Sunday, December 10, 2000		Speaking generally

THE birth of a new state in India always brings joy and excitement to the people who have fought for it. Dehra Dun was basking in mellow, golden sunlight. The air was a thousand times purer than in Delhi. There were banners hailing Uttaranchal across the streets. In the conference to which I had gone participants from Uttaranchal spoke passionately about their new state. The women particularly were eloquent and both men and women were very critical of the time they had spent as part of Uttar Pradesh. Today Uttaranchal is a state heavily in deficit. The Chief Minister came to speak to us and said that in six months there would be free and universal primary education in Uttaranchal. Certainly, he was being too optimistic.

We were staying in the campus of the Forest Research Institute, 1,000 acres of trees and forests where the British had set up a most attractive institution. The roads inside the campus are still named after the British Directors of the Institute, but unfortunately, their successors have not been able to preserve the heritage.

I cannot speak of the quality of work in teaching and research in forestry. My ignorance prevents me from any comments. But we stayed in the Scientist’s Hostel, which is a large and solidly built modern building inaugurated by Rajesh Pilot when he was a Central Minister. The rooms were adequately sized and had the usual complement of furniture. But we were there for three nights and three days and there was no water in our room. The general toilet off the lobby stank to high heaven and the closet there was locked — a part was missing, someone said. The telephone was an extension from the main office of theF.R.I. and didn’t work on week-ends and holidays. There was an STD-ISD-PCO booth about a hundred yards away but it was open for just three hours a day, two at night and one in the day! The food was eatable but not much more than that. The reception desk in the lobby was often unattended. The television set there blared out film songs and sequences all the time, except for a few hours late in the night. So while we had a pleasant conference, the state of the maintenance of the hostel was disappointing. One hopes that the main office of FRI is not in the same state. The conference room in the Oil and Natural Gas Commission where we met was excellent and comfortable but it is hardly used.

Another extensive campus also chosen and begun by the British is that of the Indian Military Academy started in the early thirties. The IMA has a museum which we went to see — a large hall almost all of wood with two galleries on the first and second floor looking down. The walls have the painted portraits of all Army Chiefs of Staff and photographs of all past commandants and holders of the topmost gallantry awards. There are some flags and photographs of defining moments of battles with the Chinese, Japanese and Pakistanis. There are some weapons on display. At one end of the hall there is a sort of dais where an written in large letters are some words of Sir Philip Chetwode who was the Commander-in-Chief in India when the IMA was started. He had said that the concern of the officers was first, and every time, the welfare of the men they commanded and the last, every time, was their own welfare. Such statements are usually for universal appreciation. The slogan of America’s West Point, for instance, is "Duty, Honour, Country", which applies equally to us.

What struck me very forcibly was that, for the Indian Army, the Indian National Army never existed. There were photographs of the ruling British for whom the Indians fought in France in the World War I, in the Middle East’s deserts in World War II and also in Malaysia, Singapore and Burma and elsewhere, there are photographs of the Chinese who defeated the Indian Army in the North-East, of the Japanese who killed so many Indians and of the Pakistanis who were defeated in Bangladesh but nothing to remind the Indian Army of those who fought and died for India and Indian freedom. There are, on the walls, excerpts from speeches of leaders who have spoken about the Indian Army, including Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and Jinnah but nothing about the man who said from Burma that over across the distant hills was India and that the soldiers of the INA would either reach there or their blood would strain the road. From Bahadur Shah Zafar’s tomb in Rangoon where he shed tears, he quoted a couplet composed by the last Emperor: "As long as the last particle of faith exists in the souls of India’s freedom fighters, the sword of India shall continue to penetrate the heart of London".I am indeed surprised and mortified that no patriots, no Indians, have stood out against this great omission at the IMA.