THE GARUD STRIKES (3 page)

MEETING THE GARUD

T
here was a familiar jeep waiting for me when I exited the airport. The rising sun lent a strange reddish hue to the gleaming olive green jeep. It immediately brought back memories of the years that I had spent in the olive green uniform.

How many times had such a jeep met me? At countless bus stands, railway stations and airports all over the country. Almost fifteen years had passed since the day I had hung up my boots. But they were swept away in a flash as the impeccably turned out Guards NCO saluted.

‘Ram-ram, sahib. Havildar Sachinder Singh, 4 Guards, 1 Rajput, sir. I am your Liaison Officer.’ Nothing in his dress or demeanour betrayed the fact that he had driven through the night and been waiting for me at the airport for over three hours now, kind courtesy a delayed flight.

Suddenly I was (almost) ashamed of my baggy T-shirt, faded jeans and shoulder length hair. Reminding myself that I was now an author, and hence allowed a certain artistic licence, I pulled myself together, stiffened the spine, returned his salute, declined the inevitable cup of tea that accompanies such pick-up parties and got into the jeep. We were on our way.

Having been in the air, in the closed confines of an economy class seat, for almost nine hours and on the road for well nigh eighteen, I relished the opportunity to spread my legs. The cool morning breeze slicing in through the open windows more than made up for the lack of an air conditioner. Chiding myself for being a spoilt brat, I leaned back and allowed my mind to rest. It did not take long for me to doze off as we sped through the still deserted roads.

The cry of the sentry bulldozed its way past my layers of sleep. I awoke with a start as the jeep nosed past the quarter guard and halted in front of the 4 Guards officers’ mess. Still fighting sleep, I shook hands with the captain, a slim young man, in his mid-twenties, who had been waiting for me at the mess gates.

All vestiges of sleep fell away as two bagpipers burst into music and led the way in; past a huge red banner that proclaimed in flame coloured letters—4 Guards (1 Rajput) 214th Raising Day. Right in the middle of the banner was a golden Garud, upright, with its wings spread wide, grandly and reassuringly looking down at all and sundry, as though to say: its okay… you’re on my watch now.

Almost embarrassed, definitely a bit sheepish, I followed suit; it had been a while since I had been exposed to Army ceremonies. Not to mention the fact that, much as I hate to admit it, I had never been in a 214 year old infantry battalion before. Or maybe I had whilst in service, but had never noticed it.

The accumulated weight of all that regimental history slammed into me the minute I set foot inside the officers’ mess. There was an avalanche of silver trophies all over the rooms—on the walls, in glass cabinets, on the coffee tables and side tables.

‘Most of our silver is still in storage, sir,’ my escort remarked with a smile, when I commented on this. ‘This is temporary accommodation you see. We don’t have much space.’ Then, noting my interest, and aware that I was here on an information gathering mission, he led me to a massive trophy in the middle of the room. ‘This is our centerpiece, sir. It is…’

Before he could go any further, the Commandant walked in with several other officers and whatever he was going to share with me went unsaid, as pleasantries took over the conversation. However, I was soon to be acquainted with the centerpiece, the very next morning, at the Kasam (oath taking) Parade, which the unit holds every Raising Day.

The mood was sombre when I entered the shamiana (tent) that had been set up on one side of the unit’s parade ground. Though I was well in time, almost all the seats were taken. Across the parade ground, directly in front of us, was a huge, newly constructed, gate through which the parade would march in. The guardsmen marshalled on the other side of the wall were not yet visible. However, the unit’s colours and their escort, waiting to be marched in, could be seen on our left, towards the far end of the parade ground.

‘We are the only battalion in the Commonwealth Nations that has been authorized an extra Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) to carry our colours,’ an old-timer on my left whispered. ‘As you know, all Indian Army units carry the President’s colours or the regimental colours. However, in the colonial days, the royal regiments had two colours, the regimental ones and either the King’s or Queen’s colours. In 1858, after the mutiny, our battalion was made a royal unit, the 2nd Queen Victoria’s Own Rajput Light Infantry, hence the two colours now. However, in 1805, when serving under General Lord Lake, for the capture of Bharatpur and subsequently Delhi, we were given an honorary colour for exceptional service and one extra JCO was authorized to the battalion for these colours. In 1949, the King’s colours were laid to rest in Chetwood Hall, Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun.’

I was still assimilating this when the parade began. There was a strong sense of déjà vu as the regimental colours were marched on. An almost forgotten stirring of once familiar emotions swamped me. In the background, the commentator began narrating the story of the attacks on Delhi, in 1803, and then on Bharatpur, in 1805 and 1824; where the unit got the opportunity to avenge its fallen and regain its honour by capturing the fort that had been denied it earlier. How the regimental colours had been decimated during the first attack, and pieces of it preserved by those who could retrieve them!

I was yet again reminded of how much that simple, metre-long piece of cloth could mean. How willingly men would rally to it and shed blood just to keep that rectangular cloth flying high.

A few minutes later, the parade ground began to echo with several hundred voices, as the men of 4 Guards renewed the oath: to protect and defend the nation and uphold the regiment’s honour, no matter what the cost.

The words sounded harsh, the tones gruff, and yet there was something magical in the air; simple, yet incredibly powerful magic. One could sense the passion. And without knowing precisely why, one knew that these were just not words being spouted in some meaningless ceremony. It was evident that these words would be honoured whenever duty came calling. I had experienced such parades before, several times, yet I felt these emotions. It was at that precise moment that I felt connected to this book.

Echoes of the regimental war cry,
Garud ka hoon, bol pyare
(I belong to the Garud, say so, dear friend) reverberated in the parade ground long after the parade had marched out.

An hour later, still feeling all stirred up, I was ensconced in the bachelors’ accommodation, waiting for the first of the 1971 veterans to drop in for an interview. Needless to say, I was excited! I was going to hear the story first-hand; from the very people who had swept by the Pakistani garrisons and been the first to enter Dacca. These were the very men who had helped ninety-five million oppressed people throw off a cruel yoke and helped a nation wrest its freedom. I had little idea that the emotional rollercoaster I had been thrown on earlier that morning was still going to grow larger, more real; almost surreal.

Twenty minutes later, there was a grown-up man, well into his sixties, crying unabashedly in front of me, as he narrated and re-lived the story of another who had died in his arms. It is only then that realization actually struck… of what this story meant to those who had lived through those tempestuous days.

One by one they came to tell me their stories; wizened, grizzly, yet incredibly proud—officers, JCOs and Other Ranks—men who had once worn the Garud with a proud flourish. Not even aware that it was they, and men like them, who lent the Garud its sanctity, and not the other way around. Each of them had a story to tell. And they told it simply, and straight from the heart. Without any embellishments, yet fraught with emotions. Pride, grief, fear, honour, anger, and pain: it all came through with startling, heart-rending clarity.

By the time dusk fell, the picture in my head was almost complete. As complete as it could be without the smell of gunsmoke, the thunder of guns, the fear that shrouds every battlefield, and people screaming, bleeding and dying. I felt as though I had been through the war myself, right from Agartala to Dacca; that I knew even those who had either fallen on the battlefield or been taken by time. I was brimming with emotions that I was still unable to pin down or understand fully.

Like many of those old men who told me their stories, that night I, too, cried. An acknowledgement of the feelings those stories had invoked in me. And, for the very first time, as a storyteller, felt the fear that I would not be able to do justice to this book. Though it had been a long and eventful day, sleep wandered nowhere close to me that night.

As
I tossed and turned in bed, through the tiny window of my caravan, the brightly lit banner strung across the officers’ mess gates caught my eye. The Garud proudly holding its head up in the middle of the banner beckoned me. Like for most Hindus, the Garud is sacred for me, too, kind courtesy its association with Lord Vishnu. However, I had but a hazy idea of why it is so. Unable to resist the sudden urge, I powered up my laptop to find out more. It did not take long for Google to provide the answer.

Kadru and Vinata, the two daughters of King Daksha Prajapati, were married to the great sage Kashyap Muni, who offered a boon to both of them. Kadru asked for a thousand sons and Vinata asked for two, each stronger than her elder sister’s thousand. Soon, Kadru laid a thousand eggs and Vinata two. Unable to control her impatience, Vinata broke open one of them to see what was inside. From it emerged a magnificent warrior. However, he was crippled from waist down. He cursed his mother and warned Vinata not to open the second egg before its time, and then rose in the air and went in search of nectar for his thousand stepbrothers. He defeated Brihaspati and the other gods who guarded the nectar and then carried it to Lord Vishnu, the Sun God. Vishnu blessed him to be immortal and invincible in battle. He also appointed him his official carrier. That is how and when the Garud became sacred.

One of the several regimental magazines in my caravan provided the rest of the answer as to why the Garud had been chosen as the regimental emblem by the Brigade of Guards. That came about when General Cariappa accepted the recommendation of senior Guards officers like Lieutenant Colonel Bireshwar Nath and Lieutenant Colonel N.C. Rawlley. In addition to being considered sacred, the considerations were also the elegance, strength, courage and vitality of the great bird. It was for these very reasons that this majestic bird, with spread wings, in standing posture, had been the symbol of the French Army under Napoleon, not to mention the association of the eagle with the glory of the Roman Empire.

These, and a host of related thoughts, were whirling in my dreams that night. Perhaps the supreme confidence of the Garud reached out and touched me, too. Either way, by the time I arose with the morning sun, all my doubts had dissipated. And I knew I could do this book, with no concern for commercial appeal. But only for the feelings of those who had been a part of it.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

4
Guards (1 Rajput) was carrying out counter-insurgency tasks in the Mizo Hills at the time when Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was arrested, on 25 March 1971. By then, the Mizo terrorists were already on the run and had sought refuge in the Masalang Area, Chittagong Hill tracts of East Pakistan, where the Pakistani Army was providing them active support. Their camps were guarded by a series of Border Out Posts (BOPs) manned by the East Pakistan Rifles (EPR), which mostly comprised Bengalis. During this time, 4 Guards was actively involved in reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and putting together a comprehensive picture of Pakistani interference in India’s internal affairs. Soon they began raiding the camps of the Mizo hostiles.

On the very first raid, led by Alpha Company under command Major Chandrakant, some Mizo hostiles were captured. They provided exact locations of key hostile camps and very precise details of Pakistani support being given to them. This concrete and actionable information available now provided an opportunity for India to destroy the Pak-sponsored Mizo insurgent camps and put an end to this menace once and for all. This opportunity became even more real when the Awami League declared independence, and the Bengalis switched allegiance to the new state. This need (to put a final stop to Pakistani support of the insurgency in North-East India and provide depth to the Siliguri corridor) was a major consideration in India’s decision to intervene in East Pakistan.

Consequently, the unit was rushed to Agartala. The leading elements of 4 Guards reached Agartala on the evening of 3 April 1971, but before they could go into action, plans were changed, and the orders to search and destroy the Mizo camps across the Indo-Pak border never materialized. Nevertheless, the unit remained in Agartala and thus had a ringside view of the torrid sequence of events that followed in East Pakistan. Not only did they witness the massive influx of millions of refugees into India, they also had a firsthand view of the atrocities that the Pakistan Army inflicted on the people of East Pakistan.

Soon, the trickle of refugees into India had become a deluge. Soon, every possible Indian facility along those borders was swamped. The hospitals were overflowing with men who had had limbs chopped off; women who had been raped, disfigured, and had their breasts cut off. Even children had not been spared. The bestiality displayed by the Pakistan Army cannot be expressed by mere words. Mutilated and mangled, millions flowed into India.

‘We were grappling to come to terms with what we saw, as much as we were trying to cope with the daily increasing flood of starving, battered and mutilated people.’ The expression on Captain Sutradhar’s face conveyed it all. ‘I still remember Ted Kennedy standing in the hospital ward when he visited us in July 1971. There was not even an inch of room available in the hospital; every possible corner had been taken up by a mass of humanity … by what had once been normal, happy human beings.’ The good doctor was now crying openly.

Ted Kennedy’s visit, and the coverage by international media that followed in its run-up, played a major role in highlighting the plight of the East Pakistani refugees and the atrocities committed on them. Till now this was being largely ignored by the American media, primarily because the Vietnam War and the Cold War were at their peak, and America was not very keen to discuss the misdemeanours of Pakistan, its favoured ally in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). And also because Nixon and Kissinger were using Yahya Khan to try and effect a rapproachment with China.

The Pakistani Army’s atrocities also went unreported because the then UN High Commisioner for Refugees, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan also happened to be the only child of Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan III, a Pakistani. He allegedly did not hesitate to use his offices to play an ambivalent role and downplay the horrors unleashed by Pakistani soldiers on the hapless East Pakistanis.

‘I cannot tell you what terrible things we saw,’ Major Chandrakant, then officiating second-in-command and commander of Alpha Company, 4 Guards, muttered bleakly. ‘In the months before the war, when we were at Sabrun, every day, Pakistani soldiers would drag naked Bengali (Hindu) women like cattle to the river, right in front of our border outposts (BOPs) and force them to bathe in front of every one ... and they would beat them, rape them and mutiliate them. Those gutless men would even yell at us that this is what the fate of all Indian women would be if India dared to intervene in Pakistan.’

The anguish in his voice was raw even to this day. I tried to visualize what he had described, and failed. My mind could not grasp such a reality. I tried to understand the pain and horror they must have experienced, but in vain. But then I correlated it with the news of the day, where Pakistani soldiers had beheaded an Indian soldier, and I could easily see that the Pakistan Army had lost its soul a long time ago. This is not the way soldiers behave. Warriors the world over live by a code of conduct, and such animal behaviour is not a part of it. There can be little hope for a nation when its Army (its pride and glory) stoops to such bestial behaviour.

‘They should not have been allowed to get away with all this. Their officers posted in East Pakistan should have been tried for war crimes, for the sheer bestiality they committed and allowed their men to commit,’ Chandrakant’s anger was palpable. ‘Do you think they would have gotten away scot-free if this had happened in any western country?’

In the face of these continuing horrors, for 4 Guards, the operation to take out the camps of Mizo insurgents now mutated into dealing with the refugees and helping the Mukti Bahini (the East Pakistani freedom fighters) to keep the Pakistani Army at bay and defend the populace of East Pakistan.

However, by virtue of being deployed on the border, 4 Guards gathered important insights into the way the Pakistan Army was functioning in East Pakistan, as well as also learnt a lot about their commanders. These insights were to prove invaluable when hostilities eventually broke out in December 1971.

During these chaotic months, 4 Guards was moving every other day, rushing from one fire to another. ‘We must have walked over every inch of the Agartala area,’ Major Marwah, who then commanded Charlie Company of 4 Guards, commented, ‘sometimes to places so inaccessible that we had to depend exclusively on elephant columns for maintenance.’

By end November 1971, it was clear that war between India and Pakistan could no longer be avoided. The unbelievable burden of millions of refugees on India’s economy, the rape of East Pakistan by the Pakistan Army, the exploding aspirations for a life of freedom, equality and dignity of ninety-five million East Pakistanis and Pakistan Army’s increasing aggression on both eastern and western fronts made this war inevitable.

Come December, the inevitable came to pass and the Indian Armed Forces moved to rescue a beleaguered neo-nation. 4 Guards spearheaded the Indian Army’s advance, right from Agartala to Dacca. Not only did they fight past every obstacle on this incredibly long and difficult road, the guardsmen were also the first to reach Dacca when the Pakistani Army surrendered.

Akhaura, Arahand, Ujjainisar bridge, Sultanpur, Brahmanbaria, Ashuganj, Methikanda, Narsingdi, Lakhiya and finally Dacca. Each of these were unforgettable landmarks on this road. At each of them, many guardsmen shed their blood.

Over forty years have passed since those tumultuous days. The face of the countryside has changed, so much that it is nearly impossible to believe that a deadly war had ravaged it so brutally. However, sitting with these veterans, pushing through the fog of painful memories, I retraced every inch of this deadly, bloodsoaked route. And I felt each and every battle come alive.