The last few days I have been wondering at our Army Chief, General V K Singh and, collaterally, his superior, Defence Minister A K Antony. Thus far, for obvious reasons, my thoughts haven’t wandered to the supreme commander of our armed forces. My acquaintance with the armed forces is only a nodding one, limited to two or three congenial drinks at open-collar functions, after which I either nod off or break into a Hindi film song, depending on the topic of discussion. My expertise on military matters is similarly slight, all of it based on films like Kelly’s Heroes, The Great Escape, A Bridge Too Far, Bridge on the River Kwai, Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Von Ryan’s Express, and Hindustan ki Kasam, where the wooden faced Raj Kumar provides face to a beautiful Manna Dey song, Har Taraf Ab Yahi Afsane Hai. It is easy to follow war films, where the villains are either Germans or Japanese or Pakistanis.
I must admit that nothing that the army chief V K Singh and his Defence Minister A K Anthony have been saying fall into the stereotypes provided either by Hollywood or Bollywood, where there is no shortage of impossibly heroic acts. Yet, here is an Army Chief who is so nonplussed by what he describes as a brazen attempt to bribe him with a sum of `14 crores that he does the only thing expected from an Army Chief: nothing, except tell Antony jokingly of the episode. How else can we interpret Antony’s subsequent masterful inaction, unless he thought that the Army Chief was joking or that he had heard of things much worse which puts Rs 14 crores in the ‘very small change’ category; not even a blip in the radar of corruption. All Antony reportedly did was bang his head. Against what? The only thing that has taken a knock is his ‘clean’ image. People are going to wonder if he habitually turns a Nelson’s eye to similar murky goings on in his ministry. It is certainly not a good sign of what could be happening in the Defence Ministry. My guess is defence ministers and Army Chiefs should be made of far sterner stuff.
Unless our army is an army of wimps, which I am sure it is not, a perception based, admittedly, solely on my occasional interactions of the kind I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, a soldier would readily be forgiven if he thought that the current Army Chief was incapable of leading from the front. If such is his behavior even in the matter of confronting bribe givers, I shudder to think of what this Army Chief and the Defence Minister would do in a real battlefield situation. My guess is they will try the unconventional method of taking the enemy to court and have lawyers do the fighting instead and appeal interminably thereafter or till the next Army Chief takes over, whichever comes first.
The other thing that I have decided is never to take a ride on an army vehicle of an unspecified variety, of which there are apparently 7,000 running around the country, all satisfyingly substandard. That last word seems to be the leitmotif. Of course I am enormously comforted by the fact that the Army Chief has informed us that it is received wisdom that “people have taken money before me and they will take money after me.” Excuse me please while I bang my head.
sudarshan@newindianexpress.com