PM Modi accuses Congress of 'forgetting' national heroes: How Nehru treated Field Marshal Cariappa and General Thimayya

The election battlefield of Karnataka was charged up even further when PM Modi sought to rekindle old wars and attacked the Congress government over its 'disrespect' for former Chief of Army staffs  Field Marshall Cariappa and General Thimayya, both celebrated soldiers from Karnataka.

Speaking in Kalburgi, PM Modi was quoted saying by PTI “Forgetting the national heroes, patriots and history is the nature of a family in the Congress. (Jawaharlal) Nehru and V K Krishna Menon insulted General (KS) Thimayya, who had to resign. They neglected General (K M) Cariappa.”

What is PM Modi alluding to? Here’s a trip down memory lane

General KS Thimayya, also lovingly called Timmy, was Chief of Army Staff from 1957 to 1961, ahead of the 1962 Indo-China War. He also headed a UN unit dealing with repatriation after Korean War, and was Commander of the UN Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus from July 1964 to December 1965 and died in Cyprus while on active duty on 18^th Dec 1965.

Field Marshal Cariappa was the first Indian commander-in-chief of the Indian Army and one of two army officers to hold the five-star rank of field marshal (along with Sam Manekshaw). Both Cariappa and Thimayya, as PM Modi pointed out, differed with PM Jawaharlal Nehru. 

The first CIC of the Indian Army, Field Marshal KM Cariappa’s biography by his son Air Marshal KC Cariappa notes the friction between the two.

General Cariappa led the Indian Army in Kashmir during the first war with Pakistan in 1947, and the author states that his father asked Nehru, why the army didn’t evict the frontier tribesmen supported by the Pak Army. To this Nehru reiterated that the government dictated policy. While the Indian Army was confident of clearing Kashmir, the orders were to ‘cease fire midnight 31^st December / 1^st January 1948-49’.

Nehru had reportedly told Cariappa: “You see, U.N. Security Council felt that if we go any further it may precipitate a war. So, in response to their request we agreed to a ceasefire. Quite frankly, looking back, we should have given you ten-fifteen days more. Things would have been different then.”

In 1951 (more than a decade before the Indo-China War on 1962), when Chinese troops were caught with maps of North-East Frontier Agency (erstwhile Arunachal Pradesh) showing them as part of Kashmir, Nehru had criticised Cariappa saying: “It is not for the Army to decide who the nation's enemies would be.”

Later in 1959, Gen. K.S. Thimmayya also warned of the threat from China. Nehru, many believed, was under the spell of Defence Minister Krishna Menon, ignored the warnings which would lead to independent India’s humiliating defeat in 1962.

In his book, 1962: The War That Wasn’t Shiv Kunal Verma argued that Nehru wasn’t as military-minded as his Netaji Bose or Sardar Patel. Believing that Nehru viewed the army with suspicion, given the number of military coups that had taken place in post-colonial countries including Pakistan. This led to civil servants taking decisions which they were unfit to take. 

Thimmaya felt that Nehru’s arbitrary decision of making the Army responsible for the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), the responsibility of the Army, was a ‘meaningless gesture’ that ‘compromised the army’.

The author added: “Without providing the additional resources required, handing over the borders to the army was a meaningless gesture; this would allow the Chinese the opportunity to claim that the Indians were the aggressors, for they always went to great pains to describe their own troops as border guards.”

The author further wrote: “Publicly Nehru was seen to be fond of Timmy; however, behind his back, the prime minister adopted tactics that clearly indicated that he viewed Thimayya as a rival who could challenge his position as the undisputed head of the Indian Union.”

This led to what the author called a move of ‘subterfuge and survival’. COAS Thimayya was called by Nehru's Defence Minister Krishna Menon who lambasted the Army Chief, claiming that instead of approaching the prime minister, he ought to have resolved the matter at their level. This led Thimayya to send in his resignation.

PM Nehru persuaded him to stay, however his resignation letter was leaked to the media. Nehru would go on to castigate Thimayya in parliament, reproaching him for ‘wanting to quit amid the Sino-Indian Border Crisis’.

Shiv Kunal Verma adds in his book: “The prime minister’s attitude towards Thimayya was damaging to the chief as well as the army. … General Thimayya was… a seasoned, disciplined soldier who would hardly have made issues over trifles. … After the resignation drama Thimayya was seen as an alarmist and a defeatist. Having thus weakened the office of the army chief, the prime minister now placed his hope in …Lieutenant General B. M. ‘Bijji’ Kaul whose star was on the rise.”