Military intervention in government in India and Pakistan

Primarily the reason for Pakistan's plight lies in its creation itself. Pakistan was carved out of India to fullfill the ambition of one man Mohd Ali Jinah who rallied the like minded enthusiasts behind him. Its was never actually meant to be a muslim India as was advocated. The seed of dictatorship were laid there and then. Pakistan never came out of that illusion.

I disagree with the arguments above which talk of "heavy Muslim composition of British army..." or the "streamlining of Indian armed forces..." as reasons for the non military interference in Indian democracy. The fact remains that the British rule and their atrocities made people of republic of India believe in very foundations of democracy - a system of their own and for their own. The political class was looked upon as the guardian to create a better India and fortunately they did make some right noises too and hence importance of armed forces was almost sidelined. It was only during a war situation that people ever exhibited a leaning or concern for the army. But yes, a commendible job too by the army that all this while they remained professional and adhered to their job of guarding our great nation despite the lack of concern from its own civilians and constant agression from Pakistan.

On the contrary Pakistan began its journey as a dictatorship and in due course it transformed into a military junta. People had inspiration, no history, no heros to idiolise or believe in. The first time Pakistan ever moved closed to a democracy was year 1970 with free and fair elections however same didnt go down well with Ayub Khan and eventually we witnessed worse genocide in the history. Credits to America, the jihadi forces got a stronhold in the country and the army-jihadi nexus became all powerful to call the shots.

The difference between the trajectories of the two nations regarding polity may be attributed to many facts: A few of them are already mentioned above. Let us revisit them and add few dimensions of our own to the paradigm:

1. Disproportionate Size of Army to Civilian population.
2. Foundation of Idea of a Nation: Indian Nationalism is far older and deeply cherished by its Citizens than Pakistan which was created by a handful of elites in the name of perceived threat to religious minorities post independence. A Nation needs to inspire it's Citizens with belongingness, hope for future on a continual basis to ensure it's survival. For Pakistan, after its creation, not even a single national idea remained for consumption of masses. Untimely death of Jinnah may have played its part but the question remains is what he has to offer pakistani Citizens for future when the only demand that he had was already met. On the contrary, INC and Nehru described independence just as a milestone though an important one, a lot more remained to be achieved in social, political and economic life. Hatred of Hindus & perceived threat from India was an idea founding resonance with Pakistani masses which was able to gel them together. The Armed forces were able to sieze the opportunity of being the sole champion of this cause in the eyes of People of pakistan.
3. Islamic Culture : No leader of Islamic World has ever been accepted by people without having a past of military exploits. Muslims, particularly of Pakistan consider them as a martial race. Democracy is something in conflict with the basic ideologies of Islamic Societies. Most of the Pakistanis wanted their leaders like Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan or Parvez Musharraf to be the next Mahmud Ghaznavi, Mohd Ghori or Ahmed Shah Abdali thus providing them with a legitimacy to rule and thus turning a blind eye towards the means by which they have attained power.
4. No institutional evolution in Pakistan as compared to India: During its formative years, the indian leadership provided the country with atmosphere for growth of institutions - Judiciary, election commission etc in such a way so they may evolve on their own and attain maturity thus paving way for establishment of institutions whose existence don't depend on persons but their own processes. In nutshell it can be said that with each progressive phase of post-independence, the Indian Citizen's faith in Democracy and it's institutions have grown much. Contrastly, in case of Pakistan absence of comparable institutions of democracy at any stage has led the people look towards Army as their Messiah. In Short it can be summarized that, The very nature of evolution of institutions in both cases based on the psyc of the respective Societies is the true reason of both Countries adopting a contrasting trajectory as far as polity is concerned.

After Independence, the Indian National Congress was confident of winning a General Election because of its superb grass-roots network and system of patronage. Moreover, Nehru understood that it was his enemies on the Right who had most to lose from free and fair elections while his friends on the Left, outside the Congress, stood most to benefit.

Convincing election victories- in which the main opposition was visibly Leftist- gave the Indian regime great legitimacy. There could be no question of an Army coup because the Sandhurst trained General Staff had less influence over the NCOs than their 'gram sarpanch' (village headman) who was probably already part of the Congress machine.

In Pakistan, the situation was very different. Jinnah and Liaqat's Muslim League had successfully played the 'Islam in danger' card but there was no way they could carry East Bengal- which had the majority of voters and whose politicians were far more like their counterparts across the border.

Even within West Pakistan, immigrant politicians like Liaqat were at a disadvantage. The Muslim landed gentry preferred to deal with Aristocratic Premiers, like Tiwana, as opposed to verbose middle class lawyers .

On the other hand, the military- because their officers were rewarded with generous land grants (something which didn't happen in India)- had to work with the 'feudal' land-lords and accommodate their interests. In any case, after the assassination of Liaqat, the Muslim League had no West Wing leaders of stature who were not disqualified by reason of Religious affiliation.

In the event, a former soldier turned Political Service officer rose to the top but his unpopularity was such that the ambitious Army Chief had no difficulty packing him off to exile.

What alternative was there to the Army? The politicians wouldn't hold elections and thus secure legitimacy because they would lose. The Civil Service had no link to the grass-roots. By contrast, the Army had a network which reached down to the villages. Thus General Ayub Khan saw it as sponsoring something called 'Basic Democracy'. However, elections were still represented a source of danger. Fatima Jinnah, the elderly sister of the founder of the country, did surprisingly well by falsely claiming that Ayub had sold out to the Indians on the Indus water issue.

Democracy wasn't good for Pakistan. It split the country and then enthroned a paranoid dictator. The Army had to step in to hang him by the neck simply to save their own skins.

In contrast to India, the Pakistani political class had not developed esprit de corps by sharing jail cells nor had they established a personal reputation for self-sacrifice.

By contrast, the Pakistani soldier- however much he might enrich himself- needed to have shown courage in battle simply so as to be accepted by his peers. Thus, disillusionment with elected politicians, who enrich themselves unconscionably, always leaves a window open, in Pakistan, for military intervention because there literally is no alternative.

In my opinion, although both India and Pakistan's military were involved in military conflict soon after their birth, India's military directly inherited the structure laid down by the British. One of the things that the British very strongly believed in was the subservience of the military to the civilian leadership.

Pakistan had to develop a new military structure from scratch, and none of its leaders could enforce that culture. Moreover, the military got very powerful due to its role in military conflicts almost immediately after its birth. This changed the dynamics of the civilian-military relationship in Pakistan.

I believe a number of reasons have contributed to this:

1. Perceived threat from India leading to an over-powerful military organization, with the nascent nationalist perspective of the general public finding an identity and sense of pride in the powerful military their country possessed. In other words, the people of the country thought in the following way: We may not be great in health/literacy/human rights etc. but we have a powerful army so let's celebrate that! This led to the acceptance of the military organization as something good and to be supported.

2. Wrong political fundamentals in laying the basis of the nation, which were not entirely democratic in nature (and may have had links to violence ab initio). This led to identity crisis for the political classes as they had no strong ideology to bank on. The political vaccum was filled by the military.

3. Continuation of feudalism caused subjugation of the rural masses which stifled independent political thought among them.

In India's case the huge size of the nation, coupled with some wise fundamental ideas which shaped the sense of Indian-ness (non-violence, anti-feudalism, etc.) ensured that the military never got an upper hand.

While the size of India and the presence of multi cultural society makes it hard for an armed force to take control of the entire country I think the structure of the Indian army makes it even harder.

1. India's military is not independent of the democratic structure. The President of the Republic of India is the supreme commander of the armed forces and the three arms --land, air, and naval are independent of each other. While the former is true for many countries including Pakistan, the latter is not usually the case. Each service branch of the Indian armed forces has an independent Chief of Staff who only reports to the President of India. Although India has a chairman of the chief of staff committee, that post has no formal executive power of the committee. The President of India too has no formal executive power (except during times of emergency) and most of the power is exercised by the Ministry of Defence that is answerable to the Parliament and the People of India.

2. In addition, India has a fourth branch of armed forces that reports directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs (not the ministry of Defence). This branch is commonly referred to as the paramilitary force. According to the Wikipedia article I cited above, it has some 65,000 active personnel.

So in theory, this structure makes it very hard to make military coups a success without loss of civilian life. Whether or not that itself resulted in no coups in India is a highly debatable question but I would definitely say it is a contributory factor.