not lean and mean for the times. Its modernisation was put on hold for too long. In the last two decades the accent had been on mechanisation, not on sharpening skills of the Infantry. It grew in numbers, without matching quality. Gen Roy Chowdhury's famous encapsulation that Infantry was the centrepiece of the Army was a mere slogan. Ironically, Gen Sundarji, an earlier Chief and himself an Infantryman, did not take the Infantry seriously at all. It was he, a late convert to the Armoured Corps, who put Infantry modernisation on hold forgetting that it was the foot soldier who would be required to engage in low intensity conflict.
For India, the nature of war changed in the late 1980s with Pakistan launching the proxy war in J&K. The Infantry was required to deal with grades of low intensity conflict, demanding innovative skills, not the routine response it got and resulted in avoidable casualties. The high end of conflict is managed by deterrence, that is by aircraft, ships, guns and tanks. The Infantry is the only arm that plays key roles in the entire spectrum of conflict from war fighting to countering terrorism and maintaining post-conflict stability. In addition, there is peacekeeping and often peace enforcing as well as peace-building. The Infantry is also the fulcrum of humanitarian missions, such as aid to civil authority in the event of natural and manmade disasters.
Be it the earthquake in Kashmir, Kutch or Latur, the foot-soldier is the first to reach the disaster zone. The ubiquitous Infantryman drew praise from Field Marshal Montgomery who said in 1968, "An Army is considered only as good as its Infantry." But despite its sheer scale of versatility, the Infantry was, till not too long ago, placed in the lowest non-skilled category of professional grades in the Army.
The image problem still haunts the Infantry, though it has recovered its sheen after Kargil. Extended tenures on difficult missions in harsh terrain do not attract quality volunteers for the Infantry when less exacting choices are available. There are holes in self-education, knowledge and awareness engendered by the peculiar conditions and environments in which the Infantry has to operate. The media has singled out some senior officers as Thinking Generals. General Sundarji was the first to attract this distinction.
Subsequently, the cerebral quality was given to General SF Rodrigues, who was really a chattering General and on this account, got into trouble for an interview he gave to this newspaper in 1993. Gen BC Joshi was a true thinker but he died in harness prematurely. As a fighting arm, Infantry has not been regarded as thinking, instead too traditional to change. There were times when officers would shun doing the Staff College or higher education courses as they prided in being regimental officers and were loath to leave the battalion. The urges today are quite the opposite.
The image and contentment level of the Infantry has changed slowly but soberly. While difficulties like truncated peace tenures compounded by shortage of accommodation for troops and turbulence in education of children remain, challenges of modernisation cannot be ignored. Study leave for officers has helped them in intellectual pursuits necessary to cope with the battlefield of the future. Yet, there are robust-willed young officers who volunteer for a tenure on the 12,000 feet high Siachen to prove their vitality.
The sheer size of the Infantry is staggering. There are more than 350 regular battalions, 60 Rashtriya Rifle units and 60 Territorial Army battalions that include three ecological battalions. Infantry constitutes more than 35 per cent of the million plus Army. It is made up of 28 regiments that train and 23 regimental centres. The regiments are drawn on a class composition that has stood the test of time. These are single class (like the Sikhs, Dogras, Jats) fixed class (like Grenadiers, Rajputana Rifles, Rajput or Kumaon) and all-India, all-class regiments (like Guards, Parachute or the Mechanised Infantry).
Is the Infantry moving in the right direction? Or are numbers disguising the lack of effectual skills? Is there a case for reconfiguring the Infantry, sacrificing quantity for enhanced quality? Of all the arms, the modernisation of the Infantry has been most sluggish. It is based on Plan 4 B of the Army's modernisation plan. Of the Rs 4,800 crore allotted in 2003, just half the amount has been utilised. Political witch-hunting with the change in governments virtually paralyses arms acquisition. For years, the thinking was that Infantry did not require any treatment. Even now, despite the induction of medium-tech equipment and weapons, it is a case of too little too late. Some rethinking is needed to bring in the right balance.
That the Infantry has performed superbly despite these handicaps is a tribute to the quality of the Indian jawan. The degree of difficulty he has encountered in counter-terrorism and the aplomb with which he retook Tololing and Tiger Hill, speaks for virtuoso performance. A Pakistani officer in Kargil noted: "These Indians were crazy. They came like ants. Our fingers got tired, shooting at them... They just kept coming... We suffered a lot of casualties..." Field Marshal Montgomery, Britain's World War II winning General, said of the Infantry: "It is the least spectacular arm, yet without them you cannot win a battle. Indeed, without them you can do nothing, nothing at all." Let no one forget this.
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