Guest Column | Defending honour comes along with defending the nation
Does any citizen deserve this brutal treatment; and if that citizen happens to be a soldier defending the nation, didn’t it merit a more mature handling of the situation, even for a moment assuming that the soldier was at fault?
We were celebrating Holi when social media went abuzz with the news of a serving army officer and his son getting manhandled the previous night allegedly by policemen at Patiala. With many of my relatives and friends serving in Punjab Police, I immediately called them up to check the veracity of the news. Their apologetic tone suggested that something wrong must have happened.
Being a soldier, one felt terrible seeing the video clip of the violence and the anguish in the tone of the officer’s wife on TV. I will not go by social media rhetoric or blame games till the inquiry is completed. But a question has been pestering me ever since. Does any citizen deserve this brutal treatment? And if that citizen happens to be a soldier defending the nation, didn’t it merit a more mature handling of the situation, even for a moment assuming that the soldier was at fault?
A soldier lives and dies for glory. When required he is expected to charge into certain death on the call of duty. He doesn’t do it for the salary he draws; he does it for the honour of the nation for which he has signed a bond of unlimited liability. The least he expects from his countrymen is respect, gratitude and his family looked after if he doesn’t return home.
The officer involved in the incident was roughly my age. One shudders at the thought what if it had happened with me? What if my service identity card failed to provide me the immunity guaranteed by none other than the President of India? How would I live with that humiliation for the rest of my life?
I am reminded of an incident that took place in Amritsar in the late 1950s. Some goons made lewd remarks at the wives of the army officers at the railway station who had gone there to see off one of their colleagues. On being accosted, the goons ran away and took refuge at a cinema theatre close by.
On hearing about the incident, the commanding officer of the officers ordered the cinema hall to be cordoned by his troops.
What the soldiers must have done to the goons thereafter is anybody’s guess. But the matter went right up to the Prime Minister. Presumably, some of these miscreants had political connections. Army chief General KS Thimmayya, was summoned to give an explanation.
“If we cannot defend the honour of our women, how can you expect us to protect the honour of the nation?” Thimmayya replied calmly. The matter was closed.
A similar reciprocal behaviour by the army is the last thing one would want, for it will only make the adversary laugh and encourage him to fish in troubled waters. The arc of history is long and it bends towards justice. I am audacious in my hope that the truth will be laid bare and justice delivered sooner than expected. The nation can ill afford its last bastion become a ‘runners-up’ in the game called “war”; that too for want of that single most essential commodity called morale.
echpee71@gmail.com
(The writer is a decorated army veteran. Views expressed are personal)
