Readers would be amazed to find out that world’s so-called “largest democracy” is in fact ruled not by elected politicians but by powerful military brass. That over the course of India’s tumultuous history has brazenly assassinated two prime ministers, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, thus wiping out the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, constituting hereditary leadership of India’s only liberal party, Indian National Congress, and replacing it with a Hindu fascist and servile stooge of deep state, Narendra Modi.
How ironic that only two generals in Indian army were promoted out of turn as army chiefs and both were brutally assassinated. One was Gen. Arun Kumar Vaidya who was appointed army chief by Indira Gandhi in 1983 and the other was Bipin Rawat who was appointed army chief by Modi in 2016 while superseding two senior officers.
Following the gruesome assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, her handpicked army chief Gen. Arun Kumar Vaidya also met predestined fate in 1986, only several months after retirement. Both assassinations were alleged to be carried out by Sikhs, but in fact the murder plots had fingerprints of deep state all over, in the backdrop of Siachen conflict and Indian army’s nefarious plot to mount pre-emptive airstrikes on Pakistan’s nuclear installations in the Orwellian year 1984, as disclosed by the US State Dept.’s documents declassified in 2015.
Reagan admin had warned Pakistan in 1984 that India was planning to mount a pre-emptive strike at its nuclear installations before Pakistan could produce adequate stockpile of nuclear warheads constituting a powerful deterrent against future Indian aggression. This information was conveyed to Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in a confidential letter written by President Ronald Reagan on Sept 12, 1984, delivered by Ambassador Hinton, American ambassador to Islamabad.
Reagan’s fear was based on a CIA analysis, which noted in July 1984 that Indian security establishment viewed a Pakistani nuclear threat as imminent. The CIA analysis also added that “an Indian attack on Pakistani nuclear facilities would almost certainly prompt retaliatory strikes against Indian nuclear facilities and probably lead to a full-scale war.”
Besides Pakistan’s nuclear program, another factor that heightened friction between traditional adversaries was Siachen conflict. In 1984, India treacherously mounted Operation Meghdoot to take control of strategically vital Siachen Glacier in Ladakh region, bordering Pakistan and China.
In this backdrop, India’s military brass was requesting permission from the gov’t of Indira Gandhi to mount a pre-emptive strike at Pakistan’s nuclear installations. After Ms. Gandhi denied permission due to fear of full-scale war between traditional rivals, deep state instructed two Sikh bodyguards of Ms. Gandhi, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, to kill her.
Gunmen belonging to Sikh faith were chosen as assassins because Ms. Gandhi had ordered conducting Operation Blue Star at Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984. Thus, the Sikh faith of alleged murderers provided an expedient alibi to real assassins to obfuscate the actual sinister motive of the assassination. It defies common sense as to why Ms. Gandhi would keep Sikh bodyguards in security detail despite mounting military operation at the holiest temple of Sikhism.
In order to erase incriminating evidence and forestall confessional statement that might have spilled the secret, ringleader of hitmen, Beant Singh, was shot dead at the spot, while brainwashed patsies, Satwant and Kehar Singh, were later hanged in Delhi’s Tihar prison.
Incidentally, Indira Gandhi’s heir apparent Sanjay Gandhi had also died in suspicious circumstances, after he lost control of his aeroplane while performing an aerobatic maneuver and crashed in the Diplomatic Enclave of New Delhi in June 1980. Sanjay had previously survived an assassination attempt in March 1977 after unknown gunmen fired at his car from 300 meters during an election campaign in New Delhi.
Indira Gandhi’s second son and arguably last scion of fabled Nehru-Gandhi dynasty Rajiv Gandhi, who served as the prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989, was similarly assassinated in May 1991 by India’s deep state due to his pacifist role in Operation Brasstacks, a military exercise conducted by India’s armed forces along Pakistan’s border, and for withdrawing military support to Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, where a power struggle was ongoing between India and China.
Operation Brasstacks was a massive military exercise of the Indian Armed Forces in the state of Rajasthan along Pakistan’s border from November 1986 to January 1987, mobilizing half a million Indian troops. The operation's aim was to provoke Pakistan to respond and this would’ve provided India with a pretext to mount pre-emptive strikes at its nuclear installations before Pakistan could produce adequate stockpile of nuclear warheads constituting a permanent deterrent against prospective Indian aggressions.
India’s then-Army Chief General Sundarji did not inform Rajiv Gandhi, then newly appointed prime minister following assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, about the scale of the operation and important details were hidden from him. Indian army lobbied the government multiple times, but unsuccessfully, to attack Pakistan.
The war was averted only due to shrewd “Cricket Diplomacy” conducted by Pakistani Gen. Zia-ul-Haq. With Indian troops amassed along the Pakistani border in early 1987, the morning of Feb 21, 1987, presented an altogether different surprise: a Pakistan Air Force jet landed at Delhi airport, with the visitor none other than Pakistan President General Zia-ul-Haq.
The general had flown to Delhi on the pretext of watching a test match between Pakistan and India in Jaipur. Wisdom ultimately prevailed, and the next day, Rajiv met Gen. Zia for dinner. Negotiations were held in cordial atmosphere with intention of reducing tensions at the border. The leaders agreed that in the first phase, both countries would drawdown troops from borders.
But this peacemaking overture precipitated a rift between India’s security establishment and political leadership which, alongside withdrawing India’s military support to Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a Hindu militant organization notorious for inventing suicide bombing, became a reason for Rajiv’s fall from grace and eventual assassination in May 1991.
As Rajiv was campaigning for general elections in India slated from May to June 1991, he was killed at an election rally near Chennai by a female suicide bomber allegedly belonging to Tamil Tigers. As with scapegoating Sikhs for assassinating his mother Indira Gandhi, deep state deployed the plausible alibi of Tamil militants killing Rajiv as retribution to cover its tracks in the brazen murder of Rajiv Gandhi.
Lastly, Bipin Rawat served as the first Chief of Defense Staff of the Indian Armed Forces from January 2020 until his death in a helicopter crash in December 2021. He was regarded as a “political general” and Narendra Modi’s lackey. Despite completing three-year tenure as army chief, the new position of Chief of Defense Staff was created in January 2020 to accommodate him, because Modi wouldn’t trust anybody to lead India’s behemoth armed forces besides him.
Modi had trouble finding Rawat’s replacement, and eventually National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s protégé Anil Chauhan was brought back from retirement to be appointed as Chief of Defense Staff, which is a ceremonial post equivalent to Pakistan’s since-abolished Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff appointment. Indian army’s de facto head has traditionally been army chief, a powerful appointment currently held by Gen. Upendra Dwivedi.
Bipin Rawat was despised by India’s military brass, because despite suffering two humiliating defeats – India’s airstrikes on Pakistan following Pulwama attack in Feb. 2019 when an Indian aircraft was shot down by PAF and pilot held captive and the Galwan incident in disputed Kashmir in May 2020 in which Chinese troops beat to death scores of Indian soldiers – still Rawat was continuing to lead India’s army and there was no way to get rid of him because he had Modi’s blessings.
On fateful morning of December 8, 2021, Rawat’s Mi-17 helicopter took off from the Sulur Air Force Base in Tamil Nadu but failed to reach the destination at Wellington Cantonment, because a bomb aboard the chopper exploded, killing all 14 people onboard, including Rawat and his wife. I don’t mean to implicate Gen. Manoj Naravane in the “typical air crash” but he was army chief at the time of Rawat’s death, who incidentally oversaw counter-insurgency ops and was adept in executing assassination techniques.
Incumbent Chief of Defense Staff Anil Chauhan should also be careful while boarding decrepit aircraft, because India’s antiquated aircraft fleet has a history of “technical malfunctions” and “pilot errors” leading to fatal crashes, while boss of the bosses Army Chief Upendra Dwivedi is yearning to restore military discipline and professionalism by eliminating political appointees from Indian armed forces.
