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