Times of India Article on AF dated 29 Jun 2009
CITY CITY BANG BANGUsing the militarySANTOSH DESAI
If there is one subject on which all of India agrees, be it the media,
the middle class or different political parties, it is that of the selfless
bravery of our armed forces. No matter how fractious we might be about most
other issues, the valour of the Indian jawan has never been called into
question. Of course, this passionate espousal of the armed forces does not
quite translate into concern for their well being, as the recent controversy
over the recommendations of the pay panel bears out. We are quick to sing
songs in the honour of the Army, gratified to find our eyes moisten as the
forlorn figure of a brave widowed wife climbs up the podium to receive a
national honour, but slow to respond to any tangible, real life needs of
those in service. Our response to the Army is a complex one, made up in
equal parts of awestruck admiration, exaggerated respect and profound
indifference.
If we step back a little and think about it, the Army is a very strange
institution. We recruit ordinary people by the thousands to die for the rest
of us. We ask them to make this supreme sacrifice and then take away any say
that they might have in the situation. We glorify unquestioned obedience in
the name of discipline so that the soldier acts no matter what the order. We
give them the right to kill in return for their agreement to die, but we
take away any moral consideration from the equation. We frame the need to do
so in terms of the needs of the nation state, and accord this abstract ideal
overriding importance over all other human considerations. In a world
otherwise driven by money, where we place economic value on things on the
basis of how important they are to us, or on how inaccessible the product or
service in question is, we place an astonishingly low price on the lives of
those ready to die for us. Army personnel earn a pittance considering what
they put at stake for the rest of us; any market pricing mechanism will
place a much higher value on the service they provide.
What makes people willing to do this for the rest of us? Of course, they
are patriotic and brave, but there is a much larger set of forces at work
here. They are comfortable with the idea of killing people they don’t know
and dying for people who don’t know them, because they are made to believe
so.. Society manages to recruit people into the Army by constructing a sense
of an overriding moral imperative around this institution. It buttresses
this by creating an elaborate and seductive aura of grandeur around the
Army. We give them shiny uniforms and decorate them with colourful ribbons
that blaze across their chests. We give them designations that command
respect and which they can append to their names even after retirement. We
rein them in by glamourizing discipline but permit them special privileges
that civilians cannot have. They live in clean cantonments, get free rations
and cheap liquor, have a fleet of vehicles at their disposal, and are not
subject to the laws of the land but instead to their own. It is interesting
that however difficult life in the rough conditions where the Army operates
might be, what the Army celebrates is not a life of frugality, but one that
is full of pomp and pageantry. Every small action is converted into a
spectacle, through elaborate acts of ceremony. It is through the power of
ceremony, the potency of ritual and the ubiquitous visibility of symbols
that the notion of military service is glorified.
We construct the military cunningly, for we need it to do something no
rational person would otherwise agree to doing. The foot soldiers are
recruited from the underclass, seduced by a life of respect and honour,
granted privileges that make them feel special and used for a purpose that
they end up believing passionately in. The rest of us instinctively know
that if we are fulsome in the symbolic honour of our martial warriors, we
don’t really need to worry about them as people. We trap our soldiers in a
web of honour, imprison them on a pedestal made of florid tribute.
When we talk of unleashing our Army in response to every provocation
that comes our way, we ask some people to go out and die for us. We are able
to live with this because we have created an institution just for this
eventuality. And yes, if some brave young man loses his life at the age of
23, well we are all proud of him, and besides, isn’t that what soldiers do?
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