Subject: Tribute to the Indian Soldier (Kargil)
Date: Tuesday, 21 July, 2009, 5:31 PM
Hi Veterans,
It is once again a Kerala Magazine that has devoted almost 60% of the latest issue to Kargil. Please access and read all relevant articles click me
Brig AN Suryanarayanan (Retd)
The week Cover Story: Letter from the managing editor Dear Reader,
The yak probably rebelled against the routine. Or perhaps it was the food that shepherd Tashi Namgyal dished out. On May Day, ten summers ago, it quietly walked out of Garkon, a village close to the LoC. A distraught Tashi followed its trail up the snow-clad mountain. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks: six men hunkered ahead, building a stone bunker. He had not seen them around before—these men were not from the Army, nor from nearby villages. He raced back, still not realising the import of being the first to sight intruders from across the border. At the local Army unit "they thought I was lying", Tashi recalled the pulse-pounding moments to THE WEEK's Special Correspondent Tariq Bhat last week.
Ten years later, the father of four children is soaking in the adulation. He is a hero all right—the plucky shepherd was rewarded Rs 50,000 by the Army and a telephone installed in his home, the only one in the village. It was a small gesture of thanksgiving to a man whose chance discovery helped the nation avert disaster. Had the strategic heights fallen into hostile hands in the summer of 1999, an ominous grip would soon have tightened around the nation's neck.
It took three months, and the lives of 474 of our bravest sons, to breathe free again.
Kargil today is no longer just an icy outpost where men find frostbite as insidious a companion as the enemy's intent. It has become a scaffolding of steel for the idea of India. That idea glows brighter than ever before in the eyes of Lance Naik Jaswant Singh of the 18 Garhwal Rifles. Assigned the task of reclaiming the crucial Point 4700 in Kargil, Singh and his companions charged against the enemy "even as one intruder kept firing at me from as close as 10 metres". Years later, prodded by his mates, he turned around and showed the bullet wound on the back of his neck, said Principal Correspondent Nikita Doval, who visited them at their post in Banbasa, near the Nepal border. These men crave mere minutes with their children, sometimes just a warm meal served by a loved one. Instead they keep the heart's desire on hold. Amid the white wasteland where temperatures plummet to minus 40°C in severe winters, men from across India stand guard, eyeballs scanning the thin air for a hint of hostility. They know they could be buried under an avalanche the next minute, or fall to fatal high altitude pulmonary oedema that causes accumulation of fluid in the lungs.
This issue of THE WEEK is dedicated to these heroes who stand guard so that we can sleep safe. On the following pages we present an array of stories on 10 years after Kargil. Experts explain various facets of the war and its lessons—Gen. (retd) V.P Malik, who was chief of army staff during the conflict; K. Subrahmanyam, who headed the Kargil review committee; Air Marshal (retd) Vinod Patney, commanding-in-chief of Western Air Command that was active in the war; and, from across the border, Hamid Mir, chief of Geo TV, who chronicles the changes in his country since the Kargil War.
Over the last many days our reporters gained intimate insights into the lives and loss of soldiers in Kargil and combatants now posted elsewhere. On Sando Top at Dras (16,000 ft), Tariq Bhat gasped at the grit of our jawans. He gasped for breath, too: “We traversed miles of desolate stretches with an unending array of snow-capped mountains that gleam in the morning sunlight…. My headache was peaking and I tied my handkerchief tightly around my head but the nausea wouldn’t subside. By the time we reached Point 4812, I was panting. A soldier stopped the colonel I was travelling with and insisted on tea with grenades. Grenades! I was taken aback. ‘Oh they are choormas, a sweet like the ladoo that they make here with atta, ghee, sugar and dry fruit,’ the colonel explained. ‘The grenadiers call it grenade!’ he laughed. I marvelled at their mettle and the ability to view the lighter side of high-altitude life.”
It is time we paused to marvel at these incredible Indians. It is time we told our children that their modern-day heroes must include not only T20 thrillers and Bollywood badshahs, but also men like Captain Vikram Batra who is fabled for his exploits on Point 5140. It is time to take the family to a new destination like Palampur—just once at least—where Dr N.K. Kalia’s home has become a cenotaph of Kargil’s first war hero, his son Saurabh, as Senior Correspondent Neha Bajpai records in the cover story. “We must have done countless good deeds in our previous birth to have been blessed with a son like him,” said Dr Kalia, who has converted the first floor of his house into a beautiful memorial.
It is time to remember.
And time to restore the honour of men like Rangappa Alur, who was felled by a missile in the aftermath of the war. He lost both hands, and a leg. Which means he cannot run around to get the land promised to him almost a decade ago by the Karnataka government, or lobby the Army to get his meagre pension hiked. It is time to honour our men.
Philip Mathew
Read more thrilling accounts from battle front of Kargil
The week Cover Story: Kargil battle accounts: Click me
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