By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
Almost 15 years after the Kargil War and three Lok Sabha and three Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections later Samajwadi Party leader and a senior minister in Akhilesh Yadav cabinet, Azam Khan, has been reminded that it was the Muslim soldiers who alone ensured the victory in 1999. Later, while explaining his statement Khan claimed it was a strategy of the Indian Army to use Muslim soldiers to trick the Pakistani Army.
If this was at all an achievement for him to boast as a Muslim, what was he doing all these years? If it was so important for the electorate to know this fact it should have been highlighted during the campaigning in the 1999 Lok Sabha election rather than on the eve of 2014 poll.
Azam Khan [TCN file photo]
But Khan added he came to know about this strategy from a senior army officer only three years back. But then, why was this sensational disclosure not made on the eve of the UP Assembly election held two years back?
If he thinks that such utterances pay political dividends than it should have been made at least on the eve of 2012 election.
After all the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance fully cashed in on the popular sentiment built against Pakistan-backed infiltrators in 1999. Had there been no Kargil, perhaps it would have been difficult for the Vajpayee government to return to the power with such a majority. It had lost the trust vote in Parliament in April 1999 and a month later the Kargil intrusion was detected. The campaign to flush the militants out continued till July 4, after the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met the US President Bill Clinton in Washington.
The truth is that the opposition parties, which include the Samajwadi Party, failed to raise some uncomfortable questions before the Vajpayee government in 1999 or even much later. Why and how in the first place the infiltrators managed to occupy territory so deep inside Kashmir? Incidentally, the militants started sneaking at the time when Prime Minister Vajpayee travelled to Lahore in his inaugural bus journey to Pakistan in February 1999.
India has to lose hundreds of soldiers––Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain etc––to push the militants back. Had Khan or his party than exposed the failure of the then Vajpayee government it would have scored some points.
Instead 15 years later he deliberately tried to vitiate the atmosphere by simply parroting what an army officer supposedly told him about the role of Muslim soldiers. There is absolutely no scope whatsoever to take credit for the Kargil by Muslims alone and that too after so many years.
Khan knows that, unlike 1999––or later elections––this is the season of absurd utterances. The BJP might have capitalized on the Kargil victory in 1999 but it did so without anyone boasting about 56 inch broad chest of the prime minister.
Be it Khan, Amit Shah, Imran Masood and other Sangh Parivar rabble-rousers they all know that they can outdo each other only by some outlandish comments. They cunningly utilize the ubiquitous presence of media to achieve their respective goals by polarizing the electorate.
With election being held in such a surcharged atmosphere in the post-Muzaffarnagar riots days the Bharatiya Janata Party is certainly grateful to Khan, who has helped it consolidate its position further.
If Khan thinks that his Muslim supporters would be happy with such great claims about the braveness of the soldiers belonging to the community he is living in fool’s paradise. It is in the interest of the community that the communal tension subsides and amity return.
The politician from Rampur has neither done good to himself, nor to the community or his own party and the country. This is not a very Azam (great) way of making election speech.