Historical lapses

Rajiv Gandhi also ordered the setting up of a large editorial infrastructure to write the histories of the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars. These accounts have not been published so far, at least not officially, although the minimum requirement of 30 years lapsing before the de-classification of documents has long gone past. Two of these, however, were put on its website by a newspaper some years ago! Last year the government set up another committee to see whether these could be officially released to the public; and we may see some action in the near future. But the problem is that, after decades, the context in which these events happened has altered. In fact far more relevant, even authoritative, information has appeared in the public domain abroad and in India, which makes these histories redundant.

Given the track record of the ministry of defence over the decades, it may indeed be too much to expect that the official history of 1999 Kargil War would have been written. Official histories of the services in peace and war are singularly absent. Even Pakistan, which by any account has very limited transparency in its defence activities, has done better than India in this respect. Except for the 1961 Congo operations, we have not even published the official history of the large number of UN peacekeeping missions that we have undertaken. These could have provided valuable knowledge to later commanders and planners and helped them to develop their own insights. The government would do well to appoint a permanent body to plan and oversee the publication of official histories on a continuing basis.