Fratricides and Truth

https://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2019/04/damning-iaf-findings-on-india-shooting.html

Well, here’s a fearless journalist clamoring for Truth, the Absolute Truth and nothing but the Truth; admirable, isn’t it ? hold on..

My mind goes back to 1989; at this age more often , the mind goes back than forward. 🙂

In Jaffna, IPKF, Srilankan Army and the Srilankan Airforce were deployed around Palaly Airfield. Indian soldiers are used to an elaborate challenging procedure handed down by the British. Tham kaun aata hai ? Dost . Password ? ramu , tota , aao dost.

The lankans had a simpler procedure .you just had one number for the day , say 11. the sentry challenged with any number say 5 and the other person had to quickly say the complement , ie 11-5 , 6.

This was simply too much for our soldiers and the Lankans ,having been fighting LTTE for a long time were definitely trigger happy and many a time the sentry opened fire on own soldiers.

Now, in modern warfare , the challenging procedure happens digitally over a range of 100Km, and with most of the decisions automated , errors cannot be ruled out.

Recently , talking to my son ,just back from deployment, the conversation came to IFF, range for detection , target locking, firing range etc. He said, even with his limitted experience, he understood that the main issue in Naval warfare was IFF. For the first time in 20 years they were moving fully armed. As it happened , a Paki submarine had been lurking within the firing range and both ships had held fire only because, by then the PW had been handed over. It was assumed that it was an enemy ship only because none of our own was “supposed ” to be there. Who knows how many near misses happened in those critical days? we’ll probably never know.

Having seen that fratricide is a reality, let’s come to the aspect of Truth that some our friends are screaming for.

Again I go back to Jaffna. Those days , I was reading about 5 newspapers, English and Tamil from the Island and the main land. Every event had about five versions. The Indian press itself was divided, the Tamilnadu press was mostly pro LTTE and our northern brothers were personification of Apathy on the whole issue. It should be granted that they neither cared for the Tamil rebels nor the IPKF, barring the VCRs they brought.

Then I could speak to the truckers plying from Jaffna to Colombo who gave their own version as witnessed on ground. And  there were local friends .(I learnt later that my closeness to the locals prompted our own Int people to keep a watch on me, taking it to an altogether different level of fratricide) Of course the most delayed and most doctored versions came from , yes, the army channels.

I ‘ll narrate one event that affected me a lot.

It was first told by a trucker who was on his way from elephant pass to Jaffna; he said one IPKF soldier shot his commander and another IPKF soldier killed this shooter;clear and straightforward account.

After a couple of days , different versions came up. With some difficulty , I could identify the same event in the army SITREP though Truth had been battered beyond recognition. It described an assault on the Army post by LTTE cadres, followed by some valiant action by our soldiers in which a colonel and an NCO made the supreme sacrifice.

I marched into the CO’s office and demanded why we were spreading such untruths. He was very understanding and explained that it had to be done so in the interests of the kith and kin, not to mention the “regiment ka naam aur shaan” . It took a long time for me to accept such measures to look after the families.

The fact is that in cases of a Fratricide , Truth does take a hit almost every time;though one can’t say that it is always justifiable , more often than not, it is.

As for demanding absolute Truth in such matters, it is almost always undesirable, to say the least.

An innocent child sweetly asks her parents , how babies are born. No parent gives a graphic description on production and launch of babies , in the interest of Absolute Truth. Generally it is a sweet lie in the view that in right time and space, the child will get to the Truth. Even Absolute Truth needs to be seen in time, space and context.

To me , the Air Chief’s words are good enough today, even if it may not be the absolute Truth.

Disclaimer : The events described above reflect the Truth as I saw it and they cannot be verified from the units as nobody, in the right mind admits to such truths. Even I never spoke about such things till after retirement and that too only with retirees. 🙂