THE STATE, THE CITIZEN AND THE ARMY

Valson Thampu

I value the services rendered by the army, though I would never be soldier. I abhor bloodshed. As Gandhi said, we should rather be killed, than be killing. Unlike the zealous patriots of today, I am not an army worshipper. To me, army is a necessary evil, the maintenance of which is obligated by the depravity of man who finds it easier to covet and to kill than to share, love and live in harmony.

Sorry, I can’t swallow the martial fundamentalism being thrust down our throats today: the dogma that the army is always right and that its versions are necessarily true and infallible. Further that it is anti-national not to take every word from the army on blind faith.

Are we to really believe that the army is a saintly oracle of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? That it is incapable of uttering untruth? Well, I wish that were true. But would someone please give me any historical basis for this dogma? (I have been waiting; but it has not been provided to me yet). It is not my contention that the report of a particular action by the army is necessarily untrue. It certainly is my contention that the army is not, never was, never will be, a divine mouthpiece of truth. Assertions to the contrary fly in the face of historical truth.

Surely, we are not ignorant of the increasing importance of propaganda in warfare. Heard of an army without experts in the art of propaganda? And what is propaganda, except the art of lying like truth? If Hitler is to be believed (which is optional), Germany lost World War I only because of its inferiority in propaganda. Sure, the army, by itself has no need to tell anything, truth or untruth. But the army is an arm of the government of the day. Universally, falsehood is born in the interface between the army and the State. Propaganda becomes the teeth of the State-army chimera. No one disputes, certainly none in the present dispensation, that the 1971 Indo-Pak war that birthed Bangladesh was meant to boost the sagging political fortunes of Indira Gandhi. But was that what either the State or the army told the rest of us?

As civilians, we have no means to sift the chaff from the grain of official versions by the State or the army. So, I refrained from commenting on the surgical strike. But I was deeply disturbed when what was an army action was brought into the civilian space for political gains. I was even more disturbed that, while this was done, citizens were disallowed to have any opinion of their own on the matter, except at peril of being branded seditiously anti-national. This aggressive, dissent-intolerant unilateralism is virulently anti-democratic. It amounts to the State, and its ideological phalanx, arrogating to themselves the monopoly to not only do what they like but also decide how their stratagems shall be received by all. That too, while professing allegiance to a Constitution that guarantees freedom of conscience and speech to all citizens!

The fundamental lie that the governments of the world and their armies peddle as dogmatic truth is that the violence they practise is legitimate and sacred; whereas violence resorted to by forces inconvenient to them is wicked and inexcusable. This pattern is of ancient origin; but the saving grace was that its currency was sporadic and temporary. It was not, except for aberrations like Fascism and Nazism, the order of the day. It is during periods of external emergency –war being its foremost instance- that the State and the army become one. The fact that army is under civilian control does not mean that they have to be in visibly seamless continuity in civilian life. The hallmark of the health and wholeness of a society is that the army remains invisible and inaudible in the public sphere. This pattern changes when a society is made to valourize aggression, which betokens collective illness. The emerging parallelism, admittedly accidental, between army actions and State-countenanced vigilantism is a cause for concern.

Surely, the army has to retaliate when there is aggression from the other side. It is commendable when the army does a neat and effective job of it, making the sort of sacrifices that their civilian masters would tremble even to think of. Death is a horrible thing, even when it is gilded with the idioms and sentimentality of patriotism. The preachers and troubadours of patriotism will have its price paid by the poor and not suffer the slightest inconvenience for it. Falsehood is in the DNA of this hypocrisy.

Seen in this light, the abomination of turning the sacrifices that our jawans make in defending the country into political capital stands naked and exposed. Those who create a nexus between such necessary army action and one’s own political fortunes insult the army. From a rational perspective, this is even worse than the stone-pelting our jawans have to live with in the Valley.

The utterances of the present Army Chief are passable as tonics to the morale of his jawans, which it is his duty to bolster. But as public statements, with assured political implications –even if unintended- they are regrettable. I do not want to be, as a citizen of India, used as a human shield under any circumstance. Wonder how many of our flaming patriots would willingly be? It was justified, we may well argue. But, then, is there anything that cannot be justified? Be not blind, I pray, to the mockery of it. The army is there to protect you. But if, instead, it uses you as a shield to protect itself, or those it is trying to rescue, is that heroism or expediency?

Is expediency our new national virtue? Have we renounced the value that the Constitution ascribes to the life, rights and dignity of every citizen? A citizen cannot be a tool, an instrument under any circumstance. Nothing in the world can justify it. It signals the nadir of our sense of fellow humanity.

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