AFVOA Newletters of Year 2004

Page 89 of 153 Kalia, had written. I could barely listen as his parents, this ordinary Indian mother and father in their ordinary Himachal home, spoke to me of what their son looked like in death and how they have had to come to terms with it. 55. Because what happened to Saurabh Kalia was nauseating. But if it was that, the tragedy was also inexplicable. If you are willing to look, he left behind some hard questions. If you are willing to think, they will gnaw at you, as they gnaw at his parents, as they have gnawed at me for several years. For there seem to be no answers, only these questions, and that’s a hard place to be for parents, for a nation, so brutally bereaved. 56. Still, five years on, we should be able to mull them over dispassionately. You’d think. If the bodies were so badly mutilated, why did Pakistan not simply throw them away? Why bother to hand them back? Was the country so unaware of the outrage that would result? Why did India not make an immediate and loud fuss right there at the border? Why whisk the six dead soldiers away for a closed-door post-mortem in Delhi, which is what happened, and return them to their families only later? Why refuse the report of that post-mortem to the Kalia family? “Existing rules do not permit handing over the post-mortem report to the NOKs [next of kin]”, says a letter from Army HQ to Dr Kalia. Which leaves them, and you, to wonder -- if NOKs cannot read such reports, who can? 57. Actually, the Kalia family has piles of letters about Saurabh’s death, many from official India. Among their correspondents are then-External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, then-Defence Minister George Fernandes, then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Army’s then-Director General (Organization & Personnel) Lt. General HS Bagga. I mention these names not for the eminence of the men who wrote them, but to remark on the eloquence of the words they use to describe Saurabh. “Martyr”, “valiant son” and “hero of Kargil” are just some. Here’s Jaswant Singh: Captain Saurabh Kalia made the supreme sacrifice in the defense of our Motherland. He displayed great valour, courage and determination in the pursuit of his goal to push out the Pakistani forces that had intruded into our territory. History will record Captain Kalia’s deeds in golden letters and his name will be a beacon for many generations not only for officers and men of the Armed Forces, but for all Indians. As a father, you have been blessed to have such a gallant son. 58. In black and white, these are unequivocal acknowledgements of the valour of the son of this Himachal home. For a sorrowing family, they must have come as some small solace. Yet here’s one reality Saurabh’s parents must grapple with: their son is conspicuously missing from the long list of Kargil awards. As are his five mates in tragedy. For these Indian heroes, there is no Param Vir Chakra, no Vishisht Seva Medal. Nothing. “History will record Captain Kalia’s deeds in golden letters”, wrote India’s Foreign Minister. But India will not give him a Mention-in-Dispatches. A entire country was moved by his courage, repulsed by the violation of his body, loud in condemning our neighbour. But that country will not honour him. Why? 59. Now it’s true, not every battlefield death warrants a medal. But equally, not every battlefield death warrants the kind of ministerial eloquence that has flooded Dr Kalia’s home. So what happened here? Did Singh and Fernandes write their letters only because of the mutilation? Was theirs a clear-eyed recognition of the effect the horror had on this country? 60. That line of questions leads only to the cynicism with which I view every move