archive: Batting for India
Batting for India
Swapan Dasgupta
India Today
July 19, 1999
Title: Batting for India
Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: July 19, 1999
For India, it's been an exhilarating six weeks. There was a war in
the barren and inhospitable climes of Kargil. The army fought that
one valiantly and victoriously. The government chipped in with a
diplomatic offensive that conclusively nailed the lie that
post-Pokhran India was more isolated than ever before. But there was
another battle being fought in the cities and villages-a battle to
re-embrace Indian nationhood.
The significance of this emotional churning shouldn't be
underestimated. For the past few years, cosmopolitan intellectuals,
leftists and gung-ho free-marketers have inundated impressionable
minds with the belief that India is just a geographical term, bereft
of emotional relevance-except during cricket matches. These upholders
of global networking heaped contempt on the tinsel patriotism of A.R.
Rahman's Vande Mataram and Border and Sarfarosh. They seceded from
India to take up causes like Narmada and disarmament, causes that are
rooted in western fashion.
Now, they will have to think again. The national awakening over
Kargil wasn't contrived or orchestrated. It was real, spontaneous and
touched every corner of India. From the bride in Orissa who donated
her wedding jewels to the Congress MP who donated satellite phones so
that soldiers could call home, the popular response to the war effort
was overwhelming. Those who contributed hadn't ever seen Kargil. Nor
are they likely to ever visit it. Yet, Tiger Hill and Mashkoh Valley
became as much a symbol of India as India Gate. Call it nationalism,
call it xenophobia, call it whatever you want, but the Kargil war
demonstrated that India lives in the soul of Indians. Quite
unwittingly, Mian Nawaz Sharif helped restore India to its people.
He did more than that. In forcing India into a war we never wanted,
Sharif forced us to choose between nationhood and a spurious
cosmopolitanism. Regardless of voting intentions, most Indians waved
the flag vigorously. But some stayed curiously silent or spent their
time in an insidious game of de-moralisation. Didn't it strike you as
curious that the NGOS who are the biggest recipients of foreign
funding for so-called "development" were hardly to be seen or heard
during the past six weeks? Why weren't their elaborate networks-so
assiduously mobilised in protesting against the Pokhran tests last
year-put to use in the war effort?
Where were groups like Sahmat that were so incredibly active in
raising money for Cuba and promoting Pakistani artistes in Delhi?
What can be said about CPI(M) politburo's Biman Bose who says jingoism
got its just desserts from the Chinese in 1962? Or the CPI(M) Rajya
Sabha member Ashok Mitra who in a newspaper column last week described
the Indian troops in Kashmir as an "army of occupation"? Booker prize
winner Arundhati Roy was photographed dishing out a note to a beggar.
Strange we never saw her signing a cheque for the National Defence
Fund? Weren't the jawans fighting for her country too?
India is an easy-going, sab chalta hai country that makes way for all
sorts of views. It will continue to remain that way once the guns
become silent and diplomacy takes over conflict resolution. Yet, when
normal life resumes and our gaze reverts to the swings and splits of
electoral politics, it is important to remember the weeks of
Kargil-those who batted for India and those who preferred to be
superior and look the other way.
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