Cover Story: Heores: Bitter Triumph

Kargil has brought about a fierce patriotic upsurge throughout the country. Solidarity with the soldiers apart, it's a renewed expression of people's faith in India.

Bangalore: Karnataka:

Bangalore: Karnataka: Once this make-up was reserved for cricket matches. Now Kargil has given a new meaning to the tricolour. Last Monday, 500 schoolchildren marched through Fraser Town in solidarity.

For the 500 or so villagers of Jaati Umra, the ancestral village of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Punjab's Amritsar district, history is moving a bit too fast. In March, they had assembled before their gurdwara to offer prayers for the success of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's bus diplomacy with Pakistan. Last month, they gathered again before the gurdwara but this time the mood was belligerent. "It's not time for prayers now but for preparing youngsters for war," said village elder Arjun Singh. At the village school, the children carefully copy "Kargil hamara hai" and "jai jawan" on their slates. "This is the only relevant lesson now," says school teacher Naajar Singh.

Jaati Umra was once a hotbed of Khalistani terrorism.Yet, today, its residents spout the rhetoric of Hindustan Ki Kasam. That's how Kargil has changed the popular mood. Throughout the country, from Ladakh to Nagaland, India is engulfed in a patriotic frenzy. From 34-year-old Hemal Rajpopat, managing director of a Mumbai entertainment company, who is obsessed with countering Pakistan propaganda on websites, to 23-year-old Shibani Mishra of Cuttack who donated her wedding jewellery to the war effort, Kargil has become the people's war. From yesterday's separatist to today's global citizen, the conflict has forced a rediscovery of India. The jawans fighting against heavy odds in the inhospitable terrain have brought about a heady emotional binding. The national feeling, which many assumed was lost in a sea of chicanery, cynicism and disgust, has suddenly resurfaced. "It is a tremendous feeling to be a part of this war," says the Assam Regiment's Tinu Naga, 22, from Mongkolamba village in Nagaland, "You are single-minded like never before."

Documenting this emotional upsurge is daunting. Almost every locality in the country has a touching story to tell. Of valour, sacrifice and solidarity. India Today correspondents travelled through the country to record a small fraction of how the war is being fought on the home front. Of how it has taken a war to make us realise a basic truth -- that we love India. Our India.