Indian Military Leadership: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

This paper is based on an exploratory study of Indian military leadership that was delimited to the indigenous perspective and veterans’ own interpretations of effective military leadership when preparing and leading soldiers into combat. The primary aim is to present our initial findings based on the analysis of the first wave of eight interviews with mainly senior Sikh veterans. A secondary aim is to describe the development of a codebook as an analytical platform for the initial and subsequent interviews. Thirty-codes emerged from the qualitative analysis, which were associated with military leadership in India. Five of the codes were identified as a local or ‘emic’ construct: welfare of the men, regiment pride, an explicit religious orientation, importance of religion in motivation, and the preference for blind obedience by the jawans (soldiers). Additionally, a codebook was developed that consisted of 14 parent nodes and 24 child nodes.