This week the heroics of the 1965 war with India will have been widely celebrated – rightly so. It is always a good time every year to salute the soldier who lays down his life down for a country without a thought, especially when all else around him seems to be unravelling at a rapid rate.
Where all is in a state of implosion, the soldier plods on, steady in his gait, yet beholden to that one purpose of his life – to do what has been assigned to him as his ‘duty’, a word lost to our younger generations. He does so with a belief that everyone’s duty, big or small, when done with the certainty of one’s best ability and even at the peril of one’s life, will contribute to a bigger purpose.
The citizenry and the soldiery exist in two separate spheres in present day Pakistan, with some in the citizenry paralleling a soldiers ‘duty’ to that of a ‘watchman’ hired through their taxes, to keep a watch while they make merry.
The soldier, still plods on, undeterred and unaffected. To him, his ‘duty’ is sacred. Yes, more sacred than anything else. But it takes some introspection to reach that side of a soldier’s reality. Else we will continue to stereotype him through the misperceived prism of ‘strategic depth’.
There is something, however, even more sinister beyond the mere ‘duty’ to these sceptics: ‘the mindset’. Over hundreds of airtime hours, the term ‘mindset’ has attained menacing connotations. A perfectly good English word but used often by the worthier to imply duality; with questions such as, ‘has the mindset ‘really’ changed’? Add a bit of a wide-eyed drama to it and the question lingers in the minds of the beholder.
The word is always hanging out over the edges of the lips or ready to drop from the twinkle when discussing the Taliban or Afghanistan and India, or democracy. As if a pathological redux will bear out of the dreaded ‘mindset’ that will ruin the day for the civilians.
The making of this ‘mindset’ in a soldier begins early, very early.
They take them in at eighteen; even younger for the non-officer line. They are usually born to normal parents. Full of enthusiasm, and on the cusp of adulthood. Bright and brazen, collected from all over the country through a competitive process and educated sufficiently to launch into something more specific and specialised.
Where the raw material is compromised, given the dreadful level of our education, they are picked up even earlier, at twelve or thirteen and nourished and nurtured in the English Public School tradition and raised as young men ready to take on the world. Those few who are unable to make the grade, or opt out earlier, get fed into other sectors and make a name for themselves. Nothing ever gets wasted. Each is a builder in his own right.
Back to the eighteen-year old. The only question that emerges in the mind is: where does the gulag training began? Well if you have been around in the last one week or so when the media went behind the scenes of the military’s training system, you may have seen a truly reflective course of training, both formal and informal, at the Pakistan Military Academy. It is as reflective and universally applicable as it can be for all other military institutes of training.
A bunch of cadets, entry level or sophomore, are in the hands of a senior who has them around for what is called ‘ragging’ in sophisticated terms, but ‘raghra’ to the purist. You are neither a man nor a soldier till you have been through the process, every living moment of your life at least for the first two terms.
So this bunch under the senior, with some free time at his hand, is being put through its paces. They are taken to a place called ‘Tammana Block’ which has a pool of water, in all likelihood dirty, beside an embankment. Why in the world is it called “Tammana Block’? The programme doesn’t answer that. It surely has a history – unrepeatable – but for the moment this is where all ‘tammanas’ (desires) drown, literally, before new ones inculcate.
As the senior orders them to jump in and duck under water, or stand with the head immersed with legs skywards, or summersault in the water or... It is then that he ‘orders’ a ‘Tammana’ cry, and they all shout in unison, “meri tammana, teri tammana; haye tammna, haye tammana”. Something as inane as this but spoken with such commitment and belief that it easily seems to be their new faith.
Ideologues seeped in creating the Taliban or sheltering them, or the ideology of hate that doesn’t let Pakistan make up with India, or minds steeped in finding ‘strategic depth’ as a policy is farthest from this new found creed. Truth be told, there hardly ever is time for such nonsense. These lads are too imbued with learning their art and just toughening up.
If a nation must have ‘men of steel’ they have to be forged in fire. These guys may now be into their fledgling steps but will soon qualify to don the ranks. Not all make it, but those who do are as reliable as a rock wall. Then the passion takes over. The ‘mindset’ is made for ever. They come out stronger, firmer, bolder, sometime boisterous but wedded already to their mission. To them camaraderie is a faith, excellence a belief and devotion their creed.
In my over three decades of service, I never heard the words ‘strategic depth’. There never was time enough to think beyond the passion. We were already wedded. The mindset was made, never to be altered again.
These guys remain very clear about one entity, and why they are there: ‘the dushman’. Along with India, it is now the terrorist too. And nothing is going to keep them from dominating both. At the peril of their lives.
The air force is just slightly different. Perhaps, a little cool too. They say about fighter pilots: “they only ‘love’ twice – once with their steed; and then with the girl they marry”. Please note the order. To the soldier, and the airman.
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.
Email: shhzdchdhryyahoo.com