Centre approves policy to declassify war histories, ops
In a significant development that will help set the record straight on India’s military history, defence minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday approved a new policy to declassify war histories and records of military operations in a time-bound manner to give the country an accurate account of events, provide authentic material for research and counter unfounded rumours, the defence ministry said in a statement.
The policy on “archiving, declassification and compilation of war and operations histories” mandates the setting up of a committee headed by a joint secretary in the defence ministry and consisting of representatives of the armed forces, external affairs and home ministries and prominent military historians (if required).
The development is significant as the military has faced uncomfortable questions about several events including the sinking of an Indian warship in the 1971 Indopak war, the 1999 Kargil war and contentious war accounts authored by veterans. It was not clear if the policy would lead to the declassification of the Henderson Brooks-bhagat report on the reasons behind India’s defeat in the 1962 India-china war.
“The committee will take a view on earlier wars and operations,” an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Australian journalist Neville Maxwell had made portions of the Henderson Brooks-bhagat report public on the internet in March 2014 triggering a debate on India’s worst military defeat. The report practically held the entire civilian and military leadership responsible for driving the country into a war it wasn’t prepared for.
The BJP then demanded that the report, authored by Lieutenant General Thomas Bryan Henderson Brookes and Brigadier PS Bhagat, be declassified immediately. But in July 2014, then defence minister Arun Jaitley told Parliament that the release of the document would not be in national interest.
The government declassified the 1947-48 Kashmir operations in 1987. The defence ministry’s History Division has published histories of the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars. The responsibility for declassification of records rests with the respective organisations as specified in the Public Records Act 1993 and Public Record Rules 1997, the ministry said in the statement.
“...records should ordinarily be declassified in 25 years. Records older than 25 years should be appraised by archival experts and transferred to the National Archives of India once the war/ operations histories have been compiled,” the statement said.
The History Division, set up in October 1953, will be responsible for coordination with various departments for compiling, seeking approval and publishing war and operations histories.
“It’s good to have certain aspects of a war or a campaign declassified for people... But there are certain aspects that are confidential and need not come out in the public domain...,” said Lieutenant General VK Ahluwalia (retd), director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies.