A periodic reminder by former Chief of the Naval Staff Adm Arun Prakash (Retd) and an afternoon spent (re)reading Indian Navy’s journal ‘Indian Naval Despatch’ (INDES, 2022) brought to fore some difficult but essential conversations around morals and ethics in the services.
Rewind to 2022. I made my debut in the ‘Both Watches’ section of INDES with some personal anecdotes, under the venerable stewardship of Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande who pointed me towards naval veteran Cdr Allan Rodrigues’ brilliant recall of his days with one of the legends of the 1971 War: Second Lt Arun Khetarpal PVC (Moral Courage, The Bedrock of Valour: A Retrieved Lesson, Spring 2022 Edn, Pg 1).
After reading Cdr Rodrigues’ article and former naval chief Adm Arun Prakash’s comment on the same, I was initially hesitant to weigh-in on the subject. I can neither match their virtuosity with the pen nor do I have any combat experience. Then again, the same must be true for most readers today. It took Cdr Rodrigues 54 years to share his anecdote. I turn 57 this winter. I am no longer eligible to fight any war except those with a pen and my conscience. So while the topic is still alive, I thought it apt to share a personal anecdote that marked my rather unremarkable tryst with ethics, morals and integrity.
Thirty one years ago, a Chetak (Alouette) helicopter tasked for a routine training sortie off Cochin (Kochi) crashed at sea, killing one crew member — a trainee aircrew man diver ACM (D), now nomenclatured Flight Diver (FD). The pilot was a young naval lieutenant who had just graduated from the naval helicopter training school — a topper of his course — then bearing what looked like the markings of a successful naval aviator.
The self-imposed pressure of an ACM (D) training course that was reaching culmination meant flying several sorties each day. On the fateful morning, there was no safety boat available from the local Naval Ship Repair Yard (NSRY) to carry out exercises. The crew (and authorising officer) decided to go ahead with the sortie “in good faith” using any opportune vessel — the first of many crucial decisions with fateful consequences. While hovering over a local fishing boat entering the Cochin (Kochi) channel, the helicopter lost control and crashed into the sea. The survivors gave their statements to the station flight safety officer soon after rescue. A naval board of inquiry was convened.
By all indications, it seemed to be some technical failure. But scuttlebutt was spreading that the crew might have been doing “unauthorised” flying (“picking up fish”, which factually they were not). There was also concern in certain quarters that investigating authorities may flag the danger of bird activity above a fishing boat entering harbour, laden with catch.
A senior supervisor suggested — again “in good faith” — to the young pilot and his senior copilot that “maybe you should reverse the direction of the boat” (leaving harbour as against entering harbour) as “it won’t matter much, but will quell the ‘picking up fish’ angle. Call it a “smart act”, “manage” or what you will, but the young, inexperienced crew went along, slowly entering the unholy arena of false affidavits, questioning and cross-questioning, until finally the young pilot broke rank and made a voluntary confession to the board.
That young pilot was me — stunned by an accident at the infancy of my flying career; beholden to the “good faith”guidance of seniors. I was no Gandhi, nor were there any people of the mettle of SCC Arun Khetarpal around. Lines blurred, and, at a difficult juncture where my reputation and career was at stake, easier wrong prevailed over the harder right.
As richly deserved, I was court martialed, sentenced and punished at the young age of 26 — about four years more than Arun Khetarpal’s lifespan. My defence counsel, a senior aviator who went to great lengths to defend young KPS, wept when the verdict was pronounced — not because I was wholly innocent or pristine, but because not one senior around me had redeemed himself with honour or integrity in the entire saga — leaving me with a severe sentence and –more importantly — a family without its breadwinner.
A year later when my senior copilot went up for court martial, the naval prosecution team suggested that I “help out” the fellow accused by withholding some information since “the case is over and you have already paid the price for both”. I flatly refused, stood my ground, spoke truth to power and walked out of the court martial hall in Anti-Submarine Warfare School, Kochi, head held high, salvaging the mortal remains of my tattered reputation and credibility. My career was all but over, but — more importantly — I fell in my own eyes.
Mark these words, for this is usually the ultimate price one pays to be on the wrong side of personal ethics and integrity. There is no prosthetic for an amputated soul (recall actor Al Pacino as Lt Col Frank Slade, in the 1992 Hollywood movie Scent of a Woman).
That I eventually made a full comeback, qualified as an experimental test pilot, rose to the rank of commander and was even “wet-listed” for a frontline sea appointment thirteen years later bears testimony to the fact that our system has adequate bandwidth for ‘errors of commission’ and lifelines for the good.
But my bruises are lifelong. I carry the burden of shame and pangs of conscience to this day. It modified my life, my future in ways I never imagined. The accident was pivotal in my early, voluntary exit from the navy, even when I believed the personnel branch had great plans for me. I knew it would be a lifelong exercise in futility trying to exorcise ghosts from the past.
An interesting anecdote “The Lay Apart Store” where again I saw the casual treatment of morals and ethics in the name of “smart acts” featured in the same issue of INDES under Rogues’ Yarn.
To date, I never regretted the decision to forego my promotions and take premature release while I was still on the “winning” side. I would have been eternally unhappy flying a flag with the blood of an innocent on my hand. I am sorry to say I don’t see the same level of conscience or rectitude in some around today.
It would serve us well to remember: our officers and men are our biggest brand ambassadors — and they are highly impressionable. Recent developments leave me pondering if ‘service before self’ still underpins our conduct in uniform and outside of it. Are we seeing a slow erosion of values in the military, the bar for conflict of interest and ‘self over service’ being lowered ever so blithely as to go almost unnoticed? ‘Caesar’s wife’ must not only be above suspicion, but must also be seen as being above suspicion. You can make your own assessment how far we have come down this road.
As a cadet from the experimental first course of 10+2 (X), Naval Academy, Goa, we did not have any great academy legacy, customs or traditions to fall back on. I can admit with candour that I have been witness to almost all the ills that have been raised by commentators on the subject. Winning at all costs, self-imposed omerta in the face of explicit wrongdoings by coursemates, kicking the underdog, toxic masculinity, plagiarism, breaking the honour code — I have seen all this and more. I therefore do not share the blanket optimism that ‘all is well’, or that we have all the tools needed to fix it.
If brick and mortar establishments like the National Defence Academy (NDA), Centre for Leadership and Behavioural Sciences (CELABS), or modern infrastructure like that of Indian Naval Academy (INA) could breathe morals and ethics into young cadets and junior officers, we would not be discussing this issue in the 21st Century. I believe the issue of morals and ethics is very much alive and kicking, however much we would like to believe otherwise.
Authorities remove weather warning so VIP sorties can go through; ships under-report winds or ship motion so helicopters can be recovered; uncontained peacetime pressures make lower rungs fire guns in harbour, commit fratricide, launch cruise missiles into the neighbourhood, or lose multiple jets in the opening game, while those at flag level publically tom-tom victory minus the constitutional guardrails that build an aspiring superpower.
Even these may be boxed under tactical-level mistakes or misdemeanours which can be understood if not condoned. At higher level today, fractions of senior military leadership openly eschew the secular ethos of services (while in uniform or immediately upon retirement), resort to gaslighting or misleading citizens to feed personal ambition or reinforce the dominant political narrative, then go on to claim lifelong immunity from question under the cloak of secrecy that insulates military leadership from accountability (which makes them no different from politicians). I can go on. How many of us can say we have never seen or been party to such ‘minor’ transgressions?
That INDES, Indian Navy and navy veterans have opened this subject up for discussion fills me with hope that we will see better days. Discouraging zero-error syndrome and borrowing from aviation’s HEVOLREP (human error voluntary report) and ‘just culture’ may perhaps be a good step, leading to some self-correction. But for this, we should be able to look ourselves in the mirror and confront our deepest, darkest secrets without fear of censure or the threat of a truncated career. The service today is more transparent than ever before. Past sins cannot be washed away with scholarly articles or preaching what you only ‘flexibly’ practised.
Also relevant to the discussion is the proliferation of social media and its design to drag the level of discourse to the gutter.
In one of the parade rehearsals in Navac (1989), a cadet who was slipping into unconsciousness was propped up with a bayonet by his coursemate from the rear rank because we were not allowed to even bat an eyelid on parade. I experienced the same dull thud some years ago when one of the graduating students from my son’s class X school batch fainted on graduation parade. The chief guest — a former Cottonian, now a Supreme Court advocate — used that example to highlight that no matter what the rules say, when you find your buddy or any fellow citizen falling or under attack, please show FRATERNITY.
I leave the readers to reflect on what examples to follow. I bring up this anecdote because lack of fraternity — even wrongful fraternization — is a critical flaw in the military circuit diagram today.
To my mind, the only future-proof way to build a solid honour code is to codify it and then lead by example. We have three achievements in an Annual Confidential Report (ACR) cycle but no voluntary disclosure of moral or ethical transgressions. It is no good pontificating on ethical friction of war if we have ourselves not kept a squeaky-clean cupboard of values. In this regard, I deeply appreciate Adm Arun Prakash’ stoic commentary on the subject. The admiral is one of the very few military voices of conscience in public debates today. I am inclined to believe he comes from a place of deep introspection and self awareness. Sadly, I am unable to see many such examples today.
(What is also a parallel reality is that for every self-entitled senior, there are, possibly, ten examples of 24-carat leaders amidst us. We can go into specific examples, but I wrote about one such person in a 2019 blog post. Here’s the link: https://kaypius.com/2019/04/26/service-before-self-or-self-service/.)
We have managed to keep the peace for so long, none of our so called honour codes have even been put to test in a wartime scenario. Add to that a slew of changes brought about at frenetic pace (Agnipath, women in NDA, female combatants, etc) which makes it all the more important that we mainstream the discourse around morals and ethics. If done right, it will be deeply cathartic. If we window-dress our lives, expect little to change. The Service needs to be ready at short notice, and for which professionalism reinforced by the moral and physical courage exemplified by Arun Khetarpal is fundamental.
Talk and walk must converge. The world is more transparent than we think.
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© KP Sanjeev Kumar, 2026. All rights reserved. Views are personal. Feel free to debate and contribute to the discourse. Please keep the comments respectful and civil. I can be reached at realkaypius@gmail.com or on my X handle @realkaypius.
