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Sunday, October 28, 2012
50 years on, NEVER forget the valour of the Indian soldier!
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October 26, 2012 12:52 IST
'Fifty years down the line, she still
remembers her son and feels proud of the fact that he gave up his life for the
nation...'
Tarun Vijay salutes the memory of Indian
soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice in that unequal war of 1962.
Also Read: They
fought to the last man for India
Those who keep repeating
with political naivete that India [ Images
] was defeated in the 1962 war with China simply insult those soldiers who
sacrificed their lives defending the motherland.
They showed incredible brevity and courage
and fought till the last man and the last bullet. They did what they were
ordered to do. They carried out their orders till the last breath and embraced
death with a grace and elan that befits only the warriors of supreme order.
The nation still repeats the lines that Lata
Mangeshkar [ Images
] sang in the unforgettable song Mere Watan Ke Logon -- 'When the nation
was celebrating Diwali [ Images
], they were playing Holi with their blood.'
Jaswant Singh [ Images
] Rawat was one of them. He was just 17 when he was inducted into the 4 Garhwal
Rifles. He was a jawan who was trained for only six months, given a 3o3 single
bullet fire gun and sent to Walong in Arunachal Pradesh to defend the nation.
Brigadier R S Rawat described that day's
ferocious battle in graphic detail recently at a function to felicitate the
veterans of the 1962 war. He spoke about how the Bhullas (it means boys in
Garhwali) cut the trees and used their huge trunks to cover bunkers with three
layers of wood, how they threw mortars over it and gave the enemy the harshest
time before finally succumbing to the unending waves of attack by an adversary
who possessed far superior arms, automatic rifles and wore better winter
clothing.
Our jawans had ammunition that belonged to
the era of the Second World War, as well as inferior guns and clothing which
could not resist the spine-chilling icy winds in Chushul and Tawang. Yet they
didn't yield.
Those who were well ensconced in their warm,
comfortable and secure rooms in Delhi [ Images
] yielded to the enemy and bid a pathetically worded farewell to their men in
uniform and the patriotic civilian people.
The men in white caps were defeated in the
1962 war, not the brave men in olive green uniform.
Jaswant Singh Rawat's
mother Leela Devi Rawat is 92 years old and lives in Dehradun.
We felicitated her at a graceful function and
Uttarakhand [ Images
] Governor Aziz Qureshi got off the dais to touch her feet.
Fifty years down the line, she still
remembers her son and feels proud of the fact that he gave up his life for the
nation. Living in a small house with her younger son and daughter-in-law today,
she vividly recalls the day when her Jaswant went away to join the army.
When the news of his martyrdom reached her,
the future had looked impenetrably dark, yet the glory of her son's sacrifice
kept the light intact. Jaswant remained a living soldier even after his mortal
remains had been consigned to the flames.
The army maintained his room, he got promoted
every year and he retired as a major general. His temple in Tejpur reminds
everyone about not just the valour of the Indian soldier, but also his
immortality.
Such is the level of faith for soldiers'
sacrifices in India. Such is this Indian society which believes in martyrdom
for the nation in the most unbelievable manner. According to Hindu scripture, a
soldier goes to Surya Lok, a heaven made of a thousand suns, after his
martyrdom in the line of duty. This explains the Indian family tradition of
sending the best child to the armed forces.
The 1962 war shattered the belief in the
honesty and sincerity of India's political rulers. A plethora of articles and
analyses have been published on how in the 1960s, ordnance factories were
manufacturing coffee machines and lipsticks, when we should have been making
guns and how Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru [ Images
] was waxing eloquent on the uselessness and meaningless of maintaining a huge
army at an enormous cost when India didn't have an enemy.
Even during the war, the Communist parties in
India sided with China and Nehru had some of their leaders arrested under
charges of sedition. Workers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh helped the
soldiers on the front.
The Nehru government invited the RSS workers
to participate in the 1963 Republic Day Parade to honour them. It is ironical
that today, the Communist parties seem to have become strange bedfellows with
the Nehruvian Congress and the political rulers look at the RSS with hatred.
Let us forget all that and look forward. Do
we have that kind of leadership today and will we be able to thwart any other
Chinese action against us?
China is fast emerging as our largest trade
partner, but it still keeps the border dispute open. Top army officers and
defence analysts maintain that China remains the biggest threat to India.
Are we ready to at least
equal China's military might? Is there political will across party lines to
look into our defence preparedness and have a consensus on securing our
borders?
The biggest threat to national security does
not come from external aggression, but from within. The corrupt leadership and
the lethargic babudom that corrodes the nation's defence and allows the
enemy to buy a 'win' is as bad a threat, if not a worse one, to our defence as
is the foreign invader.
The 1962 war was the political defeat of
foolish governance, but the defence forces did their bit in exemplary fashion.
On the 50th anniversary of that war -- rather
the resistance to the Chinese attack -- the most sensible thing would be to
salute the indomitable spirit of the Indian soldier and ensure a public debate
on our present defence preparedness.
The Chinese must be made to feel that they
inflicted a scar on the Indian psyche that is hard to erase They have to
understand that unless they show sensitivity towards Indian peoples' feelings,
no enduring friendship can be shaped, the increase in the volume of trade
partnerships notwithstanding.
The use of force to settle a bilateral
dispute is strictly unacceptable in today's world and to ensure that it is
respected, India has to grow enormously in military stature. A powerful and
formidable military power alone can win long lasting friendships and peace in
the region.
Empowering India will be the best tribute to
the brave soldiers who laid down their lives to defend their motherland in
1962.
Tarun Vijay is a Bharatiya
Janata Party [ Images
] member of the Rajya Sabha from Uttarakhand.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
India should match China's defence power: Tarun Vijay
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
22 OCT,
2012, 10.05PM IST, PTI
MUMBAI: India should learn lessons
from the 1962 Indo-China war and relook at its defence
preparedness in respect to the neighbouring country, BJP MP Tarun Vijay said today.
"As the country observes 50th
year of the Chinese invasion, India needs to relook at its defence preparedness
in respect to China," Vijay, the Rajya Sabha MP, said.
Stressing that India should match the
neighbouring country in military might, he said "Friendship can be lasting
if the engagement is between two equally powerful partners. China should be made aware
that the scars it inflicted on Indian psyche are hard to be erased."
Vijay demanded that the government
tell the nation as to where it stands as compared with Chinese military might.
The BJP leader said India should take
up the issue of presence of People's Liberation Army (PLA) personnel in
Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
"PoK is constitutionally and
legally a part of India. The country should protest the presence of foreign
armed forces on its soil at the international fora," he said and accused
the government of not standing up to China's aggressive postures, calling it
"spineless".
During his visit to Milam glacier in Uttarakhand,
Vijay said he found ITBP forces have to walk 105 km to reach the borders while
Chinese troops have motored roads to ferry their personnel to the border.
In Ladakh's Pangong lake, China has
22 state-of-art mechanised patrol boats while India has two old ones, he said.
"The border villages are facing
unprecedented exodus towards cities. These are dangerous signals for the Army
as the locals are their ground support during crisis," he said.
Vijay demanded that the border
villages be declared as special defence areas and budget should be allocated
for their development.
He claimed that the NDA government
had ambitious programme of constructing border roads and tenders were also
issued, but in the last eight years there has been no progress.
Vijay said there is concern over the
manner in which "China was encircling" India in PoK, Nepal, Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives. "Do we have an answer to counter
this?" he asked.
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