GLORIFYING DEFEAT: AN ANATHEMA

1. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori — ―It is sweet and right to die for your country.ǁ The centuries-old Latin line popularized in modern times by Wilfred Owen — in a poem written near the end of the First World War — as ―The old Lieǁ told ―with such high zest to ―children ardent for some desperate glory. A century and more later, this old lie‘ continues to be seen as useful and necessary to the armed forces, especially in times of peace. Individually too we‘ve all been beaten at one point or another in our daily lives. Be it through harder circumstances than we could bear tougher competition, or even just bad luck. It happens. Sometimes we‘re beaten and other times we beat ourselves. However, in combat there is only 50% chance of victory, so unless you happen to be far stronger, more talented, or luckier than the adversary, odds are that you may not be the victor. The challenges of combat notwithstanding, we learn to lose and yes, we learn to accept defeat too. And yes, our loss might be the result of perfectly valid reasons. But before we get too comfortable with losing, we have to remember: that‘s not why we took up the profession of arms.

2. It‘s a fine line we walk as professional soldiers between accepting that we won‘t always make our goals, and being completely dismayed by not making our goals. Neither option is right or wrong. Unfortunately, it‘s turns out to be a lot easier to accept the reasons why our loss is okay and overlook the reasons why our loss might have been avoided. The thing I‘ve found as a common strain in history or it may just be my prejudiced view that we glorify defeat and by doing so, it‘s harder to maintain objectivity. Once glorified; personal acts of heroism are used as a cover to obfuscate tactical and operational blunders of the hierarchy. There is certainly something in the theory that we Indians value heroic failure. Be it defeat of Porus by Alexander in ancient past to the battle of Saragarhi or Rezang La. I put that down to the national cult of self-deprecation — the pride that apes humility — and the fact that strength in the face of failure is more admirable than strength buoyed by success. Strength in the face of death — as displayed by Maj Shaitan Singh and the braves at Saragarhi — is even more admirable.

3. This is an honest attempt to present a view to put to end the idea of glorification of defeat and failure. Our culture appears to be fascinated with the concept, to a fault. At the heart of this philosophy is an unsubstantiated, almost romantic notion of the value of randomness; that is if we just open ourselves to the possibility of failure and defeat, then something positive will happen, almost by a kind of magic. Victory is intentional and defeat is not and the moment we glorify defeat we refuse to learn, study and recalibrate our responses to achieve better efficiency. Glorified defeat makes a good story in the future but a poor teacher always. As soldiers failure and defeat is a matter of shame, even a whiff of failure initiates a psychomotor response of either avoiding it or worst glorifying it thereby making it beyond scrutiny. It helps us not feel judged for failing. At the same time, glorifying failure or defeat has some severe consequences.

4. Defeat was a consequence of certain mistakes; tactical or operational. Assuming that the protagonists then had more information, more time or more advice, the mistakes might have been prevented. Supposing they evaluated their COAs well, defeat might not have been the end result. But none of these things happened. Errors were made and it is undeniable. The modus vivendi to move forward is to learn from the mistake or mistakes, so that you can prevent them from happening again. Glorifying defeat makes you look for justifiable reasons for what happened and brush the errors under the carpet.

5. As an organization we have always placed ourselves on a pedestal beyond criticism extrinsic or intrinsic. It brings out the worst in us because it makes us feel judged and inadequate. When we glorify defeat, it amounts to defending your actions. In our collective wisdom, we will give reasons for what happened and how the circumstances conspired to deal us an unfair hand and had it not been for the martyrdom of some the situation could have been far worse. We will probably never blame it on ourselves; debacle of 1962 was a politico-strategic fiasco and the armed forces suffered the consequences. While there is merit in the statement above but we can‘t take away the fact that it takes two to tango. Glorifying defeat gives the organization the backbone to put the blame on someone/something else while extricating itself and its own actions.

6. Organizationally mediocrity is a taboo and as an organization the necessity to reinvent and reinvigorate is inescapable. Since we have decided to glorify defeat and failure, we refuse to take bold corrective measures and are beset with inertia. Compounding our challenge is that this false sense of excellence breeds a sense of passivity; why fix a thing which isn‘t broken. Automatically, glorified failure has given strength to a mediocre state for years to come.

7. Glorification of defeat leads to a situation where introspection and critical analysis are sacrilegious, changes which could have been beneficial would never be forthcoming and dead wood would continue to stymie growth of the system and at the same time blind creativity as well. Glorification of defeat in combat has become synonymous with glorification of failure in normal life where in we create martyrs who have been wronged by the circumstances or the system. With just a little creativity, the organization could be better and worth more than we are today trying to seek relevance and at times engaged in infructuous spats with other vectors of national power to cleave out a niche for ourself. Refusing to glorify failure when we fail is a must, how can we rest on our oars and praise failure when it happens?

8. When confronted by a defeat, the instinctive coping mechanism is to convince oneself that this was inevitable despite the best we had done. Successful organizations have to be resilient in all they do. It doesn‘t matter if there‘s discomfort and uncertainty. It is not a setback but rather a catapult into achieving even greater things. Those factors are what propel us to collective greatness. And there‘s no better teacher for those excruciating factors than learning from failure and defeat. Failure is something we‘re all afraid of. Simply remember Lance Armstrong‘s words: ―Pain is temporary, Quitting lasts forever.