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Justice
must prevail Out of
crease |
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Deplorable
treatment
Lack of
strategic thinking
The role
models
Jallianwala: How the empire was stirred, but not shaken
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Out of crease
Navjot Sidhu
the MP, it seems, is unhappy with the way his party, the BJP, is treating him. However, the former cricketer has chosen not to take to the field himself. Instead, Navjot Sidhu the MLA, who is also his wife and a doctor, has delivered knocks that could well upset the scorecards of rivals within the party, especially in Amritsar, which both represent. Her husband had been ‘sidelined’ in the party and projects he was pushing for his constituency were being scuttled, she alleged. It would be hard to deny some of the charges, as most of the developments have taken place in the public domain. The party put a lot of trust in Navjot in bringing in an ‘outsider’ to Amritsar, but then the outsider returned the favour in no less measure, winning the seat thrice (including one byelection). The feisty lady has said her husband may even quit politics, a commitment for which he had sacrificed a blooming career in television. Citing what he gave up to serve the people, however, does not behove the gallant sportsman, who entered politics entirely of his free will. To quit too would not be what a sportsman does. If Navjot believes there is something wrong in the party, and that people’s interests have been harmed to serve certain individuals, he owes it to his voters to expose that. It is more honourable to fight and lose a match than quit complaining. Perhaps the single largest factor that has gone against him is something he was brought in for in the first place, his star value. The state and its politics are too small to accommodate multiple stars. The developments do not portend well for the BJP in Punjab. It lost some currency with the voters during the last government, when some of its ministers had to leave in embarrassing circumstances. Internal bickering has ensured ministerial berths for some not-so-effective leaders this time. All this, when its alliance partner SAD is becoming increasingly independent. Navjot Sidhu was a face that brought to the party in the state enduring star value that also delivered. But that is if the opening batsman doesn’t retire hurt.
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Deplorable treatment
Laws
have a limited reach in India. The 10- year- old alleged rape victim’s detention in a lock-up in a Mahila Thana ( all women police post) in Bulandshahr has revealed deep- seated ignorance and prejudices at play across layers of hierarchy. This is not the sole case where caste superiority coupled with patriarchal advantage has displayed absolute irreverence towards law. In a system where caste is the deciding factor for all practical purposes, police men/women cannot remain inseparable from caste based hierarchy that delivers — from getting jobs to choice transfers and promotions. Caste influences top political class down to the thana level. In such a system creation of gender-based thanas is showing its limitation. In this particular case, the caste arrogance can be gauged by the fact that the men of the higher caste majority have accused the dalit family of letting their minor girl roam around free, which provoked the hapless father of three children to allegedly rape the minor. They now demand the family to evacuate the village or face consequences. Even the sarpanch of the village is favouring the accused in this demand. In all such cases the law takes a back seat, howsoever vociferously it may have been debated by the media. Was the woman thana in-charge made aware of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, and its various amendments for the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act? Were the constables aware of the amendments? In Uttar Pradesh, where this deplorable incident took place, women are taking matters into their own hands. In the capital city, Lucknow, about 100 young women trained in self-defence skills have created the Red Brigade and are teaching their tormenters lessons, which are not dependent on the long arms of law. Emergence of such groups is a sad reminder, that the ground reality for women has not changed by amending laws in their favour. Perhaps, there is lack of will by the implementers of the laws to help women claim their dignity.
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Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions. — Nikolai Gogol
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Lack of strategic thinking IT was in the mid-1990s that George Tanham, an eminent Ame ican scholar then working for RAND Corporation published a seminal paper, India’s Strategic Culture. His conclusion, moderately expressed, was that nothing of the kind “existed yet”. Patriotic Indians were enraged
and tried to rubbish Tanhm’s findings as best they could. The epic battle of Mahabharta, they pointed out, was fought on the basis of the highest military doctrines, and they asked, somewhat sneeringly, whether the US specialist had heard of Chanakya and his masterly work on statecraft that instructed the king what to do in times of both war and peace. Only after K. Subrahmanyam, the Bhishma Pithamaha of modern Indian thinkers on security and strategy, asked what else had been written or said by us during the two and a half millennia since Chanakya, were the critics silenced. Since then, however, things in India have changed radically. The number of strategy-linked think tanks has increased exponentially, compared with a handful then. More importantly, the government that had traditionally treated defence and strategy a “hush-hush affair” never to be shared with the people or even Parliament, has also gone public, if only to a limited extent. However, while lively discussions on security pour out of the think tanks and the voluble media practically every day, there is little resonance to it from those that make and run policy. In the circumstances, it is both sad and strange that very recently, The Economist has repeated almost exactly what Tanham had said two decades ago. Let the pith and substance of the two elaborate articles in the journal (March 30 - April 5, 2013) speak for themselves: “Whereas China’s rise (economically and militarily) is a given, India is widely seen a nearly-power that cannot get its act together … India’s huge potential … is far from being realised. One big reason is that the country lacks the culture to pursue an active security policy”. The weekly’s punch line is: “That India can become a great power is not in doubt. The real question is whether it wants to.” Now it would be wise not to be stampeded into believing that every word of what The Economist says must be true, for even the most respected publications in the West have sometimes been biased against India. But a dispassionate examination of the relevant articles by security experts and those of us whose job it is to chronicle and comment on the goings-on in the security establishment, including former chiefs of the three services, shows that much of the criticism of this country’s security policies is based not on prejudice but on reality. Let me just cite a few stark truths that the London-based journal doesn’t even mention. Fourteen years after the formation of the National Security Council, this august body has met but rarely. During the last three years or so, it hasn’t met even once! Worse, to this day the second largest country in Asia does not have a national security doctrine. Mercifully, a strategic doctrine, boldly opting for a “credible minimum deterrent” and no first use, was made public after the 1998 nuclear tests. Shockingly, there isn’t even a joint doctrine of the three armed forces. The Army, the Navy and the Air Force each plough a lonely furrow in this day and age when every battle is a joint land-air-sea undertaking. Like other western analysts The Economist has devoted considerable space to India’s huge defence purchases from abroad – said to be the world’s largest over the last five years and still rising – but refrains for hammering home the real underlying message: A country that imports 70 per cent of the military hardware it needs cannot be a superpower. At the same time, the path to domestic production of sophisticated defence equipment is littered with many roadblocks, largely because of the almost complete dependence on the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) despite the government’s grudging willingness of late to give the private sector a share in defence production. The fate of the main battle tank, Arjuna, promised to be operational two decades ago and still undelivered, underscores the point. The Army has to do with dated T-72 and T-90 tanks, imported from Russia. Why the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) flown by a former Air Chief several years ago hasn’t yet entered service in the IAF remains a mystery. There is a clear and present danger that the mother of all defence deals, costing about $ 20 billion, for the import of 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) might be at stake. An unduly long time was taken in deciding to buy from France the Rafale aircraft manufactured by Dassault. Now the whole deal is in danger of coming unstuck. For, an essential part of the deal is that Dassault would sell us 18 aircraft from the shelf and the remaining 108 would be produced within this country by an Indian entity and Dassault jointly. The GOI now insists that the joint production must take place at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Unfortunately, Dassault considers HAL to be a stodgy organisation and, therefore, suggests that it would deliver the kits to the HAL and accept no further responsibility. The French preference is for a consortium of public and private engineering companies to represent India. The Ministry of Defence says that this is totally unacceptable. In available space, one of the fundamental flaws of the highest structure managing defence and national security can be mentioned only briefly. It is the appalling state of the relationship between the civilian and military components of the Indian security system at the top. The trust deficit between the two sides is colossal. The armed forces deeply resent being “bossed over” by generalist civilians of the IAS. One will have to return to the subject later. The Naresh Chandra task force on national security took cognisance of this problem and suggested measures to take care of it at least partially. But the report of the task force has been before the government for one year without any decisions being reached. In such matters our government believes in doing nothing and doing it all the
time.
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The role models One
often hears people bemoaning the fact that we no longer get teachers who are role models. Unfortunately by this, they usually mean teachers who dress immaculately, speak English with a British accent and who know when to drink red wine and when to drink white. Nothing is looked for beyond this veneer resulting in some absolutely hilarious appointments. One ‘role model’ came to school every morning with a massive hangover, reeking of alcohol. The children sniggered and exchanged knowing smiles. Someone advised him to camouflage the smell with cardamom or mint. The children sniggered even more. He ceased to be a role model. In another school a ‘role model’ would persuade the children he taught to donate expensive books for a class library, a library which never materialised. This led to wild insinuations, which in turn tarnished his image as a role model. The entire print order of the school magazine, 3,500 copies, of a third school had to be shredded because the ‘role model’ editor was too lazy to correct the proofs. Another ‘role model’ sailed through an entire academic year without setting any written work other than ‘fill in the blanks’ exercises. No action is ever taken against these ’role models’, for they have often come in on the recommendation of a powerful godfather, sometimes after the dismissal of a perfectly good teacher, have the unquestioning support of a lobby of VIPs and because those in power are completely in thrall of their ‘charm and sophistication’. As a result, they become a power unto themselves — they are arrogant and rude towards other teachers, play favourites with the children and perform no positive function other than being ornamental. There are other teachers who speak atrocious English, have little or no dress sense and little idea of table manners. When they first come, they are figures of fun for the children. But gradually the children’s attitude undergoes a sea change. These teachers spend most of their spare time with children. They coach the children who are weak in academics. They play games with the children and comfort the ones who are in distress. They are firm and fair when dealing with aberrant behaviour - the children soon look beyond that surface veneer and learn to respect them for their politeness and humility, for their kindness and compassion. In spite of everything, our schools are still turning out decent and successful individuals and not because of ‘the role models’ who have no time for the children outside the classroom. Of course, a good dress sense is important, very important, so are good spoken English and good table manners. But these can be taught and learnt even by adults: concern for the children, humility, compassion and kindness cannot. The correct combination of style and substance is perfect. But with a choice only between substance without style and style without substance, I’d take substance any day. You see, it took me all of half an hour to learn when to drink red wine and when
white!
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Jallianwala: How the empire was stirred, but not shaken
The
recent expression of remorse, almost after 94 years, on the occurrence of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by a serving British Prime Minister David Cameron came as a welcome voice. In the past, it was in the same spirit in which the British Secretary of State of India Edwin Montagu and the great war-time Prime Minister of England Sir Winston Churchill condemned the firing on the unarmed Indians on Baisakhi, April 13, 1919, at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar as an act of “terrorism” committed by Brig. Gen. Reginald Dyer. Dissecting martial law In a debate in the House of Commons on July 8, 1920, on the Report of the Hunter Committee, Edwin Montagu the Secretary of State for India was forthright in his denunciation of merciless firing on hapless Indians in 1919. His memorable words were as follows:- “If an officer justified his conduct, no matter how gallant his record is, by saying that there was no question of undue severity, that if his means had been greater the casualties would have been greater, and that the motive was to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab, I say without hesitation…. that it is the doctrine of terrorism. Once you are entitled to have regard neither to the intentions nor to the conduct of a particular gathering, and to shoot and to go on shooting with all the horrors that were here involved, in order to teach somebody else a lesson, you are embarking on terrorism, to which there is no end.” Dissecting the martial law orders issued by the authorities, Montagu went on to characterise the order to salaam officers as racial discrimination and the whipping of schoolboys and flogging of a wedding party as frightfulness. “Are you,” Montagu asked the House, “going to keep hold on India by terrorism, racial humiliation and subordination and frightfulness, or are you going to rest it upon the goodwill, and the growing goodwill of the people of your Indian Empire?” There was, Montagu said, an alternative to terrorism. “It is to put the coping stone on the glorious work which England has accomplished in India by leading India to a complete free partnership in the British Commonwealth, to say to India: ‘We hold British lives sacred, but we hold Indian lives sacred too’.” The passionate advocacy of the above liberal doctrine served only to infuriate a section of House of Commons which believed that a radical Secretary of state, a Jew himself, had inflicted injustice on a ‘gallant soldier’ whose action to suppress a mutiny deserved support. Montagu asked the House of Commons: “Is your theory of domination or rule in India the ascendancy of one race over another, of domination and subordination (cries of ‘No’) or is your theory that of partnership? If you are applying domination as your theory, then it follows that you must use the sword with increasing severity (cries of ‘No’) until you are driven out of the country by the united opinion of the civilised world.” Although the above words alienated the Conservative members further, they appeared prophetic almost 27 years before India got complete freedom. Dismissal of Gen Dyer Montagu strongly pleaded for the dismissal of General Dyer and having failed to carry the House with him, he still pleaded for his compulsory retirement. Although the general sense of the House was against Dyer’s use of excessive violence, yet there was no consensus on how to punish him. There was a general feeling that the civil administration in Amritsar, headed by the Deputy Commissioner Miles Irving, abdicated its responsibility which gave a free hand to the military commander to indulge in ruthless and mindless firing of 1650 rounds killing 379 innocent citizens and leaving another 1500 injured. The doctrine of O’Dwyerism, authored by Michael O’Dwyer the then Lt-Governor of Punjab in the World War years, came in for sharp criticism as steeped in selfish disregard for the feelings of the common Indian who was by and large supporting the empire in its war efforts. Michael O’Dwyer had earlier put his seal on the senseless killing at Amritsar by sending a message through General Beynon, reading: “Your action correct and Lt-Governor approves.” Churchill’s take What perhaps came in as the most acceptable and politically correct criticism of Dyer’s action was the reaction from no less than Sir Winston Churchill, the future Prime Minister of England. He stated that Dyer’s deed had been “an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in sinister isolation,” and he had done something which no other English officer faced with a similar problem had ever done. This was so because Dyer had abandoned the principle of minimum force upon which all military aid to the civil power had to be based. Churchill elucidated this principle, and showed the House how it had to be applied: “No more force should be used than is necessary to secure compliance with the law’; a commander had to ‘confine himself to a limited and definite objective that is to say to prevent a crowd from doing something they ought not to do”. Dyer had gone beyond this, and had thereby laid himself open to the charge of “frightfulness”, a word Churchill used intentionally for it recalled the charges made against the Germans in the War. “What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or country”. Setting aside those who were by now attempting to interrupt his flow, he retorted: “I do not think that it is in the interest of the British Empire or of the British Army for us to take a load of this sort for all time upon our backs. We have to make it absolutely clear, some way or other, that this is not the British way of doing business.” In a view, which he revealed in a subsequent letter to Lord Crewe, he wrote: “My own opinion is that the offence amounted to murder, or alternatively manslaughter”. Split British society As the opinion about the role of Dyer split the British society into a sharp dichotomy, it was difficult for liberal thinkers to inflict an exemplary punishment on him. Ironically, while this was going on, a charitable fund amounting to almost £30,000 had been collected to raise his morale. Yet the opprobrium with which Dyer surrounded himself due to the false bravado of a braggadocio exhibited during cross examination before the Hunter Committee resulted in his retirement in the reduced rank of a Colonel. The guilty conscience from which he suffered soon grew into nemesis and tragic self-pity. His health started deteriorating. Constant depression and isolation in life, due to living at various obscure locations in England, took a very heavy toll on him. The end came on July 2, 1927, almost within eight years of the infamous firing. His death certificate declared the cause of death as “cerebral hemorrhage” and “arteriosclerosis”. His family believed he died of a broken heart but it was an obvious case of twin failure — both of the brain as well as of the heart. — The writer is a retired DGP from the Punjab cadre.
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