The night of the generals

Recording of history has very often led to the distortion of history, a crime that time and succeeding generations will not easily pardon. So beware of those who believe that a myth will hold. Those days are gone. We need to postmortem all operations, battles and wars of the Armed Forces and after thorough research present a comprehensive document, fair and impartial, highlighting our strengths and our weaknesses over the last 50-odd years. Greater transparency and accountability, particularly in the higher echelons of command, is absolutely essential now. Fortunately the soldier still responds to orders, instructions and commands as do the young officers, perhaps questioning once in a while, reasoning occasionally.

The middle rung of command sulk and seethe and the top brass allow their ambitions to run away with them, suppressing truth, preferring silence to assertion, hankering for further promotion and post-retirement crumbs. They demean themselves before those very politicians whom they and the public alike, hold in contempt. That is the reason why 1962 happened. That is the reason why the facts of the 1965 war, as revealed by Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh, now challenge our warped and dwarfed mental dispositions and threaten to expose the falsehoods of our carefully cultivated visuals. That is the reason that the IPKF imbroglio in Sri Lanka happened. That is the reason that Kargil happened. That is the reason that Kashmir is still happening.

Sun Tzu, in his celebrated work, The Art of War has said: “The highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans.” Were we to appraise the Kargil operation in the context of this statement, I’m afraid the generals, at various levels of command, cannot but show up in very poor light. To discover after five months or more, that the enemy has penetrated 14 to 15 km inside and then fortified himself in your territory on strategic heights and to compound that by losing more than six hundred precious, and I repeat precious, lives, what a way of balking the enemy’s plans!

There are no `thin lines’. There is the front line of action and then the rear where the privileged few work overtime to create the myths, disregarding Hannibal, Alexander, Napoleon, Wellington, Rommel, Montgommery, Mao and Moshe Dayan and discarding Sun Tzu, General Sir John Hackett, Alvin Toffler and the like, on whose study generals, air marshals and admirals of the Armed Forces have all devoted great time.

I wish to quote Sun Tzu once again for the benefit of the political leadership and the generals alike, hoping that the essence of Sun Tzu’s wisdom will not be lost on them. “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

Further responses to Shekhar Gupta’s `Dangers of military myths’ (September 9) and `Truth needn’t be first casualty’ (September 16) will now be posted on expressindia.com