The situation between India and Pakistan is tense. Talk of a war has been looming over us for weeks and today we are as close to war as we have been in the last 20 years. Two nuclear-armed nations on the brink of war. But you know what infuriates me the most? People with almost no stakes in the war writing obituaries for living men.
I am writing this article today not to share facts with you but to share something that has been troubling me since all of this started. If you are going to try and put me in boxes like pro-Modi or anti-Modi, pro-peace or pro-war, don’t. Those things need deeper thinking, but I am writing this purely out of emotion.
Troops have been mobilised in large numbers on both sides and there really are people around me who cheering for a war. “War is necessary. There is nothing else we can do,” you hear them say. But the same people then turn around and ask others to stand with the soldiers. No soldier goes to war happily. They have to leave behind a family and risk dying.
There are people from army backgrounds around me and they are anything but happy about the possibility of war. You know what the irritating thing is, though? People who have nothing to lose are telling them to be brave. They are saying that life and death is in no one’s hand and that there is nothing we can do. Well of course there is something we can do! We can stop writing tributes and obituaries for our soldiers as if they were already dead. Why is there an expectation among people that if someone is in the army then they will die on the battlefield? The same people then turn around and say that we should respect our soldiers. Obviously we should respect those who fight for us, but shouldn’t we also do whatever we can to keep them alive?!
People are okay with soldiers dying. They even expect them to. They will glorify their deaths saying that a battleground demands blood and sacrifice, but the truth is that it doesn’t. Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was captured behind enemy lines after an aerial skirmishes on February 27. And again people are talking about him as if he was dead.
“He is very brave. He is a role model for so many of us. I wish I could do something to help him,” they say. But you can do something. “I pray for his well-being,” tweet politicians, but dear politician, aren’t you a leader of the masses? How will praying solve anything? Didn’t you have any power to pressure the government into doing everything they could to bring him back? Or is it that you didn’t want them to do anything? Is it that you are okay with him dying as long as you get to display your useless sympathies for him?
The truth is you don’t really mind a soldier dying. You will mourn them, you will say you will remember them and then you will forget them. The truth is that if these people had an actual conversation with a soldier, it would go something like this:
Mr. Idiot McIdiotson: I am proud of what you are doing Mr. Soldier. You are very brave, and I have great respect for you.
Mr. Soldier: Thank you Mr. McIdiotson, but what if I die?
Mr. Idiot McIdiotson: Well, we will mourn you. For a while. But we will REMEMBER you. For five years or less. But we will PRAY for you! At least on some days of the year. And that is better than nothing I guess.
The people who cheer for war are okay with people dying on their behalf. They will try to justify it by hiding behind the valor of the martyrs and display their pseudo-respect for them. To them I say, at least be honest about what you really want, about what you are willing to pay for it, and about what you are willing to make other innocent people pay for it. You want to fake helplessness when there is so much you could do and you enjoy talking about real, living human beings as if they are dead or are going to be.
Every Indian is proud of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman today but are we doing enough to make him proud of us?