Category: Opinions

Whenever I talk to civilians and indeed non-navy men, one of the biggest chasms that I have to cross is the minds-gap between us. It doesn’t easily sink in with people that seas are open in access, they have no visible boundaries, and hence there are gigantic problems of identification at sea especially when it comes to small fishing craft, the kind that ten terrorists from Karachi travelled in from Karachi to launch an attack on Mumbai on 26 Nov 2008 (26/11). With every inch of land owned by either governments or people and some having more than two competing claims, another thing that doesn’t easily soak in is that seas are largely unowned and anyone can be anywhere.

Most of the fishing in our waters is unregulated despite all efforts to bring in regulation post 26/11. Post 26/11 it was decided that all boats more than 20 m in length would be fitted with Automatic Identification System (AIS) and all boats would be registered and would have colour coding system to enable quick identification. Additionally, and all crews would have identification cards. Sounds great? Well, the closest analogy that comes to mind is that of a careful and safe Indian driver: he drives carefully and safely for about ten kilometres after witnessing an accident.

Somewhere in the vicinity of Jakhau (on the Northern side of Gulf of Kachchh in Gujarat), when the Indian minesweeper on which I was serving in 1976, used to come closer to fishing vessels and enquire about their identity, some of the vessels would first hoist a Pakistani flag and then when our identity would be revealed to them through our talk on the loud-hailer, they would quickly replace it with an Indian flag. The scenario continued without much variation for decades. After regular patrols started from both sides, many a fishermen (number in hundreds) on both sides of the IMBL (International Maritime Boundary Line) found themselves in prisons of the opposite side. Again, it is extremely difficult for non-navy people to realise that a line drawn on the map doesn’t actually manifest itself at sea and in the absence of familiar features that you find on the land (such as fence, wall, rock, pillars and sign-boards), it is difficult for the fishermen to even realise that they have crossed this invisible line of IMBL.

Early this month I was talking to research scholars of Punjab University studying to obtain Master of Philosophy degree; most of them being from Army background. When I told them that the Indian Navy wrongly got blamed for having allowed Kasab & co. to traverse the sea-route from Karachi to Mumbai which resulted in Mumbai attacks known as 26/11 attacks, most of them were up in arms against me. They said that it was an attack on the nation by foreign armed terrorists using the sea-route and hence the failure to detect and stop them should be pinned on the Navy. I brought out to them that in the like manner, the failure to prevent the attack on Indian parliament (the very seat of the Indian democracy), on 13th Dec 2001, perpetrated by terrorists of LeT and JeM, should have been pinned on the Indian Army since it was a land-based attack. Similarly, following the same reasoning, the failure to detect and prevent bicycle-bomb attacks in Jaipur, on 13th May 2008, should be pinned on the Mechanised Infantry, bicycle being a mechanised vehicle.

Firstly, a knee jerk reaction of the government post 26/11 made the Indian Navy the only leading navy in the world stuck with the responsibility of coastal security. Secondly, with both the target boats and the investigators constantly moving at sea, the only real identification would be whilst leaving and entering harbours. Post 26/11, in two joint exercises carried out in April and June 2009, by the Indian Navy, Coast Guard, Police and Customs, they were able to check the identities of only 300 and 1000 boats respectively. On land too, you don’t check the identities of vehicles by chasing them on highways, roads, streets, fields et al; you do so at choke points such as Toll Plazas, Barriers, Check-Points and the like.

What about Automatic Identification System transponders for the fishing boats so as to help provide quick identification at sea (in almost the same manner as IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) does it for aircraft? Well, two news items would be indicative of the progress made. First is a news item in the Times of India (ToI) on 12 Jul 2009 by Vishwa Mohan: ‘AIS transponders now made must for all fishing vessels’. And seven years later, here is a news item in the Indian Express on 09 Jun 2016: ‘Centre plans to install tracking devices on fishing vessels’; “With Home Minister Rajnath Singh set to chair a meeting on coastal security with CMs of nine coastal states and four Union Territories in Mumbai on June 16, government sources said modalities of implementing a crucial project to install automatic identification system transponders in all small fishing vessels could be finalised at the meeting.” In short, eight years after the Mumbai attacks, modalities to install AIS transponders were still to be finalised.

First of all, 100% installation of AIS on all craft is still to be implemented. Secondly, no technical means can provide warning of an intent in advance. One has to remember that one is looking for just one boat in thousands and lakhs that would have turned rogue from innocuous and innocent fishing boats earlier. To illustrate this point, lets look into MV Kuber, a vessel hijacked by Kasab and co. off Porbandar in international waters. Now, lets say this scenario was to replicate in future after 100 percent fitment of AIS. This innocuous and innocent fishing vessel having turned rogue would still give an AIS signal of a friendly and no-threat vessel.

Whilst on this subject, one curious fact that escaped most people’s attention was the news item that the master of Kuber, Amarsinh Solanki, was in a Pakistani prison just six months prior to his vessel having been hijacked by Kasab and co. Was it, therefore, just a coincidence that his vessel was the one that was hijacked at the appointed hour? Doesn’t that make identification of such a rogue craft and its intent even more confused? Isn’t that a pointer towards keeping an eye on the fishing community on the whole, an exercise beyond the scope of a maritime agency like the Indian Navy? Would Fishermen’s I-Cards and registration of all boats under the Merchant Shipping Act (MS Act) help? Yes, these would, if one remembers that such I-Cards and Registration cannot be checked at sea. Also, that most fishing boats use migrant labour who keeps changing frequently.

Take the incident of 31st Dec 2015 when a Pak boat carrying explosives blew itself up when challenged by a vessel of the Indian Coast Guard off the coast of Gujarat.

“The coast guard had received a specific intelligence alert on December 31 that a fishing boat from Keti Bunder near Karachi was planning some kind of an operation in the Arabian Sea.”

“Based on the input, a Dornier aircraft undertook a sea-air coordinated search and located the fishing boat. The ship patrolling in the area was diverted and intercepted the unlit boat around midnight of December 31,” the spokesperson said.

Imagine the effort required to intercept just one boat at sea.

“Parrikar had added that the Centre would ensure “99.99%” protection against 26/11-type incidents by timely detection. “How do you pull the needle out of the haystack? Zero tolerance to error is the most important in this project.””

The ironical point here is that even a preventive success story brought out the gigantic difficulties involved in identification and interception and that the answer lies in national will pertaining to “zero tolerance to error” is the only answer to pulling “the needle out of the haystack?”

We must also remember the fact that Coast Guard DIG B K Loshali was sacked for making the following remark on 16 Feb 2016 whilst addressing a gathering of Coast Guard officers and Larsen & Toubro officials during the launch of an interceptor boat (the remark was video taped and reported by the Indian Express: “Let me tell you. I hope you remember 31st December night. I was there at Gandhinagar and I told at night, blow the boat off. We don’t want to serve them biryani.”

Identification of Friend or Foe in Indian Maritime scenario and preventing repeat of 26/11 attacks are, therefore, mammoth tasks that require not just technical means but enormous coordination between many different agencies and, more than anything else, a national will to handle the aftermath of preventive efforts in international waters.

A news item, at the end of the year 2016, from a small village called La Joya in Mexico is probably manifestation of a phenomenon that has had far-reaching effects that the world has seen lately, in the fields of popularity, talent and fame. The invitation for ‘quinceanara‘ party or coming-of-age party of a 15 years old Rubi Ibarra by her father Crescencio went viral (the expression used in the Internet age for something that spreads with the speed of the viral fever from person to person). Whilst Crescencio meant by the words: Everyone is invited, people in the neighbouring communities, the local event photographer who posted the invitation video on Facebook omitted to mention that. The result: everyone landed up for the birthday party. The media and social media, both domestic and international, covered it as the event of the year.

Five years ago, at the end of the year 2011, we had a variation of this phenomenon in India. A Tanglish (a hybrid of Tamil and English) song titled ‘Why this Kolaveri Di?‘ The song was sung by Dhanush on his own lyrics and composed by Anirudh Ravichander. Outside Tamil films, no one would have heard of them, not even the name of the 2012 psychological thriller simply called: ‘3’ (the shortest name of a movie in the world!). However, the success of this song on YouTube made it phenomenal (here is it from Wikipedia):

“Upon release, the hashtag #kolaveri topped the Indian trends in Twitter on the evening of 21 November 2011. Within a week of the official release of the video, it received more than 3.5 million views on YouTube, more than 1 million shares on Facebook, while trending in India on Twitter the whole time. By 30 November 2011, it had more than 10,500,000 YouTube views. By the start of 2012, it had crossed 30 million YouTube views. The song and versions of it account for more than 75 million of YouTube’s total views. The song became the top downloaded song on mobile with 4,100,000 downloads within the first 18 days of release.”

Dhanush, the singer, was invited as a guest of honour by the Prime Minister. Various parodies of the song also became viral (You can read my own parody: ‘Why This Valentine Valentine Di?’ on the subject of opposition to celebrating a foreign fest in India). Here is the song for you, again: Why this Kolaveri, Di? (Why this killing rage girl?):

What do these two phenomenal events tell us? Simply this that there is – what I term as – democratisation of talent – and one can be a star overnight. First, lets compare it with the olden times:

Even if one were very talented, it would be years before one became popular or achieved fame. William Shakespeare, the greatest author in English language, for example, during his years of struggle, used to go incognito to various bookshops in London, asking for his plays, so as to influence demand for his works. There are many factual stories of actors around the world who paid (instead of being paid) for acting in movies and plays before they became famous.

And, very few became popular and famous. For authors, poets, playwrights, speakers and actors, one had to wait for years before their works were noticed; sometimes merely by fluke. Ordinary people – except for the rare ones who made big – couldn’t even dream that someone, other than in their immediate and local community, would see or read the product of their art or skill. Overnight success was a rare occurrence. As an example, in the 16th century, just think of an ordinary street play in Bengal becoming famous all over India, let alone world-wide or for that matter a bard in say, Punjab.

Similarly, amongst the great speeches of the world, we only had to read about great personalities delivering these and at best we could read the text unless parts of such speeches found their way into some documentary or movie.

Nowadays, everyone, is a writer, actor, speaker, singer, photographer, poet and playwright (‘All Photographers And Writers, No Viewers And Readers‘). And if you have talent, suddenly the social media makes you famous without your having to stand on your head to be noticed. Everyone of us, for example, sees a number of videos everyday of unknown authors, actors, speakers and singers. As another example, earlier ordinary people would not have access to worldwide listeners and viewers until platforms like TED Talks made it possible. Recently, we heard an Indian Army major convincing us of the rationale of deploying army in Kashmir.

One of the valid critical observations on this phenomenon is that media-savvy people (that being their only talent) can make themselves or others famous who have little or no talent. Conversely, there are still many talented people still to be discovered. I have only this to say to it that any new video game that you buy also has a cheat program. In democracy, talent would sometimes suffer because it is based on majority acceptance and majority is not always the best judge of the quality of art, skill or talent.

However, the chances of ordinary but talented men and women being watched everyday by millions have increased manifold. How many of us, for example, listened live to Beatles or Mohammad Rafi or seen live great dancers like Gene Kelly? However, these days, ordinary but talented singers and dancers reach us on the telly, cellphones and other devices and we watch with bated breath to see their talent on, say, America’s Got Talent or Sa Re Ga Ma; literally millions of us, many more than those who watched the famous and the popular in the olden days.

What about the dilution of real talent due to this democratisation of talent? Well, there are both sides of the coin here. The good view is that excellence is pegged even higher than earlier since you can instantly see who are better and worse. The reverse view is that popularity often gets the mask of fame and excellence.

Lastly, whilst it is easy to be Good these days, it is equally easy to be Bad and Evil. One can learn, in fairly easy steps on the net, how to make a molotov cocktail or even a dirty bomb. Similarly, one can visit darknet or tor browser with impunity leaving no footprints to be traced whilst engaged in sinister things.

However, with some exceptions, I feel that democratisation of talent is a good thing, indeed. Whilst we, keep saying, largely erroneously, that God made all men and women equal (Please read: ‘Debatable Philosophies Of Life’ that I wrote on the last day of last year), the fact is that those who were born with silver spoons in their mouths often achieved success, fame and popularity. However, now, there is the beginning of an effort to make all men and women equal. Who knows, a time will come, when evolutionary changes would make everyone equally good singer, writer, actor, player or speaker?

And then, perhaps, everyone would be invited for and attend everyone’s party rather than being asked, just by accident: “Are you going to Rubi’s party?“

Finally, last week, we had Shri Pranab Mukherjee, telling the Indian parliamentarians that continued disruption of parliament by the opposition to protest against demonetisation is not acceptable at all. He reminded them that the ways of the street are ill-suited for the parliament and that crores of rupees are wasted when the parliament is disrupted in this manner.

The fact is that the Congress has been so used to ruling the country that it has come close not to believe in democracy at all. Hence, whenever it loses elections, it wants to believe that the people have made a terrible mistake in electing an alternative and that the country should get back to being ruled by it as quickly as possible. And, if the people can’t do it on their own, it would leave no stone unturned to facilitate conditions for its rightful return to ruling the country. In this it has been helped by various factors:

• The country-wide movement against the imposition of Emergency in the country by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi after Allahabad court found her guilty of electoral malpractices although succeeded in installing a non-Congress government (Janata Government) for the first time in 1977, it lasted for only two years due to various factors such as internal squabbles, and the Hindu-Muslim riots due to external machinations by the Congress trying to portray that it was the only secular front in the country and that the country was doomed if it was to go the RSS way.
• Generations of bureaucrats in the government have obtained reflected glory, power and influence by being as loyal to Congress governments as wazirs have been to the rajas. The Congress kept them in good humour soon as it was elected or re-elected to power. This arrangement worked so fine that I remember when in 1978 the first non-Congress was formed in Maharashtra, there was a news item that brought out that the babus, loyal to generations of Congress MLAs, didn’t let the newly elected non-Congress MLAs to transact any meaningful business.
• Successive Congress governments shared the largesse with a number of think-tanks in the capital and elsewhere who mastered the art of pleasing their masters by carefully concocted theories that only secular (read Congress led) government would be the country’s saviour. And this, even after it facilitated the massacre of thousands of Sikhs in the capital and elsewhere after Indira Gandhi was killed by her own security-guard, a Sikh. Predictably, after Modi government was installed, Congress engineered the people’s movement against intolerance. At this juncture, it was helped in no mean measure by the Hindu revanchists who translated BJP victory as their licence to have a Hindu rashtra with supremacy of cow and other purely religious ideas. (Please read: ‘Is Communal Disharmony A Challenge To India’s March To Greatness?’ that I wrote in Feb 2015).

And just a week before I write, there is a newspaper item about Prime Minister Modi directly reaching out to the people since, he says, he is not allowed to speak in the parliament. It seems that the governments in India and the opposition take turns in denigrating the parliament. It also appears that the Indian parliamentarians take the word opposition very seriously and feel compelled to oppose anything and everything that the other party or front proposes, even if the idea was mooted by them in the past.

Why does the opposition feel compelled not to let the government duly elected by the people to function thereby questioning democracy as well as people’s verdict? I think the precedence of obtaining independence by disobedience movement engineered by Mahatma Gandhi goads it to employ similar tactics against all rulers as the father of the nation employed against the British. That we are already an independent country doesn’t direct it to change tactics more readily suitable and even acceptable in a functioning democracy. Hence, many a times, the opposition doesn’t mind putting the ruling party or even the nation to shame internationally as long as it can score points with the voters as an opposition. Consider the following:

• In order to infuse new thought in a stalemated Indo-Pak diplomacy, when the BJP PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, started a Sada-e-Sarhand (Call of the Frontier) Delhi-Lahore Bus on 19 Feb 1999 (on the inaugural day as the world watched agog, the Prime Minister Vajpayee traveled by the bus to attend a summit in Pakistan and was received at Wagah Border by Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif), the opposition, as soon as the Kargil War started, protested on Delhi streets by displaying a large rubber-inflated bus, upside down. Even some of its own party men felt that it was in very poor taste; it showed as if it hated the enemy of the country less than the BJP:

• In order to prove that despite people’s verdict a non-Congress government wasn’t qualified (read experienced; since the only party that had any experience of ruling the country was the Congress), when Vajpayee government took over, it rejoiced in onions (staple food for the poor in the country) being made scarce by hoarders loyal to it and put his government to shame for mishandling the onion-crisis in 1998. The BJP, having quickly learnt from the opposition (Congress) how to bring the government to heel on the issue of onions, returned the favour in 2013:

• After the Uri terror attack on 18 Sep 16, the opposition took the Modi government to task for not coming equal to its pom-pomed speeches when it was in opposition to the effect that if voted to power it would teach a lesson to Pakistan if it indulges in proxy-war that it had got used to. So, on 29 Sep 16, eleven days after the terror attack at Uri that killed 19 Indian soldiers, Indian Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Dilbir Singh declared it in a press statement that the Indian Army had made a preemptive strike against “terrorist teams” who were preparing to “carry out infiltration and conduct terrorist strikes inside Jammu and Kashmir and in various metros in other states.” (Please read: ‘Cross- LOC Surgical Counter-Terrorism Strikes, A New Indian Psyche And Resolve?’) Seeing this as a national issue of high-import internationally, the opposition (led by Congress) initially declared full support to the government, but later relentlessly made a mockery of the government for its false assertion. What was the trigger? The BJP government tried to get credit for the surgical strikes so as to sway the voters in the largest Indian electoral state of Uttar Pradesh. In retaliation, the Congress very quickly showed the government and hence the nation in poor light globally (Please also read: ‘ “India Retaliates” – The Aftermath And The Consequences’).
• After the so called ‘Surgical Strikes’ by the Modi government, the Congress and any number of  think-tanks that it had so assiduously promoted during its tenures (which I mentioned in the beginning of this essay) including retired armed forces officers, claimed that such strikes had been carried out many times earlier too under Congress rule except that the Congress never talked about it in national interest (Ha! Ha! How the average Indian hopes that sometime or the other the political parties (all of them) would actually be guided by national interests and not electoral gains).
• The Congress led opposition ensured that the complete winter session of the parliament was a wash-out on the issue of protesting against demonetisation of high-value currency notes of 1000 and 500 rupees, announced by PM Modi on the night of 08 Nov 16. That its Manmohan Singh government had mooted this in 2012 was soon forgotten. As far as Modi government is concerned, it took enormous credit for the courage to go in for demonetisation in order to rid the country of corruption and cross-border terrorism conveniently forgetting that in 2012, when in opposition, it had opposed it tooth and nail on the issues of distressing the common man and doing nothing to net the big fish who would, in any case, find ways and means to circumvent such demonetisation.

It can be seen with these examples that there is no consistent policy with any of our major political parties. The only consistent policy that it has is to denigrate the other party for whatever it does even if when it was in power it did or mooted exactly what it is opposing now. It ridicules the government when it is in opposition to have come up with some hare-brained idea but, finds merit in the same idea when it comes to power.

Who suffers? We, the people of India, suffer irrespective of who is in power and who is in opposition. And, this suffering is in many different ways:

• First of all, our political polarisation makes us divided as people as we or they; either you are with us or against us. The politicians of all hues and parties rejoice in such divide and rule policy that was mastered by our erstwhile rulers: the British, and now perfected by our own rulers. The real issues facing our country are lost track of when we make everything into political or worse, electoral issues (Please read ‘How Proud Should We Be Of Indian Republic At 62?’ an essay written by me on Republic Day in 2011 and bringing out how Indian democracy and elections work and make us at the bottom of human growth indices.)
• Such polarisation also ensures that we are unable to discuss the merits or otherwise of issues without taking sides. The debate on the television is all about the opposition holding a charge against the government about their wrong-doings and the government spokesperson bringing out that the opposition, when they were in power, did worse. It is as if all is forgiven and forgotten in the light of the misdeeds of the previous government.
• Take the present issue of demonetisation for example. The country is divided squarely into mainly two types of people: the Modi-Bhakats (Disciples or Worshippers of Modi who feel that even at times when people are put into extreme hardships, Modi can’t do any wrong and will ultimately lead us all to pots-of-gold as soon as achhe-din (good days) are ushered in) and the Congress-Bhakats (Disciples or Worshippers of Congress) who feel that the sooner the nation returns to Congress rule and normalcy, the better. Very few have discussed, at any length, the merits or demerits of it objectively and whether there were other and better means available to achieve the same objective. Indeed, the objective (or the goal post) itself is still not clear: from tackling corruption to cashless society, the goal-past has been frequently shifted.
• Granted that corruption in our society has reached such gargantuan proportions that some extreme measures were required, why is it that the Modi-Bhakats are silent about Modi government having exempted political parties from any adverse effects of possession of 1000 and 500 rupee notes? Doesn’t it realise that the mother or gangotri of all corruption in India is funding of political parties? Doesn’t it make mockery of the claim of Modi government that the travails undergone by the common man due to demonetisation would be well worth it since it would largely do away with corruption?
• The common man, therefore, always makes sacrifices and the big fish (such as the political parties) laugh all the way to the bank or wherever they store their money, at his cost.

I would want the Modi government to be given a chance to prove its credentials. I salute the people’s verdict in its favour in the last Lok Sabha elections in April-May 2014. Afterall, before that the country had been plunged into a morass of almost total corruption, inefficiency, hopelessness and cynicism. The majority voted Modi into power to bring about a change. However, most Indians tend to forget that once brought into power the Prime Minister or the government ceases to represent only those (often as little as 9 percent of the electorate; please see these calculations in the article quoted earlier:  ‘How Proud Should We Be Of Indian Republic At 62?’ ) that voted for him or it. The PM or the government when in power represents and is answerable to all the people of the country who have every right to discuss every issue on its own merit, without taking sides. For example, however fond I may be of Modi’s promise to bring about changes, as a retired defence forces person, I can never forget the fact that he and his government allowed the armed forces personnel to be denigrated, publicly abused and assaulted on the issue of OROP? How can I forget that whilst finding faults with the Congress for superseding LtGen SK Sinha in favour of Gen AS Vaidya, it did exactly the same with LtGen Bipin Rawat superseding two others?

In all these issues, follies and announcements, this time, though, there are bigger stakes. The people gave Modi government a clear majority to bring the country out of the pit of hopelessness that it had plunged into before him. If he fails and/or made to fail, we have a revolution waiting around the corner that is likely to be bloody, brought about by the people who are fed up of all governments and oppositions in the country; whose numbers include the vast majority of Indians.

Lets hope the government and the opposition keep this ominous warning in mind whilst blithely reducing every issue that the country faces into crass politics.

Exactly a week back, on the day (29th Sep 16, Thursday) when our DGMO declared to a euphoric nation the fact of the Indian Army conducting what he called as “tactical surgical strikes to neutralise terrorists who were ready to sneak into our country and attack us”, I penned a piece titled: ‘Cross-LOC Surgical Counter-Terrorism Strikes, A New Indian Psyche And Resolve?’ .

The news headlines were all about ‘India STRIKES’ and ‘India Retaliates’ and so on. We felt proud of our army and the government for having given a befitting response to Pakistan for relentlessly waging a proxy-war against India.

I myself went on record saying that perhaps we have learnt a lesson 825 years after Prithviraj Chauhan refused to learn it in 1191 after winning the First Battle of Tarain against Mohammad Ghori. Little did I and like-minded people know that we Indians are adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I am painfully aware of how we are used to putting our foot in our mouth viz-a-viz our neighbour (Please read: ‘Indians Poor In Record-Keeping; Armed Forces No Exception’). However, what made me call it a seminal change in Indian psyche was the fact that unlike the neighbouring rajahs of Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192, the opposition in the immediate aftermath of the declaration of surgical strikes stood resolutely behind the army and the government.

Presently (just a week later), if you google ‘Surgical Strikes by India’, you are likely to run into headlines such as ‘India fails to sell surgical strikes’ and ‘Surgical farce blows up in India’s face’.

Lets look at the events as the aftermath of our spectacular declaration on 29th Sep and see what went wrong.

1. The Uri attack takes place on 18th Sep 16 (19 soldiers die) and the opposition (they take the moniker very seriously and feel duty-bound to oppose everything that the government does) takes the government to the mat for “inaction”. The opposition reminds the PM, Shri Narendra Modi that whilst in opposition he roared like a lion and immediately after the Uri attack, he is silent about any retaliatory strikes.
2. So the government, after ten days of Uri attack, allows a tactical military response and the military declares it in so many words; nothing more, nothing less. The opposition, sensing the mood of the country supports it “whole-heartedly”.
3. Both parties go to sleep and wake up the next day with changed feelings (or unchanged feelings of ‘back to politics; thank you military for that small distraction‘).
4. The government supporters see in this tactical military response an opportunity to lionise the PM for an unprecedented slap in the face of Pakistan (indeed a large number of cartoons with PM’s hand imprinted on the face of Pakistan do the rounds on the social media. The government supporters’ response is largely understood for taking credit for a purely tactical military response. After-all the government is the one that permitted this response and allowed it to be announced. Purely military analysts have brought out that the government permitting the strike to go through and announcing it to the world were even more damaging to our friends across the border than the strikes themselves. However, the opposition’s response is ludicrous to say the least:
   a. “We supported it ‘whole-heartedly’ without ever seeing the proof”. Ha!Ha! What was the compulsion to support it?
   b. “We ourselves conducted many cross-LOC surgical strikes but never pom-pomed these as great achievements”!
   c. “And now that we see the damage being done to our chances in UP elections, we demand to see the proof of these strikes”.
5. I am really not amazed by the level of debate and discussion of the ‘uninformed‘. I am really amazed at the levels to which the so called ‘informed‘ have gone, such as:
   a. “A purely military ‘strategy’ to sort out India-Pak problem is bound to fail” (Ha! Ha! Who told them that ‘surgical strikes’ are a ‘strategy’? But, I guess they have their pet argument and lose no opportunity to air it even if it is not an appropriate one, given the circumstances. The circumstances are that the DGMO not just declared these as tactical response but reiterated that we have no intent to convert this into a strategy. He insisted, on the other hand that we don’t have plans to continue these strikes in future.
   b. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. We should be prepared for retaliation”. This is another pet response, which takes for granted that after conducting the strikes we were likely to rejoice until struck by them.
6. The fact of the matter is that:
   a. We have the fifth largest army in the world and it has an openly declared ‘military strategy‘ of avoiding war by deterrence.
   b. Continued incidents like Pathankot and Uri bring out that this deterrence is not being taken seriously and circumvented by proxy war.
   c. We conduct a ‘tactical‘ strike to reassert this deterrence.
   d. Political signaling either adds or subtracts from such strategic deterrence. The kind of signaling that we have let out in the aftermath of the strikes has, I am afraid, further weakened the deterrence; how can you take a nation seriously whose leaders convert everything into electoral issue and are not above playing with the pride of the nation for electoral gains? You can imagine the damage caused by this signaling by taking into account that one of the opposition (Kejriwal) is now a national hero in Pakistan!
   e. If you then conclude that we are ‘self-sufficient nation‘ and have our own ‘indigenous enemy‘ rather than depending upon the enemy across the border to roger us, we are not too far off the mark.
   f. And to think that we are a nuclear nation. Most (if not all) of nuclear deterrence actually revolves around ‘signaling’.

So when the opposition and the ‘informed‘ think-tanks and so called strategists make a mockery of Indian Army’s well-conceived and well-executed surgical strikes, it is not a victory for them; it is our collective defeat as a nation. Lets get back to expecting more proxy-war attacks from them, more killings of innocents, and bemoan as a nation and ask the US or Nawaz Sharif to rein in Pak Army, and gather signatures to declare Pak a terror-sponsor (as if our experience teaches us – and please permit me to use strong words for once – that the moment we call a whore a whore, she immediately stops whoring!)

As if political wrangling over the surgical strikes is not enough, we have any number of these peaceniks who recommend the Gandhian philosophy of offering the other cheek too if someone slaps us on one. These are the worthies who openly declare that soldiers are meant to die since they are paid to do so and that they (the soldiers) wilfully chose the profession of arms (no one forced them).

It must be very lonely being a soldier in our country. He fights his own battles and wars.

Jai Hind!
Jai Hind Ki Sena

Mu’izz ad-Din Muhammad Ghori, also known as Muhammad of Ghor, was a Sultan of the Ghurid Empire (The Ghurids were a Persian dynasty from Ghor region that is presently in Afghanistan). The dynasty was originally Buddhist but they converted to Sunni Islam after the conquest of Ghor by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1011 (Kashmir, Doab, Rajasthan and Gujarat were never conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni and remained Hindu dynasties). Mahmud of Ghazni specialised in extreme cruelty, treachery, looting and plunder and extended his empire in the north-western part of Indian sub-continent. He was particularly devoted to the spread of Islam and the tales of his demolitions of Hindu temples can still be seen in many dilapidated structures.

Despite all the cruelties and plunders done in the region by Mahmud of Ghazni, Pak military named its short-range ballistic missile as Ghazanvi missile to honour (!) Mahmud of Ghazni.

The foundation of Muslim rule in India was however laid by Muhammad Ghori. He extended the Ghurid Empire to Delhi and then all the way to Bengal (present day Bangladesh) and greater part of Indian peninsula.

During his conquest of Hindustan, in 1191, Muhammad Ghori captured Bhatinda and planned to take over the neighbouring kingdom of Prithviraj Chauhan. In the First Battle of Tarain (now near Thanesar in Haryana), he was roundly defeated by Prithviraj and was seriously wounded. The Rajput king declined to conduct a hot-pursuit of the retreating Muhammad Ghori’s army as it was considered against the accepted norms of battle that Rajputs believed in.

Mu’izz ad-Din Muhammad Ghori and his army, however, didn’t suffer from any of these armed conflict ethics. So, in the Second Battle of Tarain, in 1192, they defeated Prithviraj’s army through guile and deceit (Prithviraj’s army was used to battle between sunrise and sunset whereas Muhammad Ghori’s army carried out successful surprise attacks pre-dawn). Also, since Prithviraj had fought against all his neighbouring Hindu kingdoms, none of them came to his rescue even though he called for help. Prithviraj was defeated, captured and finally executed.

Pak military named three of its medium-range ballistic missile Ghauri-I, Ghauri-II and Ghauri-III, in the memory of Mu’izz ad-Din Muhammad Ghori.

The conquest of India by an Islamic Sultan led to, in the ensuing centuries, large-scale forced conversions of Indians. It also coincided with the defeatist attitude by Indians so much so that many Indians fondly recall the greatness and splendour of the Islamic rulers including the Taj Mahal and the Lal Qila.

The last of the Mughals: Bahadur Shah Zafar surrendered to British forces led by Maj William Hodson on 20th Sep 1857 and thus ended the Mughal Empire in India.

The British too not just enslaved us but ensured that in our mindset we would remain enslaved forever. Even after acquiring independence, we had the defeatist attitude that many things such as railways and post & telegraph were done better by the British and that we have to bow to the superior workmanship, doctrine and principled ways of doing things of our erstwhile rulers.

With this national psyche our resolve to do things decisively, on our own, went down gradually until it was literally in our shoes.

The Indian armed forces, on the other hand, refused to have this defeatist attitude and gloriously proved themselves in all wars except in the 1962 war with China wherein Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru considered his becoming a statesman more important than the national strategic interests and succumbed to this honed defeatist attitude and thus ensured our defeat even before the war.

Many historians believe that in 1191, after decisively defeating Mohammad Ghori, had Prithviraj Chauhan carried out a hot-pursuit of the retreating defeated army, perhaps the events that followed later could have been avoided.

Last night, ladies and gentlemen, after 825 years of this tactical mistake by Prithviraj Chauhan (By the way, we named our own SRBM Prithvi. Though it means Earth, but, the fact is that we still adhered to the disciplined and principled way of fighting adopted by Prithviraj Chauhan), our gallant armed forces crossed the LOC and did what Prithviraj should have done to Mohammad Ghori after the First Battle of Tarain.

Terrorists don’t follow rules taking a cue from the tactics of Muhammad Ghori. But, we had a national psyche of restraint despite repeated attacks by the Pak supported terrorists. Our countrymen often wondered what would be the limit of our self-imposed restraint. The Americans, on the other hand, exercised what they termed as Right of Self-Defence thousands of miles away by carrying out relentless drone strikes against terrorist hide-outs in Waziristan.

Last night’s surgical strike, I feel, is a seminal change in Indian psyche and perhaps the beginning of the end to our slavish and defeatist attitude of centuries. As I listen to the news I find all opposition parties (coming out of the mould of the neighbouring Hindu kings of Prithviraj Chauhan) supporting Narendra Modi’s government and saluting the Indian army for a precision, successful and effective cross-LOC surgical strike that should have been first conducted years back.

Jai Hind!
Jai Hind Ki Sena!