Chandigarh: The recent retreat from the disastrous 2022 Agnipath scheme for recruiting Personnel Below Officer Rank (PBOR) on limited tours of duty, which the top service brass not only helped formulate but also actively defended to please the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) government, has sparked a lively debate on social media.A series of WhatsApp posts after Chief of Defence Staff General N.S. Raja Subramani recanted Agnipath on November 4 recalls a time when senior commanders and service chiefs were prepared to boldly challenge political leaders when they believed the interests of the armed forces were at stake.One such message was shared by a two-star Indian Army veteran, who has asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions, and recalls an episode from the early years after Independence that illustrates the forthrightness associated with an earlier generation of military commanders.According to this post, whose broad account is supported by several historical references, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is said to have suggested at a gathering of senior Army commanders that, since Indian officers lacked the experience to lead the Army, a British general should be appointed for a limited period until they were better equipped to take over.Many officials and politicians at the gathering reportedly nodded in agreement. But Lieutenant General Nathu Singh Rathore from the erstwhile princely state of Dungarpur in Rajasthan, educated at Mayo College, Ajmer, and subsequently trained at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in the UK, took sharp issue with the suggestion. Known for his forthright views and frequent run-ins with both British and Indian military authorities, he reportedly retorted: “Sir, we do not have enough experience to govern a country either. Should we therefore appoint a British Prime Minister to lead India?”His tart response, recounted by Major General V.K. Singh in his account of Nathu Singh, drawing on papers made available to him by the latter’s family, was greeted by stunned silence. And while Gen Singh’s exact riposte cannot be independently confirmed from contemporary records, the episode more than captures the spirit of an earlier generation of senior Indian soldiers prepared to question political authority when they believed the interests of the armed forces were at stake.Nehru is then said to have asked Nathu Singh whether he would be willing to become Army chief. Singh reportedly replied, with characteristic bluntness, that the Army already had a “very talented officer” in General K.M. Cariappa, who was better qualified for the appointment. Nehru agreed, and Cariappa became India’s first commander-in-chief on January 15, 1949, retiring in 1953 and being conferred the rank of field marshal in 1986, four years before his death.“Whatever the precise circumstances – and wording – of the exchange, it reflects an ethos associated with an earlier generation of militarymen,”said a three-star Army veteran in Chandigarh, declining to be named as he was speaking on a sensitive matter.Also read: Agnipath: The Military’s Four-Year March Into a Six-Year MessThe nub of the matter, he declared, is that officers of that generation – Cariappa, Thimayya and, later, Sam Manekshaw – were all prepared to disagree with the government when military considerations demanded it, without regarding such candour as disloyalty. They understood that political neutrality did not mean political subservience and that the duty to serve an elected government required commanders who were not just its yes-men, he added.An even clearer operational illustration of such professional steadfastness, after Nathu Singh’s retort to Nehru, came in 1971. At the time, General – later Field Marshal – S.H.F.J. Manekshaw was under intense political pressure from an autocratic Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to intervene militarily in East Pakistan in order to stem the massive influx of millions of Bengali refugees fleeing a murderous Pakistani army into India.When she asked what the Army could do to counter this, Manekshaw’s now-famous, astonishingly blunt, one-word reply – ‘Nothing’ – reportedly left those present at the meeting momentarily stunned, much as General Nathu Singh’s retort to Nehru had done years earlier.Manekshaw then went on to professionally elaborate that while the Army could be battle-ready by June or July 1971, sound military judgement and logistical realities favoured postponing an operation until November or December, after the monsoon had receded and the waterlogged terrain of East Pakistan no longer impeded troop and vehicle movement. He also warned of the possibility of Chinese intervention from the north, and the dangers of being exposed to a two-front war. Gandhi listened, negotiated strategic treaties with the Soviet Union, and Bangladesh came into existence in December 1971.Such accounts of earlier Indian military chiefs standing their ground with political leaders, without fear of career repercussions, continue to be recounted with admiration by armed forces officers even today. The irony is that this professional independence went hand in hand with a military whose officers and men were held in high social esteem.Service salaries were modest, but the uniform commanded immeasurable respect, and those who wore it were expected to – and largely did – uphold high standards of personal and public conduct. Military officers and even PBORs were much sought-after as prospective bridegrooms, and older retired jawans still nostalgically recall the era when a mere note from their commanding officer, or his equivalent in the Indian Air Force or Indian Navy, to local authorities in their home town or village carried considerable weight and invariably secured a favourable response. Politics was rarely discussed in both the PBOR langar’s and officers’ messes, and senior commanders were expected to offer their professional advice without calculating how it might affect their prospects for promotion or lucrative appointments after retirement.That ethos, several veterans argue, began to incrementally unravel in the late 1970s, following the Third Pay Commission that ushered in changes to the military’s rank and career structures. It fundamentally altered the relationship between rank, responsibility and pay, while ostensibly seeking to improve officers’ career prospects through the dilution and proliferation of ranks. Periodic cadre reviews compounded the problem, spawning an increasingly top-heavy hierarchy in which senior officers found themselves performing duties that had earlier been handled by those considerably junior. Moreover, the overall military expansion, particularly the Army, in response to growing security threats from China and Pakistan on the northern and western fronts, brought with it a burgeoning of senior ranks, but not necessarily any corresponding increase in their authority or responsibilities.The resulting pyramidical promotion structure further distorted military careers, triggering greater competition and intra-service tension. With a limited number of higher appointments and an expanding pool of officers competing for them, many brigadiers, major generals and lieutenant generals spent barely 12 to 18 months in their posts before moving on or retiring.Consequently, such short tenures left little time to implement meaningful changes or establish continuity in command. More damagingly, succeeding generations of senior officers increasingly turned to political and bureaucratic patronage to secure advancement while in service and lucrative appointments after retirement. Hence, the professional independence that had once allowed commanders to disagree openly with the government gradually gave way to caution, careerism and gratuitous accommodation.Such erosion of professional independence, in turn, led to a Faustian bargain between the military and the political establishment, which has become more pronounced in recent years. It is no secret that sections of the senior officer corps have increasingly identified themselves with the BJP-led government since 2014, which has been equally eager to appropriate military achievements for electoral gain.Several veterans also point disappointingly to the growing religiosity within the military, mostly the Army, as another, particularly troubling, departure from its earlier inclusive character. In earlier decades, personal faith was generally kept private, and the uniform remained above overt religious identification. In recent years, however, especially from 2014 onwards, this boundary has become opaque and blurred, with officers and jawans publicly displaying religious allegiance whilst in uniform, senior commanders visiting questionable godmen, participating in religious ceremonies and flaunting such encounters on social media.In a recent commentary in The Hindu, defence analyst Colonel Ajai Shukla (retired) cited a July seminar on atmanirbharta in New Delhi where an address by a three-star IAF officer reportedly contained more Sanskrit than English or Hindi. One attendee wondered whether the address was intended for the entrepreneurs and engineers present or for members of the BJP’s Sangh Parivar. Shukla added that military speakers were increasingly peppering their public addresses with Sanskrit shlokas in recent years, observing that the IAF appeared to do so more than the Army or the Navy. Soldiers participating in Bageshwar’s sermon, posted on X by @Bageshwardham, January 24, 2026.Videos circulating on social media of uniformed soldiers sitting at the feet of self-styled religious figures, or the army chief appearing bare-chested and dressed in saffron at a temple alongside the defence minister, have become routine, and are celebrated by politicians and numerous electronic and print media outlets alike. In response, a shrinking cross-section of veterans has raised the alarm that mixing military service with religious symbols and political messaging is fast turning the armed forces, particularly the Army, into an ‘instrument of majoritarian identity’, alienating personnel of other faiths and destabilising the military’s inherently secular character. The aforementioned three-star Army veteran argued that a similar erosion of institutional independence had become evident in the military leadership’s handling of government policy and political messaging, with the Agnipath scheme providing the most recent and glaring example. He said that when the government prevailed upon the services to implement this sweeping reform in mid-2022, its stated objectives were to reduce the massive pension bill, which was eating into the annual defence budget, and build a younger fighting force. Also read: Agnipath: Four Years On, the Damage Control BeginsBut, he added that rather than subjecting this proposal- doubtlessly the most sweeping restructuring of the armed forces since Independence-to closer scrutiny, flagging the likely fallout, which was hardly difficult to foresee, and strongly opposing it, senior military leaders, led by two successive Chiefs of Defence Staff, threw their weight behind the policy and defended it publicly.However, four years later, having helped hard-sell and implement Agnipath, the military leadership cannot now wash its hands of its inherent shortcomings, which forced the government to recast the scheme last week by granting 75% of the first batch of recruits a further two years of service. Yet none of those in uniform who championed the scheme has even hinted that their judgement was seriously flawed or that they should have opposed it on sound military grounds, particularly given its long-term implications for operational effectiveness.Even former Army Chief of Staff General M.M. Naravane, who offers a revealing account in his unpublished memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, that the Agnipath directive came like a “bolt from the blue” for the services, went along with the proposal, rather than opposing a scheme with such seriously adverse consequences for the armed forces.The contrast with General Nathu Singh’s countering Nehru and Field Marshal Manekshaw’s handling of Indira Gandhi in standing up to political authority is difficult to miss. After all, Agnipath was, without doubt, one of the most consequential overhauls of the armed forces in nearly 80 years, yet it was pushed through shambolically, without even rudimentary professional assessment by the service leadership of its likely consequences. In the end, a military leadership more intent on pleasing the government than speaking its mind risks forfeiting the professional authority it was once respected for, to the country’s detriment. And the country, not the top military brass, could end up paying the price.