Attack on the last bastion of hope
By K N.. Pandita
Intriguingly, the Supreme Court does not focus on the urgency of responding to the petition of the Army Chief. In doing so it gives time and space to the sections of voluble media that has wantonly blurred on the issue with less of sense but more of nonsense. The Supreme Court has dismissed the PIL of Grenadiers Union but we may ask why Justice Thakur of the Supreme Court recused when the case was referred to him first?
General V.K. Singh created many enemies by playing right in Adarsh scam case. The person holding the post of Military Secretary has been court-martialed, found guilty, dismissed with his pension forfeited. The same person when in power had been relentlessly pursuing the one year-earlier date of birth case of the Army Chief.
The history of the case simultaneously unfolds the sordid game of mutual rivalry and the denigrating act of fellow soldiers at the highest level of the Army. While it speaks a lot of MOD’s incompetence to forge harmony and discipline among the highest ranks of the army, it, at the same time, is also reflective of General V.K. Singh’s immaculate record of disciplined services of highest order in the Indian Army.
How disappointing that the incompetence of the Ministry of Defence should have forced the Army Chief to seek redress of a wrong thing at the Apex Court. The Defence Ministry has conducted itself very efficiently in winning and treasuring public humiliation.
Military Secretary has no jurisdiction of maintaining record of officers in the Army for scrutiny purpose. That is the job of the office of the Adjutant General. How does the MOD trust the documentation made by the MS – a person who has a shameful record to his discredit?
There appears a good network of mandarins plus some influential persons in the olive green who are bidding for the next man in the”line of succession”. Is it because his daughter-in-law is a Pakistani national? Who does not know that even the faintest of Pakistan connections goes well with the mandarins on the Raisina Hills at the present juncture of our national history? Pakistani connection has always been a fascination for sections of Indian ruling class.
The fault of the General is that he has held the dignity and status of a soldier higher than all other considerations. He did not oblige the political class by agreeing to bow to their browbeating that carried with it the luscious prize of Governorship in return. Here we have a soldier to his hilt standing tallest among his peers about whom the nation can rise and say this is the General we will gladly follow.
In an ocean of corruption, scams and scandals into which hour nation has been pushed by scurvy politicians, the Army remains the last bastion of hope. Now this last bastion also is under brazen attack.
But the fact is that the soldiers know their Commander, and they will refuse to call his move of approaching the court of law to make its pronouncement on the issue of age as unwanted. A just and unbiased verdict by the court will enhance the prestige of the Army further so as to vindicate the hopes and expectations of all nationalistic and patriotic Indians.
The case of the Army Chief is a result of a combination of perverse elements. It is conspiratorial rivalry among the stakeholders; it is partly incompetence of the MOD; it is divide and rule syndrome of Indian domestic politics; it is a conspiracy of weakening the decades-old solidarity of the Indian Armed Forces. Only the anti-nationals and the enemies of India will be happy with this scenario.
We do not think even for a moment that the step taken by the General is unhelpful to the nation in any way. General V.K. Singh will go down in our history as the soldier who tried to secure the dignity and honour of the armed forces when these were threatened by irrational and conspiratorial elements.
The General has not made it a public and a political issue but it has these ramifications if the situation deteriorates. We hope political leadership in our country is alive to that. Sharad Powar, the Union Minister has hinted at that. He said that it is unfortunate that the case has been brought to the doorsteps of judiciary. This view is also shared by a number of political observers in the country.
This is not the first instance in which the civilian government has tried to blunt the sharp edges of the Indian Army’s public image. What is the crux of the concept of “Line of Succession”? It is to weigh the incumbent Army Chief in the political scale.
By playing lose with the Army Chief our spineless politicians are actually playing with fire. Our advice to them will be to keep their hands off this messy political gimmick with an institution that has kept its head high in raging storms. Disappear before the lion roars. Remember that the rank and file of this great army hails from rural India and true India lives in her villages. That was at the core of late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s slogan of “Jai jawan jai kisan”.