December 3, 2011 marks 40 years of the outbreak of the third India-Pakistan War, which like the earlier two, was sparked off by Pakistan. On that day, 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. Ms Maheshwari Khetarpal, Arun’s mother, received the medal and scroll by the then President V.V. Giri on the Republic Day, 1972.
On November 19, 2011, Ms 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 Indo-Pak War. While the first of the armoured fighting vehicles, christened as tanks, were used or rather, tried out, in World WarI, it was in WWII, that well-developed tanks, which had replaced horsed cavalry, proved to be a very decisive factor in modern warfare.
While the Indian Army redefined mountain warfare by fighting at the height of 14,000 feet and even hauling Stuart tanks of 7th Cavalry there in 1947, after WWII, 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 13-day war, resulting in the demise of East Pakistan and the creation of the newly liberated Bangladesh. Major Khwaja Mohammad Nasir, 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 14 Patton tanks. His bandages were owing to injuries sustained by him in the final engagement of his and Arun’s tank. The 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, Brigadier (Retd) Madan Khetarpal, residing with his wife, Maheshwari, in New Delhi, had for long nursed a desire to visit his hometown, Sargodha, Pakistan. Speaking to this writer, he mentioned that in 2001, when he sounded his old friend, retired Lieutenant General Kirpal Singh Randhawa, of 7th Cavalry, who visited Pakistan a number of times in the past couple of decades, the latter merely asked him for his passport, which he brought back a few days later with the Pakistan visa stamped on it. Not only that; he had also arranged with his Aitchison’s College (Lahore) mate, the same Khwaja Mohammad Nasir, then a Brigadier and manager of Pakistan’s cricket team, to host Brigadier Khetarpal. 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, 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. A.S. Vaidya of the Deccan Horse, who later became the Army Chief and after retirement was killed by 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 the Cavalry Week on the second or third Saturday in November and the other is on May 1, celebrated as Armoured Corps Day, which marks the process of mechanisation of the 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 the 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 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.
During the recent wreath-laying function at least 20 busloads of school children passing the Teen Murti roundabout were enthusiatically waving out to the gathering of armoured corps personnel, singing Saaray jahan se achaa, Hindustan hamara loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of traffic.
Teen Murti, the memorial of three bronze statues of the 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 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 cavalry 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.
Designed by Robert Tor Russell, who was part of Lutyens’ team, Teen Murti Bhavan was 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. Shikargah, also known as Kushak Mahal, after which Kushak Road is named, is a hunting lodge built by Feroze Shah Tughlaq, on a mound within the compound and is accessible by stairs. It has three open bays containing arches which are supported upon typical stone shafts and each bay is divided in depth into three compartments. The Nehru Planetarium is also in the same compound. The house is set amid large beautifully maintained gardens with a rose walk from where Pandit Nehru plucked his trademark buttonhole each morning. Nearby is the Jawahar Jyoti , the eternal flame, lit on his birthday in 1964. Adjacent on a rock is his epitaph.
After the wreath-laying ceremony all officers and families move to the lawns of the Officers’ Mess of President’s Bodyguard (PBG) in the President’s Estate nearby, where refreshments are followed by the Cavalry Officers Association’s general body meeting. Raised as the governor-general’s bodyguard in 1773 at Benaras, by the then governor-general Warren Hastings, with a strength of 50 specially picked troopers and horses, PBG today is a small body of men comprising four officers, 14 JCOs and 161 bodyguardsmen backed up by administrative support personnel. Equipped with armoured cars and about to be equipped with tanks, its men are trained for operational duties, both as tankmen and airborne troops with the parachute brigade, in addition to their ceremonial role. PBG’ are bay and dark bay in colour, except that for the regimental trumpeter and the colour party, who traditionally are always mounted on grey chargers. Required to be of a minimum height of 157.5 cms, measured at the shoulder, they are the only horses of the Indian Army permitted to wear full manes, like their counterparts of the Household Cavalry, UK.
The rest of the ceremonies of Cavalry Week this year were a lecture in honour of Late Maj. Gen. Rajindar Singh Sparrow (7 Cavalry), MVC bar, delivered by his son, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) M.S. Shergill, PVSM, AVSM, VRC, at DGIS auditorium on November 17; a golf tournament was held at the ITC classic golf resort, Gurgaon, including ladies’ putting on November 18 and a grand cavalry dinner held at the Imperial Hotel, Janpath, New Delhi, November 19.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi