Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Thursday said he was not hurt by the comparison with the infamous British army officer General Reginald Dyer, who was responsible for the 1919 Jallianwalla Bagh massacre.
“I am an army officer. Just anything can’t affect me. You have to be prepared to face such comments. People can misinterpret (my comments),” Rawat said in an interview.
The comparison was made by historian Partha Chatterjee from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata.
Chatterjee wrote an article for a website in which he drew parallels between General Dyer and General Rawat, and argued against the army chief’s support for Major Leetul Gogoi, who had used a Kashmiri man as a shield from the unrest in the Valley.
“There is no need to react. It should not bother me. He (Chatterjee) was trying to draw a reaction from somewhere else,” the army chief said.
DH News Service
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