FAMINE OF MEDALS AT RIO - ONLY TWO AGAINST SAI PROJECTION OF 20 : 

AN APPEAL TO SIGN MY LETTER 

TO THE GoI 

Veer Savarkar ???

Veer indeed!!!

Excerpts from the second letter, dated Nov 14, 1931, of Hindutva Leader, Veer Savarkar, (prisoner # 32778), to the British government, seeking their forgiveness :  

"... I am hopeful that the British government, will bring back to the right path all the youth, living in India and abroad, who look up to me as their guide, but have gone astray and oppose the Govt. I am ready to serve the Govt as it wishes, with all my abilities and power under my command. Since I've changed from within, I these views of mine will not change in the future. The Govt will derive nop benefit by keeping me in in prison. Only the strong can be merciful. Where else can a son gone astray return but the father-mother like Govt? Hopefully, the Govt will seriously consider my submission.”

It is worth noting that, for the rest of his life, Savarkar never opposed the British Govt and instead took to organising anti-Muslim radical Hindu movement.

It is also significant to know that after a court sentenced Martyr Bhagat Singh to death on Oct 07, 1930, Savarkar wrote another letter, on Mar 20, ‘1931, seeking the Govt’s mercy.

We have these two extreme examples before us, one of Bhagat Singh and the other of Savarkar.

  

On this 70 Independence Day, it is for us to choose which one of the two we wish to follow, one of death with dignity and the other of a life of shame.

7th PAY COMMISSION : 

JUSTICE DENIED

By 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS (RETD)

Edited by Samuel Dhar

08/08/'16

Dear Friends, 

I think this discussion has gone far too long, that who deserves what, how much and why. While most people agree that the armed forces have always been on the wrong side of the receiving end though they deserve the best. However, when it comes to implementation of such commissions, it is Justice XYZ delivering his verdict. It is such honourable men like Justice Mathur who are ensuring that the future generation refrains from joining the Armed forces of India. Choice and justice delivered is yours dear sir, I wish you good luck. I will still like my child to adorn the Olive Greens, present controversy notwithstanding.

Well, justice sahib, we need real justice. Justice from the discrimination of pay parity, justice to get back our Izzat, justice to be able to serve this country longer, justice because we look after humanity during natural calamities and disasters, justice when it comes to looking after our families when we are at the borders, justice when we restore law and order due to the incompetence of the civil administration and mishandling by politicians, justice to deliver during war and bring victory to the nation, justice to live in peace, if there is such a thing in this Country today.

Can justice be delivered to the Armed Forces fraternity by a person who has no clue which way to point his rifle?  

Can you do justice to the soldiers who spend most of their time without their families? Away from his aged parents, wife and children;

depriving him of watching his child take the first steps and hear the first 'Papa/Mama'.

Can you do justice, when a soldier misses the funeral of his father as I did missing the flight due to constant inclement weather? 

Can you do justice when the soldiers' leave is cut short for operational duties? 

Can you do justice to a soldier who is denied the discharged his moral and legal duty by his parents and family, when his parents ail and his wife is rushed to the hospital for her first delivery? 
Can you do justice to the soldiers whose children go astray without the guiding presence of their father? 
Can you do justice to the soldiers, majority of whom are forced to leave the  who are forced to walk the civy street when still very young due to terms of service, but are denied re-employment when I have to leave the armed forces in the prime of my youth? 
Job or no job, you will still find him with shiny pair of shoes and smartly turned out and be the envy of many a civilian around him.
Can you do justice by denying a 'post early retirement' job to a soldier who guarantees dedicated hard work, just as he did in the Armed Forces and prove to be an asset to the organization he gets to serve in.

Can you do justice  to the soldier who contracts the disease called Hypertension, operate as he does in dangerous areas infested with insurgency? 
Can you do justice to a soldier who contracts other dreaded diseases like,  diabetes, arthritis, high altitude pulmonary edema etc? 
Can you do justice to a soldier who loses his limbs or other organs due to the dreaded scourge of the battle field called 'mines'? 
Can you do justice to the soldiers deprived of the basic requirement called food in treacherous  terrain? 
Can you do justice to soldiers who have to constantly face the vagaries of extreme weather conditions of low oxygen and temperatures as low as -50 deg C or as high as 55 deg C or humidity as high as 100%? 
Can you do justice to soldiers who have to operate in terrains infested with blood sucking leeches which have to be plucked off their bodies at the end of the day? 
Can you do justice to soldiers who have ticks enter their underpants in the thick undergrowth ridden jungles of J & K , sucking blood from their private parts and  which cannot be got rid off till they touch base at the end of the day-long patrol? 
Can you do justice to soldiers, trained to kill the enemy beyond the Nation's borders at first sight, have to face the enemy within due to the utter failure of the civil administration and told not to fire at even murderous rampaging crowds?  
Can you do justice to soldiers, the defenders of our Nation, whose families are asked to pay bribes to corrupt administrators, be they of schools or local, state or Center and even more corrupt  politicians and nothing is done to them?
Can you do justice to the soldiers, who are denied proper accommodation in every military cantonment in the Country? 

Can you do justice to the families of the soldiers who are brought back from the operational theaters in body bags, draped in the Tri-colour, eulogized just for a day and then forgotten for the rest of the days?

Can you do justice to the families, the widows and the orphaned children, of brave martyred soldiers who still lie buried in deep snow avalanches? 
Can you do justice to the families of soldiers who still rot in Paki jails, even after 45 years?

I want to ask you Hon Justice, if you have the slightest inkling of -

what it takes to keep up the morale of soldiers who face the enemy, eye ball to eye ball 24x7x365;

the value of the high degree of discipline we in the Armed Forces have to maintain at all times, under all circumstances;

what it takes to live the vow to bear loyalty, allegiance to the 'Nishan' and the National flag. 

Hon Justice, come with us - 

sit behind in an Army truck, drive with us in a convoy from Jammu to Ladakh. 

acclimatise and then be inducted, after three months of induction training, to a post at the Bana Top for just 3 months; 

come down thereafter to the base camp and stay their for another 3 months. 

Believe you me Hon Justice -

when you land at Delhi on leave or posting, the first beath of fresh air will take your breath away, feeling kind of heavy, since all this while you were used to rarefied air.

you will be ecstatic when the first thing you do on landing at Delhi, is to ring up your wife and hear her voice on line after months;

on seeing the first carrot or cabbage in the market at Chandigarh you will run to touch and feel it. 

the smell of fresh chapattis and dal fry at the first dhaba that you come across will gladden your heart;

'chai' at the nearest railway station will smell and taste like nectar;

used to seeing only bearded men, with stinky outfits, when you see the first good looking girl on a civilized street, you will be like the dumb who feel pleasure in myriad ways but cannot express their feelings;

after having heard the constant whining and whistling on the transistor sets that we, the soldiers, have with us in our forward posts, when the crystal clear blast of the FM radio first echoes in your ears, you will be jumping with joy, like a child. 

how will you feel when your little girl stops short of hugging you when you first arrive at home and screams, not recognising you? 

and all this after you have traveled thousands of Kms in an unreserved second class compartment packed like sardines; don't you think that the defender of the Nation deserves at least a berth in a 3rd AC as he would have descended from -50 to 40+?

Last, but not the least, 
Can you do justice to the veterans, who are valiantly still fighting peacefully, in a disciplined manner for their rights, which you have denied to them. 

You may deny it, but we know we deserve it, and 

We shall get it. 

A MILITARY COUP IN INDIA?

(Edited Version)

Deepak Singapore                                                                                                         Daily Pioneer 

 (As edited by Samuel Dhar)                                                                                     Friday, 05 August 2016 

                                                                                                                                  

It’s a known fact that the military in India is simmering. If they are not given their due, there is likelihood of the proverbial, 'Reap what you Sow'.

Whether our Government openly admits it or not, the recent aborted coup in Turkey has come as a shock and forced a reality check at home. It is but natural, for the political establishment, to wonder if such a turn of events can ever find resonance within our Armed Forces. 

The Turkish Armed Forces are the second largest within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It is a professional military — secular, well led, well trained and fully equipped for their role. Given that the modern Turkey as we now know, owes its birth to the intervention of its the then Chief, General Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its history has a number of Military interventions.

The details of the present unsuccessful coup in Turkey are scant and speculation abounds, regarding its motives and the reasons for its failure.
The manner in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his pro-Islamist party have responded, has raised many questions around the World. 

If the coup in Turkey was organised to prevent the secular fabric, binding the country, from being subverted, as some suggest, then its abject failure is a cause for concern. It raises grave doubts about the perceived secular outlook of the rank and file of the Armed Forces. Despite supporters of the President taking to the streets, the rebel elements of the Armed Forces  should have been able to easily suppress the unarmed civilians and police on the streets of Accra. That they could not, shows that elements sympathetic to the Islamist cause within the forces sabotaged the planned coup. NATO and the West have much to worry about.

In our context, analysts, have arrived at the same conclusion, though for differing reasons, that our Armed Forces will never indulge in such a treachery. 

A section believes that the Armed Forces are highly professional, extremely well disciplined, rooted in the ethos and traditions imbibed by our British masters, of the Military being totally apolitical, with total subservience to the civilian  masters, the bureaucracy and the politicos.

Some others, like Steven Wilkinson, who in his book, 'Army and Nation : The Military and Indian Democracy Since Independence', deals with this subject, and questions such a premise and points to the Pakistan Army which comes from the same lineage and yet has a long history of interventions in domestic politics. 

Wilkinson is of the opinion that our Military rank and file, though seething with anger at the deliberate lowering of their status, vis-a-vis their civilian counterparts, has been de-fanged and “coup proofed” by a series of measures put in place by the bureaucracy and its political masters.

As per Steven, the measures include  a steep decline in its protocol precedence and perks, diversifying its ethnic composition and giving overriding powers to the civilian bureaucracy within the Ministry of Defence in every aspect of military functioning, including selection of senior ranks.

In addition, large paramilitary forces under the Union Home Ministry have also been formed to “ring fence” the military and act as countervailing forces against it, if and when required.

Finally, Steven suggests that the senior hierarchy has been made to remain mute and continue to toe the Government line through a well planned lure of post-retirement crumbs, such as an ambassadorship here or a governorship there or a membership of the Armed Forces Tribunal. 

Both the above theories have merit. Given the divergent growth profiles of the Indian and Pakistani Armies following independence, comparisons to the latter Army, however, have little relevance . 

One cannot also not lose sight of the fact that over the years, the Military, especially its leadership, have been keen votaries of our democratic process, keeping in mind that no Military has the ability to successfully run a vast country like India. 

In the above regard, the wisdom of the Military Brass, which did much to keep our democracy stable and functional through trying times too,   must be applauded, despite the utter lack of governance, near absence of political leadership, continued loot of treasury by crony capitalists and an almost non-existent criminal justice system over decades.

Notwithstanding the above, it must be pointed out that neither traditions nor ethos, however deeply embedded, will ever be a reason enough to stop military intervention. 

That any Military can either be totally “ring fenced” or “coup proofed”, is akin to living in cuckoo land. The East India Company made just that mistake in 1857 with disastrous consequences for itself and those who served it. While we may prefer to call it our First War of independence, the spark that led to the conflagration was an angry Army, extremely upset at the manner of its treatment that felt slighted by Company officials and its own officers.

We need to face the truth head on that the military is simmering for a number of reasons, too well known to bear repetition. That an erstwhile Service Chief was referred to by the esteemed Raksha Mantri as 'Chotey Loag'; that the Government could not be bothered to call the Service Chiefs and extend them the courtesy of explaining the reasons for their objections against the shabby treatment of the Military by the Govts approval of the 7th Central Pay Commission, speaks volumes of the arrogance of those in power. 

If the above was not enough, the Armed Forces continue to be hampered by serious shortages in manpower and critical equipment. the demands of the three Service Chiefs have fallen on nearly deaf years. 

All of the above coupled with the ongoing Hindutva thrust across the length and breadth of our Nation, has resulted in clear divisions within the ranks of all the three Armed Forces, from top to bottom. Indications also exist that all is not well in the relationship between the officers and the PBOR, with a section of the latter becoming critical of the officer cadre.

The Government would do well to remember that angry men with guns , that too of the finest Defence Forces in the World,  are dangerous.

The Govt must also weigh-in the fact that there are three Army divisons deployed in close proximity of our Capital. The memory of the panic created in the Govt hierarchy, at the reported news of the move of mechanical columns of the Army towards the Capital from neighbouring Haryana, when Gen VK Singh was the COAS, is still fresh.  The Defence Secretary had at that time been recalled from a foreign engagement. More telling was the fact that the Defence Minister was unable to summon up enough courage to personally speak to the Army Chief.

Now we don't really want that, do we? The Government needs to take urgent corrective measures to assuage this growing anger in the rank and file of the Defence Forces. It must recollect what the sage Chanakya said over 2,000 years ago, which remains relevant even today :

           “While the Magadha citizenry endeavours to 

         make the State prosper and flourish, 

         the Mauryan soldier guarantees that the State 

         continues to exist!”

The writer is a military veteran and consultant with the Observer Research Foundation_