Kargil candle in the Mumbai wind

By Harish Khare

A SOLDIER'S blood shed in defence of the motherland is sacrosanct. It becomes even more so when shed because of the king's ineptness. A year ago as many as 476 of our bravest and brightest soldiers lost their lives in the forbidding hills of Kargil; a year later today when we are being invited to light a candle in their memory we are at a loss to justify to ourselves - leave alone to the families of the martyrs - the noble sacrifice of young lives. Intellectual and political limitations of the incumbent kings produced a messy situation with Pakistan that had to be sorted out only by the blood of the men and officers in uniform. Just because things turned out not as messy as they could, is no reason why the first anniversary of the Kargil conflict should be allowed to serenade the small minds who acquired badges of sagacity while the war widows had to be content with vir chakras.

The soldiers' gallantry and sacrifices were seized upon by an insincere and undeserving regime to crank up a cacophony of nationalistic triumphalism; in this less-than-honourable enterprise the regime had the eager connivance and the willing acquiescence of the media - especially the electronic segment - to keep beating the war-drums loudly and incessantly. Consumerist India and corporate India pitched in to choreograph the nationalistic dance of valour, sacrifice, and motherland. This feverish display of triumphant nationalism was just the digression the guilt-ridden middle classes were looking for; it was a time for all those who had made compromises, big and small, with unwholesome forces and interests, all in the name of globalisation, to establish demonstratively their nationalist credentials. It is a different matter that the soldier was soon forgotten and everyone was back at the business of helping the `entrepreneur' ply his dubious wares.

Nonetheless the `Kargil victory' did produce a victory of a sort for the National Democratic Alliance, led by the `tried and tested' Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee. The soldier's sacrifice was used to give a partisan and sectarian colour to our nationalism, to be contrasted sharply with the `foreign-born' leadership of the Congress(I). At the end of the day, the electorate found itself tricked into giving a kind of mandate to Mr. Vajpayee and his assorted allies. And the kind of governance that `mandate' has produced is best exemplified by the fact that on the eve of the Kargil victory anniversary, the official residence of the Defence Minister is used to mount a defence of the fallen cricket heroes and to tick off income tax officials for wanting to sniff out evidence of possible criminal wrong- doing.

While the political leaders do have an obligation a year later to salute the soldiers who shed blood at Kargil, the polity needs to be cautioned against the overdoing the Kargilised nationalism celebration. It certainly cannot be allowed to camouflage the fact that the `nationalist' slate of kings and crown princes has not produced any relief for the citizens in terms of governance. The presence, for example, of a very devoutly nationalist Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh has not helped in arresting the benighted State's all-too-visible slide into gentle anarchy. Or neither, for that matter, has the Indian state became any more efficacious than it was before the Kargil conflict; the presence of the stern Mr. L. K. Advani in the Union Home Ministry has not, for instance, deterred the presumed ISI-agents from practising their murderous craft. Nor did the romanticised `awesome' astuteness of our leadership deter the Khandhar hijackers.

These failures, too many to be catalogued here, are perhaps built into the limitations of the leaders and leadership available to the ruling coalition. All the more reason, therefore, the Kargil `vijay' is not used, once again, to garner respectability for discredited hindutva ideology. It would not do to overlook the fact that the triumphal nationalism that was drummed up during the Kargil conflict was anchored as much in the our collective visceral hatred for Pakistan as in the idiom of animosity and hatred in the domestic context; many of the liberal drum- beaters would be embarrassed at being reminded that the Kargil conflict was used to resurrect the majority-minority divide along the patriot-traitor dichotomy. The finest tribute we can pay to the Kargil martyrs is to be watchful against outbreaks of ugly nationalism.

The degeneration of `Kargilised nationalism' into plain minority- bashing has been most evident in the uninterrupted attacks against the minorities, particularly the `docile' Christian community. Notwithstanding the laboured efforts of Mr. Advani's Ministry to `discover' evidence of Pakistani involvement in the attacks on churches in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, there are far too many incidents to warrant any comfort. The renewed suspicion, doubts, accusations and attacks against the minority institutions in recent months is an inevitable fallout of the inflammatory standards of nationalism that were set during the Kargil conflict. And when this cultivated anti-minorityism becomes an international embarrassment, the Prime Minister is reduced to proclaiming - on the eve of a meeting with the Pope - his Government's commitment to protection of minorities in India; such a commitment has to be a practising faith, not a matter of diplomatic manoeuvering. The soldiers did not lay down their lives in the Kargil battlefield so that soldiers of the saffron brigade would stage a dance of intimidation and insinuation against our own citizens.

The second bitter crop of the `Kargilised nationalism' is being reaped in Jammu and Kashmir. The same Dr. Farooq Abdullah who would cheerfully shake a leg in any nationalistic jig was reflexively dubbed anti-national the moment he decided to use the autonomy bogey to perpetuate his dynasty; the man who sings louder than anyone else the anti-Pakistani theme song was to be denounced instantly as `traitor'. The National Conference too reacts with ugliness, and, the irony of ironies, the Ladakhis, the hosts of the Kargil conflict, want a different governing arrangement.

And, the third bitter manifestation of `Kargilised nationalism' degenerating into an unalloyed ugliness is the threatened dance macabre in Mumbai. The magistracy of the Indian state is defiled by the very managers of that state. An ally in the ruling coalition at the Centre is pretending to be above the law of the land just because he is in a position to make life uncomfortable for the Prime Minister and his Government. A Law Minister would invite a sack from the Cabinet rather than stand up for the constitutional scheme of things. No soldier who died in Kargil can be presumed to have sacrificed his life so that the likes of Mr. Bal Thackeray could continue practising their craft of hatred, divisiveness and sectarian violence.

We need to use the occasion of the first anniversary of the Kargil `vijay' to make one more effort at discovering the moral and ethical imperatives that must inform modern nationalism. Which means the polity and its managers must redefine for themselves the collective purpose of the Indian nation-state as a decent, reasonable, liberal, plural and egalitarian enterprise, especially in a world that insists on being intrusive and meddlesome in the name of globalisation and its rapacious local cohorts. This clarity of national purpose was never more imperative than it is in the post-Kargil phase when we have allowed foreigners to define for us our national interests and needs. We seek to cover up these concessions - more mental and psychological than strategic or economic - to the outsiders by being overbearing and ugly towards the poor and the vulnerable at home. The post-Kargil nationalism has necessarily to be inclusive, caring and sensitive to all classes of Indian citizens.

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