Bharat is not a nation of cowards, as will soon be proved

Munir has sowed the wind and will see the institution he heads begin to crumble after the response by PM Modi

- M.D. NALAPAT

Chief of Army Staff in Pakistan, Asim Munir, gambled in the Pathankot attack on the myth fostered by the Pakistan military. Which is that Bharat is a nation of cowards who supinely agreed to Partition in 1947, when the reality was that the British were in no position to hold on to the British Indian Empire. The reason was the military, which was showing increasing signs of disaffection towards a continuation of British rule over an ancient land.

A situation was coming in which the regular army would go the way of the Indian National Army (INA) launched by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. And after the exhaustion of having fought and won, substantially with the help of Indian troops, World War II, Britain was in no condition to quell an 1857 mutiny on a much larger scale. The British Army was not even 400,000 in number, and the public was exhausted by the war, which is why during wartime itself, of course when it was clear that Hitler and his forces were defeated, voters in Britain chose Labour led by Clement Attlee over the Conservatives led by the formidable wartime Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill.

It was a shock to the world, as the US lost to the ages President Franklin Delalo Roosevelt, who was succeeded by Vice-President of the US Harry S Truman.