dna edit: No political football

Captain Vikram Batra, the Kargil hero whose ebullient ‘Yeh dil maange more’ resonated from the mountains as a war cry that combined courage and wit, is once again in the headlines, 15 years after he died fighting Pakistani troops. Not because his mother is contesting as an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate from their home state Himachal Pradesh and is looking to establish a connect and not because politicians want to highlight the sacrifices of the armed forces in this election season. But because the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi used the famous Pepsi tagline immortalised by Batra, not once but thrice during rallies in Himachal Pradesh, as part of an electoral strategy to woo voters, leaving Batra’s family upset and outraged.

Campaigning in Batra’s hometown Palampur as well as Mandi and Solan, Modi repeatedly recalled the martyr’s sacrifices, using the catchy ‘dil maange more’ phrase to rouse the people, many of whom are retired and serving defence personnel. “Vikram Batra died for the country — he had said, yeh dil maange more. I say it too. I want all four seats in Himachal. I want 300 lotuses across India,” Modi was reported as saying. Furious that their son’s name had been dragged through the murky paths of Indian politics, his parents hit back. In a sharp rebuttal, his mother Kamal Kanta, who is contesting from Hamirpur, said even she had refrained from naming her son through the campaign. Modi, she said, was the BJP in-charge during the Kargil war and in Palampur when Vikram died, but had not cared to visit them. Moreover, in the last 15 years, no politician, including Modi and his party, had cared to find out how they were doing. The father said the BJP was just using his son and challenged Modi to withdraw his candidate in Hamirpur if he was indeed “so indebted to martyrs”. Modi responded by saying he too was hurt and asked whether it was a crime to remember a martyr and a son of India.

It is not, of course. But politicians, and not just from the BJP, must remember that voters are nobody’s fools. And it needs more than catchy tag-lines and slogans to invoke patriotism. Cold calculations shouldn’t work in issues as emotive as this. When you recall Batra in his home state and make him the proverbial football being tossed around rally maidans and newspaper columns you undermine not just his sacrifice but those of the many thousands of defence and paramilitary personnel who give up all in the line of duty.

India’s defence forces, amongst the largest in the world, and its paramilitary troopers are tasked with protecting the country’s borders, fighting insurgencies and maintaining internal peace. They fight issues of morale, low pay, staying away from home for months at a time and often times terrible working conditions — from the icy heights of unliveable Siachen to dense jungles in Maoist strongholds. Suicides and fratricides are worrying, continuing problems. Even going by the cynical compulsions that govern political stratagems, they comprise a huge chunk of a voter base that goes beyond caste, class and religious divides. Why then has no party thought it fit to highlight their daily, heroic struggles that keep you and me safe?

Sure, soldiers’ sacrifices must be remembered and recalled. But not like this. Vikram Batra’s mother rightly refused to play political football with his legacy. Some boundaries ought not be crossed.