Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, the head of the Indian Air Force, appears to have gone ballistic, throwing at an aerospace seminar in New Delhi on Thursday a view that is among the oldest in the RSS armoury of attacks on our first Prime Minister — that what we call Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) was ours to take militarily if only Jawaharlal Nehru hadn’t abruptly ordered a ceasefire. It is true that an untruth repeated a thousand times begins to appear to the gullible as the truth: this is the first principle of successful false propaganda. But more considered opinion with greater regard to historical facts and circumstances don’t buttress Air Chief Marshal Raha’s line of thinking.
There are many serious reflections on the first Kashmir campaign, one of them by a participant, the late Gen. K.V. Krishna Rao, a former Army Chief and later governor of J&K. Air Chief Marshal Raha could do little better than acquaint himself at least with this soldier’s account on the ground realities of the day. War, it has been quite rightly said, is too serious a matter to be left to generals. And the last thing we need are too many talkative military men. Air power is of course undoubtedly a vital element of warfare. But the Air Chief should also bear in mind that the relentless pounding of North Vietnam by US bombers couldn’t prevent America’s military humiliation there, and regular American air raids in Afghanistan are yet to settle the matter against the Pakistan-fed Taliban.
