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ShareThe 10th anniversary of the Kargil conflagration showed that no one is too willing to look at reality in the face. There were two sections which showed themselves to be most lacking in this ability. They were the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was leading the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the time, and a section of the media, including the infant television news channels.
Some of the BJP leaders tried to make a point saying that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was not willing to commemorate the victory in Kargil because it was achieved when the BJP was in power. It was of course a silly jingoist claim which is so characteristic of the right-wing party, but then political parties can stoop to score points. The fact is that Kargil had happened because of the failure of intelligence.
The Subrahmanyam committee had elaborated on this point at length in its report on the Kargil issue. The young army officers and men who had died scaling the mountaintops in the face of enemy fire was tragic. They need not have died. It will be hard to ignore the failure of intelligence at the top.
The intelligence establishment in this country owes an apology to the Kargil martyrs. Secondly, the ceasefire that came about, brokered indirectly by the US, allowed free passage for the jihadis and Pakistan's army irregulars to leave the heights. This after the death of all those Indian bravehearts.
The blame for the intelligence failure should have been borne by the political masters of the day. Remember that Nehru, despite his stature and popularity, did not survive the debacle of the 1962 Chinese war. Even the Congress party members did not spare him.
They forced him to drop defence minister VK Krishna Menon. Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his government should have come under intense scrutiny for what had happened in Kargil and defence minister George Fernandes should have quit office. How did the Vajpayee government turn a failure into a victory?
That turns the light on sections of the media which failed to play the watchdog at a time when it was most needed. Instead of pointing to the glaring lacunae in the way Kargil was handled, they went into overdrive in giving a ringside view of the fierce armed engagement between the armed forces and the intruders.
The fighting occurred on the Indian side of the border. There was no major confrontation with the Pakistan army based across the Line of Control (LoC). And the Indian Air Force (IAF) had to take care not to intrude into the Pakistan air space even as the helicopter gunships fired at the mountaintops occupied by the jihadis. Kargil was more than a skirmish and less than a war.
India's first televised war is an embarrassment to the media. There were wars before Kargil which the media wrote about sincerely and with gravity. The Films Division made some moving documentaries on those who had died and won gallantry awards, without making it maudlin.
There was the dignified Films Division documentary made on Subedar Joginder Singh, who had died in the 1962 war. It used to be shown in movie houses before the main film began. So, for the callow journalists of 1999 to claim that they were the first to cover a conflict is not just an empty boast, but a plain lie.
One of the TV reporters was shown asking the young officers in a bunker whether they felt fear even as they were preparing to go into the fight as though they were going to play a cricket match -- they were walking to their death. That was the insensitivity shown by the BJP politicians and the media in this sad and tragic tale.
