archive: Injecting politics in Kargil counter-productive
Injecting politics in Kargil counter-productive
Virendra Kapoor
The Free Press Journal
July 28, 1999
Title: Injecting politics in Kargil counter-productive
Author: Virendra Kapoor
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: July 28, 1999
Natwar Singh has got company. Legal eagle Kapil Sibal is now
furiously engaged in trying to make the mini war in Kargil a great
defeat for India. And, oh boy, how the Government and the BJP-led
coalition are indebted to the S and S duo! That is the best thing
that could have happened to the Vajpayee-led National Democratic
Alliance on the eve of a crucial parliamentary poll. Only half in
jest was it said that with Singh firing from all the guns from all the
TV studios at Vajpayee, the latter would soon cede the slot of the
NDA's chief campaigner to the former diplomat. Now it seems that
Vajpayee stands in real danger of being pushed back as the number
three vote-catcher for the BJP-led coalition even as Singh and Sibal
slug it out between themselves for the number one and two positions.
The superannuated diplomat and the amoral lawyer are not simply in
sync with the national mood in the wake of the war in Kargil. Their
harsh and invariably unsubstantiated charges are meant more to get
them closer to the dumb deity of 10 Janpath than to convince the
countrymen at large that the Prime Minister had bungled in Kargil.
Singh had reason to be unhappy with the Government for accomplishing
the main objective of Operation Vijay sooner than he had hoped. He
had allowed himself to be persuaded that the war in Kargil would go on
till at least September when the United Nations' General Assembly
would meet like every year for its annual jamboree. 'Pakistan would
rake up the issue in the General Assembly, which, in rum, would lead
to the internationalization of the Kashmir issue,' the Congress Party
expert on foreign affairs and putative Foreign Minister in any future
Sonia Government had said in several of his on and off-the-record
briefings to the media.
Of course, Singh was way off the mark in assessing the time-frame of
the armed hostilities as he was in analysing all other facets of the
war in Kargil. You need to be clever to be critical; Singh was being
critical without being clever. Hence everytime he raised his finger
at Vajpayee, he lost the sympathy of his viewers\listeners\readers,
etc. When the entire nation was emotionally engaged in supporting the
valiant soldiers fighting to. repulse the enemy from the craggy
mountains in Kargil, Singh was engaged in campaigning for the coming
parliamentary election. The more the public mood concentrated on the
valour and sacrifices of our young officers and jawans, the more
shrill Singh sounded as the spokesperson of Sonia's party about the
war in Kargil. Everyone outside Sonia's charmed circle of hangers-on
was put off by Sangh's nit-picking. But none dared call a halt to
Singh's ravings and rantings for fear of incurring the wrath of the
supreme. leader of 10 Janpath. Alas, the Jat revolt against the
Congress Party in Rajasthan coupled with Singh's felt need to mend
fences with his constituents in order for him to realise his immediate
dream of getting elected to the Lok Sabha had deprived the BIP-led
coalition of the services of the ace campaigner.
But the void has now been filled by Sibal who lost no time in stepping
into Singh's shoes. And being far more clever and articulate than
Singh, Sibal is deter-mined to bring all his powers of diversionary
declamations and lawyerly debates in order to turn the Kargil victory
for the nation into a huge defeat for his party. The contempt he
affects for 'that prime minister' on myriad television talk shows
detracts nothing from Vajpayee's position of pre-eminence in the
nation's polity today. It only shows the loaded lawyer's personal and
political pique - and his total lack of civility. For someone who has
been a senior Supreme Court advocate, Sibal's acerbic mannerism and
his seeming. ignorance about the terms of political discourse is
indeed shocking.
A good lawyer or had, he/she is necessarily supposed to defend the
indefensible - after all, his/her livelihood depends entirely on not
being judgmental about law-breakers. But Sibal's preferred choice of
the second profession, namely, politics entails some such
constraints. Since the ultimate court of appeal in politics is the
people of India one has to at all times try and be in consonance with
their moods and their aspirations. On Kargil, despite the tragically
high loss of lives of our soldiers, alas, the Congress Party's verbal
warriors have been shooting their mouths off without endearing
themselves wee bit to the public. They denigrated the Indian
successes oil Kargil on all three fronts viz. moral, diplomatic and
military.
Early on in Operation Vijay, the Congress Party rushed to lampoon the
Lahore visit of Vajpayee when its in-house balloonist made a huge
likeness of an over-turned bus with the legend Delhi-Lahore-Kargil
emblazoned on it. This was as if the Paki intruders in Kargil had
come in the Lahore-Delhi bus. ( Lest you forget, the Lahore bus
service was never suspended even at the peak of the Kargil hostilities
and continues uninterrupted to this day.) That inverted rubber bus
symbolised less Vajpayee's naivete in proffering the hand of
friendship to our neighbour and more the Congress Party's opportunism
in seeking to exploit the war in Kargil for partisan ends. After that
Congress bus turned turtle and Singh withdrew to the backwaters of
Rajasthan it is now Sibal's turn to rifle through the records of the
Indian Army for foisting the charge of intelligence failure against
'that Prime Minister.'
Before we dispose of that unfortunate business of the penalised
brigade commander's alleged letter to the Chief of the Army Staff, let
me make a general comment in passing. Which is that all acts of
aggression any-where in any war needs must be accompanied by a great
element of surprise. It is not possible for the army to be in a state
of war-readiness at the border round the year. If your, neighbour is
bent upon committing aggression against you, he shall have the initial
advantages of surprise and the location of the theatre of war of his
own choosing. Each time Pakistan committed aggression against India,
it took us by surprise, be it 1947, 1965 1971 or 1999. And in 1962 we
were completely taken by surprise by the Chinese in Aksai-Chin,
Surely, this repeated failure to anticipate hostile action by our
neighbours indicates a flawed approach on the part of our armed
forces. Maybe the budget allocation for defence was niggardly as it
did not ensure the costly aerial and radar surveillance. Maybe
post-Kargil, the Finance Minister would loosen the purse strings to
provide for satellite reconnaissance and remote sensors all along the
border. But the fact that the Indian Army used to withdraw well
inside into our territory during the killer winter months and that
this was the routine followed for at least two decades or more cannot
be denied by anyone who has tried to appreciate the real facts as
against Congress fiction about the war in Kargil.
Now about the quality of evidence produced by Sibal. Contrary to
Sibal's claim, Surinder Singh, the Brigadier commanding the brigade in
Kargil when Operation Vijay was launched and who had since been sent
on a punishment posting to Bihar, wrote no letter to the Army Chief,
General Malik in August last year. Even the letter number which Sibal
intoned so very loudly at his press conference, for the benefit, no
doubt, of TV channels, has been found to be false. So much for his
concern for truth. However insofar as he sought to lay the blame at
the doorstep of General Malik, Sibal was guilty of playing politics '
with the armed forces. The General's office has lost no time in
denying the existence of such a letter. Brigadiers, Sibal ought to
know, do not normally address their letters directly to the Generals.
Will Sibal argue for the truth, at least this once, as an Indian and
not as a Congressman?
He is good at defending the likes of fodder scamsters like Laloo Yadav
in return for the re-ward of Rajya Sabha membership. He should not
blot his copy book by speaking about matters about which lie knows
precious, little. Even good lawyers can come to grief arguing
terrible briefs. Sibal cannot but burn his ringers pushing the
Congress Party's cooked up non-case on Kargil.
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