Jo uchit samjho: Rahul’s Ladakh charge vs BJP’s “insider” pattern claim

New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi’s charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “shed responsibility” during the 2020 Ladakh crisis rests on a single line he has chosen to weaponise: “jo uchit samjho woh karo”.

He reads it as abdication even as the BJP and the government frame it as delegation.

Gandhi cited former Army chief Gen M.M. Naravane’s unreleased memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, to claim that the Prime Minister “passed the buck” in a critical moment.

He repeated the allegation outside Parliament after being stopped from quoting the book on the floor.

Whose message was it?

The phrase, however, does not originate as a “Modi message” in the reporting around the memoir excerpts.

Multiple reports from December 2023, based on excerpts and accounts of the episode, said it was Defence Minister Rajnath Singh who told Naravane “jo uchit samjho woh karo” on the night of August 31, 2020, after a tense situation at the Rechin La area during the standoff.

If the line was said by the Defence Minister to the Army chief in the middle of a fast-moving situation, it reads like operational discretion.

If it is recast as the Prime Minister telling the Army chief “do what you want”, it can be sold as the top political executive washing his hands of accountability.

This is the semantic move Gandhi is making, and it is why the government has treated the claim as not merely an attack but a distortion.

Gandhi’s point is that if a former Army chief has written it, the country should hear it, and the House should not be blocked from discussing it.

He held up a physical copy outside Parliament and said the government was afraid of what the book contains.

Delegation or abdication?

But the dispute that has stayed largely unexamined is the one defence professionals privately flag: in a civil-military chain, the same words can point to two very different leadership styles.

“Do what you deem appropriate” can be a conscious choice to trust commanders on the ground.

It can also reflect a lack of political direction if it comes without clear objectives, red lines, and accountability.

The question is not whether discretion is wrong. The question is what else accompanied the discretion.

‘Absolute empowerment’, say defence voices

Defence commentators also argue that “jo uchit samjho woh karo” is not ambiguity but absolute empowerment.

In a civil-military chain, they say, the political executive delegating operational judgement to the commander is the textbook definition of trust, not an escape hatch.

By that reading, calling such delegation “abdication” is not just an attack on the political leadership. It also, by implication, casts aspersions on the judgement and calibre of the subject matter expert who is being empowered to act.

One retired officer put it more bluntly in private: if a Prime Minister or Defence Minister tells the Army chief to do what is appropriate on the ground, the charge cannot be that the political leadership is ducking responsibility; the political leadership is taking responsibility for empowering the commander to act.

“In that frame, the insinuation that the message was ‘meri bas ki nahi hai’ is not a fair translation but a political leap,” said the officer.

A political misread?

This is also where BJP leaders see a deeper political miscalculation.

Since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Congress governments have faced sustained attacks from rivals over “lack of political will” and perceived inaction at moments of crisis.

In the Naravane memoir episode, the grand old party appeared to spot an opening in the part of the reported account that suggests delay and hesitation in decision-making.

It then tried to flip an old charge of inaction into a fresh allegation of delay by implying that the political top would not decide.

Top political analysts who appeared on television debates said the move was counterproductive for Congress.

If Congress is seen as interpreting empowerment as abdication, it risks weakening its own broader claim that political leadership must show will and direction in crises, they argue.

In effect, Congress tries to answer old charges of inaction by accusing the other side of delay, but ends up reopening the same question for voters: who acts decisively in a crisis?

‘Insider’ pattern?

Naravane, as Army chief, publicly said during the disengagement phase that India had not lost “an inch” of territory in the standoff and that “we are where we were”.

That line has been cited for years by the government’s defenders to argue that the Army’s official position did not match the Opposition’s narrative of loss.

The BJP argument is that Gandhi selectively elevates Naravane when it helps him attack Modi, but ignores Naravane’s earlier public assessment that undercut the Opposition’s broader claims.

BJP leaders have also sought to frame Gandhi’s repeated reliance on Naravane-era episodes, from the China standoff to Agnipath rollout debates, as a pattern designed to manufacture “insider” validation for political attacks. 

They have not publicly produced evidence of any coordination, but they argue the consistency of the source and timing raises questions about how unreleased material and selective excerpts keep entering the political arena at moments of maximum disruption.