Bring back self-esteem — Supreme Commander Narayanan

The President will no doubt be well briefed about the capabilities of his armed forces. The truth everyone will tell him is that come what may the soldiers, sailors and airmen are always willing to do their job, doing the damndest when the situation demands. They are after all the last option left open to the Government of India. And utilising the last option means that the situation in the first place has been allowed to be created into a rather messy one. That, however, does not seem to bother the decision-makers for the Army will always come when called out. Whilst doing their service to the nation the Army is also bailing out those in the Government who are basically shirkers. Their ineptitude allowed a crisis to develop. And for that the Army is paying a price materially, operationally and above all with their lives.

The cruel pursuit of statistics apart, as also the fact that all soldiers are volunteers into the profession of arms so lives may be lost, but the simple fact is that since the time the new Supreme Commander was filing his nominations for the post, the Army has lost more soldiers fighting the little wars in India than the number of days that have gone by. It is a worrisome reality, but one which nonetheless is true. There have been many more deaths in the insurgency areas, all attributable to military service, but we are only considering the number of casualties owing to actual combat.

And that figure, when there are no air-raid sirens going off intermittently, is high. No doubts about it. Don’t for a moment assume that the Army is not worthy of its task. It has hit much harder than it has got, and the figures of terrorists killed is many times more, of course. Hardly surprising since this is the same Army that liberated much of Asia. Startled?

All of east and south-east Asia was under the occupation of Imperial Japan, and it took the gut-wrenching resilience of this Army to turn the tide against Japan. A tennis court was all that separated India joining the ranks of the rest of its eastern neighbours, but this Army fought like the devil over that tennis court. And then pushed the Japanese back to where they came from. But the same Army is now pessimistic about its standing in the country, its role and its future. Being the most deployed of the services, it is bound to, and then the other two cannot be too far behind. The Army is pessimistic because its officers and men are dying whilst doing somebody else’s job. The charter of duties as clearly laid out in the Constitution of India states that internal security is the responsibility of the central police organisations, and is only the secondary task of the Army. That has not deterred the Army in taking it on as the primary responsibility; what irks the soldier, however, is the callousness of the nation despite the sacrifices being made on a daily basis. The indifference of the state and the nation is breeding this pessimism. Conversations in the numerous unkempt transit camps where officers and jawans from different units cross paths are a pointer to this unhealthy pessimism. The new Supreme Commander may or may not have the opportunity to access such conversations, but if he did it will open up a different world for him. Where concerns for security do not rest on rifles but the conditions of families left behind in the small towns and villages. Because, for example, land-grabbers across India prey on the families of soldiers on the frontline. The days are gone when a Company Commander’s request for help would elicit a judicious response from the District Collector, nowadays even a Division Commander does not receive a reply. Additionally, this decay in the nation’s care and respect for its soldier is best exemplified on platforms of Jammu, Chandigarh and Guawhati railway stations where ticket collectors do not give seats to officers and jawans going home from combat areas until the leave allowance rum changes hands. And those officers are in uniform because the President of India is pleased to grant them a commission. Respect is all that the soldier yearns for. Pay Commissions may come and go but they can never give him that lost respect, only the nation can. And as the first citizen of the Republic, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, President K.R. Narayanan can begin the process by undoing an abominable wrong within the precincts of Rashtrapati Bhavan. On the occasion of a state function deputationist policemen with the Prime Minister remove the breech-blocks from the rifles of those Army soldiers on guard. When the eminents of the Government of India do not trust its soldiers then how long can he be expected to die for the country? Because a rifle without a breech-block cannot fight, so why should the soldier when he is being desecrated under the nose of the Supreme Commander of India?