The almost tandem news coverage of the execution of Yakub Memon, one of the key accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, and the 16th Kargil Vijay Diwas at Dras, highlight in their own fashion, the two faces of the external threat to the nation — one covert, the other overt, both of them clear, present and persistent. Kargil Vijay Diwas 2015 commemorates the battle at Kargil in 1999, which itself was actually the fifth such, because Kargil is a well-trampled battleground on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir which has featured in all of India’s wars since Independence.
The first battle at Kargil took place in 1948, during the First Indo-Pak War in Kashmir, and, thereafter, on two occasions, in 1965 and then in 1971, when the Bangladesh War was in progress in the east. The only exception would perhaps be the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962, though, even here, Kargil was in the proximate vicinity of southern Ladakh, where multiple Chinese intrusions did take place at Demchok and Jara La.
Like all of India’s wars, the Kargil war was won by the sheer courage and endurance of Indian soldiers, sailors and airmen. On Kargil Vijay Diwas, one recalls one such hero. Major B.S. Randhawa, of the 4 Rajput, was posthumously awarded the Maha Vir Chakra. He captured the features Pt 13620 and Black Rocks in Kargil in 1965, which were handed back to Pakistan during the false bonhomie following the pseudo-ceasefire after the Rann of Kutch incident in April, 1965.
Both hill features had to be recaptured all over again with more casualties when the 1965 war flared up later that same year in the aftermath of Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar and the infiltration of large numbers of mujahideen into the Kashmir Valley. While Operation Gibraltar failed, the episode highlighted the gullibility of India’s leadership, which returned critical and hard-won military terrain in Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan after the Tashkent Agreement. This included the Haji Pir Bulge and Black Rocks and Point 13620.
The same fumbling was to be displayed, yet again, at the Simla talks in 1972, which allowed the Pakistan Army to outwit Indian negotiators, including Indira Gandhi, India’s “Iron Lady”, and literally get away scot-free with genocide and murder in East Pakistan, later Bangladesh after its liberation by the Indian armed forces in 1971. The battle of Kargil was won by the fortitude of the Indian infantry, which crawled from hill top to hill top ignoring sub-zero temperatures and intense enemy fire, with their “Big Brother” the Indian artillery, blasting the deeply entrenched cave defences of the Northern Light Infantry of the Pakistan Army, who really constituted the hard core of the Pakistani infiltrators, fielded under the window dressing of the mujahideen.
The Indian Air Force overhead, flying vintage aircraft kept pace with their comrades on the ground, improvising brilliantly on their established operational procedures to cope with adverse weather and ultra-restrictive political directives which effectively clipped their wings and confined them to a narrow band of Indian airspace along the LoC. A Kargil Review Committee was constituted, but once operations ended, India’s usual ultra-bureaucratic procedures reverted to the driver’s seat and the report was never holistically implemented.
The Bofors 155mm medium gun, is a case in point. Once the source of intense political controversy which led to the downfall of a government and its associated political dynasty, successor governments ostentatiously severed all connections with the firm, to the extent that it refused to avail the technology upgrades which were part of the contract. The artillery regiments that had been issued this equipment kept it going by “cannibalisation” — an inelegant term for scavenging components from unserviceable weapons — to keep serviceable guns operational. In the end, it was these much patched-up pieces of weaponry which saved the day for India at Kargil 1999, and again, only the Indian Army could have done it.
Indian Army “Gunners” are second to none — but where is the modern artillery they urgently require? However, it must be mentioned here that “achche din” seem to be approaching with the new Dhanush 155mm artillery piece developed in India by the often berated and ridiculed Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), to be produced by its equally berated counterpart the Ordinance Gun and Shell Factory, though some critical components will still be of imported origin.
Yakub Memon represents a more invidious and perhaps even more dangerous threat. But from his case springs yet another concern — that regarding the credibility of sovereign assurances given by the Indian state. According to media accounts, denied by the government, Memon and his co-conspirators in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case had escaped to Pakistan, but were approached and persuaded by Indian clandestine agencies to return to India via Nepal, apparently on assurances of amnesty, as mentioned by former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) agent B. Raman, but subsequently recanted.
Memon’s arrest in Delhi in 1994, after return to India with his family, his trial and award of the death sentence, and then his execution even after 20 years of incarceration awaiting trial, surely violates any sovereign assurances which may have been conveyed even non-formally by clandestine agencies of the Government of India. If true, the process of Memon’s execution undermines the reputation and trustworthiness of the nation itself, since, paradoxically, good faith is one of the unwritten rules of clandestine negotiations in the dim and totally murky world of counter-espionage. But that game, too, cannot be played unless there is a sense of honour, even among thieves.
The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament
