Gen VK Singh

Well what triggered my previous blog? Of course it was Gen VK Singh, my namesake. His date of birth is a controversy that is hogging the headlines. And of course I don’t like him, for earlier when you would google for VK Singh, you would get some lines pertaining to me. Today he hogs the first 5 pages of the search, relegating me to anonymity.

He is a good thinker, plain speaker and bold officer. This is enough to make in not so popular. this is also enough to make him un-deserving. Besides, he is smart. He has a swagger about him. He carries himself in a manner befitting a 4 star general. He is not perpetually obsequious toward the political masters.

A son of an army officer, a Rajput by caste, an honors graduate from the Staff College, and Colonel of the Rajput Regiment, as my mother says, करेला और नीम चढ़ा.

So he swaggers. But in India, people are afflicted by what you can call the bechara syndrome. Take the example of our PM. He is very intelligent, very brilliant but looks like a bechara. He will secure one position of influence after the other. Gandhi perhaps would not have been as powerful, if he had the looks of Mountbatten or Gregory Peck. Indians like such bechara looks. They like to support becharas.

So despite the fact, that we have after 20 years maybe, after Gen Sundarji, a smart general, who carries himself well, he does not go down well with the all powerful bureaucracy nor the political pavilion.

So he will lose the case of the date of birth controversy. The media will not support him. They will underplay the episode actually. What a pity.