Dismissal
"You still can't have grasped what the Prime Minister means by settling the matter once and for all, General," Singh said without ceremony.
"Once and for all? Is that the aim of the air force's ceaseless bombing of the Jhelum dam?" Prasad said; he knew he would very likely be dismissed today, and so had thrown caution somewhat aside.
Perhaps the speaker meant nothing by it, but the hearer took it to heart; Prasad's words gave a jolt to the Chief of Air Staff, Bifrata, at one side. Thirty minutes earlier he had just received the losses from the latest round of attacks, and the figure far exceeded the worst upper limit he could have imagined. This attack had not only failed to destroy that accursed dam; it had lost, in a record, eleven aircraft and eight pilots.
No. 29 Scorpion Squadron and No. 22 Swifts Squadron had each lost four MiG-27UPG attack aircraft, and by the principles of air warfare neither squadron could be committed to the offensive again in the short term. No. 14 Bulls Squadron had lost three Jaguars,1 one of which had actually been chased into home territory by an uncommonly ferocious Chinese-built Su-27, and, its fuel run out, unable to reach base, had been forced to land in a paddy field and been lost that way. That Su-27 had swaggered clear to the skies over the 16th Infantry Division's headquarters at Sri Ganganagar, twenty-five kilometres from the border, before it turned back, and all the ground fire could do nothing to it. Bifrata was now inclined to believe the Chief of Army Staff, Prasad, might be right, that India ought not to plunge into a great war at this moment, because the technical advantage had not been fully established; take the air force, for all its many new aircraft, the other half of it was still stuck in the 1970s, a mass of second-line squadrons keeping many decrepit machines and waiting to re-equip. But he knew better still that he could only follow the Defence Minister's line, for it was the Prime Minister's line too.
"You're quite right; wrecking this dam can block all the Pakistani ground forces north of Lahore, and pave the way for the next step. From that point of view, our present losses, set against the price of an enemy that will be back on his feet in a few weeks, may be counted as nothing at all," Singh answered indifferently.
"But today's attack still returned empty-handed, that dam is still there. A few more attacks like this, and by my reckoning Air Chief Marshal Bifrata will not agree to it."
Prasad's words named the Chief of Air Staff outright, not to draw an ally, for Bifrata could never have the courage to stand with him; he said it only to rebut the audacious offensive plan Singh had commissioned. And sure enough, Bifrata chose silence.
"A war must have losses, there is nothing strange in that," Singh said; he found this old man standing opposite actually using India's setbacks to mock him, all but treason. "We must recognise that if we go back to the Army Staff's operational plan, all these losses will become meaningless."
"Meaningless? Only greater losses will make the war meaningful? India's operational principle has always been to act according to national strength; to destroy a nuclear-armed middle power surely exceeds our strength."
"You say our strength falls short? Our military power is several times theirs; our tanks and combat aircraft far surpass them in performance."
"By your way of reckoning, we can indeed crush Pakistan, but you have not yet reckoned the strength of the enemy's allies, a factor you can never be sure of, such as the Su-27s that appeared over Lahore today, right outside your calculations. By the intelligence I have, their air force was once on the brink of collapse, but has now been quietly made good, its wrecked runways under repair, a fresh batch of J-10s due to arrive; while the weapons and parts we order from Russia keep rising in price."
"That is exactly why we are here discussing a plan for swift victory. We cannot let the war drag on without end," Singh said, raising his voice, and seeming a little flustered with anger.
"You actually count on tanks to solve every political problem?" the general shot back; he too had lost some of his composure, and this remark unwittingly stung several armoured commanders present, who had of course long been dissatisfied with a Chief of Staff who had always laid more weight on building up the mountain forces.
Lieutenant General Sipanga, standing to one side, could hardly hold himself in; he could least of all abide this line of his superior's. Prasad's ideas were plainly still stuck in the Cold War, or even the First World War. He held that India's every move had to watch the faces of the great powers, and that defence relying on terrain and fortifications was the Indian army's chief task. But it was not yet Sipanga's turn to speak, for Singh had long since flown into a rage.
"You think your army cannot win this war?"
"Win? I do not even know where your war would end, so I cannot answer that question."
"It is very simple. The present Pakistani government must fall; their intelligence system and their military system must be dismantled. Geographically, the land corridor where Pakistan borders China must also be cut, and in those regions it would be best for a new state to arise, which would work a fundamental change in our geographic security," Singh said, holding forth on an outcome as airy as a castle in the clouds, as though he never considered the possibility of failure.
"Set up a new state? I should very much like to hear your views on geographic security."
"What we must do, of course, is seek a thousand years of security for India; every direction that might pose a threat to India must undergo positive change in accordance with the national will of India. Uplifted by the force of that will, there is on the map today already no East Pakistan; and now, we mean only to go a little further, that is all."2
"Expansionist geopolitics is dangerous; new borders breed new enemies, and make too many foes on every side; many powerful nations have perished in the pursuit of absolute geographic security. Go and turn over the history of the first four decades of the twentieth century, and you will see that no nation ever grew safer by expanding."
Prasad said this; he had long since guessed at the whole grandiloquent line Singh would spin, all in the name of long-term security and so forth, but this line would absolutely drag the nation into crisis in the short term.
"...Since the general holds so many views out of keeping with the government's settled policy, and has too little confidence in the ability of the army the Army Staff commands... I hope the general will tender his resignation at once. I think... this is not a repudiation of your forty years of service to the army, but rather... out of the personnel needs of this government, and the needs of the new military transformation."
Singh had at last shown his hand, and everyone present was taken aback; though Prasad's ouster had been expected, that Singh, after the general had put to him a question he could not answer, should suddenly invoke administrative power to crush his opponent, still made the flesh creep.
Prasad too was a little startled. He had meant to manoeuvre a while yet, to contrive to shrink the new plan somewhat, so that not too many forces from other axes need be moved; he had never thought Singh would tear the paper open barely an hour into the conference. He regretted having just now left Singh with no way to climb down, not out of care for his own career, but because he knew that once he left this Army Staff, Singh would surely plant a confidant in the Chief of Staff's chair, and could then, without the least scruple, tear down all the work he had built up over these years. One could imagine the whole northwestern defence being stripped bare for Sipanga's grandiose, impractical offensive, which would inevitably create an unprecedented and dangerous situation, one that Singh and his most-favoured armour prodigy would find very hard to handle.
1. No. 14 "Bulls" and the 16th Division (both Indian): The Jaguar squadron that loses three aircraft is the IAF's No. 14 "Bulls," and the divisional headquarters the Su-27 overflies is that of India's 16 Infantry Division at Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan. Both must be kept distinct from the Pakistani formations of the same number the glossary already carries (the PAF's own No. 14, and the Pakistani 16th Infantry Division in the Thar). The Su-27 is one of Hamid's Chinese-supplied J-11s. ↩
2. "The national will of India": Singh's phrase (国家意志) is the novel's title, spoken here as a doctrine of expansion: every neighbouring direction that could threaten India must be reshaped to India's will, and the corridor linking Pakistan to China severed, with a new client state raised in between. His allusion to "no East Pakistan on the map" invokes the 1971 dismemberment of Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh as the precedent he means to extend. Prasad's rejoinder, that no nation grows safer by expanding, frames the argument the book keeps returning to. ↩