Editorial, "CONDEMN ALL JINGOISM!", in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 31 August 2015, Vol. 11: Part 2, No. 16

CONDEMN ALL JINGOISM!

Had Modi/Rajnath Singh/Manohar Parrikar seriously perused the sincere, honest and balanced account of the history of Indo-Pak War 1965 by Lt. General Harbaksh Singh, the man who commanded most of the war from the Western sector, perhaps they would have hesitated to declare August 28-September22 three-week long celebration of ‘Indian Victory’ in national arrogance and for whipping up jingoism among the children even, at the same time mouthing eulogies, every now and then, of Mahatma Gandhi as the messenger of peace! Or is it their exquisite expertise to talk in two tongues and act in two ways. Anyway, so many impartial observers and honest journalists on both sides of the border, as also a well researched Indian Army report, produced prior to coming to power of the Modi & Co., have all pointed out to the stalemate reached in the war, the international compulsions which led to declaration of cease fire and the short lived euphoria of victory (claimed by both parties!) with heavy losses of the junior leadership in the Indian Army coming to light and finally the loss of our own honest and selfless Premier at Tashkent in mysterious circumstances. A paragraph from Sri Harbaksh Singh’s War Despatches [quoted by Shekhar Gupta on Facebook] may be enough to expose the myth: “Measured purely in terms of material gains our achievements have been very modest. We occupied approximately 740 square miles of PAK territory when it was well within our capacity to expand our hold over a far greater stretch of enemy land. PAKISTAN’s fighting potential was considerably whittled down, but so was ours, though to a lesser degree. The enemy armour was only mauled instead of being crippled, which we could have done. On the other hand, our casualties in the officer cadre were staggering compared to those of PAKISTAN. The young officers earned a grim glorification but an enormous void was created in junior leadership.” And now Captain Amarinder Singh reveals that had it been not for Lt. General Harbaksh Singh’s courage and composure not to carry out Gen. J.N. Chaudhuri’s panicky order to withdraw all our forces to the east of Beas River, we could have lost Amritsar and faced an ignominious defeat comparable to the 1962 debacle! Certainly, there is no sense at all in celebrating such stupid and cruel enterprises of human massacres. §§§