(Part 1)
The Caravan Magazine: General Naravane’s Unpublished Memoir
Caravan Failed to Ground Your Article on Naravane in Precedent and Facts.
Sushant Singh’s essay on General Naravane’s unpublished memoir reads like investigative journalism. It carries the weight of operational detail, the credibility of insider testimony, and the moral urgency of democratic accountability. In fact it a journalist’s interpretation of a general’s recollections, not the recollections themselves.
Sushant Singh has vivid imagination and he has used it to add scenarios in the article wherever it is needed by his narrative. An ordinary person reads the article and gets the impression that it is an extract of Memoirs. It is not. Notice the quotation marks. The text between the quotation marks is the extract. Rest is creative work of Sushant Singh. The scene-setting, the psychological speculation and the comparative historical judgements are product of imagination of Singh. Since the extract is less than 1%, it reads like a non-fiction political–military novella.(More about it in second part of this article.)
Singh built an argument from his narrative which is based on an assumed precedent, selective omission, and the translation of military language into civilian crisis. The accusation is that Prime Minister Modi abdicated responsibility during the August 2020 standoff at Rechin La by telling Army Chief Naravane to “do whatever you deem appropriate.” This phrase, the article claims, shifted the burden of initiating war from elected leadership to military command. It is presented as unprecedented, abnormal, and constitutionally dangerous.
This problem of article is rather simple. The article provides no evidence that this was actually abnormal. It is like calling water as wet. Remember that the words which sound ambiguous without context are often crystal clear in a given context.
The Missing Precedent
Singh invokes Kargil, 1971, and earlier conflicts to establish a norm of clear political ownership. He writes that “memoirs from that period show the CCS being able to own its decisions and issue clear directives to military commanders.” But he does not cite those memoirs. He does not quote cabinet minutes. He does not provide comparative examples of how prime ministers handled tactical fire/don’t-fire decisions at moments of escalation.
What he offers instead is canonical memory. A reputation for decisiveness standing in for documentary proof. Vajpayee and Indira Gandhi are invoked as counter-examples, but their actual decision-making processes at comparable tactical moments remain un-examined. Was Indira Gandhi telling the Army on telephone in 1971 when to fire and from which area to proceed forward? Was Vajpayee telling the soldiers rather naming the soldier who had to scale the Tigar Hill in 1999?
This is not a minor gap. It is the foundation of the argument.
Abdiaction and Delegation
To prove abdication, you must first prove what normal political oversight looks like at the granular level of battlefield decisions. Without that baseline, calling Modi’s instruction abnormal is interpretation, not demonstration. We are left not knowing whether Naravane’s experience was exceptional or simply one instance of a long-standing pattern where Indian political leaders maintain strategic oversight while delegating tactical discretion.
Historical analysis cannot run on assumption. If the claim is that this was unprecedented, the precedent must be proven, not presumed.
The article conflates strategic decisions (whether to go to war, what the political objectives are, what constraints to impose) with tactical decisions (how to position tanks, when to fire, which unit moves where).
Indira Gandhi decided to support Mukti Bahini and liberate Bangladesh. That’s political. She did not tell field commanders which hill to take at what hour. That’s military decision.
Vajpayee decided not to cross the Line of Control during Kargil. That’s political. He did not select which soldier climbed which peak. That’s operational.
Modi told Naravane to act within existing constraints, if possible and use appropriate force, if required. That is delegation within political boundaries, not abdication of political responsibility. Let me elaborate the context.
The Buried Context
The article describes Chinese tanks advancing toward Rechin La as an alarming, near-war moment. It emphasizes distance, urgency, and the possibility of artillery fire. But it omits two technically decisive facts.
First, the tanks were reportedly moving with their guns rotated backward. In armored warfare doctrine, this is transport posture, not combat posture. Tanks in firing configuration have turrets oriented forward or toward the adversary. Guns rotated backward signal mobility, not imminent engagement.
This does not mean the movement was benign. Tanks crossing sensitive terrain are coercive instruments. But coercion is not the same as imminent attack. By not mentioning turret orientation, the article allows readers to collapse “advance” into “attack preparation.” This sharpens the drama and strengthens the abdication charge, but it does so by omission.
Second, India and China have formal agreements prohibiting firearms use near the LAC. These date to 1993 and 1996, with later protocols reinforcing them. This is not vague understanding but treaty-based confidence-building architecture. It has been honored even during extreme violence, which is precisely why Galwan soldiers fought with clubs and stones rather than rifles.
The article mentions restrictions on firing and protocols, but it does not clearly situate these as mutual, long-standing, and treaty-based. This omission makes Indian restraint look uniquely imposed or politically paralyzing. It frames the question “why didn’t we fire?” as potential leadership failure rather than deliberate treaty compliance.
Once this context is restored, Naravane’s hesitation reads differently. Not as isolation under political vacuum, but as strict adherence to an inherited escalation-control framework that both sides were observing.
Do Whatever You Deem Appropriate
For a civilian reader, “do whatever you deem appropriate” sounds like abandonment. It carries the weight of existential loneliness, of being handed an impossible choice without guidance.
But in military language, particularly at senior command level, this phrase has established meaning. It translates to: fire if required, restrain if possible. It operates within a dense lattice of rules, precedents, treaties, and red lines that the commander already knows.
Senior officers are trained for precisely this space where intent is ambiguous, constraints are binding, and the cost of wrong first moves may be strategic rather than tactical. Explicit political micro-orders can actually be dangerous in such fluid situations. The system relies on commanders understanding both the ceiling and the floor.
Naravane’s actual decision supports this reading. He deployed tanks nose-down at close range, creating maximum deterrence without crossing the firing threshold. This is textbook professional soldiering. He neither fired reflexively nor froze. He used geometry and posture to achieve de-escalation.
That is exactly what “appropriate” means in operational context: calibrated force without symbolic escalation.
The article translates this military phrase into civilian moral language and finds abdication. But the translation itself may be the error. What looks like political vacuum to a journalist may be standard delegated authority to a commander.
The Real Question
None of this absolves the governments of serious questions about China policy. The creation of buffer zones that restrict Indian patrolling rights, the acceptance of dual reference points that implicitly validate Chinese LAC claims, the lack of parliamentary transparency, and the suppression of Naravane’s memoir all deserve sustained scrutiny.
The handling of territorial concessions and the opacity around disengagement agreements represent genuine democratic deficits. These are important stories that need rigorous investigation.
But the August 2020 “abdication” charge specifically appears to rest on three unstable pillars: precedent that is assumed rather than proven, context that is selectively omitted, and language that is translated out of its operational meaning.
When you build an argument by omission, arranging facts to support a predetermined narrative while burying technical context that would moderate conclusions, you are not doing investigative journalism. You are doing advocacy dressed as investigation.
It is activist journalism.
The Standard of Proof
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Charging a prime minister with abdication of war-making authority is an extraordinary claim. It demands documentary comparison with past practice, complete operational context, and careful attention to how professional military language actually functions.
The Caravan may have done important work exposing governance failures. But this piece, for all its operational detail and moral urgency, fails its own investigative standard. It offers interpretation where it promises revelation. It assumes norms it does not prove. It omits context that undermines its thesis.
Naravane’s memoir may indeed contain important truths about India’s China crisis. But those truths need to be presented with the context that allows readers to judge for themselves. Method of selective omission to show a story of democratic collapse seems manipulative.
When journalism becomes narrative construction by omission, it loses all the credibility. Media environment is already struggling with credibility, such article do no favour for Caravan Magazine which published this article.
The facts deserve better. So does the reader.
P.S.: The sequence of events betrays an uncanny coincidence. This article became the cause of uproar in parliament on 4 February 2026. There is a long tradition of the Congress Party raising issues from publications to disrupt parliamentary sessions. This has been consistently happening for several years in every session. Was The Caravan Magazine feeding the event?
References:
- Caravan Magazine article: https://caravanmagazine.in/security/navarane-memoir-ladakh-crisis (requires paid subscription)