Today is Kargil Diwas, the day we remember the glorious 527 Indian soldiers who wrote their brave war legacy in blood against brutal odds and kicked the Pakistan army across the Line of Control (LoC)—from Mushkoh valley to Chorbat La in Jammu and Kashmir—in 1999.
While we celebrate the saga of those who sacrificed their lives and got seriously injured, the key lesson of the Kargil war was that pre-emptive intelligence and constant military vigil against an unscrupulous adversary like Pakistan will reduce the economic and human cost of war.
Had the Indian military and civilian intelligence not viewed Pakistan through pink glasses after the 1999 Lahore Declaration, and had the Indian Army commanders not conducted long-range patrols only on paper, Kargil could have been prevented or preempted, rather than costing India billions of dollars and the lives of brave soldiers in this limited war.
Documentation recovered from dead Pakistani officers and soldiers on the heights of Drass, Mushkoh and Batalik battle grounds clearly revealed that the Pakistan Army under then Army Chief Gen Pervez Musharraf had planned the intrusion into Kargil theatre at the same time when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was rolling his bonhomie bandwagon into Lahore in February 1999 under pressure from the “juffi and pappi (hugs and kisses)” gang. It was treachery of the highest order, but nothing less was expected from Musharraf in hindsight.
The fact is that the Pakistani intruders were sighted for the first time on May 3, 1999, in the Batalik sector, even though recovered documents from Pakistanis showed that their Northern Light Infantry had crossed over in the Mushkoh sector as early as March 1, with Gen Musharraf himself visiting the Gultari brigade across Drass at the same time.
Even though the Indian intelligence gave reports of a build-up of jihadists at Olthingthang in Gilgit-Baltistan right across the Kargil town, the reports were not actionable to say the least, with everyone caught in the India-Pakistan bhai bhai syndrome.
Looking back at the past 27 years, India has paid very heavily in men and material costs due to a lack of intelligence with agencies over the years, relying more on technical intelligence and its dreary analysis.
After Kargil, India paid for the IC-814 hijacking, the December 13, 2001, Parliament attack, the 2002 Kaluchak massacre, the 26/11 attacks and numerous hinterland terror attacks, orchestrated by the Pakistani deep state and their jihadist arms. Be it the 2025 Pahalgam, 2019 Pulwama, 2018 Uri or 2016 Pathankot terror strikes, the Indian external and internal intelligence has been found wanting, even though the Modi government has militarily retaliated to each and every Pakistani perfidy.
Poor intelligence costs money as each BrahMos missile used in Op Sindoor costs ₹40 crore, and so does a Rampage, S-400, SCALP missile or Harpy, Harop, Palm 200, Warmate loitering ammunition, apart from the human costs.
While not all those attacks could have been prevented even after having actionable intelligence like in 26/11, India has to seriously upgrade its intelligence if it is aspiring for the global high table.
Indian intelligence agencies should not function like other government departments, trying to save money for the exchequer, and be wholly focused on writing long reports for the government.
If you do not invest in human intelligence in terms of money and material, you end up paying a million times more in war in foreign currency. Indian intelligence has to unshackle itself and extinguish the threat from the place it is coming from, without the fear of big powers.
We need to ask ourselves whether we know why President Xi Jinping fired his two defence ministers and half of the Central Military Commission or what is the deal between Field Marshal Asim Munir and US President Donald Trump? Do we know what is happening on the ground in the Middle East?
The answer is perhaps no, as even our armed forces and intelligence chiefs have moral compasses despite facing the most unscrupulous enemy in the West and a power to the north that will be challenging the US for the numero uno status at the end of this decade.
The problem is that while the political leadership is bustling with energy, the professional leadership is just doing its job in their own silos without the same passion.
The Kargil lesson was repeated in the 2020 Pangong Tso PLA intrusion and the 2025 Pahalgam attack imposed very high annual operating costs on the country, as a simple audit of such accidents over the past quarter of a century will reveal.
India cannot become a big power till its adversaries feel the heat and are deterred from targeting Bharat. Are we ready to empower Indian intelligence through merit and innovation, or are we satisfied with a colonial mindset, bureaucratic department based on seniority and safe players?
It will be a great pity if the second option is chosen, despite having a very strong Prime Minister, Home Minister, Defence Minister, External Affairs Minister and National Security Advisor.
