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The 1965 war Profile |
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Politicians should keep off
educational institutions On Record Marriage a sacrament, not a one-day game
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The 1965 war
This
writer vividly recalls his speech on August 15, 1965, from the ramparts of Red Fort. That was the time when massive Pakistan military infiltration had taken place in Jammu and Kashmir and war clouds were hovering over the country. Referring to Chinese protests, “The Chinese are claiming that we have made bunkers in their territory”, he told the nation. “Well, if it is their territory they are welcome to destroy them”, he added to a thunderous applause. That was Lal Bahadur
Shastri, our Prime Minister. No logic could be more simple; no message more direct. A physically small man who stood much taller in his boldness to take political decisions. On the anniversary of our 1965 war, it would be appropriate to recall his contribution to the nation. Both India and Pakistan have followed divergent paths since Independence. While India chose to become a democratic, secular and welfare state wanting to be left alone, Pakistan chose to foster an obsessive hatred of India and to prevent India from going forward by any means, fair or foul. Historically, peace between the two has been possible only when Pakistan had a fear of military retaliation from India, mainly from 1971 till 1989. On becoming nuclear, and assuming to be immune to attack from India, it stoked a jihad in Kashmir. Another such period of fear on part of Pakistan was prior to 1962 when Ayub Khan had a very high opinion of the fighting prowess of the Indian Army and had stated in a public meeting that he did not want to lose Pakistan for the sake of Kashmir. All that changed in 1962, when the famed India Army was humbled and humiliated in a totally one-sided conflict with China. Ayub seems to have concluded that the India Army was no more the same feared fighting machine that it used to be. Death of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his succession by a diminutive, seemingly unimpressive Lal Bahadur Shastri seemed to have further emboldened Pakistan. The result was the Indo-Pak war of 1965. Kashmir has always been a handy pretext for Pakistan to justify its obsessive hostility towards India. Of course, there can be any number of such pretexts between two countries sharing such a long border. One such chosen by Pakistan in April 1965 was the Rann of
Kutch. Pakistan planners decided to test Shastri and also to draw out Indian Army far way from Kashmir, where they planned to fight their real battle. The Rann of Kutch gave Pakistan every tactical advantage. India had hardly any troops in Gujarat; the nearest unit was in Jam Nagar and they were under Bombay area, a peace formation not geared for fighting a war. The only rail communication was a metre gauge railway incapable of transporting tanks and artillery. Pakistan, on the other hand, had better rail and road communications right up to the chosen battlefield. The entire Rann became a sea during monsoon and India would be obliged to withdraw troops before the rains started. The only problem was the fact that Pakistani Air Force bases were far away in Punjab, while Indian bases were in Gujarat and
Rajasthan. To overcome this problem, the Pakistan Air Force C-in-C Ashghar Khan tried the usual dirty trick and called up his old senior from pre-Partition days ACM Arjun Singh Chief of Indian Air Staff to suggest that the two air forces stay out of the conflict. As subsequent events proved, the latter was just too shrewd and too thorough a professional to get taken in by such a ruse. Pakistan created a border dispute in Rann totally out of the blue and sent a Brigade group supported by heavy artillery and Patton tanks under Brigadier Tikka Khan who was later to become notorious as Butcher of Bangladesh. The Indian High Command, having sensed a trap, refused to bite the bait and the then Chief of Army Staff General
J.N. Chowdhary was categorical that we would fight at the place of our choosing and not the one chosen by Pakistan. Though we lost some territory and considerable prestige in the world by refusing to fight and accepting a face saving formula that left our territory in Pakistani hands, it saved the day for us later when the real action started. Emboldened that Indian leadership was shy of a war, Pakistan launched its Operation Gibraltar by sending thousands of infiltrators into the Kashmir valley. The major route was through Haji
Pir. Our Para battalion under Ranjit Dayal captured it and not only blocked further infiltration but also cut off the supplies etc. for those that were already in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan unleashed its previously planned Operation Grand Slam on September 1, 1965 aimed to capture Akhnur bridge over Chenab cutting off Punch and Rajauri and then capture Jammu along with a pincer from
Sialkot, bottling up all Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir. On Sept 3, Ayub Khan sent his favourite General Yahya Khan (who though a Shia was instrumental in bringing Ayub Khan to power in the October 1958 coup as a senior operational staff officer in GHQ then at Karachi), to command this battle and get all the
honours. As the situation in Akhnur sector was getting critical and untenable, India opened a second front across the international border to relieve the pressure there and a full scale war was on. A war on a wide front favours a country with more resources in manpower and material and slowly as we started getting an upper hand, the ceasefire came about on Sept 23, 1965. Two events during the war stand out not only for their boldness but also for the impact on the outcome of the war. Both were political decisions taken under the leadership of Lal Bahadur
Shastri, who had earlier set an example of moral courage by resigning as the Railway Minister following a train accident. First was the decision to use the Air Force on the evening of Sept 1 when the Army’s situation had become untenable and Akhnur was in imminent danger of falling to the enemy. That far-reaching and bold decision he took within minutes of being apprised of the critical situation by the Army and Air Chiefs. The second decision was to open another front across the international border. An attacker chooses the time and place of his attack and is the strongest in the chosen sector. Militarily, it makes more sense for a defender to launch a counter-stroke elsewhere to force the attacker to divert his resources into defending his own territory and thus weakening his attack. In the 1948-49 Kashmir operations, the fighting had remained confined to the ceasefire line and did not spill over to the international border. Pakistan, obviously, expected a repeat of the scenario and had prepared accordingly. When India opened up the Punjab front, they were surprised and Ayub’s dreams of glory and consummation of the “ideology of Pakistan” ended in the plains of Punjab, thanks primarily to a diminutive man but with the heart of a lion. The nation owes this lion an everlasting gratitude. Without his bold leadership, the outcome of that war could and would have been different and the political map of the subcontinent of India would have been very different today. n The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff |
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Profile When he was a child, he had to face lot of hardship because there was no school in his village. He had vowed to build a school so that children should not undergo the hardship he had faced. He redeemed his pledge within two years of returning to India. Little did Prof Misra know when he returned home and built the school that the research done by him in Canada would one day earn him international fame and his name would make world headlines. The BBC reported “a fossil in Canada believed to be 565 million years old has been named after the Indian geologist, Professor Shiv Balak
Misra, who found it”. The fossil, said to be oldest record of multi-cellular life on earth , will be called Fractofusus
Missrai. “Mistaken Point”, located in Canada’s Newfoundland, the area where fossil was discovered, has since been declared a protected area. The “turning point” in Prof Misra’s life came in June 1967 when in course of his work, he began to study some of the fossil samples. He found these rocks had the imprints of a leaf and a soft-bodied jellyfish. He has been quoted as saying “before this discovery, it used to be unicellular organism but the fossils that I stumbled upon were multi-cellular and it established a crucial link in the history of evolution of plant life”. In a research paper, based on the discovery, he has concluded that the fossil was of a soft bodied jelly-like floating colonial organism which were killed by fumes and volcanic ash falling on them. Earlier, scientific community was unsure whether the fossils were remains of plants or animals. Now international scientific opinion has veered round to Misra’s original theory that fossils represent the earliest multi-celled animals. Geo-scientists from Canada are making all efforts to get the site declared a UNESCO World Heritage. Although, Prof Misra left Canada decades back, he has been in touch with the scientific community in North America and contributes articles to various journals on fossils.
Misra’s name was announced at a ceremony in Newfoundland city of Portugal Cove South where he lived during his days as a student of Memorial University. He could not make it to the function where he was bestowed the
honour. He, however, received an e-mail saying “ Your name appears as the discoverer of the Mistaken Point fossils. It will be seen by thousands of people every summer. You should feel quite pleased at the huge role you played in discovering this world-famous fossil site. Misra’s impromptu response was, “I am overwhelmed by the recognition”. Soon after building the school in his native village from his savings, Misra’s money exhausted and he looked for a job to eke out a living. He joined the Madhya Pradesh Government as geologist, then moved to Kumaon University where he taught and researched until his retirement in 1999. His wife managed to run the school where she is the principal. Now in early seventies, Mishra joined her and the couple lives in
Lucknow. He has no fresh plan for his career but says, “I will continue to do more writing. My interest in research is alive and I will continue to share ideas with my fellow researchers in North America”. |
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— Union Tourism Minister Ambika Soni to reporters after a meeting with the Prime Minister Compulsions of multi-party government are obstructing agricultural
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Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar My lips are sealed on anything to do with the India-specific safeguards…You know what is going on in India. We will get back to you. —
Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar to reporters at Vienna There is need for comprehensive approach to the conflict in Darfur. Solutions cannot be piecemeal. The crisis grew from many causes. We must deal with all of them — security, politics, resources, water, humanitarian and development issues. —
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon I am not looking for power in Gujarat immediately, but am patiently building up the party. The Bahujan Samaj Party had strong vote banks, but they are scattered over various constituencies. My party would not allow its support base to be wasted by aligning with any other party. —
UP Chief Minister Mayawati There were cats, bats and rats in the fight against terrorism. Why inquire into only cats? Why not against bats and rats too? We used several means to eliminate terror in the nation’s interest. —
Former Punjab DGP K.P.S. Gill — Konkana Sen — Abhishek Bachchan |
Politicians should keep off
educational institutions The
issue of autonomy of educational institutions, particularly Punjab’s universities, has come to the fore. The Akali Dal had promised to the people a fair and just government to negate the rule of corruption and nepotism allegedly characterising the previous government. The Akali Dal-BJP government assumed office barely six months ago. The first issue that raked the education system of the state was the ouster of the Vice-Chancellor of the Punjab Agricultural University, the think-tank of the state’s agriculture and hence its economy and future. Agriculture is the state’s mainstay as it has no mines and industry. The VC of such a think-tank was ousted on a flimsy ground of not “opening one of the university gates to public thoroughfare.” It only tells how serious the present government is to the cause of education in the state. The Tribune has been carrying editorials and articles by educationists on the subject. The dust had hardly settled when the issue of the Vice-Chancellor of another university got stirred. The ruling party leadership must find some decent mechanism, at least with such a façade, to say good bye to the appointees of the previous ruling party. Making mockery of everyone associated with the education system should be avoided. The Punjabi University is in turmoil for the last couple of months. How long will it remain so is anybody’s guess. Who is the real sufferer? Obviously, the university and all those associated with it. Like the banks of a river, it remains a mute witness to the flowing streams of vice-chancellors and governments. The leadership of all political hues and shades, regional and national, must realise the worth of education and its long term consequences. This land of five rivers could only yield agriculture given the socio-historical and geo-political reasons. And we have already reached the plateau of agricultural production and the profits therein. The point of saturation has arrived. The vain hope of GM seeds and increased production are dreams yet to be realised. What consequences it will have on nature, its flora and fauna and on human population are still to be assessed. The peasantry is already up in arms against the WTO and the government as well on various counts. There is no industry here for various reasons and one doesn’t see any hope in the near future of such a development. The reasons are numerous. Punjab had hitherto been a voracious consumer of industrial products of all sorts but has yet not witnessed the installation of any major unit of such production. What is then left with us? The human resource, a resource par excellence indeed but only if we are conscious and cautious enough to harness it. Punjabis do hard work. This resource may be best used for the growth of service sector in the information industry. Gurgaon and Noida are best examples. Politicians promise to make Punjab a California. But how can they do it amidst migration of our intelligent and productive youth? Why do they migrate? Are they sure of getting quality education here? Can they secure employment on merit alone? Do they get a hassle and corruption-free milieu to work? If education below is losing standards, how can universities remain aloof? How can we develop them into centres of excellence? How can we harness the excellent human resource that we have? How can we check their export? These questions are looming large on the face of Punjab and its future. The political leadership must assess the damage and explore ways to recuperate it. The people and the intelligentsia must wake up to impress upon the government the issues confronting Punjab. If we do not improve the standards of education in our schools, colleges and universities now, these will become dens of vices and the vagrant. How do we save our institutions from too much of unwanted and unnecessary political intervention? Are we bearing this interference because the government is the largest funding body? Is the government now in a position to play the same role it used to play? Consider the case of Punjabi University. It now receives only 28 per cent of its grants from the state government as against 78 per cent a few years ago. And this will fall in the near future, given the cuts and crunches on education. The government is already facing a financial crisis and education is the first one to face the resource crunch. Each government blames the previous one for emptying the exchequer. People should realise their game plan and the media must come forward to play its role of making people conscious of such machinations of the political leaders. If the government is actively withdrawing from the role of a protector and provider of minimum basic needs to its population by leaving all institutions including hospitals and educational to themselves, ways should be explored to generate our own funds. The government is already asking us to raise the fees enormously and the institutions had no option but to follow suit. If we are able to meet over 75 per cent of our requirements, a little more effort can make these institutions self-reliant and independent. This is no hypothetical proposition but well experimented by Punjabi University. The present Vice-Chancellor has shown that sufficient resources can be mobilised. Of course, this is no novel idea. A Vice-Chancellor’s main job in developed countries is to generate funds. Once the universities here become financially self-reliant, these may well ask the government and political leaders to leave them alone. The VC may be selected or elected, but one of his main functions should be to generate funds. If one fails in that, s/he may be removed. Some democratic set-up may be organised to oversee different activities of the officials, lower or higher, in the institution. The autonomy will help us keep things to ourselves. As we say in Punjabi Ghar di ghar wich hi dhaki reh gayi. Even if there is brick-batting or fighting between members, it will remain within. The cats will be judged by other cats. They will at least not go to a monkey who will exploit them. All of us have read this lesson in the primers but are yet to learn from it. n The writer is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Punjabi University, Patiala |
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On Record
Vandana Shiva is a well known physicist, environmentalist and author of many scientific papers and books. Her NGO Navdanya supports biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights. An M.Sc (Hons) in Physics from Panjab University, Chandigarh (1973), she is currently involved in issues such as intellectual property rights, biodiversity and genetic engineering. In an interview to The Sunday Tribune, she shares her views on agriculture. Excerpts: Q: What is wrong with Punjab’s agriculture? A: The soil. Before the green revolution, the soil was fine and healthy. Now, over 60 per cent of its soil is in bad shape. The soil’s health is created by soil microbes, whose nutrition is organic matter. When organic fertilisers are replaced by chemical fertilisers and pesticides, they damage the soil organisation in two ways. One, they kill friendly organisms like earthworms. Earthworms are just one of millions of beneficial species that chemical fertlisers and pesticides kill. You can add nitrogen and potassium from outside, but soil needs magnesium, calsium, other vital micro-nutrients. Two, chemical fertilisers demand intensive irrigation. And when there is too much water in the soil, there is water logging and plants get suffocated. This also leads to salination of soil. Q: How are the green revolution and chemical fertilisers responsible for the farmers’ woes? A: I use a special term for chemical fertilisers — ecological narcotics. When chemical fertilisers were introduced in Punjab, the World Bank gave subsidies to farmers. The more farmers use them, the greater becomes their need. As subsidies kept going down, the need kept increasing, leading to the present-day situation when farming has become an economically unviable proposition. Now agricultural scientists are being brought in from the US, who are experimenting with farmers, telling them to grow wheat one day, baby corn the next day. The government has started withdrawing from procurement and is handing over to big corporates to buy directly from farmers. Again, instead of buying from Punjab farmers, it is importing wheat at a much higher price. Actually, at the time of the nuclear agreement, another agreement — the US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture — was signed. Monsanto, WalMart are on its board. It is not Punjab farmers or the state government who are making decisions for farmers; it is the corporates. Q: What is the way ahead? A: Punjab farmers are paying the price of chemical fertilisers. Therefore, we must get rid of chemical fertilisers through organic ecological farming. Manuring the soil with organic matter will also reduce the wastage of water in agriculture as depleting groundwater is a major challenge for Punjab today. If you irrigate less, you conserve water and soil. Also, Punjab cannot remain a land of monocultures, biodiversity has to be brought in. Green revolution has limited agriculture to wheat. It was a land of makki (corn) and sarson with makki being one of most important crops in the state. Punjab must grow what it eats. It is a proud land of farming, eating well and that’s the way it should continue to be so. There should be more farmers’ markets where they can directly sell their produce and not through big corporates’ mega stores. Q: Isn’t shopping in AC comfort the sign of a developed nation for consumers? A: Not at the cost of environment, biodiversity and the farming community. The AC shopping experience will only be for the elite. There are 1.2 billion consumers in the country and AC shopping will be available to just 5 per cent. The rest depend on small vendors. Corporatisation of the retail will destroy the market for this majority because MNCs will destroy the business of small vendors like the neighbourhood vegetable vendor. Q: What about your plan to highlight the problems of Chandigarh’s periphery? A: Luxury housing, luxury investments like nanotechnology are unacceptable at the cost of farmers’ land. People from outside India are buying agricultural lands and turning them into concrete structures because of the cheap land. This is a loot of farmers’ land. They can do it in California, why in Chandigarh? Land is not elastic, you cannot create or generate more land. Adjoining areas of Chandigarh in Punjab used to be known for rural prosperity. |
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Marriage a sacrament, not a one-day game In
the article, “Compromise, not divorce: We must save the institution of marriage” (Perspective, Aug 5), this writer expressed his strong commitment to the institution of marriage and made an emotional appeal to society to check the disturbing trend of divorce. If this pious relationship is not maintained by society, there would be a spurt in the cases of live-in relationship which would not only be destructive to the institution of marriage but to society itself. The news-item, “IT boom leads to spurt in divorces?” (Aug 13) depicts the core issue in relation to one segment of society — information technology professionals are so much engrossed in raising money that they hardly have time to share the emotions of the other spouse. The answer to the problem has been given by the correspondent himself. In this materialistic world, to earn money by legitimate means is not a crime, not is it a sin. To work hard with sincerity and devotion during the office hours is also one of the qualities of a good employee, whether he is serving in a government department or a public sector concern. But wisdom does not permit that office love should bloom leading to a short-term relationship, nor should it conceive that his priorities are different. The pre-requisites of this unique institution of marriage are mutual respect, love and affection and reposing confidence by one spouse in the other. Inter-caste marriages are no taboo. These will strengthen the ties of multi-dimensional society. But to apply for divorce just after six months of the marriage is to ring the alarm bell. Is too much financial security to the spouse working in the IT, BPO and ITES sectors one of the principal causes leading to the cases of divorce? For this particular section of society requires a deep thought that plenty of money in the hands of immature youth can lead to undesirable results. If a spouse does not come up to the expectations of his counter-spouse in the trustful life and looks towards ‘office love bloom’, short-term relationships are bound to occur. Devoting too much time to office work to earn more money also means that a man or a woman works in the company of opposite sex for long hours and sometimes the Laxman Rekha of marital relationship is crossed which, in turn, leads to a marital discord. As a strong contender for maintaining this pious and fiduciary relationship and for the preservation of the unique institution of marriage, whether among the educated strata of society or otherwise, this writer feels that the institution of marriage, whether performed between two IT professionals or otherwise, requires faith, commitment, love and affection for each other and perseverance, and above all patience. In every married life, there will be ordinary wear and tear. However, marriage is a sacrament and must not be made a game of 20:20 or one-day game. It must be played like a test match testing the other spouse’s scale of confidence and faith. Marriages are supposed to be long lasting. A couple should enter the holy alliance with a commitment and resolution that they have to celebrate platinum jubilee, golden jubilee or at least silver jubilee. They should never think or conceive that let the statutory period of one year as envisaged under Section 14 of the Hindu Marriage Act expire so that they would use the provision of Section 13-B for mutual divorce. They should not try to make out a case of exceptional hardship or exceptional depravity to break the barrier of one year for applying for divorce under Section 13 or 13-B of the Act. Though a boy becomes an adult at 18 years, it is not necessary that simultaneously he also acquires the maturity of a man. To think of divorce, one must satisfy one’s own conscience in an impartial and judicious manner whether his marriage has become so stressful on account of the conduct of the other spouse that it has reached a point of no return, or in the interpretation of law it has broken irretrievably and there are no chances to live with each other under the same roof. Cities of northern India like Delhi and Chandigarh are also witnessing IT booms. A number of IT companies are spending crores of rupees for creating IT parks etc. If this disease of South spreads its tentacles to the north, what would be the fate of our children? The youth and society have to search for an answer to this question. A former Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the writer is Member, Punjab Human Rights Commission, Chandigarh |
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Thirty-seven years back, Prof Shiv Balak Misra, left the shores of Canada, giving up his lucrative career as a geologist researcher in North America. He finally settled down in Lucknow and set up a school along with his wife,
Nirmala, at his native village Kunaura, 18 km from the Uttar Pradesh capital. Built with his savings, the school was named Bharatiya Gramin
Vidyalaya, fulfilling his childhood dream.
There
reforms like abolition of a law that regulates where farmers must sell their produce. I will be happy to take bold decisions. But in the present environment of Parliament, it is not that simple. Any government which is depending on Left or Right has limitations.
Good actors have to create chemistry on the screen. It is not necessary that we have to be friends but if we are mutually respectful then it becomes quite easy to act.
Tailpiece: I have two of the most gifted actors on earth at home. I got married to one of my favourite actors. So, they are all great in their fields and have set high standards for me. They have gone about their profession in the correct way. I would like to emulate them and I have never looked upon it as a
burden.