All’s well that ends well. So what if five more dead jawans have been added to the long list of martyrs being sacrificed to Pakis in uniform or mufti or in whatever attire? Now that Defence Minister Antony has arrived at the correct statement, after a few typo trials and errors, is it not wise on the part of political ‘stall’-’warts’ cutting across parties to call a ceasefire and get back to disrupting Parli and governance on some other pretext? And since the Arnab Goswamis and sundry other anchors who had cut-loose right after the first gunshot have now successfully shouted away all the cross-border enemies and silenced politicos, the primetime pundits too can go back to other pressing and depressing issues!
Forget a few faceless jawans fated to perish. After all, theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die. And why blame an insensitive Bihar Minister for having said that bluntly and briefly when the nation’s whole political and media elite have been doing the same more vociferously? Is the country making itself proud by treating its brave sons in this fashion? Even before the bodies were counted and identified, comes an exoneration from the Defence minister. His eagerness to douse potential Indo-Pak flames instead set off fresh political fires. To the opposition, Antony & Co became a bigger problem than Pak which willfully killed those soldiers. The moment he regularised the botched verbiage, the fires died away, much before the funeral pyres consumed those bravehearts. The political dust has settled ahead of their ashes. Their souls are exhorted to rest in peace as an ungrateful people revel in Pyrrhic peace and politicos get into peace-talk mode.
To make a long-drawn and dangerous issue seem temporary and trivial calls for a really dumb and defeatist mindset. India’s political and diplomatic dispensations have historically displayed a genetic disorder: Blindness to national security concerns. The frailties and follies of our leaders, from Nehru to MSingh, and their failure to gauge Pak intent and refusal to benchmark promises with follow-up action have cost this country heavily in terms of lives and land. Compounding the confusion is such leaders’ itch for a place in posterity as peaceniks non-pareil. They ignore the elementary truism that lambs cannot pass a resolution favouring vegetarianism when wolves have other ideas!
Nothing emboldens an enemy as weakness. Pak bears no comparison to India on any parameter, social, economic or military. It is a veritable madhouse wherein the shackles can break anytime to unleash all kinds of loony characters, brainwashed beyond salvage and armed to the teeth. Terrorism inside Pak is like the bomb blowing up on the bomb-maker’s face and it is foolish and fatal to equate us and Pak as victims on the same scale. Also, it is the height of stupidity for India to draw a distinction between army and civilian regimes and picture the latter as pious. Pak will be Pak, come what may and its common denominator is hatred of India … infidel India, to put it bluntly. Yet, if such an unstable country has the gall to needle a theoretically strong neighbour, imagine the conviction it can muster and worse, the confidence it must have in the impotence of our lamb-like leadership.
And why not? The chilling clarity that Pak has in its attitude and approach to India is in sharp contrast to the cowardly cowering here. Nawaz Sharif makes bold to parade a falsehood without batting an eyelid, knowing full well his nation will back him. But here, the puppet PM fights shy to speak the truth and instead disappears behind the veil. This when the nation is ready to rally. The fumbling and mumbling Defence Minister and a bunch of bumbling spokespersons are the ones holding the fort for the ruling party as well as for the nation. Signora Sonia, the Super PM can be expected to suddenly become just Cong Pres and write to the Government demanding action, a practised ploy! And since the whereabouts of our future hope and Voice President Ra(h)ul is unknown, we have no way of knowing what he thinks on this subject too.
Pak is a chronic problem that cannot fit into political timetables, nor any leader’s personal agenda or peaceful resolution. The Chamberlains in India’s political and diplomatic establishment should read Hitler’s history to know the perils and price of wishful thinking. The choice is between slow and painful blood-letting by our brethren or some kind of decisive confrontation. This is not war mongering. Rather, Pak had declared war long back; only we have plugged our ears. We can start by empowering our army to react to, or even pre-empt, Pak army attacks appropriately and apply the same ‘rules’ that Pak deploys.
By the way, Pak is not using its soil, but ours, to wage its real and proxy wars. PoK is constitutionally still very much part of sovereign India. We have every right to walk in there and evict the squatters. Correction. It is a duty.
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