Books | Reading for Reflection

Books should not be categorised as educational or entertaining. An ideal book should have both these features. Unless educative books are interesting it would be impossible to read them. And if the raciest of thrillers don’t leave us with a thought to ponder upon, they will remain in the read and throw category, not finding a place in the bookshelves. Here’s my list of recent books that have caught my attention. 

Maj. Gen. B.K. Sharma (retd)

Missing in Action: The Prisoners Who Never Came Back by Chander Suta Dogra is a book on the issue of India’s soldiers missing in action (MIA). The government believes that 83 Indian soldiers are still in Pakistan’s captivity, mostly since 1965 and 1971 wars. The book is a masterpiece of investigative journalism based on the primary source material such as WikiLeaks, de-classified records, minutes of high-level meetings, interviews with senior officers who dealt with the issue, families and colleagues of those MIA.

The author brings out that Pakistan held MIAs as bargaining chips to prevent India from handing over 195 Pakistani Prisoners of war (PoWs) to Bangladesh for war crime trials. India relented by handing over 195 POWs to Pakistan without doing enough to get back its own MIA. The author opines, ‘Their poor mental and physical condition, possibly as a result of years of torture and injuries, made it difficult for Pakistan to admit their presence and return them.’ The government of India eschewed from approaching United Nations (UN) or the International Court of Justice (ICJ) maintaining that bilateral dialogue and not third-party intervention should be exercised. This got Pakistan off the hook of any international pressure. Pakistan cunningly held back some of the MIA by designating them as Indian spies that enabled it to circumvent the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.

Dogra makes a fundamental observation, ‘POWs war is a war behind the scenes, a war that is not constrained by rules or conventions, laws or treaties… where prisoners are not seen as human beings with emotions and familial ties but as pawns in never ending game blighted by hate and revenge’. The book ends on the poignant note: ‘There can never be any last word for any sto