Read an article by Maj. Gen. Mrinal Sharma titled “Why does India
breed so many traitors?”, I received on Whatsapp (I have enclosed it at the end of my response in trail, if you desire read it). Worthy thoughts of a gallant soldier.
Highlights his pain and predicament. I have penned my earnest views in a
response to his article.
Major General, I pay my respects to you, an Indian Soldier, because you pledge to contract a deal of supreme sacrifice for us, the Nation. Men in uniform are a source of inspiration because we look at you as the last undefeated bastion of honesty & pride. Are all men in uniform honest? I doubt, there have been a fair share of scandals & corruption, yet my faith & admiration for the forces is uncontested by my heart & mind. Because Army for me are scores of disciplined & honest soldiers and not those few, who contaminate the pristine waters. Raison d’etre of saying aforementioned is to showcase that people & nations cannot be judged in averages.
Sir, it would have really helped had you defined, what is meant from the word ‘traitor’, which is the bedrock of your article. Treason is meant to be betrayal. Betrayal of what? of State, Government, people, or truth, or righteousness, or liberty or equity or constitution.
People might grossly differ in how they define treason. As an example, for me, evasion of taxes, throwing filth on roads, fleecing money from patients, selling justice, promoting inequity are more serious than shouting unpleasant slogans on the streets. Indeed, I bracket the former in Pakistan’s “bleed by thousand cuts” strategy. Patriotism does not need to manifest only as a habitual rise as soon as our ears smell the rhymes of Tagore’s work, floating in air. Who do we desire to pay our respects to, when we stand up in attention? You quoted National Pride and Identity. But both of these are intangibles of social imagination (I understand this might not exactly coincide with the nurturing a soldier gets, but notwithstanding, I stand by it). Often the intensity of emotion completely rids us from the logical query of finding the sink of our emotional exploits. Emotions seem to have become an end in themselves, rather than being a medium to reach their beneficiary. Who is the subject-noun of this respect we pay? I regard ‘Nation’ as a plausible answer. In absence of live discourse, I further assume that a Nation is primarily its people, along with the geography, culture, heritage, history etc. When one bows to the flag of India, he is bowing to its people. So, logically proceeding, through the Anthem, we pay respect to our fellow countrymen, both living and departed, through 52 seconds. What do most of us do for the rest of the 23 hours 59 minutes and 8 seconds? We divide these very people into castes, religions and creeds, use separate utensils for each other, sit at different levels from ground, fleece money from those who have little, pluck opportunity from those able but hapless, evade tax under the false pretext of their misappropriation by politicians. We are fundamentally not wanting to do or pay our share. This for me is 23hrs, 59min, 8sec of treason vis-à-vis 52 seconds of respect. By no means am I, metaphorical. It’s important to remember & equate such treason as “inflicting to ourselves a thousand cuts”. And I regard this as not just a treason vis-à-vis Governments (which are often of dubitable repute themselves), but a betrayal of those, who like Lajpat Rai or Bhagat Singh made supreme sacrifice not fighting like the army does – with arms of equal strength, but by accepting painful body blows. This is the gravest treason – that of the constitution of India and the idea of India! Getting up for the anthem is the easiest thing to do (not that I anyway condone any disrespect). Paying taxes and not throwing trash on the road is the tougher one. That for me this is a more serious betrayal. Therefore, by my rationale, we conclude that the number of traitors are much more than those few, who are verbose against the Government or its policies. All such traitors are amongst us. Indeed statistically, we are them!
Another important matter that I desire to bring to notice in connection with comparisons of Paris attack and Batla encounter, without casting aspersions on either its righteousness or falsehood is (a) the apparent disparity - one is an act of terrorism against innocent unaware people & other is an encounter; (b) the western world considers a State enduring vehement dissent as a mark of its maturity, not vice-versa. Democracy is the writ of majority, the dissenting voices ensure the balance of liberty & are like the grand pause in between loud musical notes that render an amazing reverberation touching the soul. As much as every student protest need not be eulogized, similarly every other does not deserve vilification. Having said that I am fully with you, that any act of negation of anything (incl. a nation’s existence) with no aim of protesting for the needy & downtrodden should be made to look heroic. No one including media should drop the bar so low. Indeed, such incidents needn’t even be given any importance. In a large nation that we are, we will always have all colours and hues.
About the media you have written better than I could ever have, hence nothing to add.
Enfin, your statement, "Every victory of the foreign invaders was facilitated by the local collaborators who betrayed their kings for some devious reward or to settle personal scores". Bulls eye! Yes, "settling scores". But is this the vice of likes of Mir Zafar only? I have two highlights. (i) A strong nation with dedicated & aware people, need not fear traitors, such people can at best dent, not wear away a nation of its shield. It is the people, who gnaw a nation from inside, create circumstances that enable betrayal of one overturn a kingdom or a Nation. Pakistan’s current situation is an excellent example, while India is saved only by a whisker. By no means am I condoning treason, but highlighting that the true culprit is not the one who nailed the coffin (the verbose traitor), but the one who lay the nation in it, silently inflicting a thousand cuts. (ii) My second highlight – is settling scores a vice of the few? To this question I have no lucid answer. I feel there is a cultural streak in us of settling scores. Indeed, it starts in our epics, tales and folklore and is rampant in our lives. So I leave you with this thought & query.
I too have often asked myself this question - Why are we dishonest and sometimes outright gutless? Part-truth, that I understood for myself is elucidated below, though surely there are other competing and complementing truths.
We are an old civilization, ‘almost’ in continuum. Willy-nilly we carry a baggage of wisdom and experience. While being proud of celebrating festivals for thousands of years, we forget that this came at a cost – that of loss of naivete and romanticism with world. We value individual survival more than collective sacrifice. Loyalty, sacrifice, pride are inventions of human society, which are of little effect to spontaneity of nature. Nature is discriminate; that which withstands a cyclone lives, rest perishes. Civilizational & cultural memes behave like spontaneous natural phenomena. We are, what we learnt and how we reacted to various circumstances through centuries preceding this day. Those learnings directed us on the path of extreme individualism. Most of us are great team players but in one-man teams. Other civilizations, which had a break in between, suffered less from their past as they could break from it and start afresh. We have been carrying all the knowledge & information of thousands of years along and are buried under its gravity. Nation-state in itself is an idea introduced recently to us. Probably we are still happening as a Nation.
In conclusion, your thought-provoking & discerning article merits my earnest appreciation for dealing with a sensitive subject of treason with eloquence. But then would my ideas of treason find favour with you; you will have to reconsider defining treason, while excluding earnest dissent from it. Your article of proposing that we are cursed by more than fair share of traitors in itself is a dissent against what we think of ourselves... Deepak Loomba
Article as received by me through a chain of whatsapp messages (I do not guarantee the authenticity of this article as it is not know to me, but since I liked the piece for the thought it presented and the eloquence with which the writer did it, I am reproducing it here):
Major General, I pay my respects to you, an Indian Soldier, because you pledge to contract a deal of supreme sacrifice for us, the Nation. Men in uniform are a source of inspiration because we look at you as the last undefeated bastion of honesty & pride. Are all men in uniform honest? I doubt, there have been a fair share of scandals & corruption, yet my faith & admiration for the forces is uncontested by my heart & mind. Because Army for me are scores of disciplined & honest soldiers and not those few, who contaminate the pristine waters. Raison d’etre of saying aforementioned is to showcase that people & nations cannot be judged in averages.
Sir, it would have really helped had you defined, what is meant from the word ‘traitor’, which is the bedrock of your article. Treason is meant to be betrayal. Betrayal of what? of State, Government, people, or truth, or righteousness, or liberty or equity or constitution.
People might grossly differ in how they define treason. As an example, for me, evasion of taxes, throwing filth on roads, fleecing money from patients, selling justice, promoting inequity are more serious than shouting unpleasant slogans on the streets. Indeed, I bracket the former in Pakistan’s “bleed by thousand cuts” strategy. Patriotism does not need to manifest only as a habitual rise as soon as our ears smell the rhymes of Tagore’s work, floating in air. Who do we desire to pay our respects to, when we stand up in attention? You quoted National Pride and Identity. But both of these are intangibles of social imagination (I understand this might not exactly coincide with the nurturing a soldier gets, but notwithstanding, I stand by it). Often the intensity of emotion completely rids us from the logical query of finding the sink of our emotional exploits. Emotions seem to have become an end in themselves, rather than being a medium to reach their beneficiary. Who is the subject-noun of this respect we pay? I regard ‘Nation’ as a plausible answer. In absence of live discourse, I further assume that a Nation is primarily its people, along with the geography, culture, heritage, history etc. When one bows to the flag of India, he is bowing to its people. So, logically proceeding, through the Anthem, we pay respect to our fellow countrymen, both living and departed, through 52 seconds. What do most of us do for the rest of the 23 hours 59 minutes and 8 seconds? We divide these very people into castes, religions and creeds, use separate utensils for each other, sit at different levels from ground, fleece money from those who have little, pluck opportunity from those able but hapless, evade tax under the false pretext of their misappropriation by politicians. We are fundamentally not wanting to do or pay our share. This for me is 23hrs, 59min, 8sec of treason vis-à-vis 52 seconds of respect. By no means am I, metaphorical. It’s important to remember & equate such treason as “inflicting to ourselves a thousand cuts”. And I regard this as not just a treason vis-à-vis Governments (which are often of dubitable repute themselves), but a betrayal of those, who like Lajpat Rai or Bhagat Singh made supreme sacrifice not fighting like the army does – with arms of equal strength, but by accepting painful body blows. This is the gravest treason – that of the constitution of India and the idea of India! Getting up for the anthem is the easiest thing to do (not that I anyway condone any disrespect). Paying taxes and not throwing trash on the road is the tougher one. That for me this is a more serious betrayal. Therefore, by my rationale, we conclude that the number of traitors are much more than those few, who are verbose against the Government or its policies. All such traitors are amongst us. Indeed statistically, we are them!
Another important matter that I desire to bring to notice in connection with comparisons of Paris attack and Batla encounter, without casting aspersions on either its righteousness or falsehood is (a) the apparent disparity - one is an act of terrorism against innocent unaware people & other is an encounter; (b) the western world considers a State enduring vehement dissent as a mark of its maturity, not vice-versa. Democracy is the writ of majority, the dissenting voices ensure the balance of liberty & are like the grand pause in between loud musical notes that render an amazing reverberation touching the soul. As much as every student protest need not be eulogized, similarly every other does not deserve vilification. Having said that I am fully with you, that any act of negation of anything (incl. a nation’s existence) with no aim of protesting for the needy & downtrodden should be made to look heroic. No one including media should drop the bar so low. Indeed, such incidents needn’t even be given any importance. In a large nation that we are, we will always have all colours and hues.
About the media you have written better than I could ever have, hence nothing to add.
Enfin, your statement, "Every victory of the foreign invaders was facilitated by the local collaborators who betrayed their kings for some devious reward or to settle personal scores". Bulls eye! Yes, "settling scores". But is this the vice of likes of Mir Zafar only? I have two highlights. (i) A strong nation with dedicated & aware people, need not fear traitors, such people can at best dent, not wear away a nation of its shield. It is the people, who gnaw a nation from inside, create circumstances that enable betrayal of one overturn a kingdom or a Nation. Pakistan’s current situation is an excellent example, while India is saved only by a whisker. By no means am I condoning treason, but highlighting that the true culprit is not the one who nailed the coffin (the verbose traitor), but the one who lay the nation in it, silently inflicting a thousand cuts. (ii) My second highlight – is settling scores a vice of the few? To this question I have no lucid answer. I feel there is a cultural streak in us of settling scores. Indeed, it starts in our epics, tales and folklore and is rampant in our lives. So I leave you with this thought & query.
I too have often asked myself this question - Why are we dishonest and sometimes outright gutless? Part-truth, that I understood for myself is elucidated below, though surely there are other competing and complementing truths.
We are an old civilization, ‘almost’ in continuum. Willy-nilly we carry a baggage of wisdom and experience. While being proud of celebrating festivals for thousands of years, we forget that this came at a cost – that of loss of naivete and romanticism with world. We value individual survival more than collective sacrifice. Loyalty, sacrifice, pride are inventions of human society, which are of little effect to spontaneity of nature. Nature is discriminate; that which withstands a cyclone lives, rest perishes. Civilizational & cultural memes behave like spontaneous natural phenomena. We are, what we learnt and how we reacted to various circumstances through centuries preceding this day. Those learnings directed us on the path of extreme individualism. Most of us are great team players but in one-man teams. Other civilizations, which had a break in between, suffered less from their past as they could break from it and start afresh. We have been carrying all the knowledge & information of thousands of years along and are buried under its gravity. Nation-state in itself is an idea introduced recently to us. Probably we are still happening as a Nation.
In conclusion, your thought-provoking & discerning article merits my earnest appreciation for dealing with a sensitive subject of treason with eloquence. But then would my ideas of treason find favour with you; you will have to reconsider defining treason, while excluding earnest dissent from it. Your article of proposing that we are cursed by more than fair share of traitors in itself is a dissent against what we think of ourselves... Deepak Loomba
Article as received by me through a chain of whatsapp messages (I do not guarantee the authenticity of this article as it is not know to me, but since I liked the piece for the thought it presented and the eloquence with which the writer did it, I am reproducing it here):
Why does India breed so many
traitors? By _Major General Mrinal Suman_
While studying Indian history in
school days, one was repeatedly told that the foreign invaders resorted to
‘divide and rule’ policy to gain control over India. They were painted as
unscrupulous schemers who exploited the simple, trusting and gullible Indians.
It is only at a much later stage that one realised the hollowness of the above
assertion. The truth is that we are adept at producing hordes of traitors
who revel in India’s ruin.
Dear To begin with its important to
define
Every victory of the foreign
invaders was facilitated by the local collaborators who betrayed their kings
for some devious reward or to settle personal scores. No fort was ever
conquered without the infidelity of a trusted minister/commander.
Unfortunately, centuries of slavery has taught us nothing. We carry on
spawning throngs of people who can stoop down to any level (even imperil
national security) for their petty gains.
2. Our leaders, media and
intellectuals appear to have a single point agenda: how to generate
innovative issues to keep the nation divided and embroiled in petty
bickering and internal dissentions; and thereby impede progress and bring a
bad name to the country. They abhor India’s rise. Let me elucidate. First,
the leaders: they are the fountainhead of all fissiparous tendencies. For
them, vote bank politics take precedence over everything else. One does not
have to be a visionary to predict the danger of abetting illegal migration from
Bangladesh for garnering votes. But unscrupulous political leaders carry on
unconcerned. One hangs one’s head in shame when political leaders extend
their support to a delinquent student leader who seeks destruction of India.
Comparing him with martyr Bhagat Singh is by far the most perfidious act.
Perhaps, India is the only country that has an ignominious track record of
producing Home Ministers who revelled in shaming the country. One concocted theories of saffron terrorism to please his
party bosses. In so doing, he presented a convenient propaganda tool to
Pakistan. Another Home Minister did the unthinkable. He declared a
terrorist to be innocent in an affidavit to the court. The aim was to ensnare the opposition leaders in a false
case. Sadly, India’s intelligence gathering apparatus suffered immense damage
in the process. When a leader declares ‘it's safer to be a cow than to be a
Muslim in India today’, he puts the whole country to shame. The world media
flashes such headlines with sinister pleasure. India’s image takes a terrible
beating. Just to score a brownie point against the government, he presents a
convenient propaganda handle to the hostile forces. How low can a leader
stoop! Recently, a renowned advocate and a former law minister told a TV
channel that shouting slogans for the destruction of the country is not
debarred in the constitution. According to him, freedom of expression
was of paramount importance. Even demand for secession (azadi) was justified. As the
interview progressed, one was not only amazed by his perverted reasoning but
also shocked to see the brazenness with which he was arguing. Survival of
India appeared to be of no concern to him. One wondered if one was watching
an Indian or a Pakistani channel. Secondly, the media personnel: the
less said the better. From their conduct, it appears that many of them are
foreign plants and India means little to them. When a leading media house
invited a vicious and remorseless enemy like General Pervez Musharraf and
groveled before him, it marked the lowest depths of shamelessness to which
journalism could sink. Instead of castigating him for the Kargil war, he was
treated as a peace loving guest. *** Both the electronic and the
print media never report ‘positives’ about the country. Ugly India sells (a
la ‘Slumdog Millionaire’); and not progressive India. Remember how a TV
reporter failed to digest the popularity of Modi in the US and tried to incite
the crowd with provocative remarks. But then they get paid to demean India,
and not to extol it. Immense damage is also being inflicted on the unity
of the country by the media through its Machiavellian and skewed reporting.
Every news item is deliberately reported with a religious,
caste or creed slant – ‘a dalit girl molested in
a Delhi bus’ (as if other women are not molested in Delhi buses) or church
guard killed’ (in reality an argument between two security guards had turned
violent) or Muslim driver runs over a boy’ (as if his being a Muslim is
of anyrelevance). Recently, in a case of cattle stealing, a leading
newspaper could not resist the temptation to add that one of the five
thieves is learnt to have had connections with a cow protection group in the
past’. How cunningly, a simply case of robbery was given a
communal taint. Petty vandals are given the coverage befitting a mass
leader. It was obnoxious to see two TV channels airing their interviews
with a student leader charged with sedition. The worst was the indulgent
demeanour of the TV anchors; as if a national hero was being eulogised. The
interviews were repeatedly telecast at prime time. Did these channels think
of interviewing war heroes or martyrs’ families? Forget it; that would have
been a pro-India act and that is an act of sacrilege for them. Thirdly,
the self-proclaimed secular intelligentsia: it has done the maximum damage
to India’s prestige and standing. Some of them appear to be fifth columnists masquerading
as progressive intellectuals. In which country of the world would the
intelligentsia write to the US government not to receive their Prime Minister?
Honestly, it is simply loathsome: duly elected representative of 1.25
billion Indians being subjected to indignities by a shameless bunch of
foreign-educated and foreign-paid anti-national elements. Unfortunately,
their protests get huge publicity abroad, thereby undermining all efforts to
raise India’s standing in the world forum. It can be said with certainty that
the well-orchestrated campaign of intolerance was totally malicious in
intent. The sole objective was to stall all progressive reforms by
tarnishing the image of the government. How else can anti-nationalism be
defined? As expected, having dented India’s reputation, sold-out media chose
to ignore the true facts as they emerged subsequently. Hundreds of
Christians, led by the church leaders, marched in protest on the roads of Delhi
against the *alleged vandalism of churches and a theft in a Christian school.
Routine cases of petty crimes were cited to suggest an
anti-minority conspiracy.*** They
ensured extensive coverage of their protests by the foreign and Indian media,
thereby damaging India’s secular image. Foreign channels are only too eager to
shame India. Unwisely, even Obama got carried away with his uncalled for
advice, losing considerable goodwill in India. Reportedly, he said so on the
prodding of an Indian leader. Soldiers and the national symbols: the
national flag, the national anthem and the national salutations are
representative of a country’s national identity and pride. They
symbolise ancient heritage, current challenges and future aspirations. For
soldiers, their sanctity is incontestable. Thousands of soldiers have
sacrificed their lives to plant our tricolour on the enemy strongholds, thereby
earning the ultimate honour of having their bodies draped in the national flag.
Notes of the national anthem make every soldier get goose pimples. The
response is instantaneous and the effect is electrifying. Even in their homes,
they stand up with their families when the national anthem is played on TV
during Independence/Republic Day ceremonies. Similarly, national salutations
like ‘Hindustan Zindabad’, ‘Jai Hind’ and ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ ( now beinng
alleged as having SAFFRON overtones) make adrenalin surge through their
bodies. The salutations act as a rallying call to inspire the soldiers for
the ultimate sacrifice. All military functions conclude with full-throated
renditions of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. Therefore, the current controversy
regarding national salutations is highly painful to the soldiers. They fail
to understand as to how an Indian can have difficulty in hailing the country.
How can ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ be assigned religious overtones. Finally:
history stands testimony to the fact that a nation infested with the virus of
treachery, deceitfulness and perfidy has always been an easy prey for foreign subjugation. No one knows this bitter truth better than India. Yet, our
leaders, media and intelligentsia keep discrediting and harming the country
through their seditious utterances and activities. Under the garb of freedom
of speech, they support those felonious speakers who vow not to rest till India
is destroyed. When Paris was hit by the terrorist attacks, the whole
country gave a unified response. Compare it with our Batla House encounter
against Indian Mujahdeen where two terrorists were killed and two arrested.
A brave police officer lost his life. Yet, many seditious elements had the
impudence to term the encounter to be ‘fake’. Therefore, the mystery remains
unsolved. Why does India continue to produce so many Jaichand and Mir Jafars?
Is India a cursed nation or is treachery a part of our DNA? One wonders.**
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