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Myths and traditions

During the fifty-odd years since independence, India has fought no less than three wars with Pakistan and has taken comfort in the fact that the opponent has been whipped on every occasion. Recently published official and unofficial histories of both the 1965 and 1971 wars, however, appear to indicate otherwise. In the ongoing controversy of whether the Army's claimed victories were concocted myths, many have lost sight of the necessity to create and nurture myths and traditions.

Henry Ford said it all when he denounced history as bunk. And military history is more bunk than others. However, national and armed forces morale requires that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth need not necessarily be told each and every time.

When Prime Minister Vajpayee addressed the US Congress recently, people in India were gratified to see a packed house listening with rapt attention to his words of wisdom and punctuating his address with frequent applause. Until, of course, an overzealous reporter let out that only a handful of actual members attended the session and the rest of the seats were occupied by aides and staff members who were briefed to applaud on cue. Indian elation was punctured like a puffed soufflé. And how did it help to know the truth?

The history of warfare is full of heroes whose actions and feats of heroism have inspired and sustained succeeding generations. Until a latter day iconoclast happens, "after meticulous research," to discover that the whole thing was either a hoax or not as heroic as first reported. A well-nurtured myth is ground to dust while the reporter goes on to collect his Pulitzer.

Myths are the security blanket around which any country's armed force builds its traditions and morale. The British created the notion of "martial races". No one can say whether they were right, but the fact remains that in every action of the Second World War, the Sikhs, the Jats, the Rajputs, the Gurkhas and the Marathas were required to uphold that tradition. They always fought well and between them won most of the gallantry medals.

When the trooper Dorsetshire sank at sea during the nineteenth century, someone is supposed to have shouted, "Women and children first". Whether it really happened is immaterial, but a tradition was born which has been followed from the Titanic to the present day.

Land warfare is a messy business and so much confusion prevails during battle that in the end no one really knows what happened. Even though elaborate debriefs are held at the end of each action, the human tendency to paint the narrator as the hero ensures that truth is the first casualty in the final report. The Second World War gave birth to a series of memoirs by generals, admirals and air marshals. They ranged from Omar Bradley's modest A Soldier's Story to Montgomery's somewhat pompous memoirs. No two accounts of any battle have ever fully matched each other.

The Charge of the Light Brigade was depicted at the time as a great heroic act. So was Custer's Last Stand. Painstaking research a hundred years later has revealed that both events were avoidable and were the result of whole-scale mismanagement and bungling. Yet, all these actions have sustained military morale for hundreds of years. If they had not taken place, they would have had to be invented.

During the Second World War, after successive defeats in the desert by Rommel's all conquering Africa Korps, the British required to create a counter-hero. Churchill pulled out an obscure Major General named Montgomery and sent him to command the Eighth Army. He was supplied with every resource which was denied to Auchinleck. At El Alamein, Monty fought Rommel whose army had been weakened by lack of supplies, and won a decisive victory. A legend was born which inspired the British Army for the rest of the war. Subsequent fiascos like Arnheim failed to diminish the myth of Monty's invincibility.

Countries and their armed forces are sometimes overzealous to proclaim the valour of their fighting men. One way of doing this is to announce acts of gallantry and shower the troops with awards. At times there is undue haste in announcing the award. No time is lost in checking or cross-checking the supposed act and often leads to faux pas and blushes. Apart from announcing a plethora of gallantry medals for Kargil, the Indian Army covered itself with embarrassment when a Param Vir Chakra, the highest medal for gallantry, was announced as a posthumous award when the supposed recipient was hale and hearty in a military hospital. To this day no one can say whether the award went to the right man.

Myths make way for legends and legends transform into tradition. How did some of these legends start? The Gurkhas always fight to the last man. The captain always goes down with his ship. A modern day rationalist will argue that the whole thing is silly. Why not surrender or save yourself to fight another day? Admittedly, there is no logic in a tradition. But as Tevye in Fiddler on the roof would say, "I don't know why, but it's a tradition."

India is a young nation. Not having any traditions of our own, we have either continued those left by the British or attempted to create our own. Unfortunately, the younger generation has little respect for time honoured traditions. We are keen to break traditions at the drop of a hat, for the sake of convenience.

In 1942, the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean was required to evacuate British troops from Crete. The ships were being pounded from the air by German aircraft and the fleet was taking mounting casualties. One of Admiral Cunningham's aides timidly suggested withdrawing from the area leaving the troops behind. He got a withering look from the Admiral. "It takes three years to build a ship but three hundred to build a tradition. The Royal Navy has always assisted British troops." The fleet carried out its task.

The Indian Army too has built its tradition over 300 years. Today, it faces the modern day investigative reporter. Young, brash, cocky and self-confident. He has seen The Front Page three times and has read All the President's men many more times. He sees himself as a latter-day Woodward or Bernstein. He smells a rat under every bed, a hoax in every victory. He also sees every military man as a bumbling Colonel Blimp. With little reverence towards the establishment, he is out to find out "what really happened". His main source of information is inevitably a frustrated senior officer who feels that he did not get his due.

Does it really matter at this stage who won and who lost? Are we really interested in finding out that our victories in 1965 and 1971 were myths, that it was really not the Indian Army which won but Pakistan which lost? Or that the war might have ended earlier had the Air Force been called? And pray, what lessons are we required to learn from what is touted as "the true history of 1965"?

When told by a pompous critic that parts of his symphony resembled Beethoven's, the great Brahms caustically replied, "Any idiot can see that." The same may be said of the breathtaking revelations now being unearthed in the media about India's past wars.

Admiral J G Nadkarni (retd)