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Vajpayee on Cloud Nine

Natwar Singh and other nutty critics of the government can do their worst. For the vast majority of Indians, we have won the war in Kargil. And we have won it on all three planes: military, diplomatic and moral.

Thanks to the successful culmination of the mini-war over Kargil, Atal Bihari Vajpayee has emerged all the more stronger. And popular. He conducted himself as a great war-time leader, showing rare grit and determination in shooing the Pakistani intruders away from Indian territory. The tragic loss of lives in the Pakistani misadventure was the inevitable price the nation had to pay to preserve its territorial integrity.

But the thing to remember is that Vajpayee's statesman-like conduct of the war operations had won India handsome dividends on the battle-field and in the world capitals alike. It was the first armed conflict since the founding of the Indian republic in which Indian diplomacy had fully complemented the efforts of the armed forces. And the very first in which the gains won by our soldiers with sweat and blood were not squandered on the negotiating table by our leaders.

When the war started, Vajpayee and the ruling coalition were admittedly forced on the back foot. There were nagging questions about the failure of military intelligence to detect the Pakistani incursion. Of course, nobody can pinpoint the exact date when the first of the Pakistani intruders had set up camp in the craggy mountains over 18,000 feet above sea level in the snow-peaked Kargil ranges. Reports in the media spoke of the incursion having gone unnoticed for as long as fourteen years. The Pakistanis would come during the relatively less severe weather and after making bunkers and posts on the icy hills return to the safety of their barracks when it began snowing.

Apparently, with each passing year Pakistanis became more and more audacious. During the mercifully brief period when that unquestioned leader of political parasites, Inder Kumar Gujral, was prime minister, a file about the incursion in Kargil was sent up to him. Gujral is said to have noted on it that the ''matter could be resolved diplomatically'' and that nothing should be done by the armed forces to drive away the intruders. Since then the Pakistanis had come further inside the Indian territory, thus posing a threat to the vital Srinagar-Leh road.

Natwar and his soul-mate in the business of nit-picking, that effete phrase-monger Mani Shankar Aiyar, make much of the alleged intelligence failure. But they seem to gloss over the fact that for decades under the Congress Party rule the armed forces were denied the vital aerial surveillance equipment necessary for detecting unusual movement in the icy and abandoned wastelands that is much of Kargil mountain ranges during most of the year.

Kargil had never seen hostilities earlier. It was assumed that the terrain was too inhospitable and deadly to allow for an armed engagement. But Pakistan in its perfidious frame of mind chose Kargil precisely because it was least expected to serve as the route for its intrusion. And it was surprised by the sheer force of Indian retaliation, once the actual scale and depth of the intrusion dawned on the leadership in New Delhi.

Islamabad, or more truthfully the military top brass in Rawalpindi, hadn't reckoned with the fierceness of the Indian response. They did not think that India would press its air force to soften the enemy targets from above even as the army advanced on them from whatever side possible. There is more than one statement made by senior Pakistan ministers buttressing the view that they had not anticipated the no-holds-barred action by India to vacate the aggression.

Look back at the events since the start of the war. There is no denying the fact that Pakistan was stunned by Vajpayee's decision to go in for a strong armed action to vacate the aggression. Islamabad had hoped to engage India in diversionary and time-consuming talks. The same Vajpayee who had gone riding a bus to Lahore in search of peace with Pakistan was now determined to pursue war with it in order to defend India's territorial integrity.

Realising early on in the armed conflict that they could not but burn their fingers pretty badly in the misadventure sanctioned by them, the Sharief government launched a desperate search for a face-saving formula to withdraw from Kargil. But Niaz Naik and other emissaries of Sharief who came calling on the Indian prime minister returned with the only message Vajpayee had for them: no talks till the vacation of the aggression and no suspension of the armed action, either.

Vajpayee's refusal to meet Sharief, and, subsequently, his rejection of the invitation to go to Washington to meet President Clinton was indicative of his resolve to press ahead with the urgent task of forcing the aggressors out without being drawn into diversionary stratagems of Pakistan. For once, comrade Jyoti Basu, who has otherwise taken leave of etiquette and manners, was so impressed by Vajpayee that he could not help commend the prime minister publicly.

After the initial shock of Pak perfidy, Vajpayee had come a long way to take charge of the situation. Minor irritants like George Fernandes playing into the hands of his adversaries in the Opposition and the leaders of the Sangh Parivar egging on the government to use nukes too were duly taken care of. Vajpayee was the boss and he alone would lead the war effort without anyone queering the pitch for him.

Of course, he could do precious little to quell the discordant noises emanating from the Congress and its leader, nay, reader, Sonia Gandhi. They harped on the intelligence failure as if Vajpayee was personally policing the Line of Control at Kargil.

Admittedly, the government had promptly relegated the brigade commander in Kargil to the backwaters for his failure to assess the real Pakistani intent. And some more heads in the armed forces may roll after Kargil has been rid of the Pakistani thugs. But Sonia and others not only talked of the intelligence failure, they also let loose a false claim that the number of dead was far more than officially stated. This was, of course, a plain lie. For, in the most transparent and open war ever fought by India it is well-nigh impossible to fudge figures of the dead and the wounded.

Worse, in order to detract from the achievement of the armed forces in vacating the aggression in Kargil, they compared Operation Vijay of 1999 with Operation Haar of 1962. They wanted a Rajya Sabha session in order to exploit the minority status of the government in the House for partisan ends. And they sought to devise a strange equation, trying to hive off the armed forces from the control of the government when they severely questioned everything that the latter did while paying lip service to the cause of the former. Little did they realise that for the jawans staking their lives in the remoteness of icy wilderness, the government was synonymous with their commanders who got their orders from the former and could not defy them.

Natwar Singh and others belonging to his ilk, one is fully aware, are at pains to denigrate the Indian victory on the military and diplomatic fronts. Therefore one can do no better than to quote Pakistan's most authoritative English language newspaper, Dawn, to try and convince them that Vajpayee had indeed pulled off a major victory which, without doubt, would stand the coalition he leads in very good stead when the focus shifts from Kargil to Gill in the coming months. The author, Ayaz Amir, also addresses Natwar's charge that Clinton's assurance to take ''a personal interest'' in encouraging bilateral Indo-Pak talks on Kashmir had internationalised the issue.

Here are some excerpts from the article. ''... But that the climbdown [by Sharief] when it came would be so headlong and ill-judged, and that in the process it would leave in tatters the last shreds of national pride, should take even prophets of doom by surprise... as an attempt at permanently occupying the Kargil heights, it was madness...''

On Clinton's promise to take personal interest in Indo-Pak talks on Kashmir, the author says: ''Only a leadership with no idea of national pride and dignity can suppose that an empty pledge such as this is sufficient recompense for the blood of our [Pakistani] martyrs.''

The Pakistani perception about the Shimla Agreement should shame Natwar and other drum-beaters of the Congress Party into abject silence: ''At Shimla, Pakistan was at a grave disadvantage because it had suffered a humiliating defeat at India's hands. Yet even in the shadow of that disaster, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to his enduring credit, managed to preserve what remained of Pakistan's honour.''

As for the Kargil adventure the article said, ''Pakistan has suffered a failure of leadership, a failure of vision and, most important of all, a failure of nerve. When the crunch came the politico- military leadership could not take the heat.''

Truer words were yet to emerge from a Pakistani author. Yet, Natwar and other nutty critics of the government would do their worst to turn the Indian victory into defeat.