ON THE FRONT LINE
Iwas reading Lt. Gen. Zameer Uddin Shah’s memoirs, The Sarkari Mussalman, when the controversy about his brother, actor Naseeruddin Shah’s allegedly anti-national utterances erupted.
The irony was stark. Here was the elder brother giving glorious accounts of his regiment in the celebrated battle of Longewala in the Jaisalmer sector during the 1971 war with Pakistan and the younger brother was being taken to task for the simple reason that those utterances were by someone who carries a Muslim name. The scale of Indian victory in Longewala is obvious from the number of soldiers killed: two Indians and 200 Pakistanis.
Well, Naseer’s statement was not about soldiers but about a police officer shot dead by a mob outside the Bulandshahr police station. His point that more is made these days of a dead cow than a dead police officer incurred the wrath of the troll mob.
Naseer’s other anxiety concerns people who are accepting mixed marriages as a norm. Though still a tiny minority, numbers in the metropolitan centres are growing. The affection with which Zameer, whose own marriage is conventional, mentions his sister-in-law Ratna Pathak Shah, confirms my impression of him as being quite as open-minded as Naseer.
I know I must appear to have deviated from the book, but I have not because the book is strewn with Zameer’s hunger for diversity in all its forms.
The man’s love for cricket, hockey, tennis, golf, angling and water sports qualifies him to be encapsulated in a quip: “Was everything by starts and nothing long.”
But that demeans his personality. It is a satirical way of describing a man of many parts. He writes with deep regret on how his switch from the cavalry to the camel regiment robbed him of his chance to play polo.
Accidental insights are scattered throughout. As defence attaché in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Zameer travelled to several regional countries, including Yemen. During a visit to Najran, on the Saudi-Yemen border, he was intrigued to find a Pakistani garrison in division strength. It turned out they were posted near the Red Sea, during the US’s Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The garrison’s apparent reluctance to participate in offensive operations against Iraq was cause for suspicion in Riyadh. In 1997, the garrison was withdrawn. Zameer then mentions the return of Pakistani troops to Saudi Arabia. This probably refers to Gen. Raheel Sharif, who retired as army chief in 2016. In their desperation, the Saudis had sought military help from Pakistan for action in Yemen in 2015, but the request was rejected by Pakistan’s Parliament. An official military participation would have recoiled on Pakistan diplomatically and they would have been quite as isolated in the world as the Saudis are. However, relentless pressure from Riyadh forced them to find an ingenious route to help the Saudis. Gen. (retd) Sharif now serves as chief of the Islamic Military Alliance the Saudis have forged for their military adventures.
Zameer had a colourful innings in the army. His administrative experience stood him in good stead when he was elevated as vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, with which his family had long associations.
It is difficult to say whether he prides himself more in having led the army to halt the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, or in his role at the university. All one can say with a degree of certainty is this: he had a ball in life commensurate with the hard work he put into whatever he was tasked with.
Part of The Sarkari Mussalman’s narrative echoes through his brother’s recent travails. Sensitivity on that score lurks in the pages, even in the communal outburst of colleagues who have momentarily forgotten that Zameer is present, but none of it allows the book to lapse into bad taste.
An account of the author’s time in the army, the book is strewn with his hunger for diversity in all its forms