Army Blogger Par Excellence

I’ve often wished that an Indian Army guy would talk about their role the way Jack Nicholson spoke in the movie, A Few Good Men:
“We (soldiers) use words like "honor," "code," "loyalty." We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line… I would rather that you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand the post.”

Unfortunately, the only Indian soldiers who do talk are (or about to become) politicians. And then I stumbled upon the blogs of Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain. Boy, is he an excellent blogger, without any jingoism! Talking of the situation in Kashmir, he brought out something many of us forget: how much things have improved since the worst:
“'The Last Mile' is simply a situation which is a symbolization of the last stages of conflict stabilization in the military domain; quite different from the political, ideological and social domains. The strength of terrorists is at the lowest ever, the LoC is well dominated to prevent easy calibration by the other side. High profile leadership is missing due to inability to infiltrate without the terrorists facing heavy attrition in the march to the hinterland. Even if successfully infiltrated the ability to strike root is difficult due to all round domination by the SF (Special Forces) and intelligence agencies.”
And in this stage, the focus of the media shifts:
“Human rights take bulk of the attention as do political and legal correctness and a host of other issues.”
And inevitably:
“There will be occasions when mistakes will be made leading to loss of lives. This can never be justified but nevertheless will remain a factor among the challenges of the Last Mile.”

In another blog, he talked of the significance of Siachen and the recent avalanche where many soldiers died and one was rescued (only to die after that):
“The nation's connect with its soldiers is what keeps the motivation of the men at the frontiers. This time the media and the people have risen to the occasion marvelously. More efforts to keep the public informed are essential so that affinity with the armed forces never dilutes.”

So the next time someone equates calls for breaking the country with freedom of speech, I’d suggest that they start with baby steps: allow a Satanic Verses to be released; and don’t persecute an MF Hussain for painting Goddess Lakshmi nude.

But make no mistake about it: no student on campus has done for the country what the soldiers of the Indian Army do day in and day out.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarMarch 6, 2016 at 11:22 AM

    Interesting.

    Times are changing. They are changing so fast that nearly everyone is at one's wit's end! Talking about leaders, policies, war-mongering, dictatorial ways (suppressing anything that the neta cannot stand or anything that he or she fears) etc., what has changed today is that people seem to express and participate with increasing strength, over one century. Before that, Ghesgis Khans and Napoleons decided on wars nearly unilaterally. Today wars are very much there everywhere, but people are also whipped up to frenzy to help plunging into wars. Similarly all the political muck encourages people taking more law into their hands. In a way, the netas in India have so little freedom with policies - they manage to get on to the back of the tiger after which they cannot climb down, the tiger decides on their fate! Definitely in the third world countries, what the ancient Greeks who dreamed of democracy only to fear the same seeing mob mentality can result in lawlessness and demolition of polity, is already happening. India is only slightly better than some African countries which are rich as banana republics, kangaroo courts and monkey administration! (Note: The increase in the number of corrupt judges is an indication of our stride towards decadence of our judiciary. Raju Ramachandran told me that it is nearly impossible to check judges going the wrong way unless there is constitutional amendment. And the judges know this better than all of us; in effect they know they are above the law in so many ways. God save us!)

    As to wars, there is no escape from this idea. For humans killing is a compulsive instinct and humanity is a war-mongering society! We are no comparison to any animal society. Naturally enough, the newspaper tells that of so many ten-thousand crores allocated for Defense, about 50% goes for staff pay. The paper adds that this does not take into account pension payments. Altogether, and extending to the whole of government bureaucratic machinery beyond military, knowing taxpayers money goes into paying the salaries, perks and pensions we can safely conclude that about 60% of our tax money goes for just the salary of people in government service.

    Yes, we can thank the army for defending us, but does the army or any babu ever even gives one thought about thanking us ever for paying for their livelihood, perks and pensions and also the relentlessly increasing DA year after year without fail to their advantage, no matter how the common man is struggling for existence or the nation's economic performance may be faltering during a period? Never, never they do it I feel convinced. If they take what people give them for granted, we also need not treat them as anything but paid employees of an organization, run on money extracted from us - nothing more nothing less. In a strange way, national armies are mercenaries only! :-(

    Thinking about the absurdity of Indian economics (in the context of tax money which mostly serves as huge pay checks for government people plus the enormity of drain by way of subsidies and sops), I am inclined to believe that either India is an economic miracle or our doomsday is not far off! :-)But then I am no economist, so I am banking on my being wholly wrong! In this context being proved wrong is just lovely :-)

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