Is it to enable the thugs, scoundrels
and traitors in offices of authority to continue with their crimes with
impunity?
The woes of the
Indian soldiers began the day the reins of governance were handed over to
Jawaharlal Nehru. In retrospect it seems that the reins of power were handed
over to Jawaharlal Nehru the individual rather than a leader of the people. In
the elections to the office of the President, AICC, Jawahar is learnt to have
got just one vote against 18 votes in favour of Sardar Patel. It was an agreed fact that
whoever won the election would be the 1st PM of India. But then
Gandhiji prevailed on Patel to withdraw his candidature. Why Gandhiji did so
has been shrouded in mystery. But a video on YouTube featuring Rajiv Dixit
would have us believe that Nehru had blackmailed Gandhiji by declaring that if
he was not made the PM he would cause split in the Congress that could delay
freedom!
Nehru who felt he
was competent to be the 1st PM of a nation which had just shaken off
its colonial yoke floundered when it came to having an Indian as Governor
General of free India. He let Mountbatten continue. But when it came to his
wish to have a Briton as the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of free India
he had to reckon with the outspokenness of Gen Nathu Singh Rathore. In the manner of
advocates trying to prove that victims of rape asked to be treated as such,
Nehru wanted his military officers to confess that they were incompetent to
head the army because they did not have such experience before. But Gen Rathore
spoke up: Mr Nehru, how have you taken over as the PM without any such previous
experience? The advocate in Nehru retorted: then are you ready to take over as
the Chief? Nathu Singh Rathore replied that his senior Gen Cariappa was there
who was competent enough to do the job. Nehru had to concede defeat. (What a
fall for the armed forces from Gen Nathu Singh Rathore to Gen Bikram Singh, who
has been favoured in the most abominable manner by the current UPA government!)
And from there started the era of neglecting and belittling the nation’s armed
forces. It resulted in the 1962 debacle with the Chinese intruding upto Tezpur
in interior Assam and walking back freely! Nehru escaped blame by victimizing his
Defense Minister and a few military officers. The bureaucrats who have never
shied away from flaunting their clout in the decision making process were
nowhere to be seen once things went hay way. There is a question being asked by
soldiers even today: what happened to the then Defense Secretary? But soldiers
know that Nehru was the cause and effect of the ‘62 debacle when they had been
moved to forward areas provocatively without even protective clothing, leave
alone weapons and ammunition! Book lovers should read the many books written by
soldiers on this war, especially the ‘Himalayan Blunder’ by Brig Dalvi who had
been commanding a brigade in the eastern frontier when the Chinese struck and
had been a Prisoner of War for many years.
Thanks to the ‘62
slap on the face, we were spared another debacle in 1971. In Field Marshal
(then General and Chief of Army Staff) Manekshaw’s own words, he had been asked
to liberate Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) by Mrs Indira Gandhi, the then PM,
in May of that year. The professional advice tendered by the soldier was: I
assure you of 100 percent defeat, if am ordered to launch an operation now.
Indira, touted as the only man in her Cabinet, was taken aback. But the
memories of 1962 helped her to listen to the sagacious advice of the army chief.
She learnt that rail, road and air space would be required heavily to move
troops to the borders. That East Pakistan will be flooded in summer and we were
not equipped to move in flooded terrain, leave alone fight a battle there. So
the time and space were left to professional judgement and we witnessed one of
the biggest victories in recorded military history. They say success has many
claimants, defeat is an orphan. So after the glorious military victory the
soldiers were soon forgotten and Indira became India and Durga and what not!
Manekshaw who got elevated as a Field Marshall got his pay as arrears when he
was in his deathbed, more than 35 years later! And, horribly, he was insulted
even in his death what with not even the Defense Minister, leave alone the
President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, attending his funeral!
During the colonial
times the Chief of Staff was the 2nd senior most official in the
hierarchy, the Viceroy being the first! Come freedom and democracy the nature
of governance had to change. But as far as the role of the armed forces was
concerned it continued to be guarding the nation’s frontiers and protecting its
integrity. But did the nature of governance change? Definitely not! Arguing
against granting freedom to India, Winston Churchill had said: “Power will go
to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low
caliber & men of straw. They will
have sweet tongues & silly hearts.
They will fight amongst themselves for power & India will be lost in
political squabbles. A day would come
when even air & water would be taxed in India.” In less than 70 years we
have established him as a prophet! Many commissions have enquired into the
politician-bureaucrat-underworld nexus and presented reports which have, for
all practical purposes, been dumped into waste paper baskets. But then even
this abominable, criminal nexus can be said to pale into insignificance when
compared to the judge-advocate nexus. And how is this relevant in the context
of soldiers? We just saw how the Supreme Court of India, denied a just verdict
to Gen V K Singh, then Chief of Army Staff, in the matter of a simple issue
like his date of birth! To those who are uninformed or ill informed on the
issue the fact is that there was no dispute regarding the date of birth of Gen
V K Singh, who was born to an army officer in an army hospital in Pune and all
his official documents, including the Matriculation Certificate, showed his
correct date of birth. It was only after Man Mohan Singh became the first Sikh
PM of this country and General Jogender Singh became the 1st Sikh
Chief of Army Staff that the issue of a wrong entry in an application filled
out for joining the National Defense Academy, became the ground for a raging
controversy that ended up with the apex court directing the Defense Minister to
review the General’s statutory complaint which had been dismissed without
application of mind!
If the problem with
aam aadmi is that they do not get any service of the government without bribes,
the problems of soldiers are worse. They are no more than bonded labourers! If
in 1962 more soldiers died due to inclement weather on snowy tops without even
proper foot wear, the condition of today’s soldiers isn’t any better. The
Bofors controversy, known as the Mother of all Scams, has been buried without
even a single accused being brought to book. Worse, Bofors is being touted as a
good gun which did us proud in Kargil. But what has been left unsaid is that when
it was being evaluated it had come up only as the 2nd best, the best
being French Sofna! It was a scam where the nation’s PM was directly an accused
and his name had been taken of the list of accused after his death. Defense
deals have always remained milch cows for the corrupt. And the deals are always
processed by the babus of the Ministry of Defense (Ministry against Defense, as Lt Gen P C Katoch
put it more appropriately!) Starting with the Jeep scam in 1947 to Westland
hepter the list is long, very long. But the fact remains that the victims of
all these scams are the soldiers who have to do with the worst equipments,
vehicles and logistics and the price they pay is their own lives! In fact it is
only the soldiers who pay for their own follies as well as the follies of the
politicians, bureaucrats and judges! Can anybody recollect how many
politicians, bureaucrats or judges have ever been punished till date? Lalu
Prasad Yadav, Raja and Kanimozhi are
still strutting around even after conviction and/or during bail. And what is former
judge P D Dinakaran doing? Enjoying the fruits from the adivasi land he had
encroached on?
‘One Rank, One
Pension (OROP)’, lateral employment till retirement age of their civilian
counterparts, an Ex Serviceman Commission on the lines of Women’s Commission,
SC/ST Commission etc have been legiti-mate demands of soldiers for ages. In
fact the demand of OROP had been accepted in principle way back in 1974 itself
but has yet to reach the implementation stage. Not only is there no attendance
being paid to redress these genuine problems of all the soldiers over the years,
the case of Rank Pay affecting all officers of the armed forces is one that
exposed the gullibility of the soldiers as much as it exposed the treachery of
the clerks in the MoD. The 4th Central Pay Commission, in 1986, while
introducing running pay scale for officers in the ranks of Captain to Brigadier
introduced a rank pay also in addition to the basic pay but the clerks who
drafted the orders managed to have the rank pay reduced from the basic pay
while fixing the basic pay thus denied all the officers serving at that time
their lawful dues. Worse, none of the 50,000 odd officers serving in the armed
forces then even realized the treachery that had been made victims of. It was
one Maj Dhanapalan who much later took up the matter with the Kerala High Court
and got a favourable verdict. Appeals, revisions and SLPs later when the
officer finally got his arrears the rest of the officers had to go to court for
getting their own dues. The matter is yet to be resolved even after the apex
court ordered grant of this due to all affected officers. But then again did
the apex court give justice to the affected officers? No interest for the
period from 1/1/1986 till 31/12/2005 and only 6 pc simple interest thereafter can
hardly be counted as justice done! It has been calculated that a soldier who
joins the army at 18 years of age and retires at 35 years stand to lose almost
Rs 3 Cr compared to his counterpart in civil. The loss keeps increasing with
the rank in which one joins and retires. So today there are no takers for
joining as officers in the armed forces. The deficiency is of the order of 25
to 30 pc of the authorized strength. Soon there is going to be deficiency in the
lower ranks also. Thanks to the information revolution ushered in by
technology, youth is knowledgeable and cannot be motivated by misleading
advertisements. They have seen how the Govt of India reacted to renegade
Pakistan soldiers capturing Indian soldiers, torturing them and mutilating
their bodies beyond recognition and how the same government reacted to the
allegation of a ‘diplomat’ breaching laws of her host country and was required
to be prosecuted!
It is this sordid
state of affairs that gives one the creepy feeling that the security and
integrity of the country is under threat. Unless the masses wake up and react
to make the people in government deliver what they are tasked, empowered and
compensated to deliver, the day may not be far off when the sacrifices made by
the freedom fighters and the soldiers of free India would have been in vain.
Soldiers
against Traitors-raviforjustice@gmail.com
This is a translation,
with minor changes, of a leaflet I had prepared to educate those who were going
to participate in a function on 13 Nov 2012 where the chief guest was A K
Antony. The original Malayalam version is available at
http://www.slideshare.net/raviforjustice/soldiers-against-traitors
