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Jaya Jaitly
Did India really win the war? `We did' is the answer of the people of India and Pakistan but the Con-gress and the Left are straining to convince people that it is India and not Pakistan which has lost the war. This is a deliberate exercise to undermine national pride and to deprive the nation of its sense of glory. The public sentiment of heightened nationalism being felt by citizens irrespective of which party they support is surely something that is to be encouraged.
The current perception is: a) India extended a hand of friendship to Pakistan at Lahore; b) Pakistan betrayed this friendship; c) India responded with competence and valour; and d) the rightness of our stand and actions obtained the support of the international community. However, the goodwill effort became an upturned balloon bus for the Congress Party, yet it was this very diplomacy that paid international dividends in the form of support for India's position on Kargil. Pakistan is strangely not blamed for its betrayal by the comrades orthe Congressmen. Instead, the accusations of near-betrayal have been aimed at India's ruling leadership for allowing infiltration. Equipment was suppo-sedly delayed or denied to the armed forces and, worse still, they hint at treason by implying that information on infiltration was deliberately ignored. On the actions of the armed forces everyone has praise and rig-htly so, but the correctness of the government's stand in both its strategy and diplomacy are sought to be obfuscated by accusations of intelligence failure, internation- alisation of the issue, falling into Bill Clin-ton's hands, jingoism and the politicisation of Kargil.
During the height of the battle these people were asking for resignations of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Defence Minister. Coincidentally, the Pakistan People's Party has asked Nawaz Sharif to resign and for a high-level inquiry to be initiated against him. ``A national crisis created by an inept government'', they said. Sharif has been accused of humiliatingand dishonouring Pakistan in the face of India's successful projection of its point of view. The sad article in the Pakistani ne-wspaper Dawn is in itself a commentary on what Pakistan thinks of the fiasco brought on by its leadership. Benazir Bhutto wrote, ``The Indian Government outsmarted, ou-tmanoeuvered and outflanked the Pakis-tani leadership at every level''. Yet our ma-in opposition party is parroting to its gov- ernment in victory what Pakistan's opposition is saying to its government in defeat. Could there be a more piquant and ridiculous situation than this?If parties in government are to be defeated because incursions into our territory take place, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri should have resigned in 1962 and 1965. Nehru made Krishna Me-non the scapegoat but the Congress subsequently named a road after him. Shastri was hailed as a hero in spite of India retu-rning all captured territory putting us at a disadvantage today. Military intelligence and assessment are a major input in theentire decision-making process of the government and while the political leadership does not speak without those inputs from the seniormost service officers, the final decision taken by the civilian authority is based on a combination of information received from military, diplomatic and other intelligence sources. The ``questions'' the Congress is trying to convey is that either military intelligence is inept or the government is anti-national. No one is likely to buy either of these propositions today.The jawan is the hero of the day, but he could not have been so if the government that stands behind him had acted in an incompetent manner. If the soldier had fa-iled in his mission the responsibility would have been entirely shouldered by the political authority, as it should be, just as Na-waz Sharif is having to do today. If the soldier succeeds, as he has done, the credit has to be shared with the political leadership whose ultimate decisions, both str-ategic and diplomatic, paid dividends. In dividingthe two the opposition is indigenously engaging in eroding people's faith in civilian rule itself, making the families of the Kargil martyrs feel that their loses were of no value.
The writer is General Secretary, Samata Party
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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