The photograph of the Union defence minister, A.K. Antony, being carried away by senior army officers when he fainted during the passing out parade of the National Defence Academy in Pune was seen not only by the whole country but also by the world at large. There was something deeply discomfiting about the picture. The embarrassment came from the display of vulnerability by someone no less than the head of the armed forces. On the defence minister depends the planning, promotion, demotion and deployment of the army. Moreover, the entire top brass of the Union ministry and the military report to him. In effect, he symbolizes the face and future of the Indian defence force.

Within the rigid hierarchy of the army, the defence minister represents something like a living god to his subordinates. Even his four-star general has to address him as ‘sir’. If a man in such a prestigious position collapses in front of his generals, colonels, subalterns and soldiers during a peacetime parade in a training academy, this is bound to come as a shock to the rank and file of the nation’s armed forces. More so, because history tells us that the fall of the commander has inevitably resulted in the fall and defeat of his forces.

In juxtaposition to the photograph of Antony’s collapse was the widely circulated picture of the president of India, Pratibha Patil, the supreme commander of the armed forces, brandishing a captured Kalashnikov rifle in a mock-firing posture in Srinagar. The two pictures generated very different reactions among senior officials of the army. The smiling, joyful Patil in Srinagar reflected the best of times to the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the chief of the army staff and the entire plenipotentiary of the president’s entourage. In contrast, the slumped Antony in Pune stood for the worst of times.

Rise and fall

Antony’s passing out is all the more dismaying because it suggests a lack of medical fitness that can be damning for a defence minister. Although a man might fall ill in spite of all precautions, fitness programmes are compulsory for the entire armed force. No two-or-three star general can aspire to attain the four-star rank without being medically fit. It is thus distressing that the head of the armed forces had fallen so sick that he had to be hauled away by his subordinates.

Coming back to Patil’s picture with the gun, some sections of Indians have expressed anguish over the president’s pose, claiming that it conveyed the wrong message. However, what does the president, who is also the supreme commander of the armed forces, do in the midst of soldiers including the army chief? It is her duty to inspire the soldiers to fight well and be victorious. She can show her encouragement not by actually firing the gun but only through a mock-drill with a captured gun. The president obviously did no wrong.

In contrast, the collapse of Antony must have alarmed his well-wishers and delighted the detractors. The long-term and the less palpable consequences of Antony’s faint could be more damaging than what is immediately evident. The collapse of the defence minister of India is bound to give the enemies of the State a valid reason to rejoice. It will also give them a chance to regroup, as the faultlines in India’s defence system become all too glaring. But to the soldiers and the law-abiding citizens scattered all over the country, the scene of Antony’s ‘fall’ is one that needs to be forgotten and not repeated. Any Indian would prefer to see the president fiddling with a captured gun to the defence minister collapsing in front of his subordinates.