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The
Naval Foundation Annual KATRARI MEMORIAL LECTURE 2011 will
be delivered by Mr Vinod Rai CAG on 18th Nov in New Delhi
ADMIRAL
RD KATARI-FIRST INDIAN NAVY CHIEF –THE LEGACY
It is an honour ……
 Some
of you may wonder on how I took on this challenge to speak
on the legacy of Admiral Katari. I entered the Service as
a Cadet on the ‘ Tir’ in June 1958, receiving the
‘ Sword of Honour’ in Kochi from the then Chief
of Naval Staff Admiral Katari in 1960 , with a photograph
of the ceremony prominently reproduced in the ‘ Hindu’……and
was promoted a Lieutenant only a few months prior to the Great
Indian Chief demitting Office ……………
The character of our first Chief, reflected in the abiding
traditions and devotion to duty handed down : that professionalism
, strategic vision , and the integrity and character of the
officers and men , is as vital as the weapons acquired and
used .Adm Katari was trained
in TAS in UK. IDU was present in the same parade to be awarded
the First In Order of Merit trophy, and IDU recalls RDK as
he was known asking handsome cadet James(Joginder) Gill a
Sardar who used to trim his beard during inspection, : DO
YOU SHAVE …in his anglasied English. James replied SOME
TIMES SIR and RDK said DO IT MORE OFTEN. James said Ye CNS
BOUHUT SMART HAI….and he knows I trim my beard. Actually
what CNS asked was DO YOU SAIL…… He set high standards
of diction too.
In
later years , when I had the opportunity to call for and carefully
study the ‘policy notes’ in ‘Red Ink’
, a practice that the Commander in Chief , Indian Army initiated,
and his Navy and Air- force colleagues followed down the years
; the thinking , the logic and rationale behind several policies
initiated in the early years by our Chief became clear to
me , as there were several that had a co-relation with national
economic, political and social ideology . In the Jawaharlal
Nehru years they emphasized self-reliance, secular values
, democratic principles , non-alignment and an apolitical
armed forces in sync with India’s national policies ,
with wide representation to all classes , regions and faiths.
In particular , as his dutiful daughter, Smt Lalita Ramdas
perceptively observes in her recently written ‘Afterword’
of her father’s autobiography “A Sailor Remembers”,
his memoirs are replete with insightful observations ………
…The strong influence of ‘Swadeshi’ and the
non-cooperation movement played a decisive role in strengthening
Admiral Katari’ s firm belief in a self-reliant, and
an independent India…”
…………
‘ India’s shores and its commerce were protected
by the British Navy’, as Admiral Katari notes. They were
determined to forget recent history and the history of our
magnificent sea exploits, maritime traditions and achievements
of centuries…………,to repatriate all surpluses
from a captive society.
The
SS Dufferin came into existence in 1927. Yet it was his training
and inspiration under a formidable Captain Digby Beste, which
imbued in the young sailor ( AND
SET IN MOTION INDIAN CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD’S MERCHANT
MARINE and names like Admiral SG Karmarkar INVR also first
course Dufferin who was the first Indian Officer to command
INS CAUVERY and British officers was over taken in seniority
as RDK and later Adm Soman and AK Chatterjee joined as regular
commission ) the core professional values of integrity
and discipline, and the importance of secularism and pluralism
which is reflected again and again throughout his innings
in the service.
RDK
faced with his few Indian colleagues , discrimination , which
they battled successfully with sheer dint of merit and perseverance,
as they enter the Hooghly River Survey and the Bengal Pilot
Service , despite the official protestations of the British
Chamber of Commerce in Calcutta that they feared that the
Hooghly river shipping will close down if Indians were permitted
to enter as Pilots ! Thereafter with this merchant marine
background RDK enters the Indian Navy , symbolizing in a sense
the symbiotic relationship with the merchant navy so essential
to the country and its growing ambitions to use the seas in
its best interests .
Admiral
Katari was to witness the growing role of divisive politics
in the Subcontinent, and the senseless partition imposed on
the country , which had no basis as far as modern nationhood
is concerned , as events in Bangladesh were to subsequently
establish . ……………. Looking back he
poignantly observed the scene on board INS Kistna, to quote
his words - “This particular exercise was surcharged
with emotion and the parting in several cases was tearful,
showing that whatever might have been the political fanaticism
that contrived to bring about the situation, the hearts of
the sailors were in the right place.”
All
eyes were on him after his appointment as Captain(D11), 11th
Destroyer Squadron ,on Rajput, when he took over as Flag Officer
Commanding , Indian Fleet from Rear Admiral Tyrwhitt, a reputed
Destroyer Captain himself . How would one of us compare to
the British Fleet Commander ? The entire Service watched as
he ordered the Fleet on ‘destroyer’ speed manoeuvres
, to come out with flying colours ……….
Admiral
Katari’s greatest contribution and priceless legacy lies
in sterling and ceaseless striving to closely guide , mentor
, oversee, and nurture the Navy’s human resources and
to ensure that standards of discipline , conduct , duty ,
work-ethics , loyalty , upwards and downwards, became a part
of the culture of the Navy’s and its ethos…….
Ethics
and professionalism were always a matter of his abiding concern
, though in later years that seemed to be not a national priority
.As the ‘Afterword’ of his daughter perceptively
puts it “…given that some five decades down the
line , we are seeing the impact of having neglected this key
area of our governance at so many levels , the emphasis of
putting in place a sound personnel framework with an ethical
underpinning, merits a revisit .”
THIS
PART NEEDS CAREFUL READING
Then
Captain Katari made his own personal assessment of the RIN
Mutiny of 1946 , now known as the Navy Uprising 1946 , which
we see as inextricably linked to the aspirations of the freedom
struggle, despite the conditions of service which on the surface
seemed to be the immediate trigger. He took over as the Chief
of Personnel determined to change the culture of the service
as I have tried to briefly enumerate; proceeding to analyse
and then take corrective measures, to re-set short-sighted
and deliberately divisive policies of the British in India
, an experience which he sums up , in his own word as being
“every bit as exciting and satisfying as winning any
battle at sea would be” , and perhaps more enduring than
most battles.
………However
the stumbling and obstructive blocks were already in place
. In this context it is important to quote him on his experiences
with the bureaucracy which had stealthily transformed
itself from the Secretariat of the Defense Minister , to a
self empowered and self aggrandizing Ministry of Defense,
without any Parliamentary or even Government approval on record
, or any file except manipulation between the Secretary ,
in the Secretariat of the Minister of Defense and the Cabinet
Secretary, by the use of semantics taking advantage of the
COAS or the Chairman , COSC , turn over , or even overseas
leave ! To the detriment of the essential interaction between
the Service Chiefs and the Prime Minister and Defence Minister.
Admiral
Katari fearlessly documents the periods of frustration , arising
in the main from overbearing bureaucratic functioning .It
is telling that the tensions , not always creative, between
the armed forces and the civil servants already existed in
those early days in Independent India, and were not attributable
only to the personalities of the incumbents. As he wryly observes
, there were those civil servants “who knew all about
every thing , including operational and technical matters”
;then there are those of the Finance Ministry , “who
did not seem to care what harm they did to the Service as
long as they save money for the exchequer ; and the third
was the neutral group whose effective contribution was the
minimal.” (There has been
minimal change since.)
The
CNS perceptively highlights the fundamental flaw in the Ministry’s
system of functioning , “where officials played no
part in the initial formulation of plans , thus depriving
themselves of the opportunity to appreciate the professional
considerations and requirements as well as financial and practical
limitations in any proposal….They preferred to remain
the ultimate arbiters” . I must observe that it appears
not much has changed. The unfortunate result in his words
was the establishment of “two parallel and frequently
mutually contradictory , hierarchies of critics and controllers
who, however had no responsibility for the implementation
of the plans” . RDK underscores “the importance
of having a clear line of reporting to the political authority
, through appropriate mechanisms; but also makes a point of
noting in his memoirs , that over time the practice had deteriorated
to meetings being presided / chaired by lower level civil
servants” . …………..
Another
important facet of Admiral RDK was his whole hearted commitment
to indigenization………...The CNS while initially
having some reservations on the take over of the Mazagon Docks
and the GRSE , took bold and far reaching steps, not only
to direct the Naval Staff to put their heads together, to
formulate achievable ‘Qualitative Requirements’
and to place orders on the shipyards for a Survey ship/ craft
, LCUs , SDBs , and auxiliary craft of various types. Amongst
the wisest moves was a vital initiative, which resulted in
the proposal to set up the Navy’s Central Design Office
as an adjunct to NHQ in New Delhi, and though it took another
two years after he left in !962 to get the financial sanction,
things on the Design Boards had begun moving. Later Shri S.
Parmanandan was appointed DGND , transferring from the Naval
Dockyard . This setting up of the Design Organisation in sync
with the shipyards, laid the foundations of our Leander Frigate
building program, on which foundation alone, the Indian Navy
leads the Indigenous program among the three services ;
It
is necessary to recall that Admiral Katari was mindful of
the need to induct submarines into the Navy, and it was during
his tenure that the first batch of Officers were deputed for
training in UK . At the same time the careful approach to
sounding the UK and later the US was finalized . The Admiral
, sums up his tenure as our first Chief , despite the backdrop
of all these achievements, in understatements, and with extra-ordinary
modesty, recording that - “I find that I have regretfully
to admit to myself that , absorbing though it was , my spell
of four years as Chief of the Naval Staff was more in the
nature of a holding operation than a period of growth”,
and he adds , “particularly in a quantitative sense .
We within the Service were quite clear, that the function
of the Navy , particularly in our geographical (geo-political
) context, was not just guarding the coastline as it is generally
expressed by the press and the public. The safeguarding of
our strategic maritime frontiers and interests which were
bound to grow in the years to come should extend into areas
well away from our coastline. This vision is what had driven
the plans drawn up as early as 1948, for establishing a two-ocean
navy whose presence would be felt well into distant waters
both to the East and to the West.”
Admiral
Katari’s term as Ambassador to what was then Burma ,
now Myanmar, was equally distinguished , ,……….
His words ring so true to-day : “Barring a few notable
exceptions , our political leadership is characterized by
a desire to advance individuals or groups , by nepotism ,
by dispensing patronage to willing recipients in exchange
for personal service rendered , and by corruption in other
forms ( with the inevitable consequence of subversion of Institutions)…..The
well-being and advancement of the people who voted them into
office appears to have been forgotten by successive governments
in the intoxication of their success….the blame for much
of this is on senior leaders , to set the right example, be
it in the police or the civil services.”
To
us he gave two precious gifts – an immaculate moral compass
and an anchor that holds .
It
may just be appropriate to conclude this eulogy and homage
to our Great Indian Chief by reciting the immortal prayer
from the “Bhagwata” quoted by Jawaharlal Nehru ,
a nation builder who loved the seas , which sums up the philosophy
of life of Admiral Ramdas Katari ;
“
I desire not the supreme state of bliss ……nor the
cessation of re-birth. May I take the sorrow of all creatures
who suffer and enter into them so that they may be made free
from grief”.
“I
am afraid the next world does not interest me . My mind is
full of what I should do in this world and if I see my way
clearly here, I am content. If my duty here is clear , I do
not trouble myself about any other world.”—Nehru.
Admiral
Ramdass Katari was a man of ‘Dharma’ which throughout
Indian civilization has been synonymous with the word ‘Duty’.
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