Two decades or so ago, a soldier won a Sena Medal for a second time. A mofussil paper wrote he had won a medal, but been barred from wearing it. Most readers, village simpletons, thought their fauji beta had done something wrong, and been ‘barred’ from wearing his medal.
Nothing of the sort. Blame a poor scribe’s ignorance of the fauji lingo, or the military’s mulish refusal to speak in ‘civil’ tongue (no offence meant) when they communicate with civvies. In this case, the press note listing the year’s R-Day honours had mentioned ‘Bar to Sena Medal’ against the trooper’s name. Scribes regular on the defence beat know ‘bar’ means the soldier is getting the same honour for a second time (when a bar or a clip gets attached to the medal). Since small papers can’t afford full-time defence scribes, and get their generalists to decipher the hieroglyphics of the honours list, some poor drudge comes out with such bloopers every year.
This year’s list too reads like the Rosetta Stone: “Bar to Sena Medal: 3010203A L/HAV SATYA PAL SINGH, SM, 6 RAJPUT.” No secret code—3010203A is the winner’s Army number; L/Hav means lance havildar; Satya Pal Singh his name; SM means the Sena Medal he won earlier; 6 Rajput is the 6th battalion of the Rajput regiment; and you know the ‘bar’.
IMAGE AI
As a defence correspondent for two decades from the early 1990s, I had drilled into several brass-hatted brains, and even at commanders’ conferences attended by chiefs and C-in-Cs which I had been honoured to address, to use ‘civil language’ in their public interfaces. They have all laughed at the poor scribe’s ‘bar’ plight tale, nodded their heads to my suggestions, but ‘bars’ and slashes still mar their communiques. I still dread every January 25 evening when fellow-scribes call me, as if I were an Alan Turing, asking me to decipher a trade called ‘ACH GD’, whether ‘TELST RTO’ is Army’s driving licence office, and SEW is the guy who stitches buttons on their uniforms.
Gallantry citations are worse! The Chakra winner might have ‘neutralised’ (killed or wounded) an enemy company single-handedly, and captured a post. But the release would say, at some point of time he had ‘made contact with the enemy’. A shocked scribe once asked me: “What is this? Did he go and meet the enemy?” I pacified him saying, ‘to make contact with the enemy’ means becoming aware of, spotting, or engaging the enemy in combat.
Indeed, facts are finger taps away these days, and any scribe with a smartphone can get them in seconds. But the lists arrive late evening, and how many 1,000 seconds would a poor drudge take to decipher the codes in which 400-odd medals are couched, and translate them into Assamese, Marathi, or Telugu before his first edition closes? Editors, busier with ‘more important’ Padma awards, would list a few of the higher ranks and move on.
There, we commit a cardinal crime. Honours are more sacred for the YOs (find out!), JCOs and ORs, than for the star-ranked brass. A village home that had sent its brave boy to the fauj, and had heard he had done proud in Kupwara or Nowshera, would be waiting to read in the papers if he had been honoured. His kith and kin would be proud, they would keep the paper clipping framed on the wall; so would his neighbours, schoolmasters, playmates, and his love-lorn maiden, who would all be toasting with laddoos, pongal or payasam.
It is tough for the fauj to change. Please don’t. Have it the way you want. But can’t you just put an asterisk at the phrase ‘bar to SM’ and add a footnote on what it means, or give a glossary of your MWOs, TELST RTOs, and ACH Gds?
prasannan@theweek.in