Bajrang Bali Ki Jai

On the 10th of October 1962, the Chinese crept up the hills around Thagla in the Namka Chu valley. Facing them were three Indian Companies: 4 Grenadiers, 9 Punjab, 1/9 Gorkha, 2 Rajputana Rifles and 01 Platoon of Assam Rifles. 

The Chinese had arrived with their 11th Div with 3 regiments, equaling a brigade. They had lined the hills with over 150 guns of 82 mm and 120 mm. The numerical superiority was around 20:1.

Lt Col Rikh of 2n Rajput had taken stock. He had 150 bullets per rifleman, 17 magazines (28 rounds each) per LMG and 2 grenades per soldier. The battalion's 3" (2 & 3 inch) mortars had 60 rounds of ammo, equal to five minutes firing time. But then, he also knew what the Chinese did not know: his men were Rajputs.

At 05:14 hrs on 20 Oct 1962, the Chinese opened up their 150 guns. 82 and 120 mm shells were raining over every square inch of the Rajput position. After 15 to 20 minutes of heavy shelling, Chinese infantry moved from top and bottom of the hills. The battle was joined soon.

Chinese came in wave after wave and by the third wave, Rajputs had nearly run out of ammunition. Though they had taken heavy casualties, they were determined to repulse the Chinese onslaught. They did not wait much. The fourth wave of Chinese descended on them in quick succession.

Major BK Pant of the Rajputs saw that his men were hopelessly outnumbered and severely wounded. Though he himself was wounded in the leg and shoulder in earlier fighting, he virtually dragged himself from trench after trench, rallying his men to fix bayonets and hurl the Chinese wave down in the smog over the slopes of the hill that reeked of blood and gore. Picking himself painfully up a small overhang, he let out a blood curdling war cry that sent his men charging down the slopes. The Chinese took heavy casualties and withdrew the attack.

They realized that tough as they are, the Rajputs, it was BK Pant who was the pivot of their fierce motivation. When their next wave came, they sited the ridge on which Major BK Pant was propped up, gun in hand, rallying his men. A burst of Chinese machine gun fire was directed at him, ripping him through his chest and shoulder.

Though mortally wounded, Major BK Pant, raised himself up and let out a roar. He held his head high in the Rajput tradition and told his men: Men of the Rajput Regiment, you were born to die for your country. God has selected this small river for which you must die. Stand up and fight like true Rajputs.

As he collapsed, he let out the war cry of the Rajputana Rifles - BAJRANG BALI KI JAI.

Out of the 112 Rajuts under his command, 82 died in the battle. The Rajputs lived up to their motto : 

   Veer Bhogya Vasundhara (वीर भोग्य वसुंधरा ) "The Brave Shall Inherit the Earth" 

  The 7th Infantry Brigade under which the 2nd Rajput  had faught was commanded by Brigadier JP Dalvi. Brig Dalvi wrote an authentic but moving account of the 1962 war in his 'Himalayan Blunder'.

Foot in Mouth

United States government designated Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 2001, listing it along with its ilk like Al Quaeda, Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI), Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami/Bangladesh (HUJI-B), Harakat ul-Mujahideen (HUM), Indian Mujahedeen (IM) and Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT).

Active since 2000,  JeM is headed by former senior Harakat ul-Mujahideen leader Masood Azhar upon his release from prison in India in exchange for 155 hijacked Indian Airlines hostages. The group’s aim is to annex the state of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan and expel international forces from Afghanistan. JeM has openly declared war against the United States.
JeM was implicated in the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl and assassination attempts on Pervez Musharraf. In 2016, JeM was involved in the attack on an Air Force base at Pathankot that shook India. It has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on security forces in the valley of Kashmir. On 14 February 2019, A Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist named Adil Ahmad Dar, a Kashmiri local, was identified as the attacker of the CRPF convoy that claimed the life of 40 jawans.

The incident sent shock waves across India and around the world. There has been a public outpouring of grief and anger that threatens to wash over the normally tolerant Indian society. The PM of India of course responded with an assurance that the culprits of Pulwama and their masters will not go unpunished.

Terrorism across the world has been condemned as the most reprehensible act that a state can connive with. It is against international behavior that responsible states are expected to abide by. In a globalized world, such behavior is fraught with the dangers of isolation and sanctions that could sting. Yet, the PM of Pakistan today states brazenly that India would face the consequences if it acts against Pakistan. Pakistan has been sheltering JeM and liberally supporting its activities in India and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani PM’s statement exposes the shallow lip service the country has been paying to counter threat of terrorism. The brazen threat that he meets out to India does not seem to come from a country that is conscious of its duties to the international community at large, both on moral and legal grounds. The fact that he chose to convey veiled threats to India reflects the shallow hold that he has on the affairs of his state, reflecting rather the stranglehold that terror groups have on the government of Pakistan.

Pakistan, with the world’s 5th largest population (over 207 million), a nominal GDP per capita of $1,641 in 2018 ranking 147th in the world. It ranks 150th in Human Development Index as assessed by UNDP. Pakistan ranks 117/180 in international corruption perception index (Transparency International), 139/180 in Worldwide Press freedom index (Reporters without borders), 110/167 in Democracy Index (Economist Intelligence Unit) and the top 20th in the Failed States Index.

Pakistan is also home to five terror organizations (Al Quaeda, Jaih-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Omar, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Sipah-e-Sahiba. Pakistan’s connections with Haqqani Network are public knowledge.
In an atmosphere where international condemnation on JeM attack in Pulwama is flooding the world media, the democratically elected PM of Pakistan, Imran Khan, chooses instead to say that Pakistan will retaliate if India attacks. He expects that the Indian government to bend its knees in front of the terror tycoons who control Pakistan lest the wrath of the sovereign might of Pakistan fall on India. It is not clear as to where Pakistan and its PM rank in humour index. Instead of grabbing the opportunity to wipe the venomous blood in the veins of his country, he chooses to threaten spilling of Indian blood.

Great leaders do not wait for opportunities to knock on their doors and then go consulting their appointment books to see if the door can be open. They grab fleeting opportunities to open doors that bring in amity, cooperation and prosperity in their wake. An opportunity such as this where Pakistan can choose to behave like a responsible state can be missed only to its own peril. The vortex of violence that Pakistan has fostered in India and Afghanistan is already consuming the flower of its youth. In a country where poverty poses the most serious challenge to its governance, the door of opportunity to cooperate on terrorism thereby stepping into the bandwagon of collective prosperity can be sacrificed for protecting terrorist havens only by leaders who are consumed by their desire for self-preservation.    

The Prince

On 13 March 1910, the police arrested a 26 old man in Paris and deported him to Britain. In Britain, he was to be kept under maximum security. The British government had ensured that the arrest was kept under wraps and that neither general public nor the Indian community in London got any winds of it. He was to be sent to Bombay to face charges that were as yet not even known to the British parliament. It would suffice to surmise that the young man was a special prisoner. Why else British authorities prepare a full ship to transport a single prisoner to India?

The ship SS Morea had special guards and a carefully designed cage in which the young man was to be kept chained. British instructions to the special guards were curiously akin to forest guards tasked to transport dangerous carnivores. The ship left the shores of England and in due course called its port on 08 July 1910 at Marseilles in France for replenishment. Sensing that the ship was in port, the young man made a daring escape. He swam ashore in his shackles and ran into a couple of French policemen on patrol. Unfortunately, he did not speak French and the policemen wouldn’t understand English. As he tried to mime his way through, the British guards from the ship arrived and it did not take much of explaining by them to get him back into custody.

Deciding that he was too dangerous to be conveyed by just one ship and his guards, British government dispatched a naval frigate to escort SS Morea to Bombay. Of course, the British authorities took care to stow the young man into a 4’X4’ cage for the reminder of the journey under heavy chains. The ship reached Bombay on 22 July 1910. In the dock, as the ship berthed, soldiers with their rifles and bayonets lined up every feet of the gangway. When the entire dock had been so secured the young man was taken under escort to a police van that carried him on to Yeravada, Pune. Thus the young man arrived to a reception befitting a prince, even though he was in chains.

He was indeed the prince among Indian freedom fighters. A prince whose mere writings sent shudders down the spine of an Empire that had hundred thousand men in arms in India; a prince who invoked a passion among his countrymen for freedom like how the wind stokes a forest fire. Unlike Machiavelli who wrote of how a prince should be, this prince had written how the British had ravaged the country through and after the mutiny of 1857. Of course, he was the first person ever who called 1857 the first war of independence. His book The History of the War of Independence was to become the inspiration for Sardar Bhagat Singh and later to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. This prince spoke of war in open terms and he was no advocate of conciliation in the manner that many others thought of their relations with the Empire.

The prince then, was to be meted with the princeliest among the punishments that British Empire had devised for those who thirsted for freedom with their souls – banishment to Kaalapani, the infamous Circular Jail in Port Blair. The trail against him proceeded in the most expected manner of a farce on legal systems in the world and ended in June 1911. On 04 July 1911, he was transported to Port Blair.

The prince was assigned to the hardest of labors in the jail like chopping wood, manually pulling the oil mill and a score of other menial and physically straining tasks. After ten years of condemnation in Port Blair, he was finally moved back to mainland and lodged in Ratnagiri jail. It took another three years for the prince to be set free in 1924, although on restrictive conditions. The prince, in the new found freedom from chains, actively taught and wrote against the colonial masters advocating resistance. In fact his words on the proposal of partition of India reverberate with solemn truth even today:

“MY PERSONAL VIEW IS THAT WE MUST VIGOROUSLY PROTEST AGAINST THE CREATION OF A MOSLEM STATE INDEPENDENT OF THE CENTRAL INDIAN STATE. WE WILL NOT SIGN WILLINGLY THE DEATH WARRANT OF THE INTEGRITY OF HINDUSTHAN”.

The prince is the only Indian for whom the Empire enacted a separate law that could be used to arrest him in London; he is the only Indian again over whom a case was laid at the Office of International Arbitration in the Hague contesting his arrest and deportation on French soil in Marseilles; a prince for whom two empires, France and Briton, had to stand in the court to justify his arrest and custody; a prince who thereby made his own history – just like a prince.

The name of the prince is Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, more popularly Veer Savarkar.

                                                          

The Four Seasons of Patriotism

Barack Obama, unarguably one of the greatest contemporary American Presidents, is quoted to have said: 

"We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense".

One of the most important aspects that his statement highlights is that there can be no freedom without commitment; that there can be no freedom without patriotism.

It is perhaps interesting to sit back and look at ourselves on occasions when we feel patriotic. We will be amused to find that our patriotism is of four seasons.

The first season starts with the arrival of national days like our independence day, constitution day, etc. With the advent of social media, we get a flood of messages, often repetitive and from people of whom you are convinced that they are incapable thinking beyond the shadow of their shoes. But then what the heck? You get reeducated on the significance of such occasions; the people who penned your national anthems; what the founders of your constitution said or unsaid; the great bind (I still am on the look out for it for the past half a century) that connects us one people; etc, etc. Of course for the majority of kids (I am not sure if kids could be 16 and below. After all every one is a kid to their parents), such days are usually granted holidays to spend time with family and friends.

The second season arrives with the disembarkation of a coffin that is wrapped in the colors of the country. The media makes a beeline to the funerals in which smartly dressed soldiers (police, etc) lift their guns on to their shoulders and fire empty shells into the air. The whole community gathers around the glare of cameras to tell the world how proud they are that the man in the casket died. What they do not say of course is how happier they are that their own youngster finished his engineering or MBA from MITs, Harvards, UCLAs and the like, and is entrenched in a war with corporate honchos that is much more grueling. They regret that the sacrifices that their wards have made (think of those board meetings lasting into mid nights, those un-celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, those missed holidays or time with family) simply go unsung.

The third season arrives with dazzling insights. Standing in front of the jury and judges for having committed such innocuous acts like cheating millions out of unsuspecting investors, declaring solvency  after building empires out of the sweat of millions, and such like. One does wonder why freedom doesn't include the freedom to loot? Is anybody holding the early Americans, Australians, Britons, French, Dutch, Spaniards and Portuguese (did I leave out any one...) for what they did to the natives just to get hold of the wealth of the land. Why then are they making such a fuss now? After all, I am no Columbus or Captain Cook. It's my own country and these others seem to have what I desire of them...

The fourth is a season of opportunities. It usually belongs to the political class and sometimes to the wealthy and influential movers and makers of the nations. They, of course, have the privilege of invoking it in times when they find that the going is not exactly not in the directions that are to the liking of their ilk.

The four seasons of patriotism apply to every sovereign territory that we may belong. They are universal. And, these are the seasons that apply to every region irrespective of the terrain that any nation can claim of. They do not belong to a terrain or climate. They are universal. That is the beauty of patriotism.

The Trial of 1922

Justice Broomfield knew that the law under which the man on the dock was being tried was cruel and favored the masters over slaves. He also knew that as a judge it was his duty to uphold the law for it was enacted by a competent Crown. The only thing that he could do was to make the proceedings absolutely impersonal and let the laws prevail over personal feelings. All that he did to show his personal admiration for the accused was to bow to him, as judge, before taking his judicial seat.

And, the man on the dock bowed back, smiling as he ever was, that disarming smiles that had endeared him to millions. His name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Gandhi was accused of inciting the populace of India by his writings in Young India, a paper that he published from 1919 to 1931. He wrote from his heart and was never in doubt over what he asked the millions who read or heard his writings to demand. He asked them to demand what was their right, a right that Bal Gangadhar Tilak had so eloquently put as जन्म सिद्ध अधिकार (Right by birth), and the right to be masters of their own destinies. Freedom from colonial rule that he so out earnestly asked his countrymen to ask for through his writings was seen as sedition by the Colonial Masters who had levied the charge against him for “bringing or attempting to excite disaffection towards the British Government established by law in British India”.

The trial court was packed to the brim. Thousands of followers stood outside the court premises, silently but defiantly in the eyes of the amassed police forces. They did not sing or chant or indulge in activities that would belie the great faith that Gandhi had on them. Satya or truth, he had often said, will prevail. Violence, he believed with all his heart and soul, would beget nothing but more violence and in the melee truth will be lost. So the swollen crowds stood patiently without a murmur.

Inside the court room, on the 18^th March 1922, Justice Broomsfield proceeded to conduct the trial as per law. He was not surpriced when Gandhi eagerly pleaded guilty. However, the Advocate General (Sir JT Strangman along with Rao Bahadur Girdharlal Uttamram, Public Prosecutor of District Ahmedabad) representing the Crown insisted on reading out the full extent of incitements that Gandhi had caused in the eyes of the Crown, by his writings in Young India. Gandhi gave forth his bewitching smiles for each of the accusations and again in the end, pleaded guilty to all the charges. Justice Broomfield then proceeded to ask Gandhi whether hhe would like to say anything before the judgment was announced. Gandhi said yes. He had come prepared with a statement which, with the permission of the judge, he proceeded to read. As the courtroom in which Kasturba Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu, Pandit MM Malaviya, N C Kelkar, Smt JB Petit, and Smt Anasuyaben Sarabhai were also present among the public, he concluded his statement by saying:

“If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence…. I have no personal ill-will against any single administrator, much less can I have any disaffection towards the King’s person. But I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a Government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system. And it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me.

In fact, I believe that I have rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living. In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiples evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil.

I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge and the assessors, is either to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil, and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country, and that my activity is, therefore, injurious to the common weal”.

Pin drop silence prevailed in the court when Gandhi finished. He proceeded to fold the paper in which he had penned his statement, tuck it in his famous ‘loin cloth’, and turning to the judge, bowed. Justice Broomfield contemplated for some time and then proceeded to announce the gravest punishment that law could impose on a charge of sedition – six years of imprisonment. A smiling Gandhi cheerfully nodded when the judge completed his pronouncement. After having completed his judicial duty, Justice Broomfield added to the judicial verdict by saying:

   “I should like to say …. if the course of events in India should make it possible for the Government to reduce the period and release you, no one will be better pleased than I."

And then the honorable Mr Broomfield rose, and bowed to Gandhi. In Gandhi’s own words:

“So far as the sentence itself is concerned, I certainly consider it is as light as any judge would inflict on me, and so far as the whole proceedings are concerned, I must say that I could not have expected greater courtesy”.

Gandhi’s trial of 1922 bears eloquent testimony to a process of law and courage of conviction that are beyond physical description. There is a spiritual quality that can be felt both in the accused and judge that marked the world of those years in a different class.

Such is the story of courage and conviction.  

Kattabomman, the First Among Freedom Fighters

Jagaveera Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Polygar of Panchalankurichi, was hanged from a tamarind tree at Kayathar in Tamil Nadu on 16 Oct 1799. His crime was refusal to pay taxes to the East India Company. Little did KC Jackson, Collector of Tirunelveli, realize that he had actually lit a fuse on Polygar revolt than put out the fire called Kattabomman.

Born on 02 January 1760 to Jagaveera Pandiyan and Arumugathammal, the Polygar of Panchalankurichi, Kattabomman revolted against British sovereignty when the Collector of Tirunelveli ordered him to pay taxes. The Nawab of Arcot, suzerain over Polygars of the south had failed to pay his dues to the Company and left it to the Company to collect the dues themselves. With this free hand, the Company had set about collecting huge amounts from the peasantry, to the peril of the country side. 

Initially Kattabomman agreed to pay the taxes as per norm and even went over to Ramanathapuram to meet the Collector. However, Jackson was haughty and made Kattabomman wait for days together even to consent to meet him. Incensed, Kattabomman returned to his fort and thereafter refused to pay taxes. The Company then sent an army to collect the taxes and bring Kattabomman. The Company army was defeated by Kattabomman and his allies.

The new collector of Tirunelveli, Lousington, changed the tactics and invited Kattabomman for talks. Playing on the Tamil sense of pride, Lousington lured Kattabomman to come alone, leaving his body guards away. When Kattabomman arrived with only his head of army, Sivasubramanya Pillai. Lousington arrested both. However, Kattabomman escaped with Pillai and reached Panchalankurichi back. War now was inevitable.

The mud fort at Panchalankurichi fell to the canons of the Company. However, an injured Kattabomman escaped to a forest near Pudukottai with handful of his followers. Pillai was arrested by British, after a battle with Kattabomman's troops near Nagalapuram. Pillai's head was severed by British and put up on a spike in Panchalankurichi. 

In the mean time, regional satraps like the King of Pugukottai and Polygars like Ettappan of Ettayyapuram aided the British and actually betrayed, arrested and handed him over to the British. The date was 02 Oct 1799. Lousington conducted a farce trial for nearly 15 days and on the 16th October, ordered that Kattabomman be hanged to death. Major Banerman of the Company hanged Kattabomman from a tamarind tree at Kayathar and left the body there as a warning to other Polygars. A great son of the Tamil people was thus betrayed, and hanged like an ordinary criminal.

Unfortunately for the British, hanging and shaming of Kattabomman did not bring about peace and subjugation of Tamil lands. Between March 1799 and July 1805, for over six years, the Polygars rose in revolt against the British Company. OOmaithurai, brother of Kattabomman, Maruthu Pandiyan brothers, Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja of Malabar and Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder, among others, led repaeted attacks on Company troops mostly adopting to guerrilla tactics. They attacked Company barracks in Coimbatore, Salem and Dindigul area, Trichy and elsewhere harrying the Company to no end. The King of Ramanathapuram actively supported the Polygars. Panchalankurichi fort, rebuilt by Oomaithurai became the epicenter of operations.

Eventually, forces led by Lt Col Agnew laid seige and eventually razed Panchalankurichi fort in May 1801. Oomaithurai and Maruthu Pandiyan brothers were captured , after their escape from the fort near Kalayar Kovil. They were hanged by the Company troops in November 1801 near Odanilai. Other Poligar rebels were slowly subdued over the next few years.

16th October 2018 would mark 219th Anniversary of the sacrifice by Kattabomman. It is a day that truly must mark Tamil pride with great solemnity. 

Government of India honoured Kattabomman with the release of a postage stamp and Indian Navy has a Naval station INS Kattabomman at Tuticorin. A memorial is built at Panchalankurichi and Kayathar to honour the great warrior.           

The Story of Bikaner Camel Corps

The Ganga Risala / Bikaner Camel Corps of Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner

The Bikaner Camel Corps was a former army regiment that operated under the Imperial Service Troops of India and took part in the First World War and the Second World War. The Imperial Service Troops of India were the official armed forces of the princely states of India under the British Empire. The unit served along with the British Indian Army, when their service was demanded by the British administration. The British Indian regiment was also a part of the Presidency Armies in British India.

The Bikaner Camel Corps was formed in the year 1889 by Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner state. The unit was initially raised as the Ganga Risala unit after the British authorities in India accepted the offer of the ruler to create an army of around 500 soldiers. The Princely State of Bikaner followed the tradition of utilising armed forces mounted on camels. Later in 1900, Maharaja Ganga Singh led the regiment of Ganga Risala during its participation in the Boxer Rebellion in China. The troops of the armed force later took part in the Somali Uprising in Somaliland from 1902 to 1904; and also fought in Egypt during the First World War. In the year 1915, the unit fought against Turkish forces at the Suez Canal.

In one engagement the Maharaja himself fired many rounds at the enemy, and after their defeat led the Ganga Risala in pursuit. Ganga Singh also fought on the French front and represented India at the Paris Peace Conference after the war. When India's membership in the proposed League of Nations was being denied, on the grounds that it was not a self-governing state, the Bikaner Maharaja successfully stated India's case: "Where it is a question of securing the peace of the world, the important fact must be borne in mind that India represents one fifth of the entire human race." The Bikaner Camel Corps also provided valuable military services during the Second World War in the Middle East. The unit was aided by the Bijay Battery, which was also a camel-mounted unit.

After the country acquired independence from the supremacy of the British Empire in India on 15th August 1947, the nation was segregated into 2 geographical parts by the Partition of India. Thus, the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan were formed. Accordingly the British Indian Army was also divided amongst the 2 newly formed nations. The Bikaner Camel Corps unit was assigned to the modern Army of independent India.

Later in the year 1951, the regiment was amalgamated with the Jaisalmer camel troops in order to raise the Ganga Jaisalmer Risala. Later it was unit with the Grenadiers and was designated as the 13th battalion. The Ganga Jaisalmer Risala was dismounted in 1974 and underwent conversion into standard infantry. It continues to serve as a regular infantry battalion under the name 13 Grenadiers (Ganga Jaisalmer). Post 1971 the unit has seen action in counter insurgency operations in the states of Punjab and Assam. The Ganga Risala still survives though as a part of the Border Security Force, retaining the name Bikaner Camel Corps. It has to its credit one Kirti Chakra and one Shaurya Chakra among numerous other awards. It is the only camel cavalry operated by present day armed forces.