by: Maj Gen (retd) Himmat Singh Gill (The Tribune)

In Battery Park in downtown Manhatten in New York, there stands within a plaza an obelisk with a soldier shaped cutout by artist Mac Adams, honouring the memory of New York’s Korean war veterans.

The “Universal Soldier”, as he is called, represents 22 countries, including India, that took part in the 1950-53 Korean war. It was dedicated in 1991 to a war where North Korea, later joined in by China, slugged it out with a United Nations force composed predominantly of American soldiers under Gen Douglas Mac Arthur, till an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, and the 38th Parallel restored to its original sanctity.

Commemorating the “Forgotten War” the Korean War Veterans Memorial Committee also installed a sun dial at the memorial where on July 27 every year at exactly 10 am — the time the hostilities were ordered to cease — the sun shines directly through the soldier’s head to illuminate the commemorative plaque installed in the ground near the cutout.

At the base of the memorial engraved on stone with the country flag overhead is the roll of honour of the dead, wounded and missing, with the United States in the lead with a figure of 54,246, 1,03,248 and 8,177 respectively.

In New York itself, there are two more war memorials remembering the Korean war veterans who had sacrificed their lives in a bitterly fought war that not only saw President Truman removing from command Gen Mac Arthur for his “aggressive policies,” but the ushering in of an era of American armed intervention in subsequent years in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now how well do we Indians remember our own war dead is the question that I wish to pose to my countrymen. My regiment, Hodson’s Horse or 4 Horse as it is now called, fought at Somme and Cambrai in the First World War, then in the Second WW, subsequently in the 1965 and 1971 wars and many perished in all of them

Likewise, there are hundreds of other Indian units which give their all for the Tricolour that flutters proudly over the ramparts of the Red Fort every Independence Day. But where, may I ask, are the lights that should burn eternally in remembrance or the memorial, if not memorials, for them in our ungrateful land?

Like in New York, where in our large cities are the edifices that will remember our dead, and like in the Vietnam war memorial in Washington, where is the space where a mother will put her trembling finger across her beloved son’s name and weep in silence?

The Arlington National Cemetary honours the Unknown American soldier who died without his remains being identified, and carries an inscription saying, “Here rests in honoured glory an American soldier known but to God”.

The unknown French dead of the First World War lie remembered and honoured at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In the United Kingdom the Unknown Warrior rests in glory and peace at Westminster Abbey.

These tombs also commemorate the unidentified fallen of any of the later wars. What we do for our departed soldiers in India, I will come to later.

But do you know why we do not remember our dead soldiery as well as others do? Because for one we got our Independence on the cheap, without even much of an armed struggle, all the pontifying from the rooftops about the freedom struggle by the political parties at the time notwithstanding.

Secondly, because, the none or possibly an odd one at the most of our netas and leaders ever send their sons to the armed forces. Also at the heart of the matter is the suspicion about the Army the average Indian politician has, of it one day [like in Pakistan] taking over the reins of government.

That such an eventuality is a virtual impossibility in India is besides the point, but it is a good enough excuse and ploy to smear the Army with and keep them permanently out of any macro-level decision-making process.

And finally because, in essence, the Army is not respected any more by the money minded, rich jet set Indian youth, and because the Indian polity has done very little about this obsession, besides the occasional pay commission and the princely amount of Rs 150 half yearly as dearness allowance. So my point is that if the living soldier is not respected or remembered, then where is the question of any better priority for the dead?

Anyhow back to all those Indian soldiers from all the three services who sacrificed their all for the country, and for whom we have the All India War Memorial at India Gate in New Delhi. The India Gate was built by Edwin Lutyens to deify the Indian soldiers who died in World War 1 and the Afghan wars.

After the 1971 war with Pakistan over Bangladesh, the Amar Jawan Jyoti, the eternal flame was added at India Gate. Anyone who cares to drive past the India Gate today would see a boistrous, disinterested [in the memorial], noisy and unconcerned body of onlookers more interested in their “kulfi” and “channa” that they are eating, than the memorial that they actually should be viewing and comprehending its history.

Many questions come to my mind about this kind of a memorial. Is it for all the veterans who laid down their life in all the wars that India has fought? Is it dedicated to the Unknown Soldier or is it a cemetary?

Does an add-on in the way of Amar Jyoti do justice to a national memorial to the country’s heroes who kept India’s sovereignty intact?

Does the design of the memorial really look like a war memorial, or should there be an obelisk of the universal soldier as in New York, where one sees pride, dignity, courage and a future to look up to, and not a rather depressive picture of an inverted rifle with a helmet placed on top.

And finally, please ask any good architect to comment on the size and scale of the inverted rifle add-on as compared to the high-domed original India Gate ediface, and see if the later addition really is apt or not.

How about examining a new site for a new all-India war memorial with a different design and universal message from the armed forces at a suitable spot in New Delhi?