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Opinion
Kargil: Whose War was That?
by C. Uday Bhaskar
July 26 marks
10 years after India won the limited but high-stakes Kargil War
initiated by Pakistan. On this day in 1999, the Indian soldiers gave the
country a significant victory - albeit at a heavy cost in life, limb and
blood. More than 500 military personnel gave their lives and a grateful
nation celebrated a Kargil Diwas (Day).
But regrettably a decade later, it is evident that the nation has learnt
little by way of imbibing the right lessons. And this is not for lack of
clear and objective recommendations based on a careful review of what
caused Kargil and what went wrong as far as national security was
concerned.
The Kargil Review Committee headed by veteran security
analyst K. Subrahmanyam produced its report in record time and this was
submitted to the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government.
To its limited credit, the NDA constituted four separate task forces to
make tangible recommendations to improve and restructure the following
areas: management of the country's borders; internal security;
intelligence gathering capabilities; and defence management.
These reports were then submitted to the NDA government and reviewed by
a Group of Ministers. The earnest hope and crying national need was for
these recommendations to have been discussed in some detail in
parliament so as to obtain consensual political support and then be
implemented progressively. The objective ought to have been to prevent
another Kargil and create necessary national security capacity from the
apex downwards.
Alas, little of the implementation took place during the NDA rule and
even less so in the UPA's first tenure.
Consequently the nation had to face the ignominy of its parliament being
attacked by terrorists in December 2001 and seven years later, undergo
the trauma of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks - a veritable maritime
Kargil.
In the interim, national security has become a political football and it
was deplorable that in the run up to the 10th anniversary of the Kargil
Diwas, some political representatives actually described this war as
belonging to the NDA/BJP. The martyrs and their families and those
wounded in the icy heights of the Kargil-Drass region have been
predictably forgotten and ignored.
The lack of adequate capacity for national security - despite the
rhetoric that is periodically heard - is best reflected in the kind of
time and attention paid to this highest and most sacred national calling
in the Indian parliament.
In 10 years, there has been no sustained or meaningful debate on the
Kargil war and its lessons in any session of parliament. And to add
insult to injury, in the same period, the Ministry of Defence has
returned almost Rs.50,000 crore (over $10 billion) as money unspent from
the amount allocated for acquisition and modernization of the Indian
military inventory. Thus the reality is that in the post-Kargil decade,
India's trans-border military capacity has shrunk - but no one in the
political spectrum is particularly concerned.
In this period, the nature of the security challenges facing India has
become more complex and tangled and today the external and internal
security strands have coalesced into one opaque domain. The country is
at war. On paper - in the budget documents - the country allocates over
Rs.141,000 crore (nearly $30 billion) towards defence. Yet what is
meaningfully spent is lesser and this when the military, para-military
and police forces have equipment and related inventory that is veering
towards block obsolescence.
Parliamentarians and senior political leaders must take the
responsibility for this sorry state of affairs and embark on appropriate
redress with purpose. Specific suggestions include convening a full
10-day session of both the houses that will discuss the Kargil
recommendations and the GoM reports to evolve an all-party consensus for
immediate action.
The Indian military is a credible and highly professional institution
and when the chips are down - as they were in Kargil in 1999 - it was
the young officers and their committed troops who plucked the chestnuts
out of the fire. Ineptitude at the higher levels of national security
management is a recurring leit motif from the 1962 war with China
through Kargil to the 2008 Mumbai carnage.
Many inadequacies exist in the Indian national security apparatus
despite the lessons of Kargil and this is a poor reflection on the
Indian entity - both state and empowered civil society.
Parliament ought to demand that the government set up a Blue Ribbon
commission that will draw the most eminent and capable national security
professionals who have no political axe to grind to carry out an urgent
review and outline time-bound remedial measures. And to be meaningful
and not anodyne, they would have to be radical and far-reaching and not
timid and tentative.
Finally, as regards the martyrs - those who died in Kargil for flag and
country - and the many more who made the supreme sacrifice before 1999
and after - right into July this year - they warrant a national tribute.
This is not the time to open the arid debate about why the world's
largest democracy does not have a national memorial for its 'fauj' but
to make a modest suggestion.
Many Western nations who lost their young men in World War I (which
incidentally includes India) mark Nov 11 as Poppy Day. A tradition has
evolved wherein the common citizen lays a poppy flower on the tomb of
the martyrs or pays tribute in a designated public space.
The average Indian need not wait for the state and its political
representatives to decide whose war Kargil was. It was fought for India.
Period.
Thus there may be a case to choose an Indian flower - why not the humble
'gainda' (marigold) - and offer it to the unknown and forgotten Indian
martyr who willingly shed blood. Local communities can decide how best
to remember the martyrs and their families in their midst and let them
know that at least once a year.
'Your sacrifice is not forgotten'. The moment has come for 'Gainda' Day
to lead the plethora of other dedicated 'days' that dot the Indian
calendar.
(Uday Bhaskar is a well-known strategic analyst. He can be reached at
cudayb@gmail.com)
July
26,
2009
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