The Hard Facts: Lest We Forget How Rahul Gandhi’s Tweet Could Hurt Army Agniveers’ Morale

Battles are fought by soldiers on the ground, but a war is always won in the mind. Joan of Arc, the heroine of the Hundred Years’ War between the French and the British, immortalised these words.

Closer home, in 1857, the whisper of beef and pork tallow turned sepoys against British colonisers. The mutiny almost won us our independence.

The point of these examples is to stress that you need hands to hold a gun, but you need a mind to pull the trigger for a cause greater than yourself. In modern times, there’s no cause greater than your country.

And that’s why it devolves upon all of us to think about a tweet put out by Congress prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi.

The Army was so obviously concerned about the impact of his remarks on the morale of our forces that it had to tweet. It was forced to enter the political theatre.

Now, this is verging on the unprecedented. The Army in India holds itself to the highest professional standards. Unlike, failed state Pakistan, the Indian Army is above politics.

But Rahul Gandhi’s tweet had to be rebutted. After the martyrdom of the soldier on Siachen, Rahul Gandhi implied that the Agniveer policy leaves the family of a martyred soldier without any financial recourse. That, in a sense, there was little value in laying down your life for your nation.

The impact of the statement could have the effect of dissuading potential recruits from joining the forces. Or worse, could play upon the minds of soldiers in combat situations, forcing them to put self above service. The Army realised the harmful impact of the tweet on the morale of our servicemen and tweeted to fact-check Rahul Gandhi within hours.

What the Congress chooses to ignore is that the Agniveer emolument policy is only marginally different from the older variant.

Many leading military powers also have Agniveer-like policies. But you won’t see many mainstream politicians in those countries going out of their way to convince military men that their sacrifices are destined to go unrewarded by an apathetic state.

Here are the big questions after the tirade:

• Shouldn’t Rahul have checked his facts before tweeting?
• After Army’s fact check, shouldn’t Rahul have set the record straight?
• Does Rahul’s silence expose his attempt to politicise the forces?
• Wouldn’t unfounded remarks shake the faith of the new recruits?