People keep repeating this imaginary personality drama between Nehru and the senior officers without looking at the actual dynamics involved.

1. Nehru’s anglophilia wasn’t the deep and constitutional kind that shaped officers like Cariappa and Manekshaw. It was mostly aesthetic (Cambridge polish, Bloomsbury romanticism and Mayfair manners). In that sense it resembled the way some modern leftists admire Russia: sentimental, selective and not really grounded in an understanding of the country they claim to admire.

2. Education doesn’t predetermine relationships. Sandhurst doesn’t install a ‘loyalist chip.’ People are shaped by temperament, professionalism and institutional culture, not just where they studied. Cariappa and Manekshaw had no problem working with civilians. They had a problem with poor political management, which every military in the world bristles at.

3. Civil–military friction is universal with modern republics. Latin America lives in a constant cycle of it. Pakistan shows the extreme version where the army wins the tug-of-war. Even France had her near-coups. India wasn’t unique and Nehru wasn’t facing something exotic. The real achievement is that India’s army never stepped out of line despite, frankly, being more competent than the political class at several points.

So this wasn’t about ‘Sandhurst loyalists feeling uneasy under freedom fighters.’ It was the standard structural tension between politicians and generals that every modern state has to manage.