AMITABH BACHAN’s TALK AT NATIONAL DEFENCE ACADEMY
‘It would be a travesty
against your honour but to speak plainly here among you. You are the ultimate
guardians of our nation, our culture, our civilisation. As guardians, you are not only trained as preservers
of our peace, but also as warriors for our battle. You are not only trained to
protect life, but to take life, and give your own. Your vocation is our life
and our death, both collectively and individually.’
‘The hard truth of the matter is that the military is the
formal institution of the state for the conduct of violence. The military in a
democracy is the formal institution of the state for the conduct of legitimate violence.’
‘We can only have good government of a nation if its
individuals first govern themselves well, follow the script of citizenry. Good
government is thus mirror to good self-government. This brings good citizenship
for all. And to be that citizen is to understand the value of self-discipline.’
‘Since ancient times, in a Democracy, the blueprint for
human flourishing has always been that of the citizen-soldier, wherein freedom
and self-discipline can only exist if allied to each other in the most
strenuous embrace.’
‘Forgive me if I repeat myself, but I cannot impress upon
you strongly enough the importance of self-discipline to the flourishing of our
country and its freedoms. I would go to the extent of wishing your training as
compulsory for all of us, for civilian life.’
‘Think carefully: there is a vast gulf between those two
statements, because of one word: legitimacy.
The authority of legitimacy is given by that democracy,
invested in you. It is given over on behalf of its citizens to you. It is a
sacred responsibility and its weight that you have vowed to carry is the heavy
burden of the exalted. It is a grave and noble endeavour when directed
accordingly. When not, without legitimacy, it is tyranny.’
‘You of the National Defence Academy, you are exemplary
model to our whole culture. In you, the example has been set.
For this reason, I here take the opportunity to remind you
that as much as you are soldiers, you too are citizens of a dream.’
‘I spoke earlier of dreams. I spoke that both you and I
share a common purpose in the pursuit of dreams. That dream which you have
undertaken to perform for the sake of others is the dream of a democratic
republic. The dream of democracy for our nation is the dream of a benevolent
justice, a fairer and more equitable life for all citizens.
We have a dream. It is a dream of India.’
‘For ultimately, one doesn’t fight best for one’s country
as a sheer geographical entity. One fights best for what that country stands
for, for its dream.
And I want to see a great dream, a higher one, a stronger
dream among us. I want to push that founding dream of Independence and take it
further: march on it, sail it, fly with it. Inheritors as we are of long and
magnificent civilizations, I want us to merit their legacy, to aim to meet
their distinction, even surpass them if we can. This requires the kind of vision
from us that may strain the imagination. Inheritors as we are of our own great
civilizations, we now have the potential to reach beyond to the wider world to
find that vision.’
‘For our world is now truly a global one, and now, more
than ever before, the wealth of all its civilisations is our oyster. Its rich
pearls are ours to partake in as we choose: they are ours to share.’
‘Think about it: I would like to put an example to you of
what I mean.
Democracy itself was indeed a kind of ‘import’ to India to
begin with. We looked out, beyond our shores, and saw that it was good. We took
the good in it and made it our own, and the largest democracy on earth at that.
If we have the cultural confidence to do such a thing, may we reach further,
and again, for more.
The dream of democracy came from the world of the Ancient
Greeks into modernity. It was imported and re-vamped first to Enlightenment
Europe. Then the United States of America imported it for their own use and
re-shaped it to their own needs, re-exporting it again back to Europe, where
again it was adapted, and from there, to the rest of the world. Quite a
circuitous route. Do we, now, think of democracy in India as a foreign
imposition, an alien import? If so, from where, exactly? No: we claim it as our
own.
But let us return to Ancient Greece for a moment, to
another speck of dust that lodged itself in the shell of a civilisation, and
encrusted, turned jewel.’
‘I would like to tell you a martial story that will amaze
you. It is of Pergamon, an Ancient Greek civilisation that existed on the
shores of present-day Turkey. This story is known because of a war memorial
they left behind. It was to celebrate a victory over invading Celts, and they
erected this monument at the very centre of their great city, before the temple
to their gods. It consisted of a series of figures struggling against their
mortal wounds, their accoutrement of war still in hand. They were beautiful,
noble and defiant until their dying end. These figures of war, these warriors,
were given the ultimate prize, immortalised in sculpture for the ages, to be
held up above the citizenry in remembrance of their greatness.’
‘But here is the rub; here is what startles: these great
warriors are depictions of the Celts, their enemy in battle, over whom the
Pergamenes were soundly victorious.’
‘Think upon it, it is extraordinary. These people of
Pergamon immortalised their enemy in noble memorial. These people were strong
enough, confident enough in their own culture, to remember their own victorious
dead by saying, “Our enemy was great and noble and died with dignity. In our
victory over them, so we are all the greater, all the nobler, all the more
dignified.” ’
‘To vilify one’s foe is to fear them: it ultimately
dehumanizes both parties equally. True victory over one’s enemy is to conquer
such fear. Fear and wrath: they blind, they betray good judgment, they poison
the noble spirit. Pergamon did not make monsters of their enemy to defeat them:
these were a people strong enough to acknowledge the dignity and humanity of
their sworn foe despite war and death, for they knew that to make monsters of
the enemy is to become monstrous oneself. Their victory was greater.’
‘The measure of true greatness of an individual, as much as
of a country, is to understand this truth. Against such greatness, no adversary
can ever win out, no other civilisation can overcome such a fatal embrace.’
‘I urge you to keep this example in mind in the present
climate of fear against terrorist threat from within, and threat to our borders
from without. If we are afraid, feel under threat, then we are already gravely
weakened, for fear is the most powerful weapon an enemy can possess. Reflect
upon the Pergamenes and their cultural confidence. Their greatest valour was
the overcoming of such fear. We can do the same, we must do the same, if we
want to win out.’
‘You in the Armed Forces have a more specific power, as the
formal and embodied institution of the state for the conduct of legitimate
violence.
The wisdom of force is that it is always more powerful as
an idea, a potential, than an actuality. And force is always most powerful when
it is has moral worth: legitimacy. The justice of good character as a moral
entity is the greatest of disciplines in such a context. It is to marshal the
mind to clarity against chaotic fear. It is to direct the heart to virtuous
endeavour without wrath. It is to act with such a mind and heart. And that
justice of good character then becomes an end in itself.
If we need you to protect our national character, then we
need you more characterful than most.
If we need you to protect our civilisation, then we need
you more civilized than most.
If we need you to protect our humanity, then we need you
more humane than most.
If we need you to protect our dream of a nation, then we
need you more idealistic than most.’
‘You are the elite of our military establishment. You will
soon take up the grave weight of guarding its ethos. The very nature of your
position as officers will require you not only to perform orders, but to make
them.
As much as you have learned from your time here at the
National Defence Academy, so it will be your duty to teach its lessons to those
who perform your order. To command, to lead, is to educate, and through that
education, bring true and enduring inspiration to those who follow you. The
duty of all education is to pass it on. Pass it on, and you will bring honour
with you, wherever you venture.’
‘I trust you to look to your own insignia, the symbol of
the National Defence Academy, for there you will constantly re-discover your
own meaning, value, inspiration. There you will find our dream, and your own as
well.
The depiction of all three services – the crossed swords,
the anchor and the Himalayan eagle – therein demonstrates the equality of
camaraderie, fellowship, in fact, fraternity. The Ashoka capital, the symbol of
ancient India and our new republic at once, remembers the persistence of our
great civilisation and civilizing culture, and your vow to uphold it. ‘Sevo
paramo Dharma’ is your dignity.
But the point of the symbol is in its unity. The unity of
the mind, the body and the spirit; the individual and the collective; the dream
and the actuality of legitimate violence; our past, our present, our future.
The balance of parts that makes the whole.
Democracy itself only works to our benefit when it mirrors
this unity: when we are a commonwealth of citizens and we understand the
necessity of the balance of our various parts. Your unity of the Armed Forces
likens the mind to the unity of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity as the core of
a democracy: each one can only exist and flourish in relation to the other two
parts.
So symbols harness our manifold thoughts together in
contemplation.
But symbols also teach. And they don’t just teach once.
They teach perpetually, through the ages. Remember your symbols, hold them
sacred, revere them, for their meaning endures beyond our own brief mortality.
We are all humble before them and equal in humility, for meaning is what
endures before us and beyond us: it is our greatest heritage and will be our
greatest legacy.
Symbols teach us to be ourselves, to remain ourselves, to
endure ourselves, to act ourselves, to perform ourselves, together.
Your insignia, your emblem, that of the Academy, is not
finished with you yet, though many of you will soon depart to your separate
futures. Keep your emblem close, and you will be taught again and again. Being
taught, so you must go out and teach by word and example, for when you leave
the Academy, you become part of that insignia, symbol yourselves.’
‘Your duty, your dharma, is not a given. It is not any
particular order, directive, institution, structure. The military can give you
your vocation in life, meaning, cause, so many other things of untold value.
But as an individual, your dharma is ultimately your own duty alone and you
will forever be answerable to your own conscience: it is your ultimate judge of
merit as a human being.’
‘You have your duty as a military officer. More so you have
your duty as a citizen of India. But ultimately, you have your duty as a human
being. Your greatest duty is to live all three together with good conscience,
in good character, and daily, with vigilance. It is a formidable task for any
of us, but the good one, the right one, the path of dignity.
Then you will serve yourselves, your profession, and your
country as one.
This is our dream. Be it, live it, do it. ‘
…. And then ending it all with the inspirational
‘AgniPath’.
I felt proud. I felt statesmanlike. I felt I missed being in
such an institute !!
Major Mohan Kumar, who was put in charge of receiving and
dropping me off was a qualified ex cadet of the institute, now brought down
through recognized qualification to conduct activities among the cadets – a
position of great envy, I am told. This is a prestige appointment and the Major
felt happy and proud to be worthy to be positioned back. He had served with
distinction in Kashmir fighting the insurgents and narrated many incidents of
him and his team on mission. But the one that alarmed me most was the
revelation, that, the army follows a given ethical code of warfare, even when
they fight intruders. The insurgents do not wear uniform and therefore do not
qualify as an army as such. But if they carry a weapon then the army has the
right to attack them. However, the ethics in civilian war of this kind is that
they are not to open fire until the enemy does so. So the forces wait in the
most difficult terrain and circumstances till such act occurs. The other factor
is that if the militant after opening fire were to drop his weapon, the army
cannot attack him, for he, because of his disposition, then becomes a civilian
and the civilian as per ethics of the armed forces cannot be attacked or fired
upon. The ultimate results therefore are that the army become sitting ducks
almost at the guile and mercy of the insurgent. The loss of personnel, officers
and jawans of the forces then becomes an imminent factor for consideration. We
lose our men in these grave circumstances, in excess of what they would, in
fair and rightful warfare.
What an unfair disadvantage !! It has been unfair too on my
part to have kept you so long and in such severe circumstances.
Rest
well dear ones … for me the night at 1:42 is still young and … twitterable !! Love and much much more .. salut`e
- Amitabh Bachchan
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