The fanfare was loud, but something did not ring quite true when the government mounted an exaggeratedly-hyped “Parakarm Parv” festival to celebrate the second anniversary of the ‘surgical strikes” to demolish terrorist launch pads across the LOC on the night of 28/29 September 2016. Sure the armed services ensured good shows ~ nothing less was to be expected of the best parade-ground army in the world ~ but what appalled, and demeaned the war heroes of yesteryear, was the official bid to bracket those strikes with the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the repulsion of the intrusions in Kargil in 1999.

Without reopening the Opposition-led controversy over those strikes being more fictional than factual (the MoD has just released a video-recording of the operation), it is valid to query the military gains that accrued from what was essentially action to avenge the fidayeen foray at Uri shortly before. Only days back when asked why the centenary of “Haifa Day” was being observed, the Chief of the Army Staff said that it was because Indian lancers had staged a decisive mission that marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman empire.

The surrender of the Pakistan army at Dacca’s race course (as it was known then) and the Northern Light Infantry’s pull-out from Kargil were also decisive. Can the same be said of the surgical strikes? Even Gen. Bipin Rawat has said that Pakistan has not learnt a lesson, more cross-border stings could be on the cards ~ terrorism in J&K and infiltration into the Valley continue to remain rampant. So why the fuss over Parakarm Parv? The answer could be found in the political domain.

In its quest for kudos ~ more so since the countdown to 2019 is underway ~ the NDA is anxious to “sell” a military success to the people. Particularly since it came off second-best at Doklam, the Rafale stench has spread and the muscular policy in Kashmir has paid few dividends. Projecting itself as proficient in “Pak-bashing” would have its core constituency salivate, and Nirmala Sitharaman’s stridency would equate with sweet music to the Modi-Shah duo. A military dimension to claims of achche din would harmonise with the manner in which the event-focused government laps up even marginal improvements in international economic or social indices.

That the military’s apolitical culture and tradition is being endangered does not seem to bother a regime which has its own gold-standard ~ electoral success. Who cares for long-term implications when polarisation pays a ballot-bounty? Yet a certain bankruptcy in military matters is also displayed. The choice of “Parakarm Parv” is negative, a reminder of Operation Parakarm ~ when after the terror strike at Parliament House in 2001 Indian troops were massed along the Pakistan border for months in a “phoney war”, but dared not cross it. As diminutive Lal Bahadur Shastri had ordered in 1965.