Naravane Memoir, LAC China Claims & Questions for the Govt | South Central Episode 62

Hosts discuss the controversy over former Army Chief General MM Naravane's unpublished memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, and the political storm it has stirred in the Parliament. They are joined by senior journalists MK Venu, and Sushant Singh, who wrote about the book.

Published on:

13 Feb 2026, 12:11 pm

This week, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna discuss the controversy over former Army Chief General MM Naravane's unpublished memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, and the political storm it has stirred in the Parliament. They are joined by senior journalist and founding editor of The Wire, MK Venu, and Caravan magazine’s Consulting Editor, Sushant Singh, who wrote about the book.

Tune in to the discussions here

Listen & follow on Apple

Listen & follow on Spotify

Listen & follow on YouTube

Dhanya starts the discussion by citing the scuffle in Parliament and the row that followed.

“I think the conversation on whether the book’s PDF is out or not is a red herring, a distraction. What is important is that a person in a responsible position in the army, who was overseeing a security crisis, has said something and has not gone back on his word. These are Naravane’s words; even the publisher does not deny this. Even if the book was banned, as a journalist, it is my responsibility to bring out what is in the book. And how can we assume that a man of such professional stature does not know what he is saying?” says Sushant Singh.

Dhanya points out how Sushat’s analysis is that the General just obeyed the government’s orders to do what is appropriate with respect to the China-India border situation. “What spooked the government?” she asked.

Sushant says it is hard to say what may have spooked this government. “To my mind, what happened on the China border, especially in August, we are talking about medium artillery, which is the highest artillery fired on incoming Chinese tanks. The last time we shot any tanks was in 1971. We are talking about a very high degree of escalation, and the Army chief is specifically asking the government for orders, and Mr Rajnath Singh consults Modi and says do as you deem fit. And it falls on General Narvane to figure out how much of this the country can take. It is not the army chief’s job to decide this; it is the government’s job, the top cabinet ministers’ and the PM’s job. The political leadership should own the decision to open fire on China, not drop it on the army chief,” he adds.

Dhanya says that Narvane, in a recent podcast, speaks about why this was supposed to be a government decision. “The general said in a literary festival that he has no idea when the book will be out. How do you look at the politics that have panned out in the last few days?” she asks Venu.

“Narvane had put out a tweet saying his book is out and asking people to pre-order. For some reason, this issue was not prominent at that time. It is at the top of the debate now, probably because of the way this government is behaving. The problem with the Modi government is that it gets paranoid with issues from time to time, and it gets amplified. The technical definition of publishing also means that if the author has conveyed something to the public, then it is in the public domain. It surprises me why Naravane is not fully towing the Penguin line, as they are the publishers. They say it is not formally published yet. Politically, this moment is exerting quite a lot of pressure on the government, with other issues like the Indo-US trade deal,” MK Venu says.

Sushant says that the recent Caravan story gives more context and is far more revelatory of the situation. “The book was given to the defence ministry in 2023-24. Even as other books submitted around that time were cleared, the ministry has not yet given any decision on this book alone. It has not given edits or banned the book. The content is now out there, and the army chief has endorsed it,” he adds.

Pooja points out how this seems to be more about reputation politics for the government. “What does this say about the incident and about the process of making such decisions?” she asks.

“Cabinet Committee on security is the most important here. With respect to Galwan, it is the June 2020 incident, where the Chinese occupied some land in Galwan, and there was a clash in which Indian soldiers and Chinese soldiers died. Now what Narvane’s memoir says is that the Chinese pitched erecting tents as early as a month ago. And what followed reveals new details on what we were told about the incident. The memoir says the local commanders had no problem with the tents, then who ordered the Indian soldiers to go, leading to a scuffle and deaths,” Sushant Singh says.

The panel then goes into the details of the process of initiating a war, discrepancies in the government narrative, and the political layers of the controversy.

Tune in to the discussion here.

Once a month, we will invite one TNM subscriber to the show. Write to us on what you would like to speak about to southcentral@thenewsminute.com

Send your thoughts, suggestions, and criticism as well.

You can also let us know what you think by filling out our quick feedback form. Your suggestions help shape future episodes of South Central.

Audio Timecodes

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:19 - Headlines

00:13:00- Naravane’s memoir

00:56:47 - Free Speech

1:04:31 - Recommendations

References

In Tamil Nadu, RSS is unhappy with BJP and BJP is unhappy with itself | Powertrip #138