Naravane’s India-China claims rock Parliament, Rahul Gandhi barred from citing memoir

NEw new delhi : Former ground forces chief superior general Manoj Mukund Naravane’s claims –– in an unpublished rule book –– on unity of the most delicate moments during the India-China military standoff in eastern Ladakh that allegedly brought the rival armies to the brink of a shooting war in August 2020 triggered a political firestorm on Monday, with the Lok Sabha’s Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi attempting to refer to events detailed in the memoir in the Lower House and the government vehemently objecting to it because the book has not been published.Gandhi was referring to excerpts of the former chief’s yet-to-be-released autobiography Four Stars of Destiny, published in The Caravan magazine on Sunday in an article, titled Naravane’s Moment of Truth. The strapline read: “An army chief’s unpublished memoir exposes how the Modi government spun the China border crisis”.Naravane’s account of the developments that took place on the Kailash range on the southern side of Pangong Tso on August 31, 2020, and a purported lack of an immediate political directive on how the Indian Army should respond to the Chinese provocation lie at the centre of the controversy.The book was supposed to be released in January 2024 but was blocked by the defence ministry as the author had not obtained the necessary clearances before writing about sensitive operational matters, especially when the standoff was still raging at the time.Naravane did not respond to phone calls and text messages by HT. However, in October 2025, he said the book was still under review by the defence ministry.The government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) responded to Gandhi’s attempt to raise the issue by referencing the 1962 war with China in which India ceded territory (and which was fought when the Congress was in charge), and by pointing to Naravane’s categorical comments after the standoff that China had not occupied any Indian territory.Gandhi’s repeated efforts to raise the issue eventually saw the House being adjourned for the day. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla referred to two rules, 349 and 353, to disallow Gandhi from quoting from the book. Birla cited Rule 349 which says, “Whilst the House is sitting, a member shall not read any book, newspaper or letter except in connection with the business of the House…” Rule 353 says “No allegation of a defamatory or incriminatory nature shall be made by a member against any person unless the member has given adequate advance notice to the Speaker and also to the Minister concerned so that the Minister may be able to make an investigation into the matter for the purpose of a reply: Provided that the Speaker may at any time prohibit any member from making any such allegation if the Speaker is of opinion that such allegation is derogatory to the dignity of the House or that no public interest is served by making such allegation.”The 39-page Caravan article highlights Naravane’s dilemma of how to respond to some aggressive Chinese manoeuvres near the Kailash range on the night of August 31, in the alleged absence of a clear directive from the Indian political leadership. According to the article, Lieutenant General YK Joshi, the Northern Army commander at the time, had alerted Naravane about the Chinese advances over the phone at 8.15 pm.“Four Chinese tanks, supported by infantry, had begun moving up a steep mountain track towards Rechin La in eastern Ladakh…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,” it says, citing his memoir.Gandhi mentioned the four tanks in Lok Sabha but wrongly referred to Doklam as the place of action.Naravane was the army chief from December 31, 2019 to April 30, 2022 --- a period of heightened military activity in eastern Ladakh in the backdrop of the standoff along the contested Line of Actual Control (LAC).“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 article notes, adding that the situation was deteriorating dramatically and demanded clarity.To be sure, the Indian Army’s lightning takeover of strategic heights on the southern side of Pangong Tso on the night of August 29, 2020, stunned the Chinese PLA, gave it (the Indian Army) heft in subsequent military negotiations, and eventually paved the way for the first and crucial round of disengagement of rival soldiers and weaponry from the Pangong Tso sector in eastern Ladakh, as previously reported by HT.The bold moves on the Kailash range and other heights on the southern bank were a game changer and tilted the balance in favour of the Indian Army for the first time then, months after the border row erupted in April-May 2020. The PLA wasn’t expecting the Indian Army to take control of the southern heights when the entire focus was on developments on the northern bank where the Chinese had then intruded into Indian territory and grabbed positions on Finger 4 overlooking Indian deployments.The Caravan article says 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,” the article claims.Narvane, it adds, made yet another call to the defence minister, who promised to call back. “Time stretched. Each minute was a minute closer to Chinese tanks reaching the top. Rajnath called back at 10.30 pm. He had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose instructions consisted of a single sentence. ‘Jo uchit samjho, woh karo’ --- do whatever you deem appropriate.”The Indian Army, as reported by HT, had occupied a series of strategic heights to prevent the PLA from grabbing Indian territory on the southern bank of Pangong Tso in a stealthy midnight move on August 29, 2020. In swift follow-up action that threw the PLA off balance, the Indian Army rushed its front-line tanks and infantry combat vehicles (ICVs) to the new heights held by its soldiers. The Indian Army’s control of ridgeline positions on the southern bank allowed it to completely dominate the sector and keep an eye on Chinese military activity.However, the essay brings out Naravane’s predicament on August 31. “’I had been handed a hot potato,’ Naravane recalls in his memoir, according to the article. “With this carte blanche (given by PM), the onus was now totally on me.”India and China wrapped up the disengagement process in Pangong Tso area in mid-February 2021, with their armies pulling back forward-deployed troops, tanks, ICVs and artillery guns from strategic heights where rival soldiers fired shots for the first time along the LAC in 2020. The last recorded incident when bullets were fired at the LAC was in October 1975, when the PLA ambushed an Indian patrol in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tulung La sector and shot four soldiers dead.The situation on both banks of Pangong Tso was extremely tense before the disengagement took place, with Joshi admitting in February 2021 that India and China were on the brink of war after the actions on the southern bank.Naravane earlier created a stir by revealing that the Agnipath scheme caught the army by surprise and was a bolt out of the blue for the air force and the navy. His take on the scheme for short-term recruitment of soldiers figured in the excerpts of his autobiography, reviewed by news agency PTI in December 2023. The excerpts revealed Naravane sounded out the Prime Minister about the ‘tour of duty’ scheme for the short-term induction of soldiers in the army in early 2020, but months later the PMO came out with a formulation with a wider scope to include all the three services.In Parliament, parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju said: We must decide what to do with a member who doesn’t want to follow the ruling. You [Rahul Gandhi] should be teaching others… You are a five-time MP.Outside Parliament, Gandhi said: It is uncomfortable for defence minister [Rajnath Singh] and Prime Minister [Narendra Modi], I understand... If it was not uncomfortable, they would have let me speak.Memoir in limboGeneral Naravane’s 448-page autobiography Four Stars of Destiny was supposed to be released by Penguin Random Random House India in January 2024 but was blocked by the defence ministry as the author had not obtained the necessary clearances before writing about sensitive operational matters, especially when the India-China military standoff was still raging at the time.Naravane was the army chief from December 31, 2019 to April 30, 2022 –– a period of heightened military activity in eastern Ladakh in the backdrop of the standoff along the contested LAC. His account of the developments that took place on the Kailash range on the southern side of Pangong Tso on August 31, 2020, and a purported lack of an immediate political directive on how the Indian Army should respond to the Chinese provocation lie at the centre of the controversy.Norms for clearanceThe manuscript of any book that contains sensitive operational details must be cleared by the army’s additional directorate general of strategic communication before it can be published. This wing comes under Deputy Chief of the Army Staff (Strategy).Depending on the contents, the additional directorate general of strategic communication may send the manuscript for vetting to relevant directorates, including those dealing with military operations and military intelligence. A book can be published only after such clearance.In the case of Naravane’s book, the manuscript wasn’t submitted to the additional directorate general of strategic communication for the necessary approvals. After some controversial excerpts were published in December 2023, the defence ministry wrote to Naravane and the publisher to submit the book for clearance to the army before publishing it. The army went through the book in detail, recorded its observations on the subjects covered in it, and sent it to the defence ministry to take the final call. The defence ministry has thus far not given its clearance to the former chief’s book.