Dr Jay Dubashi
IF I were Chief of Staff or Defence Minister of India, I would have ordered the army to march, first to Lahore, and smash it to smithereens, then to Islamabad and burn down the President’s House and decapitate half a dozen Generals and Air Marshals and then go on to Kashmir and shoot every Paki soldier in sight and return to Delhi with their heads.
Of course, I am not Chief of Staff – incidentally, where is our Chief of Staff? — nor Defence Minister—and cannot do any of these things. But that shows how enraged I am and so are millions of my countrymen. I can only sit down with a piece of paper and show my disgust at the way the Manmohan Singh government — incidentally, where is Manmohan Singh? — is behaving in the face of what is undoubtedly not only a severe provocation but an act of unimaginable brutality on the part of our neighbour that goes by the name of Pakistan.
Not only the government, everybody else is behaving like chickens and hiding their faces behind the purdah, including our military and its Generals. Their cowardice is shameful.
On the day after the atrocity, which reminds me of Middle Ages, the Paki High Commissioner in Delhi showed up at the foreign office – he was summoned, it was said, but I doubt it — dolled up and smiling broadly, and maybe even laughing, and our man at the gate welcoming him, yes, welcoming, as if he was being invited to AK Antony’s birthday party. Incidentally, where is Antony? Has he gone to Pakistan to sign yet another agreement or perhaps to Kerala for New Year celebrations?
We have a shameless government, headed, if that is the right word, by a shameless Cabinet that has simply no clue to what is happening around the country, or doesn’t care. Even our newspapers have got cold feet. One so-called national newspaper, perhaps the most anti-Hindu and therefore the most anti-Indian newspaper in the country, which is always praising the scoundrels in Pakistan, had a bogus so-called lead story on something called social impact awards complete with pictures, and the Kashmir brutality way down at the bottom, along with an equally bogus editorial advising us to hold our horses and not stir up trouble. When the government leaders are themselves shameless, what do you expect of others?
And all this while the Paki cricket team is still in India, While Paki soldiers kill our jawans, their cricketers are playing cricket in India, not far from the place where the killing was done. Nobody has guts to call off the series and expel the team. Our “secular” wiseacres, who always have excuses for such acts, will say that Paki cricketers are different from Paki murderers and we should not confuse the two. Nonsense. A country is a country and it matters very little who does what. It is shocking, to say the least, that we should play cricket with Pakis while other Pakis elsewhere are sharpening their bayonets to cut-off the heads of our jawans.
I have said a number of times in these columns that there is no country called Pakistan and what we call Pakistan is a figment of wild imagination. It looks like a country and is shown like a country on the map but it ceased to be a country long ago. It does not have a proper government, a proper administration, proper laws and a proper constitution. It is not a failed state, as some people say; it is a non-state, with a non-government, a non-president, and an army that consists not of soldiers, but of thugs. God alone knows who rules it and where they get the money to run it.
On the face of it, it gets the cash from the Americans who are anxious to use its space for their army’s sorties in Afghanistan. It is more like a huge parking space for the Americans, and when their cars go back home, there will be no hand-outs from Washington, and the spaces will be vacant again and possibly taken over by the Taliban, who are waiting for the kill behind the mountains. That will be the end of what is called Pakistan and even the maps will stop showing it.
If Pakistan is a non-country, like Somalia or Congo in Africa, the Paki military is also a non-military. It is a gangster army controlled by other gangsters in military uniforms, as you have, or used to have in Latin America. They are probably controlled by the ISI, which probably controls the government as well. In fact, nobody knows who controls what. All we know is that the loot is parked in foreign banks and is probably parcelled out every where so often. The president himself was once known as Mr. Ten Per Cent, and there are almost certainly other per cent wallas, including Chief of Army Staff and others, and the men who run the ISI.
Why do we give so much importance to this tinpot country and make such a big fuss over it? Forget cricket. Why do we maintain an embassy there and why do we have their embassy here, as if it was a genuine nation, with a genuine government and a genuine administration? After all, it was only a few years ago – about forty years ago – that our army split the country into two, like a coconut shell, in a couple of weeks and we can do it again if we put our minds to it. In fact, it is high time we did so. And I am sure it will happen sooner or later, if only to revenge ourselves on the death of our jawans by the gangsters masquerading as military, and high commissioners in three-piece suits laughing away as they get down from their Mercedes and Bentleys.
I hold the United States responsible for the undue importance the Pakis have received of late. It is true Americans required some space to park their jeeps and their tanks before driving into Afghanistan, but that is no reason to make such a big fuss over a country that exists only on the maps. Pakistan is more like Somalia, a country with no government worth the name, existing only on the charity of foolish men in Washington, foolish because of their foolish war in Afghanistan, and also foolish because of the undue importance they have given and continue to give to a country that is nothing more than a hideout for gangsters.
These gangsters are clever, for they operate with modern weapons, with hand-outs they receive from their American patrons but it is other countries like India who have to bear the brunt. The Americans have caused untold trouble in Asia, and Africa, because of their so-called global activities. They were responsible for the mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to speak of other countries in Asia. And it is they who must be held ultimately responsible for the brutal behaviour of the Pakis.
If I were in charge, I would shut down the Paki embassy and ask the three-piece diplomats there to pack up and leave before sundown. We should shut down the embassy and use the building as a military hospital for our jawans. This is the only way we can teach the Pakis a lesson.
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