For PanzerKiel - Why I continue to hold the same opinion about Niranjan Prasad

[Joe Shearer]

Shiv Kunal Verma's latest book gives a total picture of the 1962 war, including the politics behind it.

Excerpts from the book

Nehru was waiting for Thimayya and for the first time, the normally reticent Timmy exchanged angry words with the prime minister. He told Nehru that his arbitrary decision of making NEFA [North-East Frontier Agency] the responsibility of the army, made public in Parliament, was preposterous and completely against Indian interests. Thimayya felt that Nehru had completely compromised the army.

Without providing the additional resources required, handing over the borders to the army was a meaningless gesture; this would allow the Chinese the opportunity to claim that the Indians were the aggressors, for they always went to great pains to describe their own troops as border guards. Thimayya asked Nehru to find a way out of the mess in the next couple of weeks, after which he departed. Immediately after Thimayya’s departure, the shaken prime minister summoned Krishna Menon to Teen Murti.

Talking heads: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon | Getty Images
Nehru and Krishna Menon knew that the prime minister was in serious trouble. He had got away with the admission in Parliament earlier in the day only because the triple whammy—ongoing clashes on the border, the construction of National Highway G219 across the Aksai Chin and the Khenzemane and Longju incidents—had come as a shock to the members of the House. At any rate, it was unlikely that any of the parliamentarians knew the terrain or understood matters pertaining to the military to raise any meaningful questions. Thimayya wanted Nehru to undo the mistake; but should the prime minister formally withdraw his statement about deploying the army and revert to the previous arrangement, he would be committing political hara-kiri. The threat of Thimayya taking over the reins of government, at least in Nehru’s mind, was very real.

Politics is full of subterfuge, and survival, when the chips are down, is perhaps the biggest challenge. Not only did the Nehru-Menon team now have to survive, they had to neutralize Thimayya. Three days later, Krishna Menon sent for Thimayya in ‘a highly excited state of mind’ and vented his anger at the chief for having approached the prime minister directly, suggesting instead that the matter should have been resolved at his level. Threatening Thimayya of ‘possible political repercussions if the matter became public’ Krishna Menon ended the meeting. A seething Thimayya returned to his office, and after a brief conversation with his wife, Neena, promptly sent in his resignation letter.

The letter, which was received by Teen Murti on the afternoon of 31 August, was put up to Nehru who promptly sent for Thimayya in the afternoon. By now Nehru was far more assured in his manner, using his authority and personal charm to good effect. After a long conversation in which the prime minister persuaded the army chief to withdraw his resignation letter in the larger interest of the nation, especially since the problem with the Chinese had flared up, the matter of the resignation was deemed closed.

However, after Thimayya’s departure, news of his resignation was deliberately leaked to the media while the subsequent rescinding of the letter was held back. Quite expectedly, the Thimayya resignation made banner headlines the next morning. Through the day, there was no formal reaction from the government, as the prime minister was preoccupied with General Ayub Khan, the president of Pakistan, who was in transit through New Delhi. By the evening the Press Trust of India had announced that Krishna Menon had also resigned, only to withdraw its report a short while later.

On 2 September 1959, the prime minister once again rose in Parliament to make a statement. He told the Lok Sabha that he had persuaded the chief to withdraw his resignation. He then went on to speak about the supremacy of the civilian authority over the military and then, had surprisingly, proceeded to castigate Thimayya, saying the issues that led to his resignation were ‘rather trivial and of no consequence’, and that they arose ‘from temperamental differences’. He then chided the chief and reproached him for ‘wanting to quit in the midst of the Sino-Indian border crisis’.

Even today, the contents of Thimayya’s resignation letter remain a highly guarded secret. Instead, vague stories about Thimayya’s resignation were routinely floated where it was said that Timmy had resigned out of pique because of the manner in which Krishna Menon treated him. On careful scrutiny, that doesn’t hold water.

The much adored prime minister, who could do no wrong in the eyes of the public, had betrayed General Thimayya. Trapped in this bad situation, the chief had no option but to quietly endure the humiliation and get on with the job of trying to prepare the army to face the Chinese when the need arose.

The prime minister’s attitude towards Thimayya was damaging to the chief as well as the army. A whispering campaign started that speculated on the ‘rather trivial’ reasons for Thimayya’s resignation. That the chief was unhappy with the defence minister’s insistence on promoting certain officers was a well-known fact and pre-dated the Longju incident. It was hinted that the ‘temperamental differences’ were a direct result of this difference of opinion. General Thimayya was, by all accounts, a seasoned, disciplined soldier who would hardly have made issues over trifles. Only overriding national interests could have provoked him to take this step. Further, as a disciplined soldier he had accepted his prime minister’s assurance and withdrawn his resignation. From the day he had taken charge, Thimayya had been focused on redressing the various problems that faced the Indian Army, especially the evolving civil-military equation where the army seemed quite removed from the decision-making process on matters relating to defence. However, he found himself up against a wall in the form of the Ministry of Defence, which was either indifferent or hostile to his moves. After the resignation drama Thimayya was seen as an alarmist and a defeatist. Having thus weakened the office of the army chief, the prime minister now placed his hope in the man he believed had all the answers. In the corridors of power in New Delhi, it was Lieutenant General B. M. ‘Bijji’ Kaul whose star was on the rise.

The Chinese had the first laugh, as the Indians had so far played the game just as they would have wished them to. Even according to Chinese records, at no stage had there been any action that pitted more than an Indian infantry company against at least four to five times the number of Chinese troops. The Chinese officially admit to 2,419 casualties (722 dead and 1,697 wounded). The figure is quite stunning, given the situation in which each Indian position was asked to fight.

From all accounts, Bogey Sen’s presence in Tawang between 22 and 23 October only added to the confusion. Before landing at Tawang, the army commander had flown towards Zimithang to get an idea of the terrain which he was not familiar with at all. Once in Tawang, as we have seen, Sen did nothing to bolster the confidence of the garrison. The meeting with [Lt Gen Niranjan] Prasad later in the evening focused on two issues: the Nam Ka Chu rout of 7 Brigade and the immediate withdrawal from Tawang. Bogey Sen opposing a withdrawal only amounted to theatrics, for had he wished, as the army commander, he had the authority to overrule Prasad.

Both officers at the time were unaware that Army HQ, now represented by Monty Palit, was pushing for the same decision. There was a critical difference though—Prasad was planning on falling back on Bomdila with Se-la only playing the part of a delaying obstacle. Palit, on the other hand, based on the one incomplete reconnaissance made almost two years ago, had made up his mind to dig in at Se-la. [Army chief Pran Nath] Thapar having gone along with his DMO, who now had the tacit approval of Nehru, was relegated to the role of a spectator. The Thorat Plan, even though it hadn’t been implemented, at least had had some discussions around it and plans had been drawn up. Just as Tawang was abandoned on a whim, Se-la was seemingly chosen arbitrarily by Monty Palit who played the ‘cleared by the cabinet’ card to ride roughshod over any opposition.

In the coming days, the Indian military high command would take decisions that lacked even the most basic common sense. Even as Palit was coming out of the defence minister’s room with Nehru’s ‘the military must decide where to fight’ mandate, Bogey Sen had decided to sack Niranjan Prasad as GOC 4 Division. Less than three hours previously, as he was leaving Tawang, Sen had eventually endorsed Prasad’s decision to pull back from Bum-la and evacuate Tawang. Surely, having seen for himself the effect of the headlong retreat from Zimithang on Prasad and other senior officers, Sen was experienced enough to know that to pull back any further would result in losing not just all the supplies and material that had so painstakingly been put together, but a withdrawal without a fight would further sap the morale of the men and officers. So far, after the first couple of hours of fighting on the Nam Ka Chu, Tsangdhar, Khenzemane, and Bum-la, all Indian units that had come into contact with the Chinese were only fighting in penny packets or withdrawing. Had it been decided that Tawang was to be held at all costs, it would have made perfect sense to replace Prasad as the GOC since the army commander felt he had lost the will to fight. But to institute this change after the withdrawal order was given was to add considerably to the existing chaos.

On the evening of 23 October neither Delhi, Lucknow nor Tezpur had any idea where the next defensive line was supposed to be; the only orders given until then were to abandon Tawang and Bum-la and fall back on Jang. When Palit took the draft of the order to hold Se-la to the chief, it was decided that Thapar, Palit and the IB chief, [B.N.] Mullik, would fly immediately to Tezpur and discuss the matter with Bogey Sen in person. From all indications,Thapar was still not fully convinced about the decision to hold Se-la. On his own initiative, Palit put into place steps for the stocking of supplies for Se-la, working on the assumption that five battalions would be required to hold the feature.

1962: The War That Wasn't
By Shiv Kunal Verma
Published by Aleph Book Company
Pages 512; price Rs995

 

[Joe Shearer]

Another extract from the book by Shiv Kunal Verma

For the first time in 12 years, Nehru was unsure of himself as he rose from the prime minister’s seat in the Lok Sabha on August 28, 1959, to face the rest of the House. Clamouring Opposition members who were demanding a statement on the Longju incident fell silent as attention turned to the prime minister. Speaking in his usual clipped style, every word that Nehru uttered stunned the assembled MPs.

The prime minister admitted to the people of India that serious disputes existed between China and India regarding the India-Tibet border and that several thousand square kilometres of Indian territory in Ladakh was under Chinese control. He then disclosed the fact that the Chinese had built a highway across the Aksai Chin, adding that the government had thought it fit not to make the disputes public, as that would have made their settlement even more difficult. He then went on to talk of the border clash between the Chinese and the Assam Rifles first at Khenzemane and then at Longju. However, it was the last part of Nehru’s statement that was to have far-reaching consequences: “We have in fact placed this border area of NEFA directly under the military authorities.... The Assam Rifles will of course remain there and such other forces as will be necessary will be sent, but they will function now under the army authorities and their headquarters.”

Nehru’s unconsidered remark had major national and international implications. By committing Army HQ, which had no troops of its own in NEFA, into the existing defence structure of manning border posts, the prime minister was committing it to a policing role. Any plans for the defence of the region that could be based on a forward line held by the police (Assam Rifles) and an inner line held by the army evaporated.

In his office in South Block, General (K.S.) Thimayya was oblivious of the drama that was being played out in the Lok Sabha less than a kilometre away. Around noon, there was a knock on the door and the Director, Military Intelligence, Brigadier Prem Bhagat, walked into the army chief’s office. Without any preamble, Bhagat told Thimayya that the joint secretary in the Ministry of Defence, H.C. Sarin, had just briefed him on the prime minister’s statement in Parliament. “Nehru has finally told Parliament the truth about the northern border. He spoke at length about the National Highway G219 and the loss of the Aksai Chin. He then spoke of both the Khenzemane and Longju incidents.”

“It had to happen.... I’m surprised it took so long for the press to realise everything isn’t quite bhai bhai with the Chinese,” said Thimayya, shaking his head.

“There’s something else...,” Bhagat hesitated, not quite sure if Thimayya was already in on the decision. “The prime minister has announced that as of today the entire border in NEFA with China is henceforth the army’s responsibility.”

The usually calm and unflappable Thimayya now stared at Bhagat, not quite sure if he had heard him correctly. He moved back to his desk and sat down slowly. “What else did Sarin say?” he asked incredulously.

“Nothing more, really. From his demeanour I gathered the Ministry of Defence had no idea this was coming. If Mr Krishna Menon was consulted by the prime minister, he certainly did not inform anybody else in the ministry.”

***

In 1957, when it was becoming obvious to Nehru that his Panchsheel policy with China was going nowhere, he had turned to Krishna Menon.... As the defence minister of India, his appointment coincided with the elevation of General Thimayya to the top job in the Indian army. Temperamentally, Krishna Menon was a loner, and having had no ministerial or administrative experience, he found it necessary to dominate the military bureaucracy by trying to make a dent in the solidarity of its senior ranks. In this he succeeded to the extent that Bijji Kaul fell for his blandishments and for a time an unwonted relationship was established between the minister and the general officer.



Bijji Kaul had not even commanded an infantry company; he was plucked from obscurity to serve as India’s military attache in Washington.

Menon would have probably never have ventured into playing these devious mind games if the signal had not come from Nehru himself. It was Nehru who had built a strong rapport with Kaul; he had allowed this friendship to often overshadow the official relationship, sometimes summoning him for purposes outside the call of army duty, even when Kaul was only a lieutenant colonel. In 1953, Nehru entrusted Kaul with the delicate task of overseeing the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah and acting as a political troubleshooter in Kashmir.

Unlike most of the other generals who were army and corps commanders at the time, Kaul had virtually no combat experience. After being commissioned into an infantry battalion, Kaul had voluntarily shifted to the Army Supply Corps while he was still a junior officer. Kaul used the term ‘national priority’ to explain the reason for this shift—a somewhat dubious explanation, as no junior officer was likely to be accorded that sort of importance. As a result, Bijji Kaul had not even commanded an infantry company, let alone a battalion, either in war or peace. Though commissioned into the army well before the outbreak of World War II, Bijji Kaul was assigned sundry jobs, none of which had anything to do with combat.

After Independence, his rise had been spectacular and completely at odds with the existing ethos of the armed forces, where each appointment in an officer’s career is a vital cog in his own training that enables him to take on responsibility at the next level. In 1947, Kaul was plucked from obscurity to serve as India’s military attache in Washington DC while also being a member of the quasi-political Armed Forces Nationalisation Committee. In 1948, he was again selected to be the military advisor to the Indian delegation to the Security Council on the Kashmir issue, which was where he first met Krishna Menon. Nehru then entrusted Kaul with the command of the Jammu and Kashmir Militia, but he had to be withdrawn from this post owing to his differences with Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of Kashmir. By the early 1950s, it was fairly obvious to the rank and file that Kaul was Nehru’s trusted man.


Supreme Commander President Radhakrishnan with Lt Gen Kaul and Maj Gen Pathania in Tezpur

After Independence, Kaul repeatedly served under (S.P.P.) Thorat. Almost each and every time, despite Kaul’s political connections, Thorat would diligently put down on paper that in his opinion, Kaul had reached the limits of his professional competence. In an army where one bad report usually seals a man’s fate, Nehru’s repeated interventions kept Kaul’s flag flying.

[...]

Krishna Menon would find it necessary to dominate the military bureaucracy by trying to make a dent in the solidarity of its senior ranks.

Just 11 days ago, on October 9, 1962, Lieutenant General B.M. ‘Bijji’ Kaul, camping at the Bridge 3 location on the Nam Ka Chu, had outlined an ambitious attack plan to occupy the Thagla Ridge across the Nam Ka Chu. Every officer and JCO present at the briefing knew the general’s plan was nonsensical. To Dashrath’s experienced ears, it sounded like the general was issuing orders for an advance the next morning across the river and up the Thagla slopes on the assumption that the Chinese did not exist. All the officers were sitting in stunned silence as Kaul droned on, using impressive jargon that included terms like ‘positional warfare manoeuvre’, something neither Dashrath nor any of the others present had ever heard before. Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad, GOC 4 Division, was staring at his shoes the entire time, while Brigadier John Dalvi, the commander of 7 Brigade, meekly tried to point out a few technical difficulties like limited ammunition, lack of snow clothing, artillery support and other factors. The corps commander, deeming them minor irritants, impatiently brushed them aside.

Having spelt out his objectives, the corps commander asked the assembled officers and JCOs if they had any questions. While the officers were still recovering from the shock of Kaul’s master plan, Subedar Dashrath Singh from 2 Rajput, who had seen five years of close combat with the Japanese in Burma and had then fought in the Jammu and Kashmir operations in 1948, spoke up: “Yeh larai to maine pehli bar dekhi hai, saab, jisme hum nalle mein aur dushman upar pahar par.”

“Yeh bhi pehli baar aapne dekha hoga ki koi general frontline mein khara ho,” was Kaul’s glib response. “Aapne apni baat to keh di, saab, lekin hamare sawal ka jawaab nahin diya,” said Dashrath. At this point Kaul lost his temper and demanded that the JCO be arrested on the spot and dismissed from service. While Niranjan Prasad and Dalvi tried to pacify the corps commander, Dashrath was quietly asked to leave the conference.

Niranjan Prasad had lost his credibility, and was replaced by Anant Singh Pathania, who didn't do much better. This is from Wikipedia, but still makes reasonably good reading.


On 14 October 1949, Pathania was promoted to acting brigadier and assigned to supervise the integration of the Saurashtra and Kutch princely state forces into the Indian Army. From 1952 to 1956, he served as Director General, Military Intelligence (DGMI) before being given command of a brigade in 1956. On 1 July 1959, he was promoted to acting major-general and given a divisional command, with promotion to substantive major-general on 13 December 1960. He commanded the National Cadet Corps (NCC) as its Director-General from 6 October 1961 until November 1962.

At the outbreak of the Sino-Indian War in autumn 1962, Pathania was still Director-General of the NCC. In November, when fighting resumed in Arunachal Pradesh, he was abruptly recalled to active service with only a few hours notice. He was given command of the 4th Infantry Division, to replace Major-General Niranjan Prasad under whom the division had been badly defeated at Namka Chu in the Tawang district. In 2012, The Indian Express discovered that four pages of a 40-page covering note to the still-classified Henderson Brooks–Bhagat Report, a review of the Indian Army's performance during the conflict, mentioned that then-Defence Minister V. K. Krishna Menon had been directly involved in reshuffling senior generals, including Pathania. According to the Express, sources mentioned the Report particularly singled out and harshly criticised Pathania's appointment and the performance of the 4th Infantry Division under his command. The Report noted that despite Pathania not having commanded troops for a considerable time, he was still appointed a division commander.

Under Pathania, the 4th Infantry Division was hastily reconstructed and under the IV Corps, assigned to defend fallback positions along the Se La-Senge-Dhirang axis in Arunachal Pradesh. This would allow the Army to fight an intense defensive campaign and make it difficult for the Chinese army to sustain operations. On 14 November, the Chinese forces launched a general offensive in the eastern sectors along the front, resulting in the defeat of an Indian brigade at Walong. IV Corps commander Lieutenant-General Brij Mohan Kaul had left his headquarters for Walong on 12 November, only departing with his surviving troops on 16 November. In Kaul's absence, Pathania panicked and contacted the Corps HQ requesting permission to withdraw from his positions at the Sela Pass. Despite Kaul's staff issuing a clear order to Pathania forbidding withdrawal from Se-la, Pathania continued to persist for an immediate withdrawal and spoke to Kaul after his return to the IV Corps HQ. In response, according to Kaul's chief of staff A. M. Vohra, Kaul issued ambiguous and unclear orders to Pathania. Though General Pran Nath Thapar, the Chief of Army Staff, and the Eastern Command army commander Lieutenant-General L. P. Sen, along with Director of Military Operations Palit had arrived at Tezpur to boost Kaul's morale, and though Palit pleaded with both Thapar and Sen to convince Pathania against withdrawing from Se-la, neither general wanted to interfere with Kaul's corps.

As a result, though Kaul repeatedly attempted to contact his division commander, during the night of 17 November Pathania withdrew two battalions from Se-la though neither had engaged the Chinese troops. He also closed his divisional HQ at Dirang Dzong and fled with his troops towards Assam. At the same time, the Chinese had rapidly infiltrated the Indian positions around Bomdila, encircling and ambushing the remaining Indian troops as they chaotically withdrew. Brigadier Hoshiar Singh, the commander of 62 Brigade who had withdrawn from Se-la only after being threatened with court-martial, was killed in one ambush. After his panicky retreat, Pathania wrote to Harish Chandra Sarin, then a joint secretary in the Defence Ministry, and requested another chance to fight, even as an ordinary soldier at the front.

About Harbaksh, whose book you must have read:

General Harbakhsh Singh, a soldiers' general, had immense battlefield experience. He had seen action in the North West Frontier Province, been seriously wounded fighting the Japanese in Malaya during World War II, had fought the battle of Shelatang and saved Srinagar from the Pakistani marauders in 1947 and had then gone on to plan and supervise the re-capture of Tithwal from the Pakistan army.

During the 1962 war with China, he was flown post haste to Tezpur to take over command of 4 Corps when Lieutenant General B M Kaul had fallen sick after the rout at Namka Chu and had left for Delhi. General Harbakhsh inspired confidence in the defeated soldiers and commanders and began to once again re-build their morale. He had barely settled down and was busy re-organising the defences in NEFA to thwart further Chinese attacks when, inexplicably, General Kaul returned to re-claim his Corps.

IMAGES: Destroyed Pakitani Patton tanks after the 1965 war. Photograph: Kind courtesy: Brigadier Hari Singh Deora/Wikipedia
General Harbakhsh was side-stepped to take over 33 Corps at Bagdogra. General Kaul's was a political appointment and, as should have been expected, he once again led 4 Corps to suffer yet another defeat.

The 1965 war with Pakistan saw General Harbakhsh achieve still more professional success. As the Western Army commander he was responsible for operations in Jammu and Kashmir as well as Punjab since there was no Northern Command at that time.

Bold and daring in his approach, he did not hesitate to take calculated risks and this is where he fell out with his chief. The real truth about whether General J N Chaudhary, the then Chief of the Army Staff, actually ordered General Harbakhsh to pull back to the Beas river after receiving exaggerated reports of the progress made by a Pakistani armoured column in the Khem Karan (Amritsar-Firozpur) sector may never be known.

Alarmist reports are not uncommon in the fog of war. A good military commander learns to distinguish the truth from fiction by visiting the battlefield and acquainting himself first hand with the prevailing situation.

In his book In the Line of Duty: A Soldier Remembers, General Harbakhsh has written: 'Late at night on the 9th of September, the chief of the army staff rang me up... his advice was that to save the whole army from being cut-off by Pakistan's armour push, I should pull back to the line of the Beas river. Pulling back to the Beas would have meant sacrificing prime territory in Punjab including Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts and would have been a far worse defeat than that suffered at the hands of the Chinese in 1962.'

The move

would have also resulted in bidding goodbye to the entire state of J&K and the army's 15 Corps that had performed extremely well over there. This has been corroborated by Captain Amarinder Singh, aide de camp to General Harbakhsh, who received the army chief's phone call.

He has written: 'At 2.30 am Army Chief General J N Chaudhury, called and spoke to the general and after a heated discussion centred around the major threat that had developed, the chief ordered the army commander to withdraw 11 Corps to hold a line on the Beas river. General Harbakhsh Singh refused to carry out this order.'

Writing on the 1965 War, Major General D K Palit has confirmed that such an order was, in fact, issued by the COAS, but 'Harbakhsh was adamant and refused to comply. He told Chaudhury that he would not accept a verbal order on such a crucial issue. A written order from the army chief never came. In any case the crisis was overcome when under Harbakhsh's leadership the outgunned Centurions and 106 mm guns played havoc with Pakistani Patton tanks in one of the great tactical victories of the war.'

Well-known defence analyst K Subrahmanyam has written that General J N Chaudhury had sought Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's permission to withdraw to the Beas but that Shastri said no. Columnist Inder Malhotra has written that General Chaudhury 'panicked and ordered Harbaksh to withdraw his troops behind Beas, and the latter refused.'

However, some other participants in the war disagree with this version. Among them is Lieutenant General Joginder Singh, General Harbakhsh's chief of staff. In his book Behind the Scenes, General Joginder Singh, whose relations with his boss were strained, has said no such order was given by the army chief.

In an article in the Indian Defence Review, Lieutenant General Harwant Singh has echoed a similar sentiment. He disparages the accounts of Subrahmanyam and Malhotra through deductive analysis. Clearly, something transpired on the night of September 9, 1965, between the chief and his army commander.

General Harbakhsh was a straight talking, no-nonsense, professional soldier of the Sikh Regiment. He was quick to give credit wherever it was due, but brooked no interference with his command and himself gave his undivided loyalty and full support to his subordinates.

When the situation so demanded, he had no hesitation in sacking unworthy commanders. Major General Niranjan Prasad, who had also acquitted himself badly while commanding a division in NEFA against the Chinese, was asked to hand over charge of the Amritsar division for conduct unbecoming of that of a general during war. Major General Chopra was removed from command for not ensuring that the guns of a field regiment were brought back safely during an organised withdrawal in the Akhnoor sector. Sacking inept commanders in war is a necessary evil as it invariably helps to stem the rot.

General Harbakhsh unhesitatingly acknowledged his mistakes, the few that there were, but did not hesitate to criticise either his subordinates or seniors. He was critical of General Chaudhury for raising 1 Corps by taking away his reserves, for not agreeing to launch the 1 Corps offensive from Gurdaspur sector towards Sialkot so that at least initially some reserves would be available on the Punjab front (a decision which the COAS must himself have regretted), for issuing direct orders to his subordinates bypassing him -- orders which General Harbakhsh was frequently forced to countermand, for failing to visit the front except on three occasions and for writing citations for gallantry and national awards for his subordinates without consulting him.

Rock steady in the face of adversity, General Harbakhsh Singh provided outstanding leadership at a critical juncture. He was a genuine national hero and was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan by a grateful nation.

One of the darker figures who never comes to the forefront:


In memoriam

Major General D.K. ‘Monty’ Palit, VrC


Soldier-scholars are a rare commodity anywhere, rarer still in the intellectual wasteland that is the Indian military, which is drilled in small things only to be at sea when faced with larger issues. Considering that old time militaries frown upon officers with an intellectual bent, and the Indian Army is still largely ‘old time’ in its traditions, values and practices, the fact that ‘Monty’ Palit got as far as he did in service is a testament to actually one thing: his contacts. His intellect was an attribute that, fortunately, was not held against him.

It was plain bad luck and bad vibes with Churchill that saw General Sir Claude Auchinleck, heading the Middle East Command in the Second World War when the going was tough against Rommel’s Afrika Korps, being shunted off just as the tide of the battle was turning in July 1942 at Alam Haifa. Auchinleck was handed his Field Marshal’s baton and kicked upstairs as Commander-in-Chief, India. Career-wise, it was catastrophic for the ‘Auk’ but a boon for Palit. Few native officers in the British Indian Army were better connected to the C-in-C than ‘Monty’ Palit. His father – Colonel A.N. Palit, an ‘OBE’, was the Medical Officer attached to the 62nd Punjabis in the 1920s, a battalion of which the then Major Auchinleck was Adjutant. For an Anglophilic army, fealty to the crown mattered. ‘Monty’ Palit got choice postings.

Commissioned into the elite Baloch Regiment in 1939 out of the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, Palit at the time of Partition won a prized billet with the (3/9) Gurkhas – a regiment the British scrupulously avoided posting Indian officers to – and which unit he led in a hard-fought action to capture the crestline above the Haji Pir salient in the Poonch sector in the 1947-48 Kashmir operations. Palit was wounded and won the Vir Chakra. Thereafter, he rose swiftly to command the 7 Infantry Brigade stationed in NEFA (North East Frontier Agency) and only a year or so into his tenure, was rushed into the job of Director, Military Operations, at the Army Headquarters, manifestly the most coveted post in the army for a Brigadier-ranked officer and that too a relatively newly minted one. Fatefully for him, the mountain war with China in 1962 intervened. It was the beginning of his slide.

It is fairly clear now that in the politics of the Generals, aided and abetted by the mischief-mongering defence minister, Krishna Menon, playing out as a sideshow to the tragic military fiasco unfolding in the Himalayas, Palit sided with the senior flag-ranked triumvirate – in Delhi the inactive Chief of Army Staff General Pran Nath Thapar and his abysmally-inept Chief of General Staff, the Sandhurst-trained Lieutenant General B.M. Kaul, and in Calcutta, the interfering General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Army, Lieutenant General L.P. ‘Bogey’ Sen, against the trio of field commanders – Lieutenant General Umrao Singh leading XXXIII Corps, the frightfully unlucky Major General Niranjan Prasad atop 4 Division and Brigadier John Dalvi heading Palit’s own 7 Infantry Brigade. It would have earned Palit the respect of fighting-men had he sided with Umrao and that lot, backed their appreciation of the situation, and bolstered their plan for an orderly retreat from Tawang, which is settled on a mountain incline and, hence, was indefensible. This he did not do.

Mistakes were compounded, and confusion reigned with Kaul and Sen in their different ways making the mess messier with each passing day, which Palit as DMO did little to clear up. The Sela Ridge in the Tawang sector was ordered to be vacated with a fallback on Bomdila. It was an order countermanded by the Divisional Commander, Prasad. In the ensuing melee with soldiers and units moving hither and thither and lower officers, not knowing which order to follow throwing up their hands, the divisional front broke, and a rout followed.

The flip side of the mounting disorder on the war front was the farce played out in the higher reaches of the army. First, IV Corps was created on paper and Kaul hoisted as its commander. Having done nothing more stressful than churning out public relations pamphlets during the North African Campaign in the Great War, Kaul promptly suffered pulmonary oedema after his initial exposure to the heights but insisted on directing the IV Corps operations from his hospital bed in Delhi! It was a nightmare and so scarred the Indian Army that it has yet to rediscover the will and the spirit to fight the Chinese. How else to explain the fact that the army brass has not prioritized the raising of 3-4 Light Mountain Divisions as a minimum force required for offensive warfare on the Tibetan plateau, despite being on the agenda for some 40 years now? Palit produced a brilliantly written, finely detailed, and ultimately unconvincing self-exculpatory book on the conflict – War in the High Himalayas.

Fortunately for Palit, his other writings burnished his reputation. As an extraordinarily perceptive military analyst and writer, he had no peer. His classic and in many ways precocious, Essentials of Military Knowledge, dealing with basic infantry tactics and such which he wrote when his contemporaries in uniform were still trying to get the hang of things military, is the primer the first generation of officers joining independent India’s army in the 1950s as also the Pakistan Army (perhaps, because of Palit’s Baloch connection) cut their teeth on.

Palit topped that by writing perhaps the first great treatise on nuclear weapons and strategy – War in the Deterrent Age – by an Indian in 1966 when he was Major General commanding the 23 Infantry Division. It was remarkable he found the time to research and write while still in service, this very perceptive tome advocating India’s acquisition of nuclear weapons to countervail China – a line that went against the thinking of the Indian government. Instead of going full tilt with testing a nuclear bomb, Delhi at that time was seeking a joint security guarantee from the United States and the Soviet Union against China, something Palit dismissed in his book as ‘more a conference table proposal than a practicable solution.’ His strong language was complemented by the quality of his strategic insights. He argued, for instance, that from a military point of view nuclear deterrence ‘is at best relative and at worst sterile’ but that if India failed to obtain a nuclear bomb it should ‘be prepared to abdicate the right to strategic (and therefore, …political) decision-making’, and warned that if India did not match China’s nuclear clout, it would have to reconcile to the fact of ‘stability in Asia [being made] forever conditional on the Chinese goodwill.’ It is an argument that continues to have relevance.

After retirement, Palit produced one of the most engaging biographies – that of Major General A.A. ‘Jicks’ Rudra, and a more affectionate monograph on his father Col. Palit, of the Indian Medical Service. Perhaps to promote such writing, the General established a publishing house (‘Palit and Palit’).

He wanted more serving and retired officers from India and Britain to do research and write military history of colonial India. For that purpose, he founded the ‘General Palit Military Studies Trust’ in the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in 1988, which he funded. The Trust moved to the more appropriate United Service Institution of India in 2003.

‘Monty’ Palit died on 3 April 2008 at the age of 89.

Memories of 1962 should be revived and remembered throughout our future years, as should the spectre of a past horror be displayed to the fastest mouth in India, Bipin Rawat, who took a detachment of Gorkhas into the alleys and bye-ways of Nizamuddin a couple of days ago.

What was he thinking about?

Thanks to Nehru's paranoia about the military taking over, a fear amplified by a less than tactful Cariappa, the Indian Army saw severe interference with its appointments and with its policies.

 

[PanzerKiel]

General Harbakh Singh, his performance in 1965 was excellent....cant say more. He single-handedly commanded the IA on the western front, was always found physically at the point of crisis, marvelous job.

 

[Joe Shearer]

General Harbakh Singh, his performance in 1965 was excellent....cant say more. He single-handedly commanded the IA on the western front, was always found physically at the point of crisis, marvelous job.

We were brutally unlucky that it became a choice between him and Manekshaw for the top job (it was a very, very close-run thing).

 

[PanzerKiel]

We were brutally unlucky that it became a choice between him and Manekshaw for the top job (it was a very, very close-run thing).

Result of 1971 war kept aside, i would have personally favored General Harbaksh, anywhere, anytime.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Result of 1971 war kept aside, i would have personally favored General Harbaksh, anywhere, anytime.

It was close, Sir. Sam was asked about his chances just before the decision was announced - this is a personal interjection - and he held out his hand, palm open, and rocked it from side to side, without a word.

 

[PanzerKiel]

It was close, Sir. Sam was asked about his chances just before the decision was announced - this is a personal interjection - and he held out his hand, palm open, and rocked it from side to side, without a word.

General Harbaksh becoming the army chief would have been a deserving end to his career.

 

[Joe Shearer]

General Harbaksh becoming the army chief would have been a deserving end to his career.

Undeniably so, and that leads to a speculative thought about what might have been.

As you probably already know, Muchu Chaudhuri was succeeded by P. P.Kumaramangalam (the first chief who was a gunner, if I am not mistaken), and it was to decide his successor that this choice between Harbaksh and Sam Manekshaw had to be made. Harbaksh was focussed on the west, having been the Army Commander in the west, while Sam was equally focussed on the east. He brought Eastern Command down to Calcutta, which was in Lucknow under Bogey Sen; he was also quite deeply involved in the management of the Naxalite insurgency at the time, so his focus was firmly on the east. When 71 happened, he had the good sense to leave it to the stolid, dependable Jagjit Arora, a safe pair of hands, and to his ebullient CoS, Jake Jacob. However, things happened in the west.

Leaving things to Gopal Bewoor was not the same thing as leaving things to Jagjit Arora; first, there was that masterful campaign by Iftekhar Janjua, one of the few examples I have read of a battle commander confronting a setback calmly, shifting his axis of attack and pushing his troops to victory. Second, there was that awful comedy of errors in the south, where Khambatta was totally unprepared for a pre-emptive Pakistani strike at Jaisalmer. Fortunately Sonny Deol intervened, a platoon of the Indian Army held off the entire Pakistan Army, as our fanboys will lose no time to tell all innocent bystanders.

I wonder what would have happened in both these cases if Harbaksh had been the Chief. After all, Iftekhar Janjua was almost reprising Grand Slam; being surprised by the enemy had also happened at Khem Karan.

But that is the speculative history I keep warning people about.

Result of 1971 war kept aside, i would have personally favored General Harbaksh, anywhere, anytime.

Without detracting from his pre-eminence, it ought to be remembered that Harbaksh was the quintessential Jat Sikh, blunt and to the point, and impatient of political correctness. He told someone who told me many decades afterwards about his experience as a POW in Malaysia. He was invited to tea with Netaji, who lost no time in urging Harbaksh to join the INA. The blunt reply he got was that Harbaksh had sworn an oath, and he had no intention whatsoever of forswearing that oath, and thanks for the tea.

 

[PanzerKiel]

Undeniably so, and that leads to a speculative thought about what might have been.

As you probably already know, Muchu Chaudhuri was succeeded by P. P.Kumaramangalam (the first chief who was a gunner, if I am not mistaken), and it was to decide his successor that this choice between Harbaksh and Sam Manekshaw had to be made. Harbaksh was focussed on the west, having been the Army Commander in the west, while Sam was equally focussed on the east. He brought Eastern Command down to Calcutta, which was in Lucknow under Bogey Sen; he was also quite deeply involved in the management of the Naxalite insurgency at the time, so his focus was firmly on the east. When 71 happened, he had the good sense to leave it to the stolid, dependable Jagjit Arora, a safe pair of hands, and to his ebullient CoS, Jake Jacob. However, things happened in the west.

Leaving things to Gopal Bewoor was not the same thing as leaving things to Jagjit Arora; first, there was that masterful campaign by Iftekhar Janjua, one of the few examples I have read of a battle commander confronting a setback calmly, shifting his axis of attack and pushing his troops to victory. Second, there was that awful comedy of errors in the south, where Khambatta was totally unprepared for a pre-emptive Pakistani strike at Jaisalmer. Fortunately Sonny Deol intervened, a platoon of the Indian Army held off the entire Pakistan Army, as our fanboys will lose no time to tell all innocent bystanders.

I wonder what would have happened in both these cases if Harbaksh had been the Chief. After all, Iftekhar Janjua was almost reprising Grand Slam; being surprised by the enemy had also happened at Khem Karan.

But that is the speculative history I keep warning people about.

Couldnt agree more.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Couldnt agree more.

The best part was that due to Y. B. Chavan, the then Defence Minister, whingeing about wanting a Maratha in the top job continually, and due to Indira's political weakness at that point (this was the period leading up to the Emergency, that shocked India to the core), Gopal Bewoor superseded someone of the quality of Prem Bhagat as Chief to succeed Sam Manekshaw!

Dear Lord.