Martyrdom in the Sauni Cauldron
Amit Sharma was always the life
of the party. His sense of timing was so perfect that any gathering in the
officers’ mess was continually in splits. Such gatherings much needed his tonic
since the days battling terrorists in the Bafliaz bowl in Surankote were grim.
When on the tracks of terrorists
Amit was to the fore. Even if not nominated as the lead, he’d nevertheless be
present in the radio conversation on what to do and what to avoid doing when trapping
the quarry, the terrorist in his den in the Behramgala-Poshana belt.
His nature to step up and deliver
as the occasion demanded led to his leading his team into a gun fight at
exactly the same set of hair-pin bends at which the terrorists struck only late
last week. This was exactly 20 years back.
I was leading an operation in
which Amit was participating. We were to clean up Chamrer bowl, immediately to
the west of the Sauni jungles through which passes the ill-fated Dera ki
Gali-Bafliaz road.
As we trudged up through the
pines, my team was ambushed. We barely made it out of the killing ground, but
in the process lost touch with the rest. The commanding officer –
coincidentally also named Amit - rushed up from the base, while Amit held fort.
Even as the terrorists made a
dash out of the cordon thrown together in quick time by the two Amits, who in
fleeing downed one from the CO’s party, Amit was hot on their trail. Little did
he realise that the terrorists had left a stay-behind man in their wake. This
terrorist accounted for Amit’s scouts before Amit leveled him. Amit was awarded
a posthumous Sena Medal.
When twenty years later another
set of good men die at the very same spot in the Sauni jungles, it is worth
asking if the sacrifice of the five of 12 March 2004, including that of Amit,
was at all worth it.
By when Amit departed, the
ceasefire had come into play along the Line of Control and Vajpayee had signed
on the Islamabad Declaration with Musharraf, that had potential to reset
India-Pakistan adversarial relations.
Some have it that had Vajpayee
stayed on, then he’d have seen his Lahore initiative to its logical conclusion.
This counter factual ignores that his next try at rapprochement, the Agra
initiative, was spiked by Advani, who’d have taken charge if India was indeed
‘shining’ back then.
Manmohan Singh, who took charge,
flattered to please. He was more fixated in fixing relations with the United
States, even staking his government’s fate in parliament on it, rather than
mending fences with neighbours. He got a perfect excuse in the Mumbai terror
attack to stall on the composite dialogue, making a typically hesitant outreach
in his lame duck second term.
To be fair, he was outflanked by
the right-wing that had by then gained a messiah, provincial stalwart Narendra
Modi. The manufacture of the Hindu Hriday Samrat was a campaign with
intelligence fingerprints all over it, having as it did both propaganda by deed
(black operations passed off as terrorism to implicate Muslims) and propaganda
plain and simple (that Hinduism needs saving by its messiah) as its thrust
lines.
Coming in with a strong-man image
– especially one when contrasted with the much-maligned Manmohan Singh – Modi
fell victim to his own propaganda. Believing that he had Pakistan suitably
over-whelmed by his own image, he invited Nawaz Sharif over for his swearing in
– quite as having satraps over at a crowning.
This - a second opportunity – was
stymied soon enough over an insignificant invite to tea at the Pakistan high
commission of Kashmiri separatists. Hoping to revive the opportunity, Modi
over-extended his embrace of Sharif by turning up at the latter’s doorstep. The
Pakistani establishment lost no time in showing Sharif – compromised by the
visit - the door.
A third opportunity was after the
Chinese came knocking in Ladakh, triggered by Amit Shah’s taunt in parliament
that he’d wrest Aksai Chin back, as he would Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. India
hastily revived the ceasefire on the Line of Control. The ceasefire had fallen
to bad days after spells of shelling across it had started in earnest after
Modi took over, it being a safe place to show off his 56” chest.
Two raids had taken place across
it, one by land and one aerial, both boosted to ‘surgical strike’ status by
supplicant strategists and a pliant media. Fictional results were ascribed to
both, allowing Narendra Modi to inveigle his way into the imagination of
nationalism-deluded India for a second time.
With the Chinese dragon posturing
on the Line of Actual Control, it made sense to have the other front -against
Pakistan - dormant. This enabled India to switch forces over to the China
border, including from the Pir Panjal, from which one Rashtriya Rifles division-equivalent
Force rushed up to high altitude.
Not having read Naravane’s forthcoming book one does not know if he bought into the line that the
voiding of Article 370 had somehow solved the Kashmir issue; thereby enabling
the thinning out along the mountain fastnesses. Clearly, Amit Shah’s rationale
of his action - ending terror and separatism – is yet another big lie of the
Modi regime.
The reiteration of the ceasefire
bought India time, with Pakistan – itself plumbing economic and political
depths – playing along, pretending to believe Indian promises on elections in
and a revert to statehood of Kashmir.
Logically, India could have used
the asymmetry to buy off Pakistan with hollow and false promises. But the
regime that believes Pakistan is but a push away from failed state status and
India itself is but one step from super-powerdom hasn’t been able to follow
through on the promise of the ‘secret’ talks between the national security
establishments of the two sides.
Though seemingly master of all he
surveys, Modi thinks he still needs the prop of Muslim bashing to keep his
flock together. Kashmir, Pakistan and
India’s Muslims – in one breath – are therefore to be kept alive for use to
extend his stay in power and the sway of right-wing ideology.
It can only come at a price well-regarded
by now as a price paid by India’s institutions, including the Army.
In a forested tract which we in
our time there only traversed on foot, these days the army has been driving
past hair-pin bends, though they’ve lost five each at precisely the same
location twice over: not only 20 years back but also merely two years ago. But
that is a benign symptom, amenable to tactical broth.
Not so the allegation – if true –
that subsequent to the latest ambush, the army picked up some civilians and
tortured three to death. While ostensibly victims of an over enthusiastic bid
to extract information on terrorist movements, impunity in Modi’s India being
such (recall the Amshipora murderer officer, the Machil and Pathribal false
encounter perpetrators being let off) it could well be a reprisal. The memory
of the deceased soldiers on the Dera ki Gali-Bafliaz stretch has been defiled
by the army nursing cowards in its ranks.
It’s the price the military is
paying for being complicit in extending Modi’s tenure in power, by inflating
his image reliant on arguably false claims of military feats (giving China a
bloody nose at Doklam and Ladakh), by succumbing to institutional defenestration
(Agnipath) and parroting regime (the Naval chief’s words at Navy Day).
Evidently, Amit Sharma’s sacrifice has been in vain.
Well after Amit attained
martyrdom, the course get-together of the sixth course of the Joint Services
Wing (present-day National Defence Academy) witnessed two retired veterans
exchanging notes. My father attending the event learnt a course-mate had lost a
son, Amit Sharma.
The least the surviving son, I,
can do for the memory of the one who didn’t, Amit, is to shout out loud that
the situation that allows for continuing hemorrhaging of good men must be
stanched.
