A HUNDRED BATTLES A HUNDRED VICTORIES/OR HUNDRED LOSSES

I SHOUTED FROM THE ROOFTOPS THEN WHILE IN UNIFORM IN CJA'S HABITAT " NOT THAT I LOVE CEASER LESS BUT I LOVE ROME (FAUZ) MORE" SENIORS SHOULD END (VIP ISM) OR THEY WILL END UP LIKE THE GENERALS IN PICKWIK PAPERS marching alone.THE TROOPS MARCHING IN OPP DIRECTION. ONCE MY WIFE REMINDED AN AIR OFFICER THAT HE OUGHT NOT TO HAVE FORGOTTEN TO WISH THE LADY AS THAT WAS COURTESY EXTENDED IN THE CHIVALROUS ARMED FORCES WHICH DAGDI SHALAS DID NOT ENDORSE ".For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, was not the Idea of Young Lochinwar. SO DEAR GENERAL/AIR OFFICER Had he  of the " So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar??"SIR WALTER SCOTT. HENCE MY ARTICLE TO A RESPONSE 

?Dear Cmde,

It is nice to be proprietary-a rationalist and  chide the irreverent with the beguiling stories of Army Brass as it was. Mahatma & Nehru the men who bedeviled the nation for few decades with stories of Ahimsa, probably the younger generation is not keen to buy the story.

The Mahatma, so he is called, wanted to put the lid over the entire history and perhaps rewrite it. Did he want to belittle the scholars like Chanakya’s Athrashashtra which talked of beguiling factors in statecraft, the need for Saam, Daam, Dand, Bheda. Did the nations win sovereignty by offering to be slapped on the other cheek?

Were the Nehru’s & The Gandhi’s  so great that they could be Benign Tyrants, one proving his celibacy with two women in toe & other with Anglo Saxon companion. His ilk forget the history now resurrected by Francois Gautier’s history about millions of Hindus slaughtered by the Moghuls while preaching Ahimsa. Did not Gandhi make Sir Subhashchandra Bose  resign from elected office of president of Indian National Congress & replace him with a man of questionable character?

Did not Nehru ignore the Army commander’s warning and wantonly push the armies into 1962 blunder which you term as “We had a bad 1962 war.”.

Sir, China did not forget Sun Tzu

 “KNOW YOURSELF, KNOW YOUR ENEMY.

   A HUNDRED BATTLES A HUNDRED VICTORIES”. Nehru overtook Chanakya belittled his General by humiliating him what happened “ The history is before us?

 Army lost its Suzerainty, lost lives and Land -& its status to political one up man ship. The political masters have distanced arm?ed Forces? & replaced by bureaucrats as advisors.

 What was the result? Nehru suffered political Ignominy, Indira was killed for ignoring military advice and thereby alienating a large cross section of army mutiny in ranks, due to wrong strategy in Punjab. Her son died after ignoring Army advice and compromising the LTTE. How many more?

Following the cease-fire after the Indo-Pak War of 1965, Under the agreement, India agreed to return the strategic Haji Pir pass to Pakistan which it had captured in August 1965 against heavy odds and at a huge human cost. The pass connects Poonch and Uri sectors in Jammu and Kashmir and reduces the distance between the two sectors to 15 km whereas the alternate route entails a travel of over 200 km. India got nothing in return except an undertaking by Pakistan to abjure war, an undertaking which meant little as Pakistan never had any intention of honoring it.
Return of the vital Haji Pir pass was a mistake of monumental proportions for which India is suffering to date. In addition to denying a direct link between Poonch and Uri sectors, the pass is being effectively used by Pakistan to sponsor infiltration of terrorists into India.

Inability to resist Russian pressure was a manifestation of the spineless Indian foreign policy and shortsighted leadership.Have the  Israelis surrender  Golan heights till now?

In 1971 ,90,000 Pakistani soldiers were taken as POWs under the Geneva Convention, the largest since World War II.  including capturing around 5,795 square miles (15,010 km2)[of Pakistan territory (land gained by India in Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistani Punjab and Sindh sectors was later ceded in theSimla Agreement of 1972, as a gesture of goodwill).

Did Gandhi remember the past  history when he  ignored the impending slaughter of Hindus .Did he forget the countless stories, one among them the  Prithviraj Chauhan who allowed Mohammed Ghori to leave after he had surrendered to Prithviraj .Muhaammad Ghori attacked India, the king of Kannauj refused to help Prithviraj. Still Prithviraj won the First Battle of Tarain and captured Ghori as prisoner of war but when Ghori begged for mercy, (AHIMSA) Prithviraj released him. Ghori duly returned and defeated Prithviraj and took him to Afghanistan and it is said gouged out his eyes .ARE WE ADMITTING THE SAME CYCLE WITH CAPT SAURABH KALIA EPISODE, the govt keeping mum over Int Court Of Justice" But Prithviraj killed Ghori by arrow, practicing the the art of Laksha Bhedi. The Indian States men have never asked for the remains of Prithviraj be returned to this nation? Why??

There are 2 important learnings for fools from  'Prithviraj Chauhan episode'/Saurabh Kalia Episode.

History repeats itself !!!!

People who forget History are condemned to repeat it !!!!

1. The values and ethics they practised by Indian kings in battlefield and their magnanimous attitude towards enemies they defeated .

2. How badly small Indian kingdoms fought with each other that the relationships were so bitter at times that led to the destruction of Hindu empires in India. As victory by Ghori in the second battle led to the laying the foundation of the Islamic occupation in India and South Asia that lasted for several centuries.

3.How many times did the Somnath temple suffer destruction – Did not Gandhi read history

“  Do Indian Muslims understand that they were part of the richest, most advanced, most tolerant and generous civilization of ancient times. That their culture was so advanced that it had spread all over the world? Do they realize that more and more archeological and historical discoveries are pointing out that the genocide of Hindus by Muslim invaders is without parallel. The conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000, was followed by the annihilation of the entire Hindu population there; indeed, the region is still called Hindu Kush, ‘Hindu slaughter’. The Bahmani sultans in central India, made it a rule to kill 100.000 Hindus a year. In 1399, Teimur killed 100.000 Hindus in a single day. Professor K.S. Lal has estimated that the Hindu population decreased by  million between the year 1000 and 1525, probably the biggest holocaust in history. Surely, many of present day Indian Muslims’ ancestors must have been among those slaughtered.

ARTICLE BY  Gary Schmitt who is director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute

American strategists are taken with the idea of India’s strategic potential: a large democracy with a blue-water navy and the world’s third-largest armed forces that happens to be jammed between an imploding Pakistan and an expansionist China. But a deeply dysfunctional Indian defense community has frustrated efforts to turn that potential into reality. Will the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month with the strongest mandate of any Indian leader in 30 years jumpstart much-needed reforms? The answer will help determine whether India begins to fulfill its vaunted potential as a U.S. strategic partner in Asia and beyond.

On the face of it, Modi’s election augurs well for India’s defense preparedness. On the campaign trail, Modi promised a strong India able to stand up to its adversaries. He deplored what he called the then-ruling Congress party’s lack of respect for soldiers, and promised to devote his government to long-overdue military modernization.

But the list of problems he faces is a long one. The Indian defense budget has declined to less than 2 percent of the country’s GDP, the lowest in five decades. This might be tolerable if the country’s security environment had gotten appreciably better in recent years—but it hasn’t. Though India hasn’t witnessed a major terrorist strike since the carnage in Mumbai in 2008, Pakistan remains a threat, and the prospect of terrorist attacks has not gone away. As the United States draws down its troops in the region, Afghan instability is likely to be of increasing concern, and India faces on land and at sea a rapidly rising military power in China, with which the country shares a disputed 2,500-mile border.

The challenges, however, run much deeper than a lack of resources. The procurement system is broken, corruption a constant problem, and tensions between the various military services and the civilian defense bureaucracy are serious and longstanding. Politically appointed defense ministers have had little time for—and, more important, little interest in—straightening out all that ails the Indian defense effort.

The last defense minister, A.?K. Antony, was so worried that corruption associated with military procurement would tarnish his image that he brought India’s acquisition process to a virtual halt. At the slightest hint of scandal, purchases would be stalled and companies blacklisted until investigations could be completed. The result: tens of billions of dollars in new equipment not acquired, with existing platforms growing outdated and more expensive to maintain.

Indians themselves point to the history of multiple on-again, off-again attempts to procure aerial refuelers, transport aircraft, and light utility helicopters. For example, even though India’s air force is replete with older (in some cases, relatively ancient) fighter aircraft like the MiG-21, there seems little urgency in replacing them. After a drawn-out bidding process, the government finally opted in 2012 to buy 126 of Dassault’s Rafale aircraft for $11 billion, but it still hasn’t finalized the contract. As a result, the full complement of Rafales probably will not enter the Indian Air Force’s inventory until well into the next decade.

Similarly, before the turn of the century, plans were approved for India to acquire 24 new diesel-electric attack submarines, both to increase the size of the submarine fleet and to replace an aging fleet. Yet it’s possible that over the next year only 9 of the current fleet of 14 attack submarines will be operational, with the rest needing overhauls—a reality reinforced by repeated accidents onboard Indian Navy submarines, including the total loss, with crew, of a Russian-made submarine last August. Yet plans to build the new submarines have been delayed time and again. Inevitably, delays mean higher costs, and, with a budget dominated by personnel expenses, this means even fewer rupees to buy needed equipment.

Already, the army is facing shortages in ammunition, field artillery, night-vision capabilities, specialized counterterrorism equipment, and antitank weapons.

Though India prides itself on its strategic autonomy, it is actually the world’s largest importer of defense equipment. Buying from abroad is an absolute necessity, given the sclerotic condition of India’s own defense industry. What India does procure domestically is overwhelmingly tied to state-owned companies and government ordnance factories. As for defense R&D, virtually all of India’s expenditures go to the state-run Defence Research and Development Organization. With little private sector involvement and a cap of 26 percent for any foreign direct investment, India has not been able to take advantage of the type of technology and expertise that Western defense giants might bring to the table. Instead, India’s military acquires homegrown tanks, armored vehicles, and helicopters that it doesn’t want or fighter aircraft, such as the Tejas, a multirole light fighter, only now being built after 30 years in development.

Compounding these difficulties is the fact that India’s defense ministry is highly rigid and largely staffed by civil servant generalists. Further, lacking the equivalent of a chief of the defense staff to force inter- service cooperation, India’s military is unable to take advantage of whatever efficiencies in planning or acquisitions might in theory be possible. The convoluted state of India’s defense establishment and decision-making process amounts to an open invitation for middlemen to ply their trade and, in turn, stoke the perennial corruption.

Will it be different this time around? Certainly, the Modi defense agenda is an ambitious one—some would say Herculean. Among the goals that have been bruited about: raising foreign direct investment caps in defense manufacturing; opening up procurement to the private sector; boosting military spending; creating a chief-of-defense-like post and new tri-service commands for space, cyberwarfare, and Special Operations Forces; completing India’s nuclear triad with the faster introduction of the indigenously produced, nuclear-powered Arihant-class SSBN; and uprooting the entrenched defense bureaucracy while at the same time professionalizing the higher levels of the defense ministry’s management.

Right now, the new prime minister has the public backing and majority support in parliament to move this agenda forward. Moreover, unlike some of his left-of-center predecessors, Modi appears not to believe that India has to choose between guns and butter: His campaign emphasized both economic growth and a strong defense.

But as the list suggests, many of the problems can’t be fixed with immediate infusions of money or even changes in laws.

Those may help, but modifications in the culture of institutions and management (VIZ The HOHENLINDEN & THE LORE OF LOCHINVAR & VITAI LAMPADA) require a capacity for sustained commitment that is increasingly rare in modern democracies. The TRADITIONAL SUPPLY OF KNIGHTS & OFFICERS HAS ENDED) I  HAVE RARELY  SEEN ANY CHILDREN OF OFFICERS JOINING THE ARMED FORCES  The natural tendency will be to adopt changes that are easy to see and produce quick results. But unless root-and-branch reforms are tackled as well, the odds of the system falling back into its old ways are high. In short, when it comes to India reaching its strategic potential, Prime Minister Modi and his government have much to do—and, uniquely, the political capital to do it.

 “And Let My Ship  now Find solace at the lord's shore, though I had not the good luck to be a Martyr Or a Hero as General  Patton says he is come to  Carthage

Patton: "It was here. The battlefield was here. The Carthaginians defending the city were attacked by three Roman Legions. Carthaginians were proud and brave but they couldn't hold. They were massacred. Arab women stripped them of their tunics and their swords and lances. The soldiers lay naked in the sun, two thousand years ago; and I was here."

DIALOGUE:

Patton to Gen Bradley: "You don't believe me, do you Brad? You know what the poet said,

'Through the travail of ages,
midst the pomp and toils of war,
have I fought and strove and perished,
countless times among the stars.
As if through a glass and darkly,
the age old strife I see,
when I fought in many guises and many names,
but always me.'" *

Patton: "Do you know who the poet was?"

Bradley [Smiles slightly and shakes his head, no.]

Patton: "Me.