Anil Bhat
3rd December, 2011 marked 40 years of the outbreak of the third
India-Pakistan war, which like the earlier two, was sparked off by Pakistan. This war is also very
significant as it liberated erstwhile Bengali East Pakistan from horrific oppression and genocide by the ruling military government of West Pakistan and created the new
nation, Bangladesh. Following about nine
months of a liberation struggle by the Mukti Bahini (Bengali liberation
volunteer fighters), it took 13 days of this war for Indian Army to encircle
erstwhile East Pakistan, forcing 93,000
Pakistan armed forces personnel to surrender to it. It is also worth noting
that India meaningfully followed the Geneva Conventions by keeping these 93,000 personnel in prisoner of
war camps in good health and repatriated them later.
On 3rd December 2011, the statue
of Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, Param Vir Chakra (posthumous) was unveiled
at his alma mater, Lawrence School Sanawar, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh. Arun, then recently commissioned into The
Poona Horse, became the youngest recipient of India’s highest award for
gallantry in war, for outstanding valour, which was praised even by his then
enemy tank squadron commander. Mrs. Maheshwari Khetarpal, Arun’s mother
received the medal and scroll by then President VV Giri on Republic Day, 1972.
On 19th November 2011, Mrs
Khetarpal was honoured during the Cavalry Day wreath-laying ceremony held at
the Teen Murti monument, which was of
greater significance as it was held during the run-up to the 40th
Anniversary of the 1971 India-Pakistan War.
While the first of the armoured fighting
vehicles, christened as tanks, were used or rather, tried out, in World War
(WW) I, it was in WW II, that well-developed tanks, which had replaced horsed
cavalry, proved to be a very decisive factor in modern warfare.
During the first India-Pakistan war in
1947, Indian Army redefined mountain
warfare by fighting at heights of 14,000 feet in Jammu and Kashmir and even hauling Stuart tanks of 7th
Cavalry up to those heights and shocking Pakistan army.. But after WW II, it was in the 1965 and 1971
India-Pakistan wars that intense tank battles were fought. And it was in both
these wars’ tank engagements that the incompetence and lack of training,
leadership and motivation of Pak army became obvious. Pak army’s US doled
Patton tanks were then the most modern compared with Indian Army’s Centurians
of much earlier vintage. Yet in both these wars Pak armoured units took major
bashings from Indian Army’s regiments like 4th (Hodson’s) Horse, The
Poona Horse and some others.
Pak armoured corp’s major drawbacks, which
caused them very heavy losses of Patton tanks against Indian Army’s Centurian
tanks were: (a) their tank gunners were
not even familiar with the gunnery
procedure applicable to the Patton tank and (b) owing to fear of dying by flames,
Pakistani tank crew bailed out as soon as their tank was hit even if it had not
caught fire and its guns were still functional.
The story of Arun Khetarpal’s role in the
Battle of Basantar, did not end with this thirteen-day war, resulting in the
demise of East Pakistan and the creation of the newly liberated Bangladesh. Major
Khwaja Mohammad Nasir, the then a
Squadron Commander of Pakistan Army’s 13th
Lancers, the regiment pitched against Poona Horse, who came bandaged the next
day to collect the dead bodies of his fallen comrades, wanted to know more
about “ the officer, who stood like an insurmountable rock” and whose troop of
three Centurian tanks was responsible for decimation of his entire squadron
of fourteen Patton tanks. His bandages
were owing to injuries sustained by him in the final engagement of his and
Arun’s tank. 13th Lancers is the same regiment which exchanged its
Sikh squadron with the Muslim squadron of The Poona Horse, during the partition
in 1947.
Nasir’s tribute to Arun did not end in the
battlefield in December 1971. Arun’s
father, late Briadier (retd) Madan
Khetarpal, then residing with his wife,
Maheshwari, in New Delhi, had for long nursed a desire to visit his hometown,
Sargodha, in Pakistan. Speaking to this
writer few years ago, had mentioned that in 2001, when he finally visited Pakistan, the same Khwaja Mohammad Nasir,
then a Brigadier and manager of Pakistan’s cricket team, who hosted him. During this visit, Nasir hesitatingly
admitted that he was the one at whose hands Arun got killed. “…he (Arun) was
singularly responsible for our failure. He was a very brave boy…”, said Nasir
to the senior Khetarpal, who even in his sorrow, stoically remained an officer
and a gentleman.
Of the 66 gallantry awards conferred on
Indian Army’s armoured corps personnel in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, apart from Arun, who got one of this war’s two Param Vir
Chakra, there were three Maha Vir Chakra (one posthumous and one awarded for
the second time to the same person), 23 Vir Chakra, one Vishishtha Seva Medal,
17 Sena Medals (including one posthumous) and 21 Mentioned-in –Despatches. The
second time Maha Vir Chakra awardee was Brig AS Vaidya, of The Deccan Horse, who later became Army
Chief and after retirement was killed by
Pakistan supported Khalistani terrorist
Harjinder Singh, aka ‘Jinda’, at Pune.
Twice every year serving and retired
officers and their family members assemble in the morning at the traffic
roundabout to lay wreathes at the Teen Murti Memorial. Once is during Cavalry
Week on the second or third Saturday in
November and the other is on 1st May celebrated as Armoured Corps
Day, which marks the process of mechanization of Indian Cavalry, beginning with
The Scinde Horse in 1939. On both these occasions, Sowars of all armoured
regiments clad in cavalry ceremonial dress with tall lances stand around Teen Murti roundabout, while four Sowars of 61st
Cavalry, the only horse cavalry regiment in the world still maintained, are
positioned at the two entrances to the roundabout. All serving and retired
Armoured Corps officers and families, who attend this solemn ceremony assemble
and lay the wreathes as the Sowars dip their vertically held lances to the left
horizontal in time with the Trumpeters sounding
the Last Post , followed by the Armoured Corps Band playing Auld Land
Syne.
Teen Murti, the memorial of three bronze
statues of Indian cavalry soldiers around a white stone obelisk is how the
palatial building where India’s first Prime Minister resided, got its name of
Teen Murti Bhavan . Erected in the centre
of the roundabout road junction just
outside the entrance to Teen Murti Bhavan, the statues were sculpted by Leonard
Jennings and the memorial was constructed in the memory of to commemorate those
killed from the cavalry of the Indian Army during World War I (1914-1919) in
battles fought in Sinai, Palestine and
Syria. The three statues represent Sowars (as cavlry and armoured corps
soldiers are known) from the three Indian State Forces - Hyderabad, Mysore and
Jodhpur- together with detachments from Bhavnagar, Kashmir and Kathiawar, which
were part of the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade.
During World War II, following mechanization
of Indian Cavalry, the 31st
Indian Armoured Division was raised and fought with distinction in the Middle
East. In 1944 the 50th , 254th and 255th Indian
tank brigades of the fought in Burma.
Designed by Robert Tor Russell who was part
of Lutyens’ team, erstwhile Flagstaff
House, the British Commander-in-Chief's residence, south of Rashtrapati Bhavan, erstwhile Governor General’s Lodge
and connected to it with a direct vists-South Avenue- became Teen Murti Bhavan,
India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s residence after
Independence. Since his death in 1964, it was made the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
