{"id":14404,"date":"2017-04-22T15:31:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T10:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=14404"},"modified":"2017-04-22T15:31:44","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T10:01:44","slug":"dont-judge-operational-leadership-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/opinion-and-analysis-comments\/dont-judge-operational-leadership-army\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t judge the operational leadership of the Army"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Major, who tied the Kashmiri man to the jeep, was deflecting the attention of an angry mob. He didn\u2019t do this to be reviled by liberals or to be feted by right-wing forces<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n By Colonel R Hariharan<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I was astounded to see the caption in a recent TV debate:\u00a0“Stone-pelters versus Nationalists.” It is shocking to see after decades of efforts to establish law and order in Kashmir, made with the blood and sweat of security forces and policemen, stone-pelters conditioning the national discourse on Jammu and Kashmir.<\/span><\/p>\n It hurts me to find Modiphobes using the word \u2018nationalism\u2019 as though it is a dirty word, the source of all mischief. \u00a0Because, I am a nationalist and I am not ashamed to say it loudly. Before self-styled neo-liberals jump to troll me, I say I am not going to allow anyone to typecast me as an admirer of Hindutva or gau rakshaks because I call myself a nationalist.<\/span><\/p>\n Equally, I am not prepared to allow the hijacking of nationalism by saffron, yellow or red or any other colour, because \u2018nationalism\u2019 is non-negotiable.\u00a0To me, you cannot confine nationalism to ideologies. To me, nationalism is beyond politics. It’s related to my identity, culture and traditions.<\/span><\/p>\n In this context, I remember the words of a smuggler we engaged to ferry our source across Barak River into East Pakistan, on the eve of the 1971 war.<\/span><\/p>\n When we asked him how much we should pay, he said: \u201cBabu, I am a convicted smuggler. But I am not doing this for money. Remember, smugglers can be patriots because nationalism is in our blood. There is no price for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n To men in uniform, it comes with the colour of their uniform and they are ready to pay the price with their lives. This is why my blood boils when I see people, sitting in the cosy, air-conditioned comfort of TV studios, passing value judgement on a Major who adopted the expedience of using one of the stone-pelters as a human shield, to extricate polling officers and policemen from a mob trying to lynch them.<\/span><\/p>\n If Akshay Kumar in uniform had done it in a Bollywood movie, the same critics would have applauded him.<\/span><\/p>\n But not in real life, when stone-pelters are exercising their \u201cright to lynch\u201d polling officers. Because they feel, nationalism is a sentiment, like any other. To me and millions of other countrymen who had worn the uniform, it is beyond sentiment. It is difficult to digest glib comments made by people, who do not bother to understand either the life and death situation the hapless Major faced or the nuances of operational leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n