the lineal descendant of 'india does not need an army, only a police force' folly: blame the army

jul 10th, 2010

do we know, or care, how those poor grunts in the army are being wiped out because of poor political leadership? this article by kanchan gives the alarming statistics.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/268286/Let%E2%80%99s-not-defame-the-armed-forces.html

Let's not defame the armed forces

Kanchan Gupta

It's now considered fashionable and politically correct to berate the security forces and accuse them of violating human rights. The Delhi commentariat, whose ill-informed members are often indistinguishable from jholawallahs with a certain fondness for candles, having run out of abuse to heap on Hindus and organisations that speak up for Hindu rights, has now decided to pour its bile on our men in khaki. Real and imagined instances of alleged 'encounter killings' are being recalled, professional human rights activists are being interviewed, separatist leaders are being flown down to Delhi and panel discussions are being organised with the sole purpose of painting the security forces in the bleakest of colours. It would seem suddenly the Army has become a four-letter dirty word and there's no crime that jawans cannot be held guilty of having committed.

Last Sunday I was invited to a popular television show in which participants were supposed to discuss whether the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 — subsequently amended in 1972 — requires amendments to make the security forces operating under this law accountable for their actions. We need not go into the specifics of who said what — much of it was predictable: The politician from Jammu & Kashmir described the law as "draconian"; the Kashmiri separatist accused the 'Indian' Army of "killing Kashmiri children"; the human rights activist said the colour khaki makes boys (she meant militants) see red and hence should be banned; and, the person representing Delhi's exalted commentariat pompously demanded that "the law must go". Two retired Generals of the Army and a Brigadier valiantly fought back. As usual, I was in a minority of one.

The point to note was that none of the critics of the Army and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act had a clue about the specifics of the law, nor did anyone offer to validate sweeping allegations of rights violations. Instead, what we heard were bizarre figures being cited and implausible charges being levelled. To be fair, the host repeatedly made it clear that the purpose of the show was not to attack or belittle the Army, but to debate the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. But that served little purpose because the critics were either not interested in this particular issue or they were keen to push their own agenda. In the process, nothing of substance could be discussed and debated.

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somehow, there is a tendency to treat the army as an embarrassment, sort of like something the cat brought in. there was the famous statement: "india does not need an army, only a police force". the political class acts as though it wants to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, by starving the army of funds, destroying its will (for instance, bureaucrats are awarded huge pay raises, but not armymen; and armymen are defamed routinely, and the terrorists who kill them are lionized).

and the country in reference to whom this idiotic comment above was made, china, is increasing its already large budget for the military by 50% every year, and it is building a blue-water navy and setting up naval bases all around india. yeah, they need an army, not a police force, they are pretty sure of that.

why this uncaringness about the army? in effect, middle-class indians have manipulated policy so that we hire poor indians to die for us, as cannon fodder. we don't care about their human rights, and our loud and foolish media love to talk about the human rights of terrorists. some poor young man from bihar dies for us, we don't care. but we should.

let us remember the axiom:

"the human rights of the terrorist and insurgent are no greater than the human rights of the ordinary citizen".

one might add, the human rights of the armed forces as well.

there is a simple solution to this problem of not-caring. it is to bring in the compulsory draft, so that the children of the media mavens and the politicians are forced to face the terrorists' bullets. if this were the case, in roughly ten days, the communist terrorist problem, the kashmir problem, and the china problem would all the solved -- there will be great energy in the drawing rooms of delhi targeted at ensuring that their children do not become mince-meat.

i wrote about this some years ago, and alas, the picture is still the same, or even worse:

http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/31rajeev.htm

Some Mother's Son: Bring on the draft

It is a chilling litany: the lists of people in India's armed forces who are killed every day in the course of counter-insurgency operations. On a random day, five Border Security Force soldiers killed in Nagaland; 11 from the Rashtriya Rifles in Jammu and Kashmir; a brigadier and a lieutenant-colonel blown up by a land-mine, also in J&K. And unlike those who perished in the killing fields of Kargil, there is no martyr's welcome when their personal effects make their last journeys to some impoverished village somewhere in the heartland.

They become mere statistics, these brave men who gave their lives, often after nasty, brutish and short tenures in these zones of low-intensity conflict. No eulogies in the 'progressive', 'secular' media, even though these men are truly secular, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, all dying for the country -- it appears bullets are unaware of religion. No tear-jerking stories. I know, and you know, the reason why: they were not 'people like us'.

They were not hip, urban, globalised Indians, products of good schools and universities. They were generally peasants at the soldier level, the sons of farmers from some interior village. They are the poor, those without clout, those who are literally cannon fodder. Nobody misses them. Of course it is true that there are officers who are 'people like us'. But by and large, the Indian armed forces are not the way to money, power and fame, unlike in other countries we could name.

Secondly, the officer corps are now finding it difficult to attract people, so they have taken to advertising for a 'few good men' somewhat plaintively just as their US counterparts do; in this case, emphasising the good life officers lead, with evocative photos of them playing polo, dancing with beautiful women at formal balls and so forth.

There is a third factor -- Indians are notoriously prone to badmouthing their country. There is little pride in being Indian; everyone in the middle classes wishes to escape to the promised lands as soon as possible. This is partly because we all live in a highly artificial neo-Macaulayite environment: Enid Blyton, Biggles, Agatha Christie, Perry Mason, Mills and Boon, Baywatch, Friends, Allie McBeal fill our imaginations, not the palpable reality of India.

There is one way to sort of fix all three of these problems at one go: create a draft, compulsory military service for young men (and perhaps women) after they finish college. I suspect that if socialite evenings in Delhi are taken up with worries about whether their offspring will make it through the day, the Jammu and Kashmir problem and the Northeast problem will be solved in approximately one week. NIMBY, as they say, Not In My Back Yard.

Each of our fat-cat politicians will suddenly have an epiphany that the soldiers who perish with such monotonous regularity are each of them Some Mother's Son, as in the 1996 film about Northern Ireland. Some mother grieves for each sepoy who falls to a hail of terrorist bullets; for each grunt blown up by an improvised explosive device.

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