Escape from the Cycle of Violence

so now my talks about the silence

cycle of violence so

[Music]

i have been a soldier you know i’ve been

trained in the military academies in the

national

the country spent a lot of money in

preparing me as a soldier

and we’ve been through national defense

academy

which is one best training institution

that can

one can go through it’s not just a

military academy it’s also

it’s a great i can say a great uh

the best mba in the world you can earn

in this institution

because it pushes you to this of you

know physical mental

emotional model and every which way and

you explore a new you when you come out

of the place

and you learn to exploit opportunities

against adversities and that’s about

that’s the business of winning walls

and uh that explains how we’ve been

it’s about how uh commanders seized the

opportunity just like you business

people

would look out for opportunities at

times of uh in your thing against your

adversaries

we also look out for opportunities to

counter them and win over them

so i went to nda i was commissioned into

four guards which is one of the finest

battalions today we are celebrating the

prime minister was in bangladesh

celebrating the 50th anniversary of the

war of liberation in bangladesh

when our country was pretty weak and we

were 50 years ago we went

very far we had the whole world arrayed

against us including the united states

siding with a dictator and our country

liberated my battalion four battalion

the brigade of gods

was responsible for liberation of dhaka

in the sense they reached there they

gave the god of honor to shake mujibur

rahman

it’s a great it’s a very proud battalion

that i was privileged to be commissioned

into

and then i earned my award and eight

guards in manipur coming long

one thing good about the army is they

always give opportunities to people i

had a little bit of a difference with my

commanding officer

and then the army said oh we need to

test him again so they sent me to this

killing fields in those days manipur

1994 was

caught in the throes of uh cookie naga

clashes

fight amongst insurgents uh fight for

independence and other things

so despite the best training or the best

pedigree that you might have

you know as a soldier no one will ever

tell you how much it hurts when you get

shot

no one tells you how do you recover in

the silence when you lie down in a

hospital bed

looking at the ceiling you know when

your legs blown off and your shoulder

blown off

i had the post i was posted to it

battalion the brigade of gods which was

in manipur

which was uh deployed in conferences and

seats a very beautiful state

people are very nice very handsome built

the girls are very beautiful the

villages are very picturesque the

mountains are

you know it’s very unique but it’s also

home to one of the largest uh

longest lasting insurgency moment in our

country

the naga incidency and other methane and

other cookie

issues that are gone and my battalion

was inducted there and i was there in

december

1993 we went there i went home for a

spot of leave after we got inducted

after a very painful anyway and i

i attended the funeral of colonel leela

continer

who was killed by naga insurgents in an

encounter in

nagaland and he along with 18 other

men talent men of 16 marathons was

killed and i had

attended his funeral infrandrum and i

was back in timing long and my mission

was to hunt locate

and if necessary kill the incidents we

were hiding and planning to blow off

some towers microwave towers and

which is communicating uh uh which is a

method of communication in uh

in this uh mode of comparing the army to

induct

so that jungles are awesome enough to

uh uh it’s terrible enough

you know it’s got leeches it’s got

carnivorous pythons it’s got

animals it’s got you know mosquitoes and

it’s got every kind of thing

and the large areas are turned into

booby traps and uh mine fields

and it’s a very difficult terrain that

you actually go through when you’re

battling them

and uh as luck would have it it is uh

you know you people can call it by any

name black destiny

fade block you know or just chance or

providence i landed in the right village

after six days of hunting the jungles

i was there in the right village and

insurgents had taken up position there

anyone walks to your door with a gun in

his hand or two three guns and five six

there’s no way

any villager or anyone the city can

refuse

to say that i wouldn’t allow you to

enter so there was this people who were

there they were

hiding and i knocked on the door i was

greeted with a warrior bullets

on my shoulder my arms then i had a

grenade blast which was there on my leg

just thrown at me which checked right

away and uh

uh it’s just you know and i had my

buddies with me

are they saying and there was a

couple of them who came and pulled me

out you know so that i was still in

control but i i

i wasn’t confusing command of the whole

thing i was losing a lot of blood and i

wanted to give a mission accomplished

report it was about an hour of fire

fight there’s very good fighters the

nagas are

very good soldiers they are from a very

very proud race and uh

they are good fighters and they are also

ably helped by other countries in the

neighborhood

so the fight went on they had the best

of weapons but then i decided that i had

to give a mission accomplished report to

my commanding officer

and i decided to announce to him that

i’m going to blow off the house

and that’s when they served and two

children came out now nothing prepares

you for that moment when you see

you know while it’s personal between man

to man between soul just a soldier

between uh

combat into combat and weapon wearing

you but when you see two young children

who are wounded in the crossfire who had

nothing with the war at all they had

nothing to do with the conflict they

don’t even know their religion or the

region that they belong to and they were

shot

and now at that moment the helicopter

was already hovering around and i knew

that

you know the children had no chance of

survival she was young enough to be

like you know young sister’s daughter or

something i was very young those days

and

she’s hardly 10 or 13 years old and

she’s very innocent uh this is the

jungle uh these are the

mountainous terrain these are the cookie

naga clashes and this is a child

if you look at it the innocence of the

child is uh

is uh you know it it kind of hits you in

your

face that you’d be really responsible

because i knew that certainly our

weapons that actually shot them

so when the helicopter had come to

evacuate me i said that it’s my

drying wish i want the child to be taken

and my commanding also

made sure that he flew out and the

child child was there and and uh

he was flown to taming long and

helicopter pilot came back for me

and i was flown to the mapur and i

remained there in the hospital for a

long time

as i recovered now one of the things

about the armed forces is that it

teaches you clearly

you know it honors you for what you do

it honors you for your gallantry and it

honors you for

a lot of things that you do you’re paid

to be a soldier by weapons and you know

call

and this is the president of india

confirming the shah richard on me for

this thing and our motto the credo of

the soldier is the safety honor welfare

of my country comes first always and

every time

the safety honor welfare of men i

command comes next

and my own safety honor and welfare

comes last always in every time and i’m

proud that i lived up to that widow

because this thing like i told you that

we are all trained

i’m paid for this i’m prepared for this

i’ve been trained for four years in the

academy

i’ve been through fine battalions which

are battle hardened been

seen action in bangladesh international

places it’s been everywhere and i

we were prepared for this moment where

either it was a very personal thing it’s

either kill or be killed

so we are prepared for this but there’s

nothing in our thing that we can

actually transfer on this liability to a

young child

you know or someone who’s not part of

the combat and that’s the reason why i

chose what i did

but yet it traumatized me because i

never knew whether the child

has survived or has it uh no i only know

that the villagers at that moment the

mother fell at my feet and

touched me you know with affection you

know i don’t even speak their language

they don’t speak my language and but i

knew affection that bonding between

humans you know when a mother knows that

a

person has that that is something that

is very unique and i knew it at that

moment

and uh probably their prayers saved me

and i went on it was a long time

a patrol 16 years later goes to that

village

i went to the village and i met all this

pill and another mother this is the

mother

this is the child this is the girl who

was shot this is the boy

you know and uh very interestingly also

men

met three people who were part of that

thing

this is a man who threw a grenade at me

so if you know

this healing you know it’s a long time

for me to come

during this period of 16 years there was

a lot of emotional

uh you know whether you’re really

responsible for

killing somebody or you know you never

knew it anyway the petrol went there and

i returned to manipur

and it was nice i got a lot of things by

the time i had moved into the

national security council in the prime

minister’s office as luck would have it

and then the village head man who was

there that encounter came i took him to

gk pillay

i went there i got the then minister of

state mr palamraji to help with the road

the road was constructed connecting

then gatkaria current honourable

minister now for robes

he sanctioned a 90 kilometer highway

connecting

making it an old well this road if you

see is a is not of

blacktop so this is something that is

sanctioned so the device trained uh

a lot number of girls from there he

continues to train girls from that

village in that

area to as nurses in norway

and uh been doing a lot of good work and

then i worked

with an is officer who was from manipur

carter she helped me set up this

this this foundation it’s called the

long department foundation along with uh

two little girls and our aim is to

support people

you know in conflict-affected

communities to develop coping mechanisms

so that people don’t have to go through

uh the reason why they work so we create

cross-cultural harmony

promote respect for everyone the respect

of race religion

tribe no community whatever it doesn’t

matter the state

we work with non-security forces and

non-state actors also

so that we respect women children calm

non-combatants in

others so this brings me to the end of

my talk

and i’d like to tell you a small little

story

at the end of it no everyone has

fears in their life everyone is afraid

and i must tell you my own story

i was always afraid not only when i

became an officer i was afraid

whether i’ll become a coward in front of

my men whether i’ll be

afraid of those gunshots and i’ll run

away from battle

whether i’ll uh you know whether i’ll be

a morally bankrupt man

you know berserk if you read about

vietnam war

you’ll find there was a captain who

massacred villagers in the my life

and you keep hearing stories about

people stripped of guilt and everything

else so

i was really afraid about myself and it

is not something that

you’re all born so absence of fear is

not an abnormality it’s uh

it’s uh like you know it’s a sorry the

fear itself is not an

abnormality it is neither is it shameful

everyone should be afraid and actually

being able to function in the face of

fear is what is more important

why i’m just picture is this is me as a

young 12 year old boy

dressed in a fancy dress competition as

a naga warrior

and uh you know with all the spears and

everything because my father also served

in the same area

in 1950s late 50s and 60s

so at these things and uh here i was i

all i had to do was to stand in front of

the stage and

you know probably just uh just do a

little bit of a thing and i would have

got the first price easily because my

my friend my uh this thing was very good

but i just ran

into the stage through my friend ran

away you know and for me the whole

audience started laughing

and uh i recall that you know my father

was the embarrassed he’s an army officer

and my son was not even able to stand

there in front of them so he asked me

what was your problem

i said i was very afraid i said about

what this is all those people who are

looking at me

and he said you are you know how do you

how are you ever going to face

people in your life if you are afraid so

they’re right next to

we were in bangalore and ac center which

is in akram i don’t know if anyone of

you in bangalore

and next to the mess is a very old 200

year old graveyard

right next to smith there and this is

the picture from that graveyard

he actually from that right from the

function he took me right into the

graveyard around seven o’clock he says

okay

here there are a lot of ghosts around

and uh you know

i think you should take a walk around

and come back here and if something’s to

you

i’ll see you know and so then he

actually

as a 12 year old boy walking in a

graveyard you know which is 100 years

old with

uh kind of uh ghost and we are afraid

even now

but he made me walk through that alone

and come back and i just

it just helped me he told me it is in

your mind whatever you want to do in

your life

it is all in your mind it is the same

your same hand same

leg same eyes everything is the same

that that distinguishes a person you

know it’s how you face it

you should be a person who is in charge

in control of your senses whose control

of everything he can control his fear he

can control his anger

he can control whatever he wants you

know because the same this he

say humans who have actually come and

achieved superhuman deeds so it says if

you’re the moment you

are afraid you’re finishing yourself you

have killed yourself you know

because then you can’t function and

that’s one of the key lessons that he

taught me and that after that i’ve never

been afraid

not only physically but also morally to

speak the truth to stand up for what is

right

so do what is the right thing you know

the difficult over the easy choose the

uh inconvenient over the convenient

choose the truth over falsehood you know

that is something that i have always

i learned my lesson as a young 12 year

old boy

and then the second thing is about

violence you know violence is very

riveting and it is it is not again

violence again is not shameful

there are reasons why we could go to war

there are reasons why

uh you know but the thing is you know

violence is uh

wars violence conflict is more riveting

peace is mundane and boring

but all religions whether it be hinduism

or everyone allows that you know that uh

we are capable but then it restricts so

it restricts the kind of thing that we

can actually uh

uh kind of the minute in which we can

actually

fight and do what is right or wrong you

know and as soldiers we find

a lot of dilemmas the military necessity

and humanity recognizing the moral

equivalent of everyone

making impossible choices between bad

alternatives

it is and it all from our ethical moral

and our you know base values

so it’s it’s a battlefield for us in the

true sense there is a battlefield where

people are trying to kill you but even

in everyday life there is a battlefield

there is a constant battlefield where we

are battling between the right and long

and everything so what i’m trying to say

is that violence itself is not

bad violence you have to take decisions

that will harm other people you may have

to take decisions as a boss

to sack people to cut down the you know

two unpleasant things so that’s also a

battle

so and we are trained for it our pto

starts our drill

starts our seniors ragas and they make

us you know

and they haze us for a particular reason

to prepare us for this it’s the same

thing in which

isis kind of members uh the terror

organizations also

show their brutality and even

democracies like usa which stands up for

uh you know human rights and everything

i was in iraq as a

international red cross delegate and i

realized that you know the kind

of uh they’ve bombed them back to the

middle ages you know iraq syria

and all those countries such as

afghanistan are like not what they were

about 20 years ago or 10 years ago

and vietnam so it’s like they’ve and

they’re the only country that has used

fat and bombs

so what what we must know is that

we all violence is regulated but how to

know to end the violence and

when to start the peace process is

important and any violence

that is uh uses extremes is very

difficult to reconcile

you know it is then they you have those

things that it is better to die in

battle than to live the life of a coward

and people seek so that is the that’s

very important for us to understand

and again one thing like war i say here

it’s about ethics it’s also your choices

tomorrow

when you are in places you should always

choose and respect the dignity of every

human

being that we have comes across you know

we should choose to flourish peace over

violence because once you get into

violence

the cycle is unending you must always

choose to forgive

you know and uh forget for whatever that

is there

and uh so reconciliation is much better

than being

know to defeat or kill and that i’ve

seen it when i’m in iraq i’ve seen the

kind of anger that the sentient has been

building up

and that’s the reason why you know even

in world war ii

happened because of unequal uh terms of

peace that was given with our cells and

and that’s explains why

india gave very magnanimous terms

towards uh

pakistan in 1972 and we’ve also

rehabilitated all their prisoners 93 000

prisoners that were taken 50 years ago

were all rehabilitated

including former president musharraf so

it is it is uh it is you must understand

that there is greater strength in

forgiving and forgetting

and reconciliation that requires greater

magnanimity

and that brings me to the end of my talk

i want to thank you for this

for your time and i really am grateful

to

you all for having listened to me and uh

so

thank you very much