26th
July, 1999: Vijay Diwas. I've grown to dislike most wars, no matter who is in
it. Most wars. They just don't make sense anymore and they're always about a
whole lot of grey stuff. There's never any one side which is right or wrong and
a whole lot of brilliant young men and women die or get injured. It simply does
not make sense. Kargil Vijay Diwas however is one of the exceptions, at least as far as reasons and justifications go. It was a
clear case of a rogue state (and a failed one at that) trying to assert itself
by grabbing its neighbor's land by force. As with most wars, there was also an
element of a failed state trying to distract its people from its own problems.
We all know how that worked out.
India
has almost always been a benign entity on the world stage, as benign as a
nation-state can be in such a region without being taken for a ride. I think that's
a consequence of how we've placed our priorities, our collective mentality of
chilling out and the fact that our armed forces are primarily geared for
defense (A more powerful Navy + A hot-headed PM might have changed this, for
sure. Thank goodness we don't have the first part of that).
Anyway,
we've mostly been the good guys, a relatively stable place to live and raise
your family in. Relatively is the key word. Despite several issues and limitations, India still offers its citizens opportunities to do well in life no matter what their background. No matter how much the Rashtriya SS types might have you believe, it is for this reason that
India, the most daring geopolitical experiment ever, has made it so far. Ideas
of unconditional loyalty to a sub-continent sized, fair, saree-clad,
lion-riding lady with a saffron standard in hand don't appeal much to people
whose primary concern is being able to live and raise a family in peace with
food, healthcare and education that is at least within 5 kilometres of their
houses. Let's not kid ourselves. If you're reading this, you're most likely
among the top 1% of this country in terms of income and definitely among the
top 5%. You do not know what REALLY keeps India together. Or to be fair to you, you've probably never felt it.
Having
said that, it's disappointing to see us systematically destroy our standing in
one of our states and squander what we've built over the years and what we
reasserted on that first Kargil Vijay Diwas.
No
amount of troops or nationalism can help you when you lose the battle for
hearts and minds. By silencing, blinding and maiming our own people, we risk losing that
battle. Let's hope we don't let Vijay Diwas go in vain. This isn't how India should do things. Kashmir should not become our Chechnya.
