Category: Anecdotes

I am going to illustrate from my own life an example of moral courage. In 1971, when Pakistan clamped down on its province, East Pakistan, hundreds and thousands of refugees started pouring into India. The Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi had a cabinet meeting at ten o’clock in the morning. The following attended: the Foreign Minister, Sardar Swaran Singh, the Defence Minister, Mr. Jagjivan Ram, the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Rao, and I was also ordered to be present.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a very thin line between becoming a Field Marshal and being dismissed. A very angry Prime Minister read out messages from Chief Ministers of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. All of them saying that hundreds of thousands of refugees had poured into their states and they did not know what to do. So the Prime Minister turned round to me and said: “I want you to do something”.

I said, “What do you want me to do?”

She said, “I want you to enter East Pakistan”.

I said, “Do you know that that means War?”

She said, “I do not mind if it is war”.

I, in my usual stupid way said, “Prime Minister, have you read the Bible?”And the Foreign Minister, Sardar Swaran Singh (a Punjabi Sikh), in his Punjabi accent said, “What has Bible got to do with this?”, and I said, “the first book, the first chapter, the first paragraph, the first sentence, God said, ‘let there be light’’ and there was light. You turn this round and say ‘let there be war’ and there will be war. What do you think? Are you ready for a war? Let me tell you –“it’s 28th April, the Himalayan passes are opening now, and if the Chinese gave us an ultimatum, I will have to fight on two fronts”.

A ‘yes man’ is a dangerous man.

Again Sardar Swaran Singh turned round and in his Punjabi English said, “Will China give ultimatum?”

I said, “You are the Foreign Minister. You tell me”.

Then I turned to the Prime Minister and said, “Prime Minister, last year you wanted elections in West Bengal and you did not want the communists to win, so you asked me to deploy my soldiers in penny pockets in every village, in every little township in West Bengal. I have two divisions thus deployed in sections and platoons without their heavy weapons. It will take me at least a month to get them back to their units and to their formations. Further, I have a division in the Assam area, another division in Andhra Pradesh and the Armoured Division in the Jhansi-Babina area. It will take me at least a month to get them back and put them in their correct positions. I will require every road, every railway train, every truck, every wagon to move them. We are harvesting in the Punjab, and we are harvesting in Haryana; we are also harvesting in Uttar Pradesh. And you will not be able to move your harvest.

I turned to the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, “If there is a famine in the country afterwards, it will be you to blame, not me.” Then I said, “My Armoured Division has only got thirteen tanks which are functioning.”

The Finance Minister, Mr. Chawan, a friend of mine, said, “Sam, why only thirteen?”

“Because you are the Finance Minister. I have been asking for money for the last year and a half, and you keep saying there is no money. That is why.” Then I turned to the Prime Minister and said, “Prime Minister, it is the end of April. By the time I am ready to operate, the monsoon will have broken in that East Pakistan area. When it rains, it does not just rain, it pours. Rivers become like oceans. If you stand on one bank, you cannot see the other and the whole countryside is flooded. My movement will be confined to roads, the Air Force will not be able to support me, and, if you wish me to enter East Pakistan, I guarantee you a hundred percent defeat.”

“You are the Government”, I said turning to the Prime Minister, “Now will you give me your orders?”

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have seldom seen a woman so angry, and I am including my wife in that. She was red in the face and I said, “Let us see what happens”. She turned round and said, “The cabinet will meet four o’clock in the evening”.

Everyone walked out. I being the junior most man was the last to leave. As I was leaving, she said, “Chief, please will you stay behind?” I looked at her. I said, “Prime Minister, before you open your mouth, would you like me to send in my resignation on grounds of health, mental or physical?”

“No, sit down, Sam. Was everything you told me the truth?”

“Yes, it is my job to tell you the truth. It is my job to fight and win, not to lose.”

She smiled at me and said, “All right, Sam. You know what I want. When will you be ready?”

“I cannot tell you now, Prime Minister”, I said, but let me guarantee you this that if you leave me alone, allow me to plan, make my arrangements, and fix a date, I guarantee you a hundred percent victory”.

 

-from Sam Manekshaw’s speech

As I was calling PSI and my friend, my cameraman was doing his duty. By the time, two more journalists, cameraman Sharan from local cable network and photographer Krishna, came to the spot. I was helplessly witnessing the horror. I was completely helpless. More than half of the attackers were completely drunk. I was requesting them not to attack and they were in no condition to listen my words. “Yeh… please don’t beat them… Don’t beat the girls. Please.. Please…” These loud requesting words of mine were just recorded in the video footage, but not in the hearts or minds of the drunken attackers.

The world must have seen violence of different kinds. I had so far heard about such horrors, but for the first time in my life witnessed them. Really horrible. The victims were pleading with folded hands and body, just as pleading before the God. “Please don’t beat us. We are friends and celebrating birthday party. We are not doing anything else. Please… Please… Please…”

The hard hearted attackers didn’t spare anybody. Four people were kicking and hitting hard one guy. Terrified girls were running around and the attackers were chasing them. Believe it or not, one girl jumped from first floor and around twenty attackers on the ground kicked her hard. Couple of guys slapped her with force. Her cloths were torn apart. Meanwhile another girl wearing pink dress was attacked by the mob. Her cloths were almost completely taken off making her almost naked. The attackers were deliberately touching her private parts. All these scenes were not shot. I saw such a horror for the first time in my life. Then all the victims were locked inside a room. All this happened within a short span of time, say 15 minutes. Everything was over.

After first phase of attack was over, Police Sub Inspector Raveesh Nayak, Police Inspector Munikanta Neelaswamy came to the spot along with some police constables. The point to be noted here is that the behaviors of the police and the attackers were indicating something wrong. The police personal seemed to have been in contact all through. I was really surprised that instead of arresting the attackers, the police were in friendly discussion with the attackers, for more than 30 minutes! One guy who was among the victims was trying to run away, but the police caught him and the attackers brutally beaten him up in front of the police!

By then, some more cameramen had arrived. I came to my office along with my cameramen and uplinked all the visuals to Bangalore head office. The news was aired immediately. All the national news-channels took our footage and the report and aired thus making it national news within minutes.

Enraged with this, Mangalore city Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh called Rajesh Rao, my friend and the reporter of TV-9 news channel. I was with Rajesh Rao when the Commissioner called and the Rajesh put the mobile phone on loudspeaker mode so that we both could listen to the conversation. The Commissioner was saying: “Why did Naveen air this news? Doesn’t he have sisters? Doesn’t he beat them and is that aired on TV? I will see him. He has alleged that Taliban culture is deep rooted in Mangalore. He compared the incident with Assam incident while airing the news live. I won’t spare him this time. I will fix him in this case. Yea.. I do fix him however influence he may have…” What all the Police Commissioner meant was that brutally beating the boys and girls was not a big issue at all, but shooting and airing that beating scene was a big crime.

–wrote eyewitness Reporter Naveen Sorinje

Last year, around this time, I had visited the Dras War Memorial.No true Indian can visit there and not get emotional.

I strongly believe that Indian civilians do not have a clue about the numerous sacrifices made by our Army brethren to save our country from our murderous enemies.Not only are Indian civilians clueless, they are utterly insensitive and callous too.

Here is a heart-breaking anecdote from an Army daughter:

While news coverage in 1999 brought Kargil to the Indian living room, we witnessed the war at a very personal level. With every tricolour wrapped coffin, we hoped it was not someone we knew. Not the officer who used to play hide and seek with us during Mess parties, or the one who used to take us for bike rides on his new Kawasaki, or the one who first taught you how to hold a tennis racket or even the one who we used to make fun of because some pretty girl refused to dance with him in last month’s social evening. But all we could do was hope. As the number of dead soldiers soared, our hopes waned. Every death was the loss of a father, a husband, a son, a brother a fiancé or a childhood sweetheart, all of whom to us, were family.
While most of the country was surprisingly supportive, given the lack of information about the defence forces out there, there were instances that made most of us Army kids cringe, partly in disbelief and partly in disgust.

 

I remember flying Indian Airlines from Bombay to Bhuj and as I was about to board the plane I suddenly noticed those dreaded coffins about 10 meters from where I was.

There were about fifteen of them, along the sidewalk, wrapped snugly in the tricolour before they were about to be transported to their various residences or battalions. I noticed this rather corpulent gentleman giving stern directions for what exactly to do with these ‘boxes’ as he called them. These were his exact words, while he loudly thumped one of them “Arey kya yaar, in dabbo ko hatta yaha se, poora jam karke rakha hai idhar.” My heart sank and my eyes welled up instantly with tears of anger, rage and most of all, insult.
But I could do nothing. I let him deride the lost lives of the people I have known and loved for years. To my horror, I found out later, that Indian Airlines had refused to transport these very coffins in their carriers. So much for being a public sector airline.

The aspirants included the late Arjun Singh, N.D Tiwari, Sharad Pawar and Madhav Rao Scindia. Sonia Gandhi was aware of this. I told her that the time had come for her to indicate her preference for Congress president. He would naturally become Prime Minister. For so momentous a decision, I suggested she ask P.N. Haksar for advice. She said she would let me know. Meanwhile, she consulted several people, including M.L. Fotedar.

 

The next day, she asked me to bring P.N. Haksar to No.10 Janpath. Haksar’s advice was to offer the post to Vice-President Shankar Dayal Sharma. He suggested that Aruna Asaf Ali and I should sound out the Vice-President. Aruna Asaf Ali told the Vice-President that she and I had been asked to request him to accept the post of Congress party president. In other words, he would be the Prime Minister. Shankar Dayal Sharma gave us a patient hearing. He then said he was touched and honoured by Soniaji placing so much trust in him.

 

What followed staggered Arunaji and me. The Vice-President continued, “The prime ministership of India is a full time job. My age and health would not let me to do justice to the most important office in the country. Kindly convey to Soniaji the reasons for my inability to take on such an awesome a responsibility”. His answer was wholly unexpected. To turn down the prime ministership of India was something only a man of self-confidence and integrity could do.

 

On the way back, Arunaji and I hardly exchanged a word, because Shankar Dayalji’s response had overwhelmed us.

We reported to Ms. Gandhi the Vice-President’s decision. The country was without a Prime Minister. Such a hiatus could not be prolonged. Already the media was reporting unseemly and not-so-innocent jockeying for the job.

 

Once again she turned to P.N. Haksar, who advised her to send for P.V. Narasimha Rao. The rest is history

 

–wrote Natwar Singh, former Foreign Minister of India in The Hindu