Service Traditions - Wg Cdr Dinesh Bharat

The 'Service Traditions' & The 'Sperm Politicians': from The AFA Facebook

 

Serving the motherland by joining the Indian Defense Forces has always been the most honorable of all the professions. When young people join the military, they may not have a clear idea about the service conditions, the tenures or the detailed financial terms of engagement. But they are always clear about one thing. They understand clearly that the chances of dying in the line of duty are manifold. They know that the war itself means either you die for the country or help the enemy die for his. There is no other choice. The attrition rate has always been very high both during the war & the peace times.

Despite knowing the risks of joining the military, families have followed the tradition of joining generation after generation. If a member of the family gets martyred in the war, it becomes a matter of great honour for the family and still more people become willing to join the same battalion, the same arm or the same unit. The soldiers have always taken pride in talking about this as an 'Honorable Tradition'.

Somewhere, in the realms of the Time, the politicians/babus also understood about the honour that the soldiers associate with the Service Traditions. So many other things done earlier only in the Services keep getting copied by the people in the civil, but our reference to service traditions seems to have become one big 'casualty' as it has been adopted by the politicians/babus.

Exactly as our generations have been joining to serve in the same unit, the politicians have also started getting their progeny into the profession of politics and if the father was a PM/CM, the son/daughter also must become the PM/CM because it is all a matter of 'traditions'. If we were to look around, we will find this happening all over and the public is accepting these people as if the tradition somehow compares itself with the honour of joining the defense forces.

The difference is stark. 

They are becoming rulers generations after generations and we, from the Services, are willing to die for the country generations after generations. No wonder the word 'Honour' has to be missing for them. The term 'Sperm Politicians' has thus been coined very aptly for such people who get entitled to rule just because they belong to a particular pedigree. 

The rulers are there for the pelf and not for any honour. If our profession was indeed seen as 'honourable' by these people, their children would also have chosen to join the Defense services. Today, with all the shortages in manpower, its only the Services children who are keeping up with the Service Traditions. There are no children from these 'privileged families' anywhere in uniform.

Services will now have to find newer ways to project the sacrifice and the honour that comes for the people who join the Indian Armed Forces.


Veteran Wg Cdr Dinesh Bharat

[Tri Services Veterans]