Justice Markandey Katju-
The statement of the Indian army chief, Gen.Rawat, at the DRDO director’s conference in Delhi recently that India will fight the next war with indigenous weapons and win, was nonsense.
As explained in my article ‘Rafale celebration won’t change reality that the Indian military is fake’ published in theweek.in, we import most of our weapons from foreign countries, and can’t even make proper rifles ( recently we bought 72,400 rifles from a US firm Sig Sauer for Rs 700 crores ), what to say of jet fighters, tanks, artillery, missiles, submarines, etc.
I repeat, a military, like the Indian military, whose country can’t even make its own weapons, is a fake military, and can only fight another fake military like the Pak military, not a real military like that of USA or China. Half a dozen US jets can destroy the entire Indian Air Force, our tanks, artillery and missiles, etc–and they won’t even be seen by our radar because stealth aircraft have skins which absorb radar.
As for fighting the Chinese, our army fled in 1962 when confronted by it (see Neville Maxwell’s book ‘India’s China War’), and went begging to America for help.
Military power comes from economic power. So if we want a real military, not the fake one we have at present, we must make India a highly industrialized country.
[Justice Markandey Katju is former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.]
