archive: Battle for the mind - Nobody can be a winner in Kargil
Battle for the mind - Nobody can be a winner in Kargil
K P S Gill
The Times of India
July 9, 1999
Title: Battle for the mind - Nobody can be a winner in Kargil
Author: K P S Gill
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 9, 1999
"You cannot even eat the ice now, or drink the water, which is laced
with cordite. Even the streams down be-low the mountains are
contaminated." (Pakistani soldier speaking of the Kargil heights, in
Time magazine).
These are the mountains that have yielded to us many noble scriptures
- and are constantly exalted in them: to the Indian mind, they have
always been sacred, a hallowed place.
Today they are strewn with the mutilated, unclaimed bodies of
soldiers. They are lacerated by artillery fire and by aerial
bombardments. They echo with cries of war, of hatred, and of the pain
of the dying and the wounded; and, increasingly, of the pitiful calls
of the terrified intruders who are confronted with the mounting
certainty of death for a futile cause, in a lonely, glacial world, far
from the warmth and comforting presence of family or friend.
We, as a nation, appear to vacillate between despair and euphoria. We
are now, it seems, in a time of euphoria. The prime minister speaks
of the inevitability of "victory" against Pakistan. A variety of
political and quasi-political organisations demand that Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir (PoK) be "re-conquered", an alternating braggadocio
and petulance marks the pronouncements of most political parties and
leaders; and the general public is whipping itself into a frenzy of
hatred for Pakistan and (short-lived?) demonstrations of gratitude
towards the armed forces.
Despair and Euphoria
In stark contrast are the matter-of-fact statements by soldiers at the
frontline, focused as they are on the task at hand, on the duties that
bind them, and on the price some of their comrades have already paid,
and others may still have to pay, for the bloody and irresponsible
adventurism of an irredeemable Pakistani leadership.
7Re conflict in Kargil is now headed towards a denouement. The major
heights in the region have been re-taken by Indian forces, though a
great deal of fighting still remains to be done. Mr Nawaz Sharifs
joint statement with President Bill Clinton shows clearly that
Pakistan has been, or shortly will be, forced to capitulate and
withdraw beyond the LoC - irrespective of the political costs within
that country.
But is this a "victory"? The re-occupation of our own territory
hardly deserves the name. Nor, indeed, does the humiliation of our
enemy. Nearly 300 of our soldiers have lost their lives in the
present engagement - a tragic loss indeed. But 4,000 soldiers have
been killed over the past decade, fighting interminable
Pakistan-sponsored insurgencies on Indian soil. A restoration of the
status quo ante in Kargil is not expected to stem this corrosive
campaign of attrition - and may well create a backdrop for its
escalation.
Seed of Disintegration
It is tempting, and there are some who now vociferously advocate this
line, to suggest that we do to Pakistan what they are doing to us. It
would be easy to arm and instigate the growing armies of malcontents
in Pakistan, pushing that nation into a spiral of violence and
anarchy. The Punjabis in Pakistan dominate the armed forces and most
institutions of governance. The people of Sindh and the NWFP are
alienated groups on the verge of insurrection. The mohajirs and the
Kashmiris are despised minorities, with few rights. And all religious
minorities - even the Shias and the Ahma dias who interpret Islam
somewhat differently from the Sunni majority - live in constant terror
of their lives. It would be a simple matter to inject a spark of
immediate provocation into this incendiary mix of mutual animosities.
And yet, this is an option that India has consistently, and rightly,
refused to exercise. If we seek proof of the sagacity of this choice,
it is available in the example of Pakistan itself. Pakistan
celebrates the destruction of Afghanistan through its strategy of
Talibanisation as a "great victory"; but this is the be-ginning of its
own eventual defeat and probable disintegration. As the ravaging
armies of Islamic fundamentalism return to Pakistan, their attention
may temporarily be diverted towards Kashmir and India; but they will,
in time, inevitably claim what they now regard as their own. In our
age, when nations provoke and support campaigns of violence and
terrorism in their own neighbourhood, they inevitably fall victim to
the scourge themselves. A victory for terrorism anywhere in the world
today is a victory for terrorism everywhere.
That is why the pursuit of peace is India's best, indeed only,
option. And that is why, to a realist, the conflict in Kargil only
reiterates the fact that, in a war between India and Pakistan, there
never can be a victor. If we seek a true victory, we must defeat the
fundamentalist ideologies that threaten to plunge the entire region
into a conflagration that may well destroy us all. The greater war
that we must now en-gage in is the war for the minds of men.
All fundamentalist creeds preach an identical message of exclusion and
hatred. These malignant doctrines, and not Islam, motivate what the
fanatics in Pakistan and their supporters elsewhere, call the jehad in
Kashmir. The mullahs of Pakistan have reduced the teachings of one of
the great religions of the world to a travesty, brainwashing young men
- many of them mere children - to commit murder, and to die, in
wayward wars of aggression on foreign soil. But this blasphemous
creed of hatred and slaughter offends against all religion. Indeed,
if Pakistan seeks a righteous cause for jehad it would find it within
its own borders - for Islam is far more secure in India to-day than it
is there. But such a jehad, must be conceived of in terms of an act
of spiritual purification, not the, intolerant and spiteful violence
of the bigots who presently pervert the destiny of Pakistan through a
falsification of their faith.
Great Victory
India has an immense advantage in the ideological war against
extremism, the tolerance and diversity of its Constitutional creed.
But this creed must be translated into policies that will create a
society less inequitable and far more humane than the one we have
today. If we can achieve this, we will win votaries to this faith
even among those who have, beyond our borders, been nurtured on a
hatred of the very idea of India.
And that would, indeed, be a great victory.
(The author is a former director-general of police, Punjab)
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