A forward march backwards
By Manohar Malgonkar

MIDSUMMER madness! That is how the dictionary defines the ultimate folly. And where else in the world can the summer be as violent as in the great plains of India? May and June are months of torment: The heat, the loo, the swarms of bugs and mosquitoes, shortages of drinking water, electric shutdowns you name it.

And yet we manage to come through our summers without quite losing our minds — without showing symptoms of midsummer madness. This can only be ascribed to our being immunised against the aberrations that are normally associated with summers by the spring festival, Holi. Holi has, since ancient times, been the common man’s outlet for letting off steam; of venting his grouses at the top of his voice, by indulging in riotous behaviour, yelling curses, lamentations, boos, catcalls and "showing goodwill through obscenity."

Holi fever is one of those self-timed maladies: one week, and it is gone, even though, of course, full recovery takes at least another week. At that, by mid April — and thus well in time for the advent of the summer — we’re back to normal, immunised by Holi against the inroads of further aberrations till the end of summer — September, and cool breezes.

Alas, the millennium Holi must have been one of a kind — unless it comes once in every thousand years. It did not subside at all, but went on and on, sputtering — and every now and then taking alarming turns. First there was Cricket’s World Cup — a sporting event which our television set manufacturers whipped up into a sales bonanza of mammoth proportions, and our media barons projected as a pre-ordained triumph for our team because by their assessment, our team just was invincible.

Alas, it was not. It did not even get to the semi-finals stage. True, their overall performance was not wholly disappointing, because there were flashes of brilliance, at least two quite creditable victories and they even broke one or two records. But expectations in India had been raised so high, that our team’s failure to bring back the World Cup to India was thought to be an unforgivable let down, deserving of inquisitionary punishments.

As it happened, however, when, in ones and twos, our cricketers sneaked back into the country they were not greeted with booing crowds as the poor Pakistani players (who, as it happened, did much, much better than our players), had to face when they returned without the cup. That was because there were far more serious things to get worked up over.

Jayalalitha had thrown a tantrum and shaken loose the very foundations of the nation’s politics. The government had collapsed. Fresh elections were to be held within four months for the Lok Sabha as well as for several of the state assemblies.

Until such time as a newly elected government took office, which would be around mid-October, the dismissed BJP-led coalition was charged to remain in office as a "caretaker regime".

I remember listening to learned debates by the pundits of constitutional law as to precisely what a caretaker government could or could not do. The consensus seemed to be that, while there was nothing to prevent a caretaker government from performing the normal functions of elected governments, it was the convention that they should refrain from making major policy changes. At that there could be no hard and fast rules. Supposing — just supposing — that the country was invaded. Was the caretaker regime to be forbidden to order the armed forces to take necessary retaliatory measures just because it was not an elected government?

That purely hypothetical contingency, thought to be so remote that our constitution-makers had not even provided for it, actually came to pass. The country was attacked and the caretaker government called upon to address itself to the problem of throwing out the invaders and, by projection, even declaring war.

In the year or so that it had been in power, the BJP had, on numerous occasions, to placate its several ayaram-gayaram partners whose politics had little in common with theirs, and indeed had been seen to roll over and perform tricks whenever Madam Jayalalitha cracked the whip. The one thing it had become known for was its spinelessness. This same lot of cardboard leaders were now called upon to get tough with a fanatically motivated Pakistan whipping up a jehad fever and to deal with a crisis fought with forbidding hazards.

Unless the situation was handled with Churchillian firmness and statesmanship, it could easily have blown up into a nuclear conflict. Those who had to man the War Room and make the day-to-day, hour to hour, decisions on the conduct of operations and overcome a well-dug-in, well-armed, well-supported, and above all absolutely determined enemy from mountain tops, without crossing the lakshman rekha of the Line of Control, were confronted with an acid test of competence at the topmost levels of performance. Astoundingly as it might seem on the evidence of their track record which had shown them up as lily-livered milksops, they passed the test with flying colours, having shown themselves to be cool, professional, firm. They didn’t put a foot wrong and were praised for their firmness as well as restraint by world leaders.

Militarily, Kargil turned out to have been a brilliant victory — indeed a feat. The odds against it succeeding were altogether forbidding. During the World War-II Montgomery’s eighth-army had been confronted with a similar situation: The retreating German troops had dug themselves in on the heights of Monte Cassino in Italy. After repeated attacks had failed against withering enemy fire, Montgomery decided to give up the attempt to take Monte Cassino by storm and then proceeded to reduce the entire ridge to rubble by relentless and concentrated aerial bombing. This alternative was not available to those engaged in the Kargil operations because of the risks of violating the LoC.

Well, what the eighth army failed to do in Italy, our soldiers achieved in Kargil. Their exploits will form the subject of study in Military Colleges of the world, but it is not likely that they will be recommended for imitation because of the scale of the odds.

If the caretaker government had been an elected government, this would have been a wonderful opportunity for it to resign and seek a new mandate in the confidence that the voters would return it to power with a thumping majority. It had happened to Indira Gandhi’s Congress after Bangladesh; it had happened to Margaret Thatcher’s Tories after Falkland. No reason why it should not happen here, now.

No reason except that in Indian politics, military successes, or economic prosperity or indeed the well-being of the nation at large have long ceased to be election issues. Everything, but everything is subordinated to the caste factor. The what? But surely, the caste factor should be a non-issue now — have not distinctions of class and caste or religion been abrogated in our Constitution?

Of course they were. But V.P. Singh brought the caste system right back and with renewed vigour in another garb: social justice.

Social justice is the Hindu caste system stood on its head. Under it, to be backward, is to be privileged. Vast sections of population which hitherto used to seethe with indignation at being thought backward are now clamouring to be labelled ‘backward’.

If Kargil makes any impact on the elections at all, it will only be marginal. Ever since the mid-seventies, when the new caste system was brought in, it has been the predominant factor of all elections. It will go on remaining so until all of us are made eligible for ‘backward’ status.

Ok. So you handled the Kargil crisis competently — even brilliantly. But my vote goes to whoever will promise to declare me as being among the backwards.

Thank you!