The Brave
Author: Rachna Bisht
Publisher: Penguin, Rs250
It is the first attempt of its kind to document the supreme sacrifices made by the great sons of India who fought for the country knowing well that they would die, writes KUMAR CHEllAPPAN
Param Veer Chakra is India’s highest military honours awarded for the highest degree of gallantry and self-sacrifice shown while fighting the enemy. Only 21 soldiers have been honoured with this award till date, 14 posthumously. There are only two PVC winners who are alive today to recount their stories.
Thousands of Indian soldiers got killed in the Indo-Pak war (1947-1948) and the Indo-China war of 1962 and 1965 because of the selfish motives of some of our politicians. The failure of Jawaharlal Nehru to deal with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue and with China on border dispute have been amply proved by India’s disastrous performance against Pakistan and China from 1947 to 1962.
It all started when Nehru usurped the authority to deal with Kashmir and the Northeastern region from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then minister for home affairs. He constituted the North Eastern Frontier Agency which included the States in the Chinese border and brought the department under the ministry of foreign affairs which bamboozled policy makers of the day.
Much has been written about those things in the memoirs of diplomats, military commanders and politicians. But till date there was no attempt to highlight the supreme sacrifices made by the brave hearts of Indian army who had to pay with their lives for the faux pas committed by Nehru.
Rachna Bisht Rawat tells us about the lives and times of 21 Indian brave hearts in her book The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories. It is the first attempt of its kind to document the supreme sacrifices made by the great sons of India who fought to the last for the country knowing well that they would die. In a country where cricket and film stars are considered as gods and demi gods, most people might not have heard of Somnath Sharma or Vikram Batra. Even school children may recount instantly all the movies featuring Salman Khan or Shah Rukh Khan. But if you ask them if they have heard of the Param Vir Chakra, then the answer in all probabilities would be a big “no”. That’s the kind of respect we give to our soldiers who guard the country’s borders while we sleep peacefully.
Rawat has travelled all over the country ranging from Punjab to Northeast to collect the details of those brave soldiers who died fighting for the country. They all died heroes. Though they are all strangers to us, army units where they had worked keep their memories alive and vibrant. Soldiers of their battalions or brigades start their day by remembering their heroic deeds and valour. Twenty one soldiers who were decorated with the Param Vir Chakra have led to the scintillating and inspiring stories in this book.
We might have seen some of the war movies in which the protagonists fight the enemies and win against all odds. Rawat brings to light real life stories from the war front through the words of those who fought with the Param Veers and survived to tell us the untold stories about the unsung heroes. In most of the cases Param Vir Chakra is awarded posthumously and the stories of the valour are told by the friends and colleagues of the warriors.
The brave acts of the soldiers who laid their lives on the altar of the nation’s security could be read only with bated breath as most of these soldiers fought the war with outdated .303 rifles and single shot pistols while their enemies had advanced and automatic machine guns and rifles.
All the articles on the brave hearts have life and emotions in the words. About the Indo-China War of 1962, the author says :”the war is still remembered as a tale of tragic heroism where brave soldiers unquestioningly gave up their lives for the mistakes of shaky Government heads and bad military leaders”.
Being a journalist, she has summed up the reasons for the 1962 debacle. “Good intelligence and war readiness are imperatives of winning wars, good command at the senior level means generals be appointed on military merit and not sycophancy, politicians should not ignore the advice of military officers regarding military readiness and that incompetent people who rise up to the top mess up nations.”
One can tell with authority that the author has Nehru, the PM and VK Krishna Menon the then Defence Minister in mind as incompetent politicians who messed up India. About the 1962 war she says “the Indian soldiers lacked everything except courage”. No need to look further. Nothing surprising in the demand for making known to the country the contents of Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report which has detailed the reasons behind India’s disastrous performance in the war against China.
It could be a strange coincidence that The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories was published at a time when news reports of Chinese incursions into Indian territories pouring in from Arunachal Pradesh and the Kashmir borders.
The author is lucid in her style. Naik Yadu Nath Singh who fought gallantly against the Pakistani Army in the 1948 Kashmir action was an illiterate. But he was an excellent soldier. Had he not become a soldier, he would have ended up as a wrestler and a farmer. lance Naik Karam Singh, the first living soldier who received the Param Veer Chakra from the Indian President too had not go to school. But they were destined to be soldiers capable of chalking out strategies to win wars. The stories of these soldiers have become folklore in their villages as well as in the units they were posted.
How ungrateful we Indians are to the memories was illustrated the other day when some Tamil chauvinist politicians last week offered “floral tributes” to Thileepan, a lTTE terrorist who is portrayed as a martyr by them. Thileepan, undertook a fast unto death demanding the withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from Jaffna which was sent to oversee the disarming of the Tamil terrorist groups. It is said that though Thileepan wanted to wend the fast, the lTTE chief Prabhakaran did not allow him to do so and the former died for want of medical aid. Major Ramaswamy Parameshwaran, a brave heart of the Indian Army died because of bullet wounds suffered by him while on a mission to save some of his colleagues who were under attack from the lTTE. Along with Major Parameshwaran, hundreds of Indian soldiers were killed by the lTTE terrorists. Tamil Nadu has memorials for the lTTE terrorists who butchered the soldiers of the Indian Army. But there are no memorials in the State for the Param Vir Chakra awardee, a Tamil.
After reading the stories of these great sons of India, all I could say is that this book should be made a compulsory reading for all our university students. And an abridged version could be recommended for school students. Rawat should write about those soldiers who were awarded Ashok Chakra and other bravery medals too.