Navy soldiers during the commissioning of INS Tarasa in Mumbai on Tuesday. PTI

Mumbai, September 26

The first Scorpene-class submarine Kalvari is expected to be commissioned by November-December, Vice Admiral Girish Luthra said on Tuesday.The Scorpene-class submarine was handed over to the Indian Navy four days back by the Mazgaon Dock Limited, one of the key ship building units of the Indian Navy.“The Kalvari submarine has already been in the sea for some time. Some 110 days of sea trials have been completed and more pre-commissioning sea trials are going on. We are expecting it to be commissioned by November-December this year,” Vice Admiral Luthra said.The submarines, designed by French naval defence and energy company DCNS, are being built by Mazagon Dock Limited here as part of Project-75 of the Indian Navy.”The Indian Navy is keen on increasing indigenous components in ship building activity. We have also increased the indigenous components in submarines as well. The components’ share needs to be increased in weapons and sensors,” Vice Admiral Luthra said.He was speaking here at the commissioning of Indian Navy’s ship Tarasa at the Naval dockyard here.The Western Naval Command today commissioned INS Tarasa, which is a 400 tonne ship.It was a much needed addition in the Navy’s fleet, Luthra said. — PTI

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 16

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman paid a maiden visit to the Headquarters of the Western Command at the Chandimandir Military Station today.She was briefed about the operational preparedness, administrative issues and ex-servicemen’s affairs by the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Lt Gen Surinder Singh.Expressing complete confidence in the immense operational might of the Western Command, she lauded its contribution to all spheres, including assistance to the civilian administration, especially in the recent past.She also laid a wreath at the Veer Smriti war memorial to pay tributes to martyrs and planted a sapling in the complex. She also interacted with the troops. Sitharaman attended a function at Kasauli and later proceeded back to New Delhi.

All praise

The minister lauded the Western Command’s contribution to all spheres, including assistance to the civilian administration.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Tribune file

Jammu, September 16

Pakistani troops targeted Indian border outposts and hamlets along the International Border (IB) in Jammu district in overnight firing and shelling, a senior BSF officer said on Saturday.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

There have been continuous ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the IB for the past four days. A BSF jawan was killed and a few others were injured in the cross-Loc fire on Friday.

Pakistani troops started firing at Indian posts in Arnia sector around midnight, prompting Border Security Force (BSF) personnel to retaliate, the officer said.

“Firing stopped at 0645 hours,” the officer said.

One temple, two houses and three cowsheds were damaged in the Pakistani firing in Sai, Treva and Jabowl villages. Three livestock were killed in the overnight shelling, the officer added.

BSF jawan Bijender Bahadur was killed and a villager injured on Friday when Pakistan troops resorted to firing and shelling along the IB in Arnia sector.

Two Pakistani soldiers were killed in retaliatory action by the BSF on Thursday, while three Indian jawans were injured in unprovoked firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the IB and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Poonch districts on Wednesday.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan Army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army. PTI

The Army also recovered weapons from the spot. PTI file

Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 16

Two militants were on Saturday killed as the Indian Army foiled an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Machhil sector in Kashmir

Army said troops noticed suspicious movement along the LoC and challenged the intruders, leading to a gunfight in which the two militants were killed.

Weapons have been recovered from the slain militants.

More details awaited.

http://

To keep the camaraderie alive, Citizen of Noida, paid homage to their 36 Martyrs, on Independence Day, at Shaheed Smarak Memorial in Sector 29 Noida. It is the only, triservice memorial in our country dedicated to the Nation by Services chiefs in 2002.

The chairman, Lt General Bakshi (V) PVSM, laid the first wreath followed by families of the martyrs, heads of institutions,residents of Noida, students and members of sanstha. It was a sight to watch as some of them stood in solemn silence and paid homage to the soldiers unknown to them including granddaughter of Col VN Thapar. The national Flag and flags of three services were fluttering majestically and adding to the great ambience of the memorial.

Cdr N Mahajan(V)

Director, Shaheed Samarak Sanstha, Noida

M 305 Sec 25 Noida

9818315422

Harish Khare

Seventy years ago, two nations were created in the Indian sub-continent.  A new nation, Pakistan, was carved out; this ‘moth-eaten’ new nation was to be home to the Muslims of the British India. A truncated India became the successor state to the British imperial order, its pretensions, its institutions, its boundaries and its flawed control model. The grand hope was that after these cartographic rearrangements in the East and the West,  the two new states and their newly endowed citizens would rediscover the joys of  civilizational co-existence. That hope got definitely belied by all the bloodshed, dislocation, riots, violence, massacres that attended the Partition. Seventy years later the two nations are yet to find a modus vivendi to live in benign comfort with each other.  In 1971, India helped Pakistan’s eastern wing to discover its separate national identity; consequently, Pakistan became a much more compact nation. It is much more a natural state today than it was before 1971. And, it now has a huge historic grievance against India to sustain its national narrative; it continues to define itself as a nation — internally and externally — in hostile terms towards India.For seventy years, we in India had permitted ourselves a glorious air of grand superiority over Pakistan. As long as Jawaharlal Nehru lived, his aura, political legitimacy, global stature, mass popularity and dedicated leadership gave us in India a new sense of collective equanimity. We were imaginatively engaged in creating a new India, building its new “temples” and inculcating a scientific temper in this ancient land of medieval superstition and ignorance. For seventy years, or most part of it, we could legitimately assure ourselves that we were better than Pakistan. We have had a Constitution and its elaborate arrangements; we were a democracy and held free and fair elections to choose our rulers; we had devised a dignified political culture of peaceful transfer of power among winners and losers after each election at the Centre and in the States;  we had committed ourselves to egalitarian  social objectives; we were determined not to be a theocratic State; we were proudly secular and  we put in place procedures and laws to treat our religious and linguistic minorities respectfully; we had  leaders who drew their legitimacy and authority from popular mandates;  our armed forces stayed in the barracks; we had a free and robust judiciary;  a mere high court judge in Allahabad  could unseat a powerful prime minister. And, when a regime tried to usurp the democratic arrangement, the citizens threw the offending rulers out at the first opportunity. For seventy years, we had every reason to believe that we were superior to Pakistan. Above all, we were not Pakistan. In recent decades, we became even more smug about our superiority as we have unthinkingly bought into the Western narrative that Pakistan was a “failing state” or a “failed state” — that too with nuclear weapons. What we have failed to appreciate is that Pakistani elites, too, have devised a working political culture best suited to its genius. Pakistani elites are not untroubled by inequities and inequalities in the land. We may bemoan that the Army has emerged as the senior partner in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi axis; nonetheless, it is a state that remains unwavered in its animosity towards us but still runs a coherent foreign policy and maintains internal order. Its elites have perfected the art of taking the Western leaders for a ride and have seen off super-powers’ intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan. There is a certain kind of stability in Pakistan’s perennial instability. Seventy years later we in India find ourselves itching to move towards a Pakistani model, notwithstanding our extensive paraphernalia of so many constitutional institutions of accountability. In recent years, we no longer wish to define ourselves as a secular nation; our dominant political establishment is exhorting us to shed our ‘secular’ diffidence and to begin taking pride in us being a Hindu rashtra. Just as in Pakistan, the dominant religion has come to intrude and influence the working of most of our institutions.For seventy years our political class looked down upon Pakistan for its inability to keep its Generals in their place. Seventy years on, we are ready to ape those despised “Pakis.”  Our Army was never so visible or as voluble as it is now; our armed forces are no longer just the authorised guardians of our national integrity, they are also being designated as the last bulwark of nationalism. Consequently, as in Pakistan, we no longer allow any critical evaluation of anything associated with the armed forces. Those who do not agree with the armed forces’ performance or profile stand automatically denounced as ‘anti-national.’ What is more, we are thoughtlessly injecting violence and its authorised wielders as instruments of a promised renaissance. Seventy years later, we are cheerfully debunking all those great patriots and towering leaders who once mesmerised the world in the 20th century world and who were a source of our national pride and who had forged an inclusive political community across the land by instilling in us virtues of civic togetherness. As Pakistan has done, we too now seek national glory and garv  from re-writing our history books to cater to our religious prejudices. Just as Pakistan has institutionalized discrimination, we too are manufacturing  a ‘new normal’ in which it is deemed normal and natural to show the minorities their place at the back of the room.  Seventy years later, the most complex legacy of the Partition — Kashmir — remains unresolved.  It continues to bleed both Pakistan and India, financially, politically and spiritually.  All these years we had allowed ourselves to believe that for Pakistani elites the Kashmir dispute provides a dubious platform of a meretricious coherence; not to be left behind, we in India are increasingly content to use the Kashmir problem to help us redefine the content and contours of our edgy and brittle  nationalism.  Worse, Kashmir continues to take a toll on our collective sensitivities. As a nation, we are getting comfortable in the use of violence and coercion to resolve differences at home and abroad. Seventy years ago we were determined to be different from Pakistan; seventy years later we are unwittingly beginning to look like Pakistan. Mohammed Ali Jinnah must be permitting himself a crack of a smile at our unseemly hurry to move away from Jawaharlal Nehru and his founding legacy.  

India and China have been locked in a face-off in the Doklam area of the Sikkim sector for the last 50 days. AFP file

Beijing, August 10

China will make no “compromise” on ending the Doklam standoff, top PLA analysts said, as they launched a propaganda blitz on a group of Indian journalists here on how New Delhi has “misjudged” Beijing’s resolve by sending troops to what it claims to be Chinese territory.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

India and China have been locked in a face-off in the Doklam area of the Sikkim sector for the last 50 days after Indian troops stopped the Chinese People’s Liberation Army from building a road in the area.

China claimed it was constructing the road within its territory and has been demanding immediate pull-out of the Indian troops from Doklam. Bhutan says Doklam belongs to it but China claims sovereignty over the area. China also claims that Thimphu has no dispute with Beijing over Doklam.

Top Chinese military experts and South Asia scholars, during an interaction with the media, said the Chinese government, people and the military were “angry” over India’s “dangerous” move in Doklam which is not an Indian territory.

“China so far has not used the world ‘invasion’. We have only used words like ‘trespass’ or ‘incursion’ and that is the goodwill of China,” Senior Colonel Zhou Bo said.

“We hope for the best but we—the Chinese government and the military—do not have any room to make any compromise on the matter. So for the well-being of the two peoples and the amity of the two countries, India must withdraw unconditionally,” he said.

His hardline comments were echoed by Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhou, Director at the Centre on China-America Defense Relations of the Academy of Military Science, who said Beijing has no room for compromise on the Doklam standoff.

“If you want this issue to be resolved, the Indian Army must pull back or otherwise this issue can only be resolved by the use of force,” Zhao asserted.

The Chinese military scholars also kept on harping that India has “trespassed” into Chinese territory and there was no basis for it to send its soldiers when Bhutan has “not invited” New Delhi to act on its behalf.

The Chinese military scholars also raked up the issue of Kashmir.

“Pakistan is a friend of China. If China crosses the Indian border or the India-China border on behalf of Pakistan I don’t know how you will react to that,” Zhao said. His comments came a day after a top Chinese Foreign Ministry official also raised the Kashmir issue.

Needling India, Wang Wenli, Deputy Director General of the Boundary and Ocean Affairs of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had raised the Kashmir issue and also referred to the Kalapani dispute between India and Nepal.

“We think it is not doable for the Indian side to use tri-junction as an excuse,” she had said, referring to Indian External Affairs Ministry’s assertion that the road building at the China, India and Bhutan tri-junction in the strategic narrow Chicken’s Neck area changes the status quo.

“The Indian side has also many tri-junctions. What if we use the same excuse and enter the Kalapani region between China, India and Nepal or even into the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan,” she had said.

The Chinese military experts said India’s actions have “severely affected” the political trust between the two countries and New Delhi had to face the “consequences” of its “dangerous” move as it “misjudged” the resolve of Beijing in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity. PTI