archive: Vajpayee on Cloud Nine
Vajpayee on Cloud Nine
Virendra Kapoor
Rediff on Net
Title: Vajpayee on Cloud Nine
Author: Virendra Kapoor
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date:
Natwar Singh and other nutty critics of the government can do their
worst. For the vast majority of Indians, we have won the war in
Kargil. And we have won it on all three planes: military, diplomatic
and moral.
Thanks to the successful culmination of the mini-war over Kargil, Atal
Bihari Vajpayee has emerged all the more stronger. And popular. He
conducted himself as a great war-time leader, showing rare grit and
determination in shooing the Pakistani intruders away from Indian
territory. The tragic loss of lives in the Pakistani misadventure was
the inevitable price the nation had to pay to preserve its
territorial integrity.
But the thing to remember is that Vajpayee's statesman-like conduct of
the war operations had won India handsome dividends on the
battle-field and in the world capitals alike. It was the first armed
conflict since the founding of the Indian republic in which Indian
diplomacy had fully complemented the efforts of the armed forces. And
the very first in which the gains won by our soldiers with sweat and
blood were not squandered on the negotiating table by our leaders.
When the war started, Vajpayee and the ruling coalition were
admittedly forced on the back foot. There were nagging questions
about the failure of military intelligence to detect the Pakistani
incursion. Of course, nobody can pinpoint the exact date when the
first of the Pakistani intruders had set up camp in the craggy
mountains over 18,000 feet above sea level in the snow-peaked Kargil
ranges. Reports in the media spoke of the incursion having gone
unnoticed for as long as fourteen years. The Pakistanis would come
during the relatively less severe weather and after making bunkers and
posts on the icy hills return to the safety of their barracks when it
began snowing.
Apparently, with each passing year Pakistanis became more and more
audacious. During the mercifully brief period when that unquestioned
leader of political parasites, Inder Kumar Gujral, was prime
minister, a file about the incursion in Kargil was sent up to him.
Gujral is said to have noted on it that the ''matter could be
resolved diplomatically'' and that nothing should be done by the
armed forces to drive away the intruders. Since then the Pakistanis
had come further inside the Indian territory, thus posing a threat to
the vital Srinagar-Leh road.
Natwar and his soul-mate in the business of nit-picking, that effete
phrase-monger Mani Shankar Aiyar, make much of the alleged
intelligence failure. But they seem to gloss over the fact that for
decades under the Congress Party rule the armed forces were denied
the vital aerial surveillance equipment necessary for detecting
unusual movement in the icy and abandoned wastelands that is much of
Kargil mountain ranges during most of the year.
Kargil had never seen hostilities earlier. It was assumed that the
terrain was too inhospitable and deadly to allow for an armed
engagement. But Pakistan in its perfidious frame of mind chose Kargil
precisely because it was least expected to serve as the route for its
intrusion. And it was surprised by the sheer force of Indian
retaliation, once the actual scale and depth of the intrusion dawned
on the leadership in New Delhi.
Islamabad, or more truthfully the military top brass in Rawalpindi,
hadn't reckoned with the fierceness of the Indian response. They did
not think that India would press its air force to soften the enemy
targets from above even as the army advanced on them from whatever
side possible. There is more than one statement made by senior
Pakistan ministers buttressing the view that they had not anticipated
the no-holds-barred action by India to vacate the aggression.
Look back at the events since the start of the war. There is no
denying the fact that Pakistan was stunned by Vajpayee's decision to
go in for a strong armed action to vacate the aggression. Islamabad
had hoped to engage India in diversionary and time-consuming talks.
The same Vajpayee who had gone riding a bus to Lahore in search of
peace with Pakistan was now determined to pursue war with it in order
to defend India's territorial integrity.
Realising early on in the armed conflict that they could not but burn
their fingers pretty badly in the misadventure sanctioned by them,
the Sharief government launched a desperate search for a face-saving
formula to withdraw from Kargil. But Niaz Naik and other emissaries
of Sharief who came calling on the Indian prime minister returned
with the only message Vajpayee had for them: no talks till the
vacation of the aggression and no suspension of the armed action,
either.
Vajpayee's refusal to meet Sharief, and, subsequently, his rejection
of the invitation to go to Washington to meet President Clinton was
indicative of his resolve to press ahead with the urgent task of
forcing the aggressors out without being drawn into diversionary
stratagems of Pakistan. For once, comrade Jyoti Basu, who has
otherwise taken leave of etiquette and manners, was so impressed by
Vajpayee that he could not help commend the prime minister publicly.
After the initial shock of Pak perfidy, Vajpayee had come a long way
to take charge of the situation. Minor irritants like George
Fernandes playing into the hands of his adversaries in the Opposition
and the leaders of the Sangh Parivar egging on the government to use
nukes too were duly taken care of. Vajpayee was the boss and he alone
would lead the war effort without anyone queering the pitch for him.
Of course, he could do precious little to quell the discordant noises
emanating from the Congress and its leader, nay, reader, Sonia Gandhi.
They harped on the intelligence failure as if Vajpayee was personally
policing the Line of Control at Kargil.
Admittedly, the government had promptly relegated the brigade
commander in Kargil to the backwaters for his failure to assess the
real Pakistani intent. And some more heads in the armed forces may
roll after Kargil has been rid of the Pakistani thugs. But Sonia and
others not only talked of the intelligence failure, they also let
loose a false claim that the number of dead was far more than
officially stated. This was, of course, a plain lie. For, in the most
transparent and open war ever fought by India it is well-nigh
impossible to fudge figures of the dead and the wounded.
Worse, in order to detract from the achievement of the armed forces
in vacating the aggression in Kargil, they compared Operation Vijay
of 1999 with Operation Haar of 1962. They wanted a Rajya Sabha
session in order to exploit the minority status of the government in
the House for partisan ends. And they sought to devise a strange
equation, trying to hive off the armed forces from the control of the
government when they severely questioned everything that the latter
did while paying lip service to the cause of the former. Little did
they realise that for the jawans staking their lives in the
remoteness of icy wilderness, the government was synonymous with
their commanders who got their orders from the former and could not
defy them.
Natwar Singh and others belonging to his ilk, one is fully aware, are
at pains to denigrate the Indian victory on the military and
diplomatic fronts. Therefore one can do no better than to quote
Pakistan's most authoritative English language newspaper, Dawn, to
try and convince them that Vajpayee had indeed pulled off a major
victory which, without doubt, would stand the coalition he leads in
very good stead when the focus shifts from Kargil to Gill in the
coming months. The author, Ayaz Amir, also addresses Natwar's charge
that Clinton's assurance to take ''a personal interest'' in
encouraging bilateral Indo-Pak talks on Kashmir had internationalised
the issue.
Here are some excerpts from the article. ''... But that the climbdown
[by Sharief] when it came would be so headlong and ill-judged, and
that in the process it would leave in tatters the last shreds of
national pride, should take even prophets of doom by surprise... as
an attempt at permanently occupying the Kargil heights, it was
madness...''
On Clinton's promise to take personal interest in Indo-Pak talks on
Kashmir, the author says: ''Only a leadership with no idea of
national pride and dignity can suppose that an empty pledge such as
this is sufficient recompense for the blood of our [Pakistani]
martyrs.''
The Pakistani perception about the Shimla Agreement should shame
Natwar and other drum-beaters of the Congress Party into abject
silence: ''At Shimla, Pakistan was at a grave disadvantage because it
had suffered a humiliating defeat at India's hands. Yet even in the
shadow of that disaster, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to his enduring credit,
managed to preserve what remained of Pakistan's honour.''
As for the Kargil adventure the article said, ''Pakistan has suffered
a failure of leadership, a failure of vision and, most important of
all, a failure of nerve. When the crunch came the politico- military
leadership could not take the heat.''
Back
Top
|
