Naravane's Moment of Truth

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LIEUTENANT GENERAL YOGESH JOSHI, the chief of the Indian Army’s Northern Command, received a phone call at 8.15 pm on 31 August 2020. The information he received alarmed him. Four Chinese tanks, supported by infantry, had begun moving up a steep mountain track towards Rechin La in eastern Ladakh. Joshi reported the movement to the chief of army staff, General Manoj Mukund Naravane, who immediately grasped the severity of the situation. The tanks were within a few hundred metres of Indian positions on the Kailash Range, the strategic high ground that Indian forces had seized, hours earlier, in a dangerous race with China’s People’s Liberation Army. In this terrain on the disputed Line of Actual Control—the de facto border between the two countries—every metre of elevation translates to strategic dominance.

The Indian soldiers fired an illuminating round, a kind of warning shot. It had no effect. The Chinese kept advancing. Naravane began making frantic calls to the leaders of India’s political and military establishment, including Rajnath Singh, the defence minister; Ajit Doval, the national security advisor; General Bipin Rawat, the chief of defence staff; and S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs. “To each and every one my question was, ‘What are my orders?’” Naravane writes in his as-yet-unpublished memoir, Four Stars of Destiny.

The situation was deteriorating dramatically and demanded clarity. There was an existing protocol. Naravane had clear orders not to open fire “till cleared from the very top.” His superiors did not give any clear directive. Minutes ticked by. At 9.10 pm, Joshi called again. The Chinese tanks continued to advance and were now less than a kilometre from the pass. At 9.25 pm, Naravane called Rajnath again, asking “for clear directions.” None came.