Border security farce

Even if the Indo-Pak atmosphere is clouded with high-level fulminations, things are changing for the better on the ground — more specifically at the Wagah-Attari international border. With India’s diplomatic corps headed by a woman, it was perhaps just a matter of time before Beating Retreat — the daily goose-stepping border tamasha — also saw the entry of women Border Security Force (BSF) personnel. The women were apparently selected for their ‘height, enthusiasm, physical fitness and stamina’ , and the tallest have now been taking part in the institutionalised evening display of India-Pakistan hostility .

These women constables had already been drafted in for more mundane and less-showy border duties such as checking and frisking, but the government — and BSF brass — must be complimented for deputing them for this ceremonial task as well. It is brave of them to contemplate putting women in a role hitherto reserved for towering men with bristling mustachios and bellowing voices on both sides of the border, who put on a show of faux martial intimidation and aggression as national flags are lowered at dusk. Women will undoubtedly bring in a measure of much-needed grace and equanimity.

If it had not been for lustily-cheering crowds on both sides, the exaggerated posturing that marks the pantomime would strike an onlooker as comical. This realisation must have dawned on the powers that be too, for under new orders the strapping BSF personnel will no longer have to kick their legs up in a goose-step that is more akin to the sychronised can-can of the Rockettes than anything soldierly.

Of course, given the traditional tension between our two nations, the decision to depute women and finally tone down the ritualistic high-stepping and stomping as it caused ‘mild-to-severe damage to joints in the lower half of (soldiers’ ) bodies’ , should not be construed as a weak-kneed response by India...