From the battlefront

CAUGHT in the Yom Kipper war, author Saul Bellow turned a war correspondent for a US newspaper, and found himself visiting the battle front and being briefed in the evening by Israeli officials. Over the days he discovered three French correspondents also doing the reporting, but not stirring out of their hotel foyers. Somewhat puzzled, Bellow ventured to ask one of them how they operated. "It's simple," he said. "We deduce". These descendants of Descartes had known everything just by this process of deduction.

In the Kargil operations such deduction had no place. In this most transparent of operations, when there was live reportage from the front, where images of women anchorpersons chatting with jawans were brought to the drawing rooms as the shells kept falling in the background, the newspapers were also not behind as the drama unfolded hour by hour. While the television images faded away, some of the newspaper reports lingered and the images stayed for a longer duration. Candidness, spontaneous reactions and sheer daring - all combined to make for some exciting coverage.

One of the reporters whose despatches attracted notice during the entire operation was Gaurav Sawant who stayed in the front all the nine weeks the operation lasted. Dateline Kargil is, in many ways, a unique book, not the conventional quickie. The reporter, not older than many of the soldiers and the officers with whom he mingled , was able to identify with them, share in their moments of despair, exuberance and sometimes even in their admiration for the adversary.

From the first days of the engagement, when things were uncertain and the responses had to be hurried without much planning, when the authorities were still assessing the situation, the mood keeps swinging. Sawant captures these with rare candidness and spontaneity.

He has also the ability to strike a rapport with the officers and jawans. His enthusiasm quite often made him venture out at unlikely places, sometimes to the annoyance of officers. He traces the relatives and keeps them informed of the happenings. He becomes very involved, going beyond the brief of his calling.

Sawant does not hesitate to ask uncomfortable questions. How, in the first place, did the Pakistanis come to occupy those sectors? Was there a failure of the surveillance machinery? Since they were entrenched, this could have been planned in meticulous detail over a long period. How could this happen? What was the intelligence machinery doing? Officers explain to him patiently that there was no letting down of the guard and that they were not lulled by the bus diplomacy. They explain the difficulties of keeping watch over such a terrain. There had been lapses. One learns from mistakes.

These officers also admit to the meticulous planning done by the opponents. From the time the first intruders in flowing salwar kameez and white snow jackets were spotted in the first weeks of May to July 26 when the war was over, Sawant lived with the soldiers. He sent his despatches, sometimes three a day, and these make engrossing reading.

In the end, he interviews the top brass and gets their views of what went wrong and how they were planning to correct the shortcomings. He makes them come out with concrete ideas and suggestions. Finally he asks the Army Chief why such encounters happen and why after each one, we surrender the vantage positions which were secured at a heavy price and why we never seem to learn from the earlier lessons. This is a question they cannot answer. One has to look elsewhere for an explanation.

After allowing for the safe passage to the intruders India explained its position to other countries, many of which were well aware of it anyway. Diplomats and military attaches were taken to the operational zones to see for themselves the intrusions. It was in many ways a victory in the end. The External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, has the last word: "I do not say this with a false sense of humility. We belong to a great country and civilisation. There are events such as Kargil when this enormous awe-inspiring greatness of India surfaces. And some of the brilliance appears. Some of us catch a ray or two and it reflects on us."

S. SIVADAS

Dateline Kargil, Gaurav Sawant, Macmillan, Rs. 295.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Next     : Evocative prose