New Delhi: Explosive excerpts from an unpublished memoir by former Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane have reopened the most uncomfortable chapter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s China policy — suggesting that at a moment of acute military crisis in eastern Ladakh, the Prime Minister chose ambiguity over command and passed the burden of war decisions directly to the Army.
The memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, is yet to receive clearance from the Ministry of Defence but forms the basis of a detailed cover story published by The Caravan.
The revelations, published in The Caravan magazine, sparked repeated disruptions in the Lok Sabha on Monday after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi attempted to quote from the account, accusing the Modi government of political indecision during the 2020 standoff with China. Treasury benches reacted with visible unease, blocking any reference to the memoir on the ground that it has not yet been cleared for publication by the Ministry of Defence.
The article offers a blow-by-blow account of a critical moment on the night of August 31, 2020, when Chinese tanks advanced towards Rechin La in eastern Ladakh, barely hours after Indian forces had occupied strategic heights along the Kailash Range.
Then Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Yogesh Joshi alerted Army chief Naravane as the tanks moved to within striking distance.
According to the account, Lieutenant General Yogesh Joshi, then commander of the Army’s Northern Command, alerted Gen Naravane at 8.15 pm that four Chinese tanks, backed by infantry, were moving towards Indian positions. An illuminating round — a warning shot — failed to stop the advance. With the situation rapidly deteriorating, Naravane began making urgent calls to the political and military leadership, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and then Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat.
“To each and every one, my question was, ‘What are my orders?’” Naravane writes, as quoted in the article.
Despite the tanks closing in to within a kilometre of Indian positions, Naravane records that he was bound by standing instructions not to open fire “till cleared from the very top.” Yet, according to the account, no clear directive came. Even after repeated calls to the defence minister seeking explicit orders, the political leadership remained non-committal.
As minutes passed and Chinese armour closed in, Naravane records that the Army was prepared to respond with medium artillery. Yet, despite the gravity of the situation, the political leadership failed to issue explicit instructions. Even repeated calls to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh yielded no clear directive.
When Singh finally called back after consulting Prime Minister Modi, the message conveyed was startling in its abdication: “Jo uchit samjho, woh karo” — do whatever you deem appropriate. The decision to open fire, escalate, or pull back was left entirely to the Army chief.
“I had been handed a hot potato,” Naravane writes. “With this carte blanche, the onus was now totally on me.”
The memoir starkly contradicts the Modi government’s carefully cultivated image of decisive leadership on national security. At a moment when Chinese tanks were advancing on Indian territory, the Prime Minister, according to this account, neither authorised action nor took responsibility for restraint, instead shifting the burden of a potentially catastrophic war decision onto the military.
Naravane writes of the dilemmas he faced alone: whether India could sustain a prolonged conflict, the uncertainty of global support, the risk of a collusive China-Pakistan front, and the catastrophic consequences of escalation. “We were ready in all respects,” he notes, “but did I really want to start a war?”
It was this portrayal of political vacuum at the top that Rahul Gandhi attempted to raise in Parliament. He argued that war and peace decisions cannot be outsourced to generals while elected leaders evade accountability. His remarks were immediately challenged by Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, who insisted that an unpublished book could not be cited.
Gandhi accused the government of panic. “What are they so afraid of? Why are they scared of one quote?” he asked, as Speaker Om Birla repeatedly intervened to shut down the discussion.
The Congress has since argued that the memoir reinforces a pattern seen since 2020 — public bravado masking private caution and confusion. While Modi told the nation that “no one entered Indian territory,” the Army continued to face Chinese aggression on the ground, culminating in the Galwan Valley clash of June 15–16, 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. China has never disclosed its casualties.
The continued delay in clearing Naravane’s memoir — now under review by the Ministry of Defence for more than a year — has only intensified suspicion that politically inconvenient truths about Modi’s handling of China are being suppressed.
What began as an attempt to quote a book has now turned into a larger question haunting the Modi government: when Chinese tanks rolled towards Indian positions, was the Prime Minister leading from the front — or choosing silence and plausible deniability?