My Dear Prime Minister

My Dear Prime Minister,

Yesterday, our jawans were martyred.

I don't want to throw around the number. That's for honorable ministers to use in Lok Sabha replies and press conferences. I seek to humanise the situation. The jawans were returning from their homes to hostile territory somewhere in India. Some were fathers, some were brothers. Some had mothers. What they all had in common was their humanness. They could all perceive pleasure and pain. They must have felt the latter when the car exploded.

People said the unfortunate tragedy shouldn't be politicised. It mustn't. But surely we must find how it happened? If asking for accountability is scoring petty political points, sue me. Sue the mothers and sisters of those who fell in the line of their duty. They want to know how this happened. Who should they seek answers from? The terrorists, believe it or not, are not accountable to us. Nor is Pakistan. But someone else surely is, my dear Prime Minister; someone we entrusted with the responsibility to keep us safe.

My dear Prime Minister, you say India must be proud of her history and learn from it. And we must be. You are right on both counts. We have a rich past which offers lessons for every situation. Prithviraj Chauhan let Ghori go. He was killed in the next war. After capturing Hemu in the Second battle of Panipat, Akbar's reagent Bairam Khan didn't let him go scot free. Hemu was beheaded and Akbar went on to become a revered royal. Siraj-ud-daullah didn't chase English out completely. They regrouped. They came back for him and they sure chased him out. There must be a lesson in there somewhere.

We celebrate our lack of spine to go for the final blow under the garb of maintaining peace. But peace is active. Passive is self-implosion. 

We glorify our incompetence under the garb of Vasidhaiv Kutumbkam. But surely it must be right to keep the home in order. 

We celebrate suffering under different names. It's a rite of passage in our culture. 

We are indecisive. We are coward. We crave for approval and validation. We want the world to do the dirty job on our behalf.

We want the UN to declare Pakistan a terrorist state while defeating a private member's bill for the same, my dear Prime Minister. We want the USA and China to take action and stop harbouring Pakistan while we have no aligned policy for the same. We don't have the capacity to utilise Indus waters which is rightfully ours. We don't have the will to revoke the MFN status because it's meaningless anyway.

I am not calling for war for I don't want our men to die. I want acknowledgement. I want you to accept India lacks a spine. We simply don't know how to retaliate. We are at loss of options.

And we have no guts to take decisions which defy the status quo and venture into the unknown. We couldn't take the risk of having any novel experience in our constitution. China grew with a unique Chinese model of growth. Ours was penned down by Gunnar Myrdal and later by Rostow. Our education, policing, the justice system and laws still reak of colonial Victorian sensibility. We have no Indian response to any situation. Or perhaps helplessness is the Indian response?

It seems to me that we will have a response when some other country devises its own when in a similar situation and it gets the approval by the world which we crave for. Till then, I am as helpless as any of the readers.

Good Luck for the Election Season!