No tears shed for seven troopers killed fighting Maoists

Threat from internal enemies is far more serious than the one from Pakistan

ajay

Ajay Singh | January 9, 2013


A CRPF team in Chhattisgarh, battling the Maoists
A CRPF team in Chhattisgarh, battling the Maoists

Despite the existence of the Geneva Convention, the inherently brutal nature is a typical characteristic of an army. In the Kargil war, there were many stories of bestiality and torture that the Pakistan army resorted to against Indian defence personnel. Surely there would be similar stories on the other side of the fence which would have projected the Indian army in a similar vein. Perhaps, to expect benevolent behaviour from any army is expecting too much.

But the killing of two army jawans on a peaceful LoC on January 8 violates all codes of conduct of a professional army. Even in the past Pakistan has resorted to beheading Indian soldiers by secretly deploying its special forces trained as killing machines on the silent borders. Of course, Pakistan would not be naive to expect the Indian army to sit back idly and grunt. There are all indications that the peace process between the two neighbours will be held hostage to jingoism from both the sides.

With Pakistan as an enemy, the Indian response has often been irrationally hysterical. Despite the fact that the Indian army has capability and resources to outdo the Pakistani army in all respects, jingoism appears often misplaced. This becomes all the more glaring in the manner in which the debate in the electronic and print media conveniently ignore the killing of seven CRPF jawans in an ambush with Maoists in Jharkhand on January 7. And their killing by Maoists was no less brutal than the beheading of the army jawans by the Pakistani soldiers. At least two dozen CRPF personnel were injured in the incident.

In fact, the killing of the CRPF jawans fighting for internal security has become such a routine that it is largely ignored in the mainstream discourse. Hundreds of trained troopers of CRPF are getting killed while doing their duty for internal security. And by all accounts, the threat from the internal enemies is far more serious than the external threat from Pakistan whose nose has been effectively rubbed by the Indian army many a time.
 

 

Comments

 

Other News

Is BharatNet digging too deep?

India’s ambition to become a digitally empowered society rests on the premise that every citizen, regardless of geography, should have access to reliable and affordable internet. At the heart of this mission is BharatNet, a flagship programme launched by the government of India to provide high-speed

WAVES Summit: A Global Media Powerhouse

In 2019, at the inauguration of National Museum of Indian Cinema, prime minister Narendra Modi had expressed his wish to have a forum of global repute similar to the World Economic Forum, Davos, for India’s media and entertainment (M&E) industry. That wish became reality with the WAVES Summit in

India’s silent lead crisis

Flint, Michigan, was a wake-up call. Lead contamination in water supplied to homes in that American city led to a catastrophic public health emergency in 2014, which is yet to be fully resolved. But India’s lead poisoning crisis is ten times worse- larger, quieter, and far most devastating. Nearly ha

‘Dial 100’: A tribute to the police force and its unsung heroes

Dial 100  By Kulpreet Yadav HarperCollins, 232 pages, Rs 299  A wife conspires with her ex-lover to mur

India’s economic duality: formal dreams, informal realities

“Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.” – Joan Robinson In its pursuit of becoming a $5 trillion economy, India has laid significant emphasis on formalizing its economic architecture—expanding digital payments, mandating

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now





Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter