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interference from the British; India’s limited international role, which meant the country was not drawn into conflicts that might raise the salience of the military; and the conflict-reducing potential of India’s federal system. In this chapter, I review their arguments in the light of other work on civil–military relations and recent developments in Indian politics. Like the Rudolphs, I agree that good initial management decisions on the army after Independence, and the federal conflict-management strategies employed in the 1950s (including the creation of linguistic states, and compromise on the issues of backward caste reservations) were key to reducing civil–military conflicts. I would also add one further factor: the much better legacies that the Indian state inherited compared to Pakistan. As Dr Ambedkar had foreseen, the secession of Pakistan saved India the massive fiscal expense of garrisoning the North-West Frontier, and also made the ethnic composition of the Indian Army much more equal than it would have been (though the Pakistan Army, now dominated by Punjabis and Pashtuns, became much more uneven).

The ‘professional traditions’ argument, however, I think has much less merit, because, of course, it could equally be applied to many other British-trained militaries, from Ghana, to Egypt, to Burma, to Pakistan, which did have coups. Professionalism can also sometimes, as Samuel Finer pointed out as long ago as 1962, act as a spur to military intervention if senior officers feel they can only protect the country or the military as an institution by intervening in politics (1962, 20–5). If India’s generals had been confronted with similar foreign and …