From Learning to Unlearning June 2024

Maj. Gen. Raj Mehta (retd)

Recognise that unlearning is the highest form of learning

—Rumi

The potentially climacteric high altitude Kargil War of May–July 1999 between nuclear powers India and Pakistan was fought in alpine Himalayan heights ranging around 5,000 to 5,800 metres above sea level in the Kargil and Batalik sectors of Ladakh. India found itself ill-prepared to fight when the war began, having to make do "with whatever he had” in the no-nonsense words of then Army Chief Gen. VP Malik. The Indian forces underwent the ignominy of both strategic and tactical surprise, clawing back from a prohibitively costly start in human and equipment/aircraft losses to stabilisation and thereafter on to unconditional victory against an implacable enemy, even as the world watched this televised war unfold. The bitter no-holds-barred fighting took place over 85 days as intensive diplomatic activity proceeded worldwide to limit the war from possible escalation to nuclear Armageddon. Eventually, the Pakistani Prime Minister capitulated, with 26 July 1999 being Victory Day for India but at a huge cost. Gen. Malik writes that India employed about two divisions (including about 250 artillery guns) in the Kargil War front and mounted 1,200 fighter and 2,500 helicopter sorties. During the war, 473 Indian soldiers were killed and around 1,500 wounded. Pakistani casualties were estimated to be over 700 killed.

With the silver anniversary of Kargil at hand, there is a rush to espouse what India learned from the Kargil victory; from its start-up valleys of sloth and despond to its later highs of bloody success and, not the least, its ‘lessons’ learnt. George Santayana famously warned us that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Modern philosopher Aldous Huxley quipped that the most important thing we learn from history is that we never learn from it. These are smart, pithy aphorisms but what do we really know about how to learn from history and how not to?

One attitude toward learning from history is that one does it as aesthetics, not as a means to more practical ends. AJP Taylor, a prominent 20^th century historian believed that writing history is “an art like painting or architecture and designed similarly to only give intellectual and artistic pleasure.” This highlights not just the subjectivity of history but also how difficult it is to learn ‘lessons’ from it. If executed, this would involve two processes: first, the inductive process of sifting historical evidence to access general truths about what happened, followed by a deductive process of applying these truths to the present, maybe even to the future. Such examination however leaves out the enemy; its motivations, its capabilities then and now and how this impacts our learning.

Gen. V.P. Malik with troops during the conflict. This photograph is from his book Kargil: From Surprise to Victory

This is thus a slip-shod, linear approach. Cognitive psychology suggests that in a given context, we only see what we expect to see and ignore what we don’t expect to see. Robert Jervis says in his iconic book Perception and Misperception in International Politics that the credo followed is: ‘I’ll see it when I believe it”. This suggests two realities: A roughshod seat-of-the-pants reasoning by analogy which is how we’ve learned lessons thus far. There’s another, more analytical system: Separating facts from fiction, evaluating information objectively, establishing context and only then drawing lessons. It involves forgetting mindsets and deliberate blockages of cognition. It involves unlearning. The stunning depth in the quote by Rumi, the 13^th century Persian Sufi scholar/poet presciently suggests that all learning emerges from unlearning. Unlearning is a reminder that the only verification of reality is experience. Unlearning is experience, moving from “knowing everything” to experiencing step-by-step new learning. Though Martin Luther King Jr said we’re made by history, unlearning places our learning in context. It helps us learn from history wisely and deduce lessons in context of today, not yesterday.

With unlearning established as the correct multi-pronged and forward looking tool for a review of what Kargil 1999 offers to us, this writer intends a Kargil scan to establish context, followed by how, in the pre-war phase, we saw the war dramatically unfold in a scheduled Corps War Game attended by the Northern Army Commander and representatives from key directorates in Army Headquarters, the Army Training Command (ARTRAC) and premium training establishments like College of Combat, Staff College and College of Defence Management. We will thereafter scan the various indices of war, its highs and lows for the actual participants across uniforms and borders. The key issue of lessons and unlearning will follow. Read on.

Sometime around mid-April 1999, when I was commanding 1 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) Sector at Anantnag, South Kashmir, I received a call from Chief of Staff HQ 15 Corps at Badami Bagh Cantt, Srinagar. I was asked to be part of the Control Cell which would provide oversight and moderate the conduct and flow of the yearly Corps War Game due in end April/beginning May 1999. It was a military honour to be so nominated. Let me establish the context of this honour.

In command since the last 18 months, we were in full control of what was a very active counter insurgency (CI) area with frequent no-quarter-asked-or-given encounters. A serious gunshot wound (GSW) sustained by me in one such encounter with foreign militants in the frozen hills above Anantnag early on in my tenure, and my immediate insistence to Army HQ in writing to remain in command despite the resulting low medical category had resulted (after careful screening right up to the Army Chief’s level) in rare institutional approval. I remained in command despite several months in crutches but still partici