India, Feb. 11 -- It is not every day that an unpublished manuscript paralyses Parliament for a week, prevents the prime minister from responding to a debate for the first time in two decades, even precipitates a rare show of no-confidence by the Opposition against the speaker. Yet, all of that has transpired in the Lok Sabha over the past week-and-a-half, former Army chief General (retired) Manoj Mukund Naravane's unpublished memoir Four Stars of Destiny.

The debate has played out at two levels. The first is where Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi used an excerpt from the manuscript, published in Caravan Magazine, to argue that the government's handling of China's aggression was botched, triggering a furious respons...