First of all, let’s remember the five soldiers who were with Saurabh Kalia in May 1999 when he died. They are:
* Sepoy Arjun Ram Baswana, from Gudi village, Rajasthan.
* Sepoy Naresh Singh Sinsinvar, from Chhoti Tallam village, Uttar Pradesh.
* Sepoy Bhikaram Mudh, from Patasar village, Rajasthan.
* Sepoy Moola Ram Bidiasar, from Katori village, Rajasthan.
* Sepoy Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, from Sivelara village, Rajasthan.
Too often in discussing the tragedy of Kalia, we overlook the men he led on patrol in May 1999, all from the 4 Jat Regiment, all of whom died with him. Every soldier who has seen combat talks of the intense bonds that form between men who go into battle side-by-side. You fight, after all, for the life of your brother-in-arms who is fighting beside you. If we don’t mention his mates when we talk of Saurabh Kalia, we do a disservice to all six men. That must not continue.
In August 2000, I travelled to Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, to meet Saurabh Kalia’s parents, Dr NK Kalia and Vijay Kalia. They told me that, over a year after he was killed by Pakistani soldiers during the Kargil War, I was the first journalist to visit them. Not that this made me particularly proud – after all, why did it take me a year? Instead, I was struck by how poorly our collective outrage matches our willingness to reach out to a bereaved, bewildered family.
The word is “bewildered”, and it remains my overwhelming memory of that trip. Here was an ordinary Himachali family, stunned by their son’s death and mutilation, but increasingly bewildered by the response from official India. From all I read in the news, they remain that way today, 15 years on.
Why so? For one thing, they had already written to the government asking for some kind of action against Pakistan for killing these six men and mutilating their bodies. They wanted India to raise the issue bilaterally, with international human rights groups and with the International Court of Justice.
They got replies, too: from then Defence Minister George Fernandes and then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. While Fernandes wrote that India had a policy not to raise such issues with international human rights organisations, Singh wrote these lines:
Add to this the subsequent decade-and-a-half of conflicting signals from Indian governments, including in the last few days. “The possibility of seeking legal remedies through the international courts was also thoroughly examined, but not found feasible,” said Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh. This was followed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj saying, “If the [Supreme] Court gives a nod, we will take the issue to ICJ.”
You would be bewildered, too.
Obstruction and praises
When Pakistani authorities handed over the six bodies at the border, the Indian Army prepared death certificates for each man, but did not immediately give the bodies to their families. Instead, they took the bodies to New Delhi for what Dr Kalia described to me by email as an “elaborately Detailed Post mortem and that was conducted at Safdarjung Hospital at the highest level involving senior medicos-forensic experts and Army personnel and was video-taped”. Only after that did the families get their brave sons’ bodies, and see the mutilations for themselves.
As any parents would, the Kalias then asked for a copy of the Safdarjung Hospital post-mortem report. Again, as Dr Kalia wrote to me: “This is the document we are looking for and the Govt is sitting over & has been denied to us and I am requesting all through.” In fact, they got a letter saying that the post-mortem report could not be released to the next-of-kin.
You would be bewildered too.
In various letters to the Kalias, Fernandes, Singh, Prem Kumar Dhumal who was Himachal Pradesh chief minister at the time, and others spoke glowingly of Saurabh: “your son was a courageous son of mother India”, “his name will be written in letters of gold” and the like. Yet he and his five mates were given no awards, not even a Mention-in-Dispatches (see here for a list of soldiers who did get awards for Kargil). Dr Kalia wrote to several authorities asking for an award for his son. Response: None.
You would be bewildered too.
Over the years, plenty of us have signed various internet petitions demanding that India take Pakistan to the International Court of Justice for the horrific tragedy of Saurabh Kalia. Despite that, and needless to say, don’t expect very much to happen very soon.
A final word
Though there is one final aspect to all this. In Guns and Yellow Roses, a collection of essays on the Kargil war, Sankarshan Thakur writes:
And who can blame them? If I was an Indian soldier fighting my way up those slopes, in danger of being shot any moment, watching comrades being picked off, unable to retrieve their bodies – if I was that soldier, when I finally got to the top and found the Pakistanis in their bunkers I’d be pretty uninterested in the niceties of UN Charters and Geneva Conventions and so on.
For it’s this simple: Soldiers do bad things in wars. They themselves understand that truth far better than we civilians do, as we shout ourselves hoarse about ICJ and the rules of war.
So forgive me my cynicism about any Indian government’s approaches to the ICJ regarding this Kargil tragedy.
But if there’s ever a petition that demands a serious effort towards peace so that fine young men like Saurabh Kalia and his mates (yes, on both sides of the border) live for this country instead of dying, I'll sign that.
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* Sepoy Arjun Ram Baswana, from Gudi village, Rajasthan.
* Sepoy Naresh Singh Sinsinvar, from Chhoti Tallam village, Uttar Pradesh.
* Sepoy Bhikaram Mudh, from Patasar village, Rajasthan.
* Sepoy Moola Ram Bidiasar, from Katori village, Rajasthan.
* Sepoy Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, from Sivelara village, Rajasthan.
Too often in discussing the tragedy of Kalia, we overlook the men he led on patrol in May 1999, all from the 4 Jat Regiment, all of whom died with him. Every soldier who has seen combat talks of the intense bonds that form between men who go into battle side-by-side. You fight, after all, for the life of your brother-in-arms who is fighting beside you. If we don’t mention his mates when we talk of Saurabh Kalia, we do a disservice to all six men. That must not continue.
In August 2000, I travelled to Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, to meet Saurabh Kalia’s parents, Dr NK Kalia and Vijay Kalia. They told me that, over a year after he was killed by Pakistani soldiers during the Kargil War, I was the first journalist to visit them. Not that this made me particularly proud – after all, why did it take me a year? Instead, I was struck by how poorly our collective outrage matches our willingness to reach out to a bereaved, bewildered family.
The word is “bewildered”, and it remains my overwhelming memory of that trip. Here was an ordinary Himachali family, stunned by their son’s death and mutilation, but increasingly bewildered by the response from official India. From all I read in the news, they remain that way today, 15 years on.
Why so? For one thing, they had already written to the government asking for some kind of action against Pakistan for killing these six men and mutilating their bodies. They wanted India to raise the issue bilaterally, with international human rights groups and with the International Court of Justice.
They got replies, too: from then Defence Minister George Fernandes and then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. While Fernandes wrote that India had a policy not to raise such issues with international human rights organisations, Singh wrote these lines:
“I have personally raised this issue with [Pakistan's] Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and urged that the guilty be identified and punished... India would raise this question with Pakistan at every opportunity [and] approach appropriate international organisations dealing with human rights and humanitarian laws... [W]e cannot and should not allow this matter to rest.”
Add to this the subsequent decade-and-a-half of conflicting signals from Indian governments, including in the last few days. “The possibility of seeking legal remedies through the international courts was also thoroughly examined, but not found feasible,” said Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh. This was followed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj saying, “If the [Supreme] Court gives a nod, we will take the issue to ICJ.”
You would be bewildered, too.
Obstruction and praises
When Pakistani authorities handed over the six bodies at the border, the Indian Army prepared death certificates for each man, but did not immediately give the bodies to their families. Instead, they took the bodies to New Delhi for what Dr Kalia described to me by email as an “elaborately Detailed Post mortem and that was conducted at Safdarjung Hospital at the highest level involving senior medicos-forensic experts and Army personnel and was video-taped”. Only after that did the families get their brave sons’ bodies, and see the mutilations for themselves.
As any parents would, the Kalias then asked for a copy of the Safdarjung Hospital post-mortem report. Again, as Dr Kalia wrote to me: “This is the document we are looking for and the Govt is sitting over & has been denied to us and I am requesting all through.” In fact, they got a letter saying that the post-mortem report could not be released to the next-of-kin.
You would be bewildered too.
In various letters to the Kalias, Fernandes, Singh, Prem Kumar Dhumal who was Himachal Pradesh chief minister at the time, and others spoke glowingly of Saurabh: “your son was a courageous son of mother India”, “his name will be written in letters of gold” and the like. Yet he and his five mates were given no awards, not even a Mention-in-Dispatches (see here for a list of soldiers who did get awards for Kargil). Dr Kalia wrote to several authorities asking for an award for his son. Response: None.
You would be bewildered too.
Over the years, plenty of us have signed various internet petitions demanding that India take Pakistan to the International Court of Justice for the horrific tragedy of Saurabh Kalia. Despite that, and needless to say, don’t expect very much to happen very soon.
A final word
Though there is one final aspect to all this. In Guns and Yellow Roses, a collection of essays on the Kargil war, Sankarshan Thakur writes:
“Troops of the Naga and Jat regiments told us quite plainly they had killed a few intruders they had captured alive in the heights above Drass. ‘It was rage, just rage,’ one Naga soldier said. ‘They had killed many of our mates, we were angry. When we got them, we butchered them.’ As and when they brought bodies of intruders back from the heights, they tied them with ropes and dragged them down. ‘We had enough load to carry as it was, who was going to bother carrying their bodies? Dragging them down was a favour.’ There was no sense of guilt or remorse there, just plain retelling; it was as if a fire of emotion had cleansed the act of murder.”
And who can blame them? If I was an Indian soldier fighting my way up those slopes, in danger of being shot any moment, watching comrades being picked off, unable to retrieve their bodies – if I was that soldier, when I finally got to the top and found the Pakistanis in their bunkers I’d be pretty uninterested in the niceties of UN Charters and Geneva Conventions and so on.
For it’s this simple: Soldiers do bad things in wars. They themselves understand that truth far better than we civilians do, as we shout ourselves hoarse about ICJ and the rules of war.
So forgive me my cynicism about any Indian government’s approaches to the ICJ regarding this Kargil tragedy.
But if there’s ever a petition that demands a serious effort towards peace so that fine young men like Saurabh Kalia and his mates (yes, on both sides of the border) live for this country instead of dying, I'll sign that.
