Thursday 9 February 2012

INDIAN CAVALRY’S TRYSTS WITH HISTORY

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.