Theaterisation is meant to be India’s most ambitious military reform since Independence. It promises to replace siloed service commands with integrated theatre commands under a single commander, fusing the strengths of land, sea, and air into campaigns that serve national aims.
On paper, the idea of theaterisation is elegant. In practice, it is paralysed by ambiguities of rank and command. These are not administrative details but the foundation of military authority and discipline. They establish who can issue lawful orders, who must obey them, and how accountability is enforced. When this chain is clear, discipline holds. Otherwise, authority diffuses and professionalism erodes. Soldiers may not study constitutional theory, but they know whom to follow and will march behind leaders with stars on their shoulders—even to their death.
The semiotics of command
Semiotics, the study of symbols and their meanings, helps explain how rank insignia and titles shape perceptions of authority. In India’s case, symbols of rank have often carried more weight than the statutes that define command. This tension began with the Commanders-in-Chief (Change in Designation) Act, 1955, which abolished the post of Commander-in-Chief and redesignated the Service Chiefs as Principal Staff Officers. By law, the Chiefs lost their statutory command. At that time, only the Army Chief wore four stars—a distinction dating to 1949—giving him visible primacy over his naval and air counterparts, who remained three-star officers.
After the 1955 Act, operational authority was vested instead in the regional Commanders-in-Chief. In the Indian Army, General Officers Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) continued to head territorial commands, a practice that had been in place since 1920. The Air Force saw its first three-star Air Officers Commanding-in-Chief between 1958 and 1963. The Navy followed in 1968, when Flag Officers Commanding-in-Chief were formalised.
The decisive shift came in 1966 and 1968, when the Air Force and Navy Chiefs were elevated to four-star rank. The IAF’s performance in 1965, along with the Navy’s expanding blue-water role, gave them symbolic parity with the Army. Two paradoxes then became entrenched.
First, three-star Commanders-in-Chief in the field retained statutory command authority yet appeared subordinate to four-star Service Chiefs in Delhi, who, as Principal Staff Officers, no longer held such authority by law.
Second, the elevation of the Naval and Air Chiefs scaled down the Army Chief’s earlier pre-eminence, creating a sense of parity between the Services, imagined by some and regarded with caution by others. This perception continues to shape debates on theaterisation and command authority, even as the Army remains seen as holding the strategic upper hand, reinforced by its size, budget share, and constant engagement along contested borders and in internal security operations.
This inversion was not accidental but cumulative, shaped by the 1955 redesignation, the rise of regional commands, and the rank promotions of the 1960s. What was meant to safeguard democracy instead eroded professionalism, as authority migrated informally upwards into the Chiefs’ offices and even into political secretariats.
In any military system, command must sit hierarchically above staff because command embodies lawful authority and accountability to act, while staff are by definition advisory. When this hierarchy is inverted, discipline frays and unity of command is compromised. In a system that prizes visible symbols, insignia too often take precedence over statute. Until this contradiction between law and symbols is resolved, theaterisation will remain paralysed at its very core.
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Lessons from Andaman & Nicobar Command
A theatre commander must be unquestionably supreme within their command, especially when they fuse elements of other services into operations. It was a straightforward lesson from the Andaman and Nicobar Command. Anything less invites paralysis. Yet this has not been applied nationally. India’s theaterisation debates remain mired in maps, acronyms, headquarters charts, and arguments over force allocation, while the core problem of mismatched rank and command remains unresolved.
The UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters shows that forces need not be earmarked permanently for every contingency. They are allotted on a need basis, but authority is never in doubt. Once forces are assigned, the joint commander is supreme.
The Inter-Services Organisation (Command, Control, and Discipline) Act, 2023, was seen as a long-overdue corrective measure. For the first time since Independence, it gave statutory recognition to “inter-services organisations” such as the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), whose Area of Responsibility overlaps with no other Commander-in-Chief, and to functional bodies like the Defence Space Agency (DSA), the Armed Forces Special Operations Division (AFSOD), and the Strategic Forces Command (SFC).
Yet the ANC itself had been created in 2001 by executive decision, not statute. This allowed for flexibility in experimenting with jointness, but executive orders cannot substitute for law. Orders can be altered, service Acts still prevail, and in war, accountability requires clear statutory authority. What the ANC had resolved in practice by subordinating all components, headed by one or two-star officers, to its three-star Commander-in-Chief—must now be enshrined in law.
The 2023 Act gave these organisations statutory recognition but limited it to disciplinary and administrative control. It stopped short of granting their commanders statutory powers of operational command. The distinction is decisive: disciplinary authority allows a commander to enforce order, but it does not give him the legal right to direct units from another service in combat. This gap reflects the larger problem of Indian theaterisation, where symbols of rank often outweigh statutes in determining who truly commands.
Civilian supremacy and military authority
This gap in statutory clarity has a parallel in the civil sphere. Examining military failures requires more than scrutinising the uniformed services. Israel demonstrated this after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Agranat Commission, chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, investigated not only the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) but also the intelligence community and Cabinet-level decision-making. Proper accountability demanded that the political and bureaucratic apparatus be held to the same standard as the military.
India, by contrast, has rarely subjected its politico-bureaucratic machinery to comparable scrutiny. Until civilian responsibility is clarified alongside military command, theaterisation will remain incomplete. This omission is not peripheral but fundamental, and it warrants a detailed inquiry into India’s command and control structures, particularly where military roles overlap with civilian agencies, as during internal security operations.
Why it matters now
India does not have the luxury of treating theaterisation as merely an administrative tidying-up exercise. The country faces a spectrum of threats: a volatile border with Pakistan, a militarily assertive China, grey-zone coercion in the Himalayas and at sea, and persistent internal security challenges. Future conflicts are unlikely to be limited or single-front; they will demand joint campaigns fought under a single commander, including all-service and all-domain— land, air, sea, cyber, and space operations.
Other nations understood this long ago and legislated accordingly. The US passed its Goldwater–Nichols reforms in 1986, elevating joint theatre commanders above service chiefs. China’s 2015–2016 reforms followed a similar approach, creating theatre commands under the Central Military Commission. Even Britain, with smaller forces, has codified joint command structures. Israel, too, learned, after 1973, that joint authority must be clearly defined. The blurred lines of responsibility between political leaders, bureaucrats, and the military carried heavy costs—a lesson codified through reforms and inquiries. These models vary, but all address the same problem: unity of command cannot be left to goodwill or improvisation; it must be anchored in law.
The real hindrances
The obstacles to theaterisation are not geographic or technical; they are institutional and symbolic. The most visible is the mismatch of rank, where four-star Service Chiefs of Staff in Delhi appear to outrank three-star Commanders-in-Chief in the field. As long as this disparity persists, perception will continue to trump statute.
What is often described as service parochialism is in fact a symptom rather than the root cause. Chiefs may resist joint commands less out of rivalry than from the ambiguity of their own roles. By law, they are staff; in practice, they wield command-like authority. To give way to theatre commanders could, to some, feel like surrendering power they have long exercised. The Service Chiefs lost statutory command after the 1955 Act abolished the post of Commander-in-Chief and vested operational authority in the regional Commanders-in-Chief.
The creation of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) has not resolved this paradox. Though the CDS wears unique epaulettes designed to reflect joint-service authority, oak-leaf wreaths curving around the tri-service emblem, the post was deliberately denied statutory command powers, serving only in advisory and coordinating roles. The symbolism and the statute are locked in a symbiotic contradiction: the insignia signals integration, but the law withholds command. Unlike the ceremonial five-star Field Marshal rank, with its double laurel wreath and crossed batons, the CDS insignia is joint by design, projecting authority without the statutory powers to match.
This paradox also risks silencing debate where it is needed most. Three-star Commanders-in-Chief, who hold operational command, may hesitate to press the case for theaterisation against their four-star Chiefs. To do so could appear as insubordination, even though reform would strengthen their own authority.
Blurred civil–military boundaries exacerbate the problem, allowing political offices to encroach on professional operational nuances. Unless corrected, theaterisation will risk giving politics even greater leverage in tactical command.
A new enactment
A new law is needed that clarifies the Service Chiefs as heads of their services and members of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It would make them responsible for training, equipping, and force development. It could also define the CDS as coordinator and principal adviser, deliberately without operational command, thereby upholding the legislative intent of the 1955 Act, which divested the Chiefs of statutory command. Theatre commanders, elevated in both statute and symbols to four-star equivalence, would be the sole holders of operational command.
Such an enactment would clarify two essential boundaries. First, the civil–military one: Parliament and the Cabinet would set political ends, while operational means would rest squarely with the chain of command. Second, the military–military boundary: Service Chiefs would oversee preparation and force development, while theatre commanders would exercise operational control in combat. Without clarity on both planes, theatreisation risks becoming another rearrangement of staff charts rather than a decisive reform of command authority.
Finally, it is essential to clarify the Cabinet’s role as the supreme authority over ends, not the intrusion into means. This clarity should be articulated through a capstone document, such as a National Security Strategy (NSS), which outlines the political objectives of force but leaves their operational execution to the chain of command. Without such a law, theaterisation will be no more than a rearrangement of headquarters charts, leaving real authority contested between rank and law.
Stakes are higher than they look
Theaterisation is not about tidying chains of command. It is about preparing the Indian military to fight and win in the most demanding environments since Independence. If ambiguity persists, jointness will remain a slogan rather than a capability. Worse still, responsibility will be diffused: victories claimed at the top, while failures could be blamed on the field.
The paradox of four-star Chiefs of Staff trumping three-star Commanders-in-Chief has already corroded authority for seven decades. To extend it into the age of joint commands would be a grave error. Reform delayed is reform denied, and India cannot afford a military that looks joint on paper but fights fragmented in practice.
Theaterisation requires statute, symbols, and soldiering to align. Parliament must legislate who commands and who controls. Chiefs should remain in staff and advisory roles, and theatre commanders must be responsible and accountable in command. The deliberate denial of statutory command authority to the CDS is itself a reminder of the complexity of what India is attempting.
In a system that prizes visible symbols, insignia must no longer take precedence over statute. The semiotics of command are not an abstract theory but a daily reality that shapes authority in the field. Unless this contradiction is resolved in both law and symbols, theatreisation will remain stalled.
India cannot afford delays. A chain of command either holds or it snaps.
The author is a former Flag Officer Naval Aviation, Chief of Staff at the integrated HQ Andaman and Nicobar Command, and Chief Instructor (Navy) at DSSC Wellington. He tweets @sudhirpillai__
Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)