How the leaders and public figures of a nation
respond to a tragedy reveals a lot about their character. Two coffins returned
from LOC with the mutilated bodies of Lance
Naik Hemraj and Lance Naik Sudhakar
Singh. The head of one of them is still missing. I am not aware of any
leader, minister visiting these families and sharing their sorrow with the
nation. I am not aware of any leader or minister from the GOI attending their
funerals. John F Kennedy once said: "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the
highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them”. If our
late PM L.B. Shastri were alive he
would wonder happened to his famous slogan of “Jai Jawan…”.
The tears of the families of the 2 Jawans killed on
January 8 had not yet dried and some of our public figures were already into “debate” mode. A bunch of journalists
and other candle light specialists got together to debate ‘Aman Ki Asha’ in Delhi on January 10. A Union Minister, Shashi Tharoor, was playing the
moderator. Participants included: from Pakistan:
Najam Sethi, Salman Raja, Wajahat Khan, Javed Jabbar and from India: Mani Shankar Aiyar, Salman
Haldar, Shoma Choudhury and Kabir Bedi. Some govt guys, some filmy ones, some
editorialists. Probably the most theatrical bunch in a tragedy! And what were
they debating? Civil society for peace!
One of the common refrains from the discussions: “Moderates will wipe out the Hafeez Saeeds”. If you look at the
audience you can see the elites of society in all that jangles. Oh Yeah, these
are the ones who are most likely to wipe out the Hafeezes of the world. I
remember the movie “Gandhi” where in
a powerful speech he says a bunch of lawyers in Delhi do not represent the
people of India. If MKG were at this stupid debate he would have said the same
thing about these people all over again. The debate was not only stupid it was
also badly timed and reflected a serious lack of sensitivity on the part of the
participants, audience and, of course, the hosts. Who else but TOI?
With what face do these Pakis come here to debate?
Who are the morons who invite them? These are people from a country which
sentenced the doctor who led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden to 33 years in prison. He was convicted of high treason.
In any other civilised nation this doc would have been rewarded. These “useful
idiots” from Pakistan (and India too) can’t deal with the stupidity of their
own govt and want to lecture in Delhi. These worthies who are going to wipe out
the Hafeezs were probably not even aware (owing to their ‘moderate’ engagement)
that on the same day as the two Jawans were killed on the LOC there were 10 CRPF Jawans killed in Latehar (Jharkhand) in an encounter
with Naxals. Surprising, isn’t it? The CRPF men were killed on January 8 but
for our media that would be ‘Breaking news’ only on January 10. One
Jawan’s dead body was stuffed with a bomb.
The PM, Manmohan
Singh who didn’t have anything to say about all this had said back in
February 2010 that “Naxalism is the biggest internal
threat”. One wonders what he has done about the threat. He should be
even more alarmed that the Pakistan camps were rejoicing the deaths of our
Jawans so it’s clear the Pak army that was involved. Hafeez Saeed was also around the LOC and it appears he had offered
a reward of 5 lakhs for the head of our soldier. These two tweets from Padmaja
Joshi of Headlines Today say a lot. The PM and his cabinet need not worry I
suppose. The so called “moderates” from India and Pakistan will wipe out Hafeez
Saeed (the LeT mastermind behind 26/11), ably led by his minister, Shashi
Tharoor. If all that wasn’t enough, The
Hindu ran a story on the LOC incident implying it all started with an old
woman, a Grandmother, who crossed over to POK. Even the headline of the story
seems to turn the spotlight away from the brutal killings into one of providing
“sound reason” for the deaths.
“Runaway grandmother sparked savage skirmish on LoC”. Skirmish? Was that all?
The killing of two of our soldiers on our side of the LOC, their bodies
mutilated, one Jawan’s head missing and all that was just a “skirmish”? Where did Praveen Swami, a supposed defence
expert, get his intelligence from? Oh! He says “…highly
placed military and government sources have told The Hindu”. Really?
Which military and which govt? He doesn’t say and I refuse to presume Indian or
Pakistan. Maybe Swami would like to clarify which country’s sources he was
referring to. Swami’s article comes out and our journalistic-bimbo wastes no
time in jumping and rubbishing all the “patriots” on TV. I guess you know who
and which channel she’s referring to. Runaway
Granny! Nice title! Let’s examine what key points his article makes and
what the Indian Army responses were. (Indian Army response here)
Swami mentions the 70-year old granny, Reshma Bi,
left Charonda village and crossed over the LOC to live with her sons in POK.
This was on September 11 and the
article implies in 2012. Inside of a week after Reshma’s flight, Indian troops
began constructing observations bunkers around Charonda, seeking to monitor the
movement of villagers. The construction work — barred by the terms of the LOC
ceasefire of 2003 provoked protests from Paki troops. Indian commanders, the military source said,
conceded that the construction was in violation of the ceasefire. However, they
refused to stop work, arguing that the posts faced out towards the village,
posing no threat to Pakistan. Early in October, the official said, tensions
began to escalate. Pakistan even made announcements over a public address
system, demanding that Indian troops end the construction work. Exchanges followed
and then Indian soldiers raided a Paki post on January 6 which led to the
brutal killing of our soldiers on January 8. That’s it.
The army rejects the story (and I quote some
statements). Swami’s story is not exactly short on facts but his timelines and
linkages appear inaccurate. The Indian army stated that Reshma Bi crossed over
on September 26, 2011 a full 16
months before Swami reported she did. On the raid on a Pak post, Colonel Dahiya
rejected Swami's contention that there had been LOC transgressions by the
Indian Army in the Uri Sector on January 6, 2013. He further stated that the
article mentions announcements made by Pak Army over a public address system at
Uri demanding a halt to any construction work. This also was factually
incorrect, he said. The article also wrongly identifies Major General G.S.
Rawat as the GOC of 19 Infantry Division. The current GOC is Major General
Khandare. He said that Pakistan carried out cease fire violations on night of
January 5 and 6, and the Indian Army carried out controlled retaliation from
its own side on January 6. So in effect,the Army rubbished Swami’s report.
It’s a question of which one to trust; The Hindu or
the Indian Army. Given the dubious articles that frequently appear in The Hindu
and even otherwise I would go with our Army. Praveen Swami, though, is not a
dubious writer. So where did he get all his “intelligence” from? Hmm! It would appear someone already knew this
article was going to appear in a newspaper on January 10. Guess who? It’s none
other than Wajahat Khan the Paki
journalist who had appeared on Barkha
Dutt’s programme “The BS here”. Yeah, a load of BS indeed! The programme
over, late night (or wee hours of January 10) Wajahat Khan tweets to someone to
watch out for a “narrative changer
tomorrow” (ie January 10). He tweets
and The Hindu delivers! Voila! This is the “intelligence” circuit of Swami
as it appears. And Wajahat calls it the “narrative changer”. Whenever anyone
uses the term “narrative” I
immediately see a warning sign of concoctions being brewed. It’s a term that
highly “intelligent” people use, like the ones at the AmanKiAsha debate in
Delhi.
Do you need any more proof how stupid Indian media
is? No, don’t go by my word. For some reason the AKA crap wasn’t telecast by TimeNow the channel of TOI group who
came up with the AKA farce. The debate was telecast by Headlines Today and I wonder why. Maybe Arnab Goswami has decided AKA is nonsense too. It is Rahul Kanwal, who heads Headlines
Today, who wonders what the Tamasha is between the TOI and its news channel.
The families of dead soldiers are hopefully unaware of all the Tamasha going
on. Our freedom is never free.
Someone pays a price for it, usually a soldier standing guard on a fence. The
shameless ‘Macaulay Putras and Putris’ who don’t tire of their AKAs and
cocktail debates breathe because someone pays the price for their freedom to do
so. They usually finish the debates, give sermons on TV, write crap in
newspapers and go have candle-light dinners. I may have to call them the candle light sinners.
