This first appeared on LinkedIn.
Take that hill, you say? Sure. At the cost of our lives? Sure.
When I first spoke about the deep and long-lasting damage a film like Uri would cause, I was shouted down by my own friends.
I do not know whether you have noticed this, but there is a straight line from that film to the death of soldiers, loss of aircraft, risk of war, and humiliation at the hands of our neighbour, all of which are a result of more josh than hosh.
The whole celebration of “Surgical Strike Day“, the making of the film, the national anthems and chants, the riding of armoured vehicles, the Diwali with soldiers, the nautanki on OROP, the “Our jawans are standing in Siachin and you are…” justifications, the righteous indignation against those speaking of army atrocities even when justified, the tricolours in profile pictures, the demands for charging students and artists with sedition, and the constant sharing of kitschy pictures with “Ek salute toh banta hai…” comments may seem like harmless silliness or even naïveté of a genuinely patriotic public, but the juvenile perspectives of life, of geopolitics, of history, of war, of the international system, and generally the realities of existence, when expressed collectively (and hysterically) at the scale at which they are in a country as large as ours, and when this anvil of emotion meets the cap of religion, especially one as diverse and ideologically nebulous as Hinduism, all it takes is a tiny bit of primer in the guise of a slogan, a movie, a chant, an anthem, a single memetic expression that causes a chain reaction and goes viral, to create all the components of an explosion.
Suffice to say, in most cases, this explodes on the face of the very people who are least prepared for it.
Of course, in the long run, if it comes to that, India will win the war. It is plain arithmetic. We have a larger army (and a far larger population of men of fighting age), better equipped, better manned, better paid, better trained, and with larger ideas to defend. We have huge goodwill internationally and (hopefully) more friends than does Pakistan. Our diplomats and businesspeople, our artists and engineers, our scientists and doctors, hell even our politicians are better respected than our neighbour’s. In addition, intrinsically, we are stronger. We have a stubbornly flexible but unbreakable political system, which while flawed, works in some way to take us inching forward. We have a media, that despite having been maligned much lately, is still quite free, fair, frank, and fearless in many quarters. We have an independent judiciary who, while having much to improve on, is part of the reason why we still have our democratic rights, which many a government (yes, I know…starting from a certain Ms Gandhi) would have usurped long ago had it not been for the courts and the judges. We have universities and technical institutes, doctors and scientists, social workers and engineers, entrepreneurs and artists. We will win a war. Any war. Especially a war with weapons that needs soldiers and cash to fight. There is no doubt about that.
But here’s the thing: Have you considered the costs of that? You think it will not touch you? You think no one you love or care for will be hurt or die? You think your house and property, your business and job, your wealth and income will be unaffected? You think you will continue to live a quiet peaceful life? You think today’s world works on who has the biggest or the best army? You think your kids will care when they grow up in a nation devastated by the foolhardiness of their forefathers because they thought going to war would be fun, and that it would be a quick, easy victory, with the fruits of your soldiers’ labours (and blood) conveniently available to you within a short time frame? Who the fuck are you fooling?
You want to fight Pakistan? You want to win? You want to prove to them that their two-nation was wrong? You want to be a patriot? Then, let me tell you something: You are already a winner. Your country (and mine, yes) is steadily doing better and better and outpacing Pakistan in every aspect: HDI, education, health, GDP, PPP, strength of currency, forex reserves, agriculture, peace, lack of crime, justice system, political system, you name it. Yes, even despite the constant changing of our governments, the bickering over petty issues, and the massive polarisation. We are on our way to make India a better place.
Yes, we have a long way to go. No doubt there are issues we have not even begun to touch upon. There’s social inequality. There’s starvation. There’s childbirth deaths. There’s caste. There’s lack of respect for tribals’ land. There’s Hindu-Muslim friction. And then, there’s Kashmir. There’s the North East. There’s Panjab. There’s a lot we can do, and a lot we need to achieve without ever firing even a single weapon in anger.
All you have to do is keep doing what we do already, but channel our patriotism and love for the country into it. If you can do that, you will never lose a war. Because you will never need to fight one.
Jai Hind, my friends. May we all have a quiet night. And may we all dream of peace.
