Indian army video stirs debate on patriotism
Footage prompts talk as to the limits of support for the military after Kashmiri youth is tied to jeep as a human shield
A set of amateur videos, shot in Kashmir and catapulted to viral fame on Indian social media, have heightened the debate about whether patriotism equals unquestioning support for the Indian army.
In the first, a series of videos from April 10, young Kashmiri men shout “India, go back” at paramilitary soldiers after a violent by-election in Srinagar.
One slaps the head of a soldier walking past, another kicks a helmet that a soldier holds in his hand.
The second video, uploaded around the same date, shows a young Kashmiri civilian tied to the front of an army Jeep as it drove through Budgam, on the outskirts of Srinagar.
The civilian was seemingly used as a human shield, to discourage protesters from throwing stones.
The Jeep had been leading a convoy with a dozen election officials, an army source told the HindustanTimes newspaper. “It was do or die,” the source said. Over the past two weeks, these videos have increased animosity between the critics and the nationalist supporters of prime minister Narendra Modi.
The context and authenticity of both videos has been fiercely contested by pro and anti-Modi factions.
But they have also sparked a debate about how Indians should support their army, and whether such support should be a litmus test of citizens’ patriotism.
The debate is particularly heated now, given the criticisms of the Indian army and the state in suppressing protests and revolts in Kashmir.
Eight civilians were killed by police fire during protests against the April 9 by-election, and a security clampdown has been in force for nearly a year, after unrest that claimed at least 100 lives – civilians and policemen – last summer.
On Twitter, the #IndianArmy hashtag has been appended to tweets that profess unquestioning support for the military.
“For every slap on my army’s [soldiers], lay down 100 jihadi lives,” wrote cricketer Gautam Gambhir, who describes himself as a patriot on Twitter, on April 13.
“Whoever wants azadi [Kashmiri freedom], leave now. Kashmir is ours.”
Several Twitter accounts said tying the civilian to the army jeep was justifiable. Although the army has ordered an investigation into the incident, to be completed by May 15, military sources defended it.
“Everything is fair in love and war,” Ram Madhav, the general secretary of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP), told The Hindu newspaper. Of the army major who ordered the move, Mr Madhav said: “I will compliment him for the decision that he took. He saved the lives of the people in police station, officials and all, and also his own boys.”
This line of thinking is common among fervent nationalists, said Srinath Raghavan, a military historian who served as an infantry officer in the Indian army. “The main claim of most types of nationalism is that the nation is the highest political value,” Mr Raghavan said.
Because the military is the ultimate defender of the nationstate and what the state proclaims as its territory, defending the army becomes synonymous with patriotism, he said.
The nationalist debate has settled on the army in relation to Kashmir, because retaining Kashmir within the Indian union has been central to the BJP’s politics, and because of the party’s electoral successes across India, Mr Raghavan said. Only last month, the BJP swept into power in Uttar Pradesh – India’s most populous state and one in which it had struggled for decades.
“If the issue has gained wider traction in India, it is because of the deepening ideological hold of the BJP on the country,” Mr Raghavan said.
“This is what ‘hegemony’ feels like.” Mr Modi’s government and his supporters also want to associate themselves with the army as an institution and “benefit from that appropriation”, said Sushant Singh, a New Delhi analyst and a former lieutenant colonel in the army.
“Right- wing forces want to appropriate the army’s actions as one undertaken for their cause,” he said.
“They can thus closely identify themselves with the army and take political advantage of the respect and support that the army has among the Indians.” Mr Raghavan and Mr Singh emphasised the dangers of equating patriotism with support for the army, pointing to Pakistan as an example of – in Mr Raghavan’s words – “treating the military as the unquestionable guardian of the country’s interests”.
“Refusing to subject the army’s actions to critical scrutiny is an abdication of our democratic responsibility,” he said.
“The chain of accountability in a democracy is clear – the army is responsible to the political leadership, which in turn is responsible to the people.
“Muting legitimate criticism of the military is a slippery slope for democracies.”
The act of putting the army above reproach could distort and diminish the integrity of the institution, Mr Singh said. “There is a danger for the army itself, because it can stop improving if it starts buying the public narrative of its infallibility,” he said.
‘ If the issue has gained wider traction in India, it is because of the deepening ideological hold of the BJP on the country Srinath Raghavan Military historian