Our Heroes

The Man Who Saved India:
He Led The Sikh Regiment To A Complete Rout Of The Enemy

GURMEET KANWAL

Some war images stick permanently in the mind and that of Lt Gen Harbakhsh Singh, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command, India, standing atop the Haji Pir Pass after its capture by India during the 1965 War with Pakistan, is one of them.

However, this was not the only major achievement under the leadership of Gen Harbakhsh Singh.

All the raiding columns of Pakistan’s Gibraltar Force were rounded up by the army. Pakistan’s Operation Grand Slam was checkmated in the Chhamb-Akhnoor sector, though with some loss of territory. An Indian Division was knocking on the gates of Lahore within hours of the three-pronged offensive being launched across the international boundary.

And, in the battle of Assal Uttar, which some quip means ‘real answer’, the famed M-47 Patton tanks of a Pakistani armoured division were stopped in their tracks by a handful of infantrymen and a single Indian Cavalry regiment armed with Centurion tanks of World War II vintage. The skeletal remains of the burnt out shells of the Pattons still dot the landscape around the village.

Gen Harbakhsh Singh, a soldiers’ general, had immense battlefield experience. He had seen action in the North West Frontier Province, been seriously wounded fighting the Japanese in Malaya during World War II, had fought the battle of Shelatang and saved Srinagar from the Pakistani marauders in 1947 and had then gone on to plan and supervise the re-capture of Tithwal from the Pakistan army.

During the 1962 war with China, Gen Harbakhsh was flown post-haste to Tezpur to take over command of 4 Corps when Lt Gen B. M. Kaul had ‘fallen sick’ after the rout at Namka Chu and had been ‘summoned’ to Delhi.

Harbakhsh inspired confidence in the defeated soldiers and commanders and began to once again re-build their morale. He had barely settled down and was busy re-organising the defences in NEFA to thwart further Chinese attacks when, inexplicably, Kaul returned to re-claim his Corps … once the war was over.

Gen Harbakhsh was side- stepped to take over 33 Corps at Bagdogra. Kaul’s was a political appointment -- he was a close relative of the then Prime Minister Nehru -- and, as should have been expected, he once again led 4 Corps to suffer yet another defeat.

The 1965 War with Pakistan saw Gen Harbakhsh achieve still more professional success.

As the Western Army Commander he was responsible for operations in J&K as well as Punjab since there was no Northern Command at that time. Bold and daring in his approach, he did not hesitate to take calculated risks and this is where he fell out with his Chief.

The real truth about whether Gen J. N. Chaudhary, the Chief of the Army Staff, actually ordered Harbakhsh to pull back to the Beas River after receiving exaggerated reports of the progress made by a Pakistani armoured column in the Khem Karan (Amritsar-Firozpur) sector may never be known. Alarmist reports are not uncommon in the fog of war. A good military commander learns to distinguish the truth from fiction by visiting the battlefield and acquainting himself first hand with the prevailing situation.

In his book “In the Line of Duty: A Soldier Remembers”, Gen Harbakhsh has written: “Late at night on the 9th of September, the Chief of the Army Staff rang me up … his advice was that to save the whole army from being cut-off by Pakistan’s armour push, I should pull back to the line of the Beas river.”

Pulling back to the Beas would have meant sacrificing prime territory in Punjab including Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts and would have been a far worse defeat than that suffered at the hands of the Chinese in 1962. The move would have also resulted in bidding goodbye to the entire state of J&K and the army’s 15 Corps that had performed extremely well over there.”

This has been corroborated by Capt Amarinder Singh, ADC to Gen Harbakhsh Singh, who received the Army Chief’s phone call.

He has written: “At 2.30 a.m. the Army Chief, General J. N. Chaudhury, called and spoke to the General and after a heated discussion centred around the major threat that had developed, the Chief ordered the Army Commander to withdraw 11 Corps to hold a line on the Beas river. General Harbakhsh Singh refused to carry out this order.”

Writing on the 1965 War, Maj Gen D. K. Palit has confirmed that such an order was, in fact, issued by the COAS but “… Harbakhsh was adamant and refused to comply. He told Chaudhury that he would not accept a verbal order on such a crucial issue … A written order from the Army Chief never came. In any case the crisis was overcome when under Harbakhsh’s leadership the outgunned Centurions … and 106 mm guns … played havoc with Pakistani Patton tanks in one of the great tactical victories of the war.”

[The Indian positions across the entire war-front were almost totally manned by Sikh soldiers, specifically chosen to replace the withdrawn troops with the express task of turning around Chaudhury’s debacle and saving the situation.]

Well-known analyst K Subrahmanyam has written that Gen J N Chaudhury had sought Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s permission to withdraw to the Beas but that Shastri said no.

Columnist Inder Malhotra has written that Gen Chaudhury “panicked and ordered Harbaksh to withdraw his troops behind Beas, and the latter refused.”

However, some other lesser participants in the war [under pressure from their superiors], have expressed disagreement with this version. Among them is Lt Gen Joginder Singh, Gen Harbakhsh’s Chief of Staff. In his book “Behind the Scenes”, Gen Joginder, whose relations with his boss were strained, has said no such order was given by the army Chief. In an article in the Indian Defence Review, Lt Gen Harwant Singh has echoed a similar sentiment. He disparages the accounts of Subrahmanyam and Malhotra through deductive analysis.

Clearly, something transpired on the night of 9 September 1965, between the Chief and his Army Commander.

Lt Gen Harbakhsh Singh was a straight talking, no-nonsense, professional soldier of the Sikh Regiment. He was quick to give credit wherever it was due but brooked no interference with his command and himself gave his undivided loyalty and full support to his subordinates. When the situation so demanded, he had no hesitation in sacking unworthy commanders.

Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad, who had also acquitted himself badly while commanding a division in NEFA against the Chinese, was asked to hand over charge of the Amritsar division for conduct unbecoming of that of a General during war.

Maj Gen Chopra was removed from command for not ensuring that the guns of a field regiment were brought back safely during an organised withdrawal in the Akhnoor sector. Sacking inept commanders in war is a necessary evil as it invariably helps to stem the rot.

Gen Harbakhsh unhesitatingly acknowledged his own mistakes, the few that there were, but did not hesitate to criticise either his subordinates or seniors. He was critical of Gen J N Chaudhury for raising 1 Corps by taking away his reserves, for not agreeing to launch the 1 Corps offensive from Gurdaspur sector towards Sialkot so that at least initially some reserves would be available on the Punjab front (a decision which the COAS must himself have regretted), for issuing direct orders to his subordinates bypassing him -- orders which Harbakhsh was frequently forced to countermand, for failing to visit the front except on three occasions and for writing citations for gallantry and national awards for his subordinates without consulting him.

Rock steady in the face of adversity, Lt Gen Harbakhsh Singh provided outstanding leadership at a critical juncture. He was a genuine national hero and was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan by a grateful nation.


The author is former Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi, India.


[Courtesy: The Statesman. Edited for sikhchic.com]

September 15, 2015
 

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