This year’s 26th November in Mumbai was akin to 26th January in New Delhi. Parades were held on the streets of Mumbai showing the city’s courage, solidarity, spirit and things like that. (Wait, I am not out to demean anything or anyone here!) The first anniversary of the Battle for Bombay was celebrated with pomp and glory. It was a very solemn-yet-feel-good show for the city. While corporate banners hogged their share of the limelight, TV prime time was also apparently bought out by them. Not bad for the economy. Not bad at all.
But the question remains, what did we intend to achieve by doing this? Merely pass on a message to the perpetrators of terrorism to invade us time and again without any retaliation from us except for a show of solidarity here and a candle march there? I mean, do we seriously believe that they care about all this! Where is the action taken to prevent such attacks? Ah, how can I forget the brand new commando team, laden with the latest of armour and provided world-class training to protect this city! But behold, lest we fool ourselves into thinking that a commando team can prevent such attacks in the future. No, it cannot ‘prevent’ an attack. It can only ‘react’ to an attack ‘after’ it has been launched. This means that by the time they react, a few more of this city’s sons and daughters will have to face the bullets from across the border. So how do we ‘prevent’ such attacks from across the border?
This is exactly where the problem lies: ‘from across the border’. Now this is interesting:
We know who did it.
We know where they hide.
We know where they train and prepare.
We have enough bombs to bury them into their graves.
We know their government is making fun of us.
We know they ought to be scared shit of our military might.
BUT WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO DEFEND OURSELVES EVEN AFTER PROVISIONING SUCH A HUGE DEFENCE BUDGET!
And this is the sad thing about the whole thing. Our government simply lacks the guts to hunt down criminals who continue to kill for no justified reason. Recently, I discovered from a news portal that our government then never had the intention of bombing the training camps spread all over PoK. Why? Because it feared that the offensive might turn into a full-fledged war with Pakistan.
My questions:
Have we not claimed since time immemorial that PoK is our territory?
Have we not built a military for the very purpose of tackling such enemies?
Is our military not raring to go and bury the enemy in its own soil?
So why this fear?!
And if the fear of a war with Pakistan is stopping us from raiding our own territory in search of our enemies, we should rather withdraw our claims over PoK and accept the hard fact that the LoC is indeed the border between India and Pakistan. And even if we do this, we will still have to defend our ‘remaining’ territories against all sorts of offensives. If our government is afraid of war, why do we have a military in the first place? Of course, we undoubtedly have a military force capable of protecting us. But the point is, we feed it, we pay it, we fund the lives of our soldiers, their children, their families, and we do appreciate their bravery with all our hearts. So, if we can stupidly decide to send this very military to Sri Lanka to gun down her enemies, why can we not take the wise decision to use it to gun down our enemies? Time and again, our political leadership renews its threats to Pakistan to ‘behave or face the consequences’. What consequences? Have we ever shown them a sample of the so-called consequences? By now, such statements have become the laughing stock of not only our enemies but even our own citizens who just smile at such headlines and shake their heads in disagreement. I wonder why our media accords any importance to such statements which are no more than mere political stunts.
Agreed, that war is not a desirable situation for anyone in his or her right mind. But here, no-war is becoming more dangerous than war itself. A quick look at the statistics in Kashmir reveals that we have lost more heads during ‘peace time’ than during ‘war time’. Have learnt our lessons from this?
Agreed, that once we bomb these training camps in PoK, China will probably open up a new front and become an immediate threat. Fine. So we choose to hold back and let these camps flourish without fear. And what is the final outcome?
1. China continues to remain a threat;
2. The terrorists continue to kill our innocents;
3. We continue our show of solidarity; and
4. We continue to feel helpless.
Let me tell you something:
If a powerful enemy wages a war on a country of a billion and that country falls short of men to hit back because its citizens refuse to put their lives on the line to protect their freedom, then such citizens do not deserve their freedom in the first place. They deserve to be the slaves of those who fight and win for their country. Sooner or later, this is bound to happen lest we all wake up and show our enemies what stuff we’re made up of. And if we ain’t made up of such stuff, why should our soldiers, who’re made up of it, waste their lives for our sake?
