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, Spring 2022) brought to fore some difficult but essential conversations around morals and ethics in the services.

I made my debut in the ‘Both Watches’ section of INDES (Spring 2023 Edn) with some personal anecdotes, under the venerable editorship of Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande (Retd) 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. It took Cdr Rodrigues 51 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 relevant, 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 III) helicopter tasked for a routine training sortie off Cochin (Kochi) crashed at sea, killing one crew member — a trainee aircrew diver (ACD, now nomenclatured Flight Diver). The pilot-in-command was a young naval lieutenant who had recently graduated from the naval helicopter training school with top honours, then bearing what looked like the markings of a successful naval aviator. Between the two pilots, the total cockpit experience was just over 1300 hours, with the senior copilot accounting for about a thousand.

The self-imposed pressure of the ongoing aircrew diver training course that was reaching culmination meant flying several sorties each day against many constraints. On the fateful morning, there was no safety boat available from the local naval boat yard to carry out exercises — a mandatory requirement. 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 issue related to the aircraft. But scuttlebutt (initiated by a senior HOD) was spreading that the crew might have been doing “unauthorised” flying. There was also concern among well-meaning seniors 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” (a fishing vessel leaving harbour will likely be devoid of catch). Call it “smart act”, “survival skill set” or what you will, but the young inexperienced crew went along with the narrative, slowly entering the quicksand of false affidavits, questioning and cross-questioning, until finally the young pilot-in-command broke rank and made a voluntary confession to the board.

That young pilot was me — stung 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 tried, sentenced and punished at the young age of 26 — about four years more than Arun Khetarpal’s glorious lifespan. My defence counsel, a senior aviator who went to great lengths to defend young KPS, broke down when the sentence was pronounced — not entirely because I was wholly innocent or pristine, but because not a single senior around me had redeemed himself with honour or integrity in the entire saga — leaving me with a severe sentence and — infinitely more important — a family without its breadwinner.

A year later when my senior copilot went up on trial, the prosecution team suggested I “help out” the fellow accused by withholding some information since, in his words, “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 trial court in Anti-Submarine Warfare School, Kochi, head held high, dragging-along the carcass of my 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 (words of 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 with top honours, rose to the rank of commander and was even “wet-listed” for a prestigious sea appointment thirteen years later bears testimony to the fact that our system has adequate bandwidth for errors of omission and commission, even lifelines for the good.

But my scars are lifelong. I carry the burden of shame and pangs of conscience to this day. It modified my life and 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 was witness to the casual treatment of morals and ethics in the name of “smart acts” featured in the same issue of INDES under ‘Rogues’ Yarn’ (Spring 2023 ed, pg 157).

To date, I never regretted the decision to forego my promotions and take premature retirement while I was still on the “winning” side (as others saw it, not me). I would have been eternally unhappy flying a flag with the blood of an innocent on my hand. I leave it to the audience to decide if same level of conscience or rectitude avails today. The military is after all a microcosm of the society at large.

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 whether we continue to live, breathe and die for such lofty ideals.

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 witnessed 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. The trajectory that has shaped the evolution of services in recent years also does not inspire a 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) were enough to breathe morals and ethics into young cadets and junior officers, we would not be discussing this issue in the 21st Century. I believe the question of morals and ethics is very much relevant, however much we would like to believe otherwise.

Authorities remove weather warning so VIP sorties can go through; units chalk-up “kills” to claim honours in low intensity conflicts; needless pressures make lower rungs fire guns in harbour, commit fratricide, launch cruise missiles into the neighbourhood, or lose aircraft in the opening game even as senior leadership publically tomtom victory while hiding losses in the name of infosec. All these miss the moral guardrails that are required to build an aspiring superpower.

Even the above examples may be classified as 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 citizenry to feed personal ambition or reinforce a majoritarian political narrative, then claim immunity from question under the cloak of secrecy that insulates the military from public scrutiny. 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 veterans across services have opened this subject up for public debate fills me with hope that we may 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 penchant 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 my coursemate from the rear rank because we were not allowed to move or even bat an eyelid while standing “at ease”. I experienced the same dull thud few years ago when one of the graduating students from my son’s class X batch at Bishop Cotton Boys School fainted on graduation parade. The chief guest — a former Cottonian himself, now a Senior Advocate practising at the Supreme Court — used that incident to make an important point: 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 — may be on the ascent in military 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 morals and ethics if we have ourselves not kept a squeaky-clean cupboard of values or owned up our ‘man in the mirror’ moments. 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 discourse today. I am inclined to believe he comes from a place of deep introspection and self awareness. Why are we unable to see many such examples today even though technology enables every voice of conscience?

(A parallel reality could also be that for every self-entitled senior, there are 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 PBORs, 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 Services need to be ready at short notice, for which professionalism reinforced by the moral and physical courage exemplified by Second Lt Arun Khetarpal PVC remains the bedrock.

Talk and walk must converge today more than ever because abundant technologies exist to distort or skew the truth. The onus is on senior leadership, not only on cadets, agniveers or second lieutenants.

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(An edited version of this article was first published in the journal Indian Naval Despatch (INDES, Spring 2023 edition under ‘Both Watches’)

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© KP Sanjeev Kumar, 2026. All rights reserved. Views are personal. Please keep the comments respectful and civil. I can be reached at realkaypius@gmail.com or on my X handle @realkaypius.