Blunt Butcher

On 19th September Pakistan Rangers slit throat of Head Constable Narender Kumar along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir, ‘prompting’ Home Minister Rajnath Singh next day to ask Indian forces to take strongest possible action against the rogue neighbour. On 21st September, terrorists abducted three jawans of Jammu and Kashmir Police-Constable Nissar Ahmed and Special Police Officers Firdous Ahmed and Kulwant Singh- and shot them dead in an orchard in Kapran, Shopian of the Kashmir Valley, forcing Ministry of External Affairs to call of the talks of Sushma Swaraj with her counterpart in Islamabad on the sidelines of United Nations’ General Assembly session.
Is it enough? India has mastered in giving first aid, instead of carrying out surgery, to incidents happening on the borders and across the hinterland in Jammu and Kashmir. The first aid starts with blaming Pakistan for promoting terror violence and condemning the incidents. Quite occasionally threats are being hurled, which instead of instilling confidence make people laugh.
Pakistan must have lost the count of Indian threats of paper tigers from New Delhi, who were showing bravado ahead of rehabilitating the Delhi throne in 2014. These turned out to be hollow and theatric during the past four years.
Remember, how Narendra Modi had reacted during the peak of his election campaign over beheading of Naik Hemraj along Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir on 8th January 2013. He had mocked the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and tweeted, “India is going through a troubled situation. China intrudes our borders, Pakistan kills our soldiers time and again but centre doesn’t act.”
The beheading happened against in May last year when two Indian jawans, Naib Subedar Paramjeet Singh of 22 Sikh Infantry and Head Constable Prem Sagar of 200th Battalion of BSF were brutally killed and mutilated. The Prime Minister did nothing. He did nothing even yesterday after beheading of Head Constable Narender Kumar. The Centre also failed in responding to abduction and killing of three cops in Kashmir early this morning.
How long shall India blame Pakistan for every odd incident happening in Kashmir? But for extending hollow threats nothing is being seen on ground zero. India, they say, is a big military power. This sounds true given the import of defence equipment and gadgets. Every Indian hears with pride successful testing of missiles and other warfare material. Maintaining the successful testing odyssey, several missiles were test fired in recent years. On 7th February 2018, India’s 18th version of Agni-I missile was test-fired with complete success. This was followed by a nuclear capable ballistic missile of India’s Strategic Forces Command (SFC) as part of its annual training cycle to test the combat readiness of the Indian Army’s missile forces on February 22 this year. On 23 May 2016 the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was successfully test-fired with major subsystems manufactured indigenously under the ‘Make in India’ initiative being tested. The missile, which was fired from the Integrated Test Range located in Odisha’s coastal Balasore district, lifted off from its mobile autonomous launcher and successfully flew its pre-set trajectory, fulfilling its mission objectives. We will soon be testing Supersonic BrahMos Mission. So reassuring and so good! But where is the political will?
With such arsenal and advanced defence preparedness, should India always keep brooding on Pakistan interference, provocation, support and what not? Given such a military might and dedicated army, can’t India dictate its terms in the region, if not with the motivation of expansion but for self-defence. Indian soldiers are bleeding on borders, policemen falling like mute ducks, civilians getting killed on regular basis and mighty India is watching helplessly with all the might at its command.
Has India stacked all the weaponry for just showcasing on Independence Day and Republic Day? Why do we procure Bofors guns or Rafale aircrafts? One hopes not for giving or accepting kickbacks. These are procured with a specific purpose-to meet the eventualities like the one posed by rogue terrorist nation of Pakistan. If this weaponry is not for using on borders, what for is it? The nation has right to know. It can’t live on bravados and hollow threats of the leaders, who roar when out of power and lower tails when the country needs action. More than weapons, nations need will to act!

DISCLAIMER:

The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article.

Courtesy: The State Times: 22nd September, 2019