Raise a toast to Colonel Ketchup of the Indian army

Raise a toast to Colonel Ketchup of the Indian army
By Jawed Naqvi

LIKE their counterparts elsewhere, Indian soldiers are widely admired as defenders of their country’s borders. Because of a huge demand for policing in perennially strife-stricken regions within the country, many Indians have also experienced regular soldiers as a coercive arm of the state. The army is the holy cow of the middle class and the ruling elite. Commoners see it differently.

Occasionally, as their experience goes, the army transforms into a helpful bunch of disciplined men. They rescue marooned villagers from torrential floods. They are seen on TV (after American example) burrowing tunnels to miraculously pluck out little children who strayed or fell into dangerous manholes. Indian armymen are also the preferred choice of the frightened minorities in a communal carnage because they most effectively restore peace, and bring badly-needed assurance of secular neutrality in polarised situations. State police and paramilitary forces that usually perform the task of domestic sentinels are perceived as communally biased and, therefore, not trustworthy for intervening in religious or caste conflicts.

This agreeable way of looking at the Indian soldier is not shared by many Sikhs of course who bore the brunt of the Indian army’s ugly face. Indian troops are etched in their memory as people who assaulted their holy shrine in Amritsar. Many in Kashmir and India’s north-eastern states too see the Indian soldier as a ruthless killer who murders innocent people to win gallantry awards. Frequent reports in the Indian media have given credence to this fear.

But there is at least one person in Kashmir we met last week who says he would prefer the army, despite their notoriety in other ways, to the paramilitary police who have replaced the soldiers in a few urban centres like Srinagar. Nazir Malik, a soft-spoken, God-fearing naturalist whose mission in life is to preserve the amazingly rich fauna and flora of Kashmir bristled with anger as we drove along the tortuous unmetalled road to Dachigam, famous as Indira Gandhi’s picturesque mountain retreat a short drive from Srinagar. An old signboard announced the “Core Zone” of dense, vulnerable forests. The stretch was dotted with fortified pillboxes occupied by federal CRPF paramilitary men.

“You see that. They are so insensitive. They just don’t care,” hissed the wiry Malik, rage distorting his otherwise genial face, as we drove past heaps of plastic bags and other assorted rubbish littered there by the gun-toting CRPF men. Occasionally you would find a commandant lighting up even though the entire region has been declared a no-smoking zone. For Malik preservation of Kashmir’s rich and rare natural habitats is the real “core issue” dear to his heart. Of that he is certain. “The army was far better than these insensitive people. They were at least more educated and aware of their responsibilities,” he said, recalling the days at the height of the insurgency when regular troops had spread out to the far corners of the splendorous jungles to hunt militants.

“Those were truly bad days for Kashmir’s forests and fauna. Troops and militants together destroyed a lot of green cover. But this stuff is even more lethal,” Malik said as he walked us to a watch tower surrounded by a dozen shades of mountains overlooking a gurgling brook. “If you want to understand nature read the Sura-e-Rehman in the Quran,” he said. “Nature is my religion. I can work here even if I lose my job someday. I may starve but will never leave this job.”

As if to prove the point, Malik declined a generous tip offered by a fellow journalist. “This was not why I escorted you there. Give it to the guards if you like. You are always welcome here if you love nature. That’s the only condition.” He added, however, that nature lovers would still need clearance from the chief minister’s office to be allowed into the sanctuary. So that was Malik’s take on the army, quite different from the perception of the ordinary Kashmiri.

Let me suggest two ways in which the Indian army could improve its image with the alienated masses in Kashmir. First of all, it must appreciate the importance and respect given by Kashmiris as any one else would, to their own officers. Lt-Gen Mohammed Ahmed Zaki retired in 1993 as a rare Kashmiri Muslim officer who became a general in the Indian army. Now we are reading about Major-Gen Mohammed Amin Naik, “the second Kashmiri Muslim to reach the rank of major-general of the Indian army” as an Indian report put it. Naik had “become a source of inspiration and pride for many youths in Kashmir for his rewarding military career”. Zaki was the first Kashmiri Muslim to have reached the rank of major-general in August 1985. But his ancestors had migrated from the valley before Zaki’s birth.

“Maj-Gen Naik is the first officer born and brought up in Kashmir Valley to have attained the rank,” army spokesperson Lt-Col V.K. Mathur told IANS news agency. And Naik’s success has given many youngsters here a “sense of pride” as well.

“It makes us feel great. It is a matter of pride for Kashmiris, particularly Muslims who feel a sense of deprivation,” Hilal Ahmed Shah, 22, aspiring to be a civil servant told IANS. “As much as it swells our hearts with pride, it is also an affirmation that we are no longer the children of a lesser god,” Shah said. The general’s father Ghulam Nabi Naik is a retired divisional commissioner of Jammu and Kashmir, his sister, Shamim Naik, is a doctor, and elder brother, Gul Mohammad Naik, is a retired forest officer. So the picture is not so bleak. But it has to be more widely spread. That’s one way.

The other way for the army to identify with the people would be to raise a toast to Colonel H.S. Kohli known better as Colonel Ketchup the cashiered officer who deserves our gratitude for nurturing a spark of humanism in his heart.

Last year it was reported how senior army officers were faking kills to win gallantry awards. The entire controversy, infamously known as Ketchup Colonel episode, ended the career of Kohli. The commanding officer of an artillery regiment in Assam had taken photographs of civilians splashed with tomato ketchup posing as corpses of terrorists. He gave them to his seniors to stake claim for gallantry awards.

According to the CNN-IBN report, the incident took place near Silchar in Assam in 2003 and Col Kohli was dismissed from the army in November 2004 after a court martial found him guilty, even though he claimed that he had acted under the orders of his seniors. Fortunately, now the army seems ready to reinstate him with a five-year service cut but the seniors who gave the orders won’t be prosecuted.

Media investigation had shown how the man had followed orders from his immediate seniors. Letters and taped evidence all pointed to the complicity from the top, but no action was taken against a General who pushed for kills, media reports say. “In a letter being circulated within the Ministry of Defence, there is a clear admission of the involvement of the General and how he could be held guilty of serious misconduct,” CNN-IBN claimed.

The defence ministry has described the army’s decision not to take action against the General a convenient one, a decision that may not be legally tenable if anyone decides to go to court. The ministry is aware that the sensitive case could set a precedent for other fake encounter cases the forces have been grappling with. The army on its part does not want to spread the blame game so it made its recommendation to the Ministry of Defence: Col Kohli be reinstated with a five-year loss of service and a severe reprimand.

Col Kohli defied the illegal order to kill the detainees in his custody. The ketchup ploy reveals a humane face of the officer who could make a great character for an absorbing novel, or even a film.

In any case Col Kohli’s unwillingness to kill a fellow human being despite orders from his seniors deserves a toast. I think the people of Kashmir would agree.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com