The Day Of The General

Harbaksh's Line of Duty began with setting the motto, the goals and a set of ethics and the ethos by which he charted his personal compass. Commissioned in 1935, his soldiering proper started three years later with a Sikh battalion in the Razmak hills of the North-West Frontier, the locale of the army's baptism for World War II.

After a short stint in Malaya where he was wounded, Harbaksh escaped the Japanese from hospital only to become their PoW in Singapore. Bigger adventures awaited him on his return to India, like stemming the first invasion of Kashmir in 1947. He volunteered from his hospital bed to join 1 Sikh, then battling furiously to save the airport at Srinagar from Pakistani raiders.

Harbaksh led a string of gallant actions culminating at Tithwal with the award of a Vir Chakra which, judging by his citation, ought to have been one notch higher and allowed him to be the recipient of the Mahavir Chakra.

Interspersed between the accounts of battles are anecdotal encounters that turned defeat into victory. My favourite is about the two mountain guns on loan for World War II from the Indian Army to Patiala state forces being returned at Srinagar. As Patiala State had still not merged with India, the commander and crew of the guns had instructions to remain neutral.

The manner in which Harbaksh managed to by turns coax and order them to assemble and fire the guns and beat back the attack is an excellent example of ingenuity and presence of mind.

Harbaksh was sharply critical of higher commanders in Kashmir like Gen Kulwant Singh and Brig L.P. (Bogey) Sen whom he called 'Bogey the Bogus" for failing to chase out the raiders, blocking their re-entry and ending altogether the cancerous Kashmir problem. Sen, promoted to Lt Gen, was later to become the key culprit in the Himalayan debacle of 1962. Instead of exchanging military charges, Harbaksh and Sen traded barbs via their poems. Sen dubbed Singh "Hairbrush" and was in turn called "Son of a Gun" in verse.

There are many fresh insights on the 1965 war. For example, Harbaksh wrote about Sikh gunners abandoning their guns and fleeing Akhnur, cases of widespread desertion of members of the infantry (surprisingly, the Gurkhas) from the Ichogil front, 4 Sikh walking into a Pakistani trap in Khemkaran and several instances of un-commander like behaviour of senior officers. Of course, Harbaksh did not mention, though it was well known in military circles, that he goaded 4 Sikh to undertake an impossible mission to commemorate their Regimental Day.

A possible reason why the war did not go well in Harbaksh's Western Command in 1965 may have been that he had difficulty in getting along with the then Army Chief Gen J.N. Chaudhury. There are conflicting accounts of who gave the orders to abandon the Amritsar salient to fall back on the River Beas which luckily, did not happen. Harbaksh's Chief of Staff, Gen Joginder Singh, who had problems with him, has, in his book (Behind the Scenes) blamed Harbaksh for creating the Beas bogey.

No general of the 1960s has escaped the legendary arrogance and sarcasm of Defence Minister Krishna Menon. The plaque at an inauguration ceremony had his name etched as Mr Krishna Menon. Piqued by this pedestrian reference he turned to Harbaksh and demanded: "Do you call Shakespeare 'Mr Shakespeare'?"

Harmala Gupta, the author's daughter, has done a good job in putting the book together though there are some errors in the narrative - 163 Infantry Battalion is actually a Brigade and H.C. Sarin was only a joint secretary in 1961 and not the defence secretary.

But on the whole, In the Line of Duty is a gutsy book, though it has arrived 20 years too late.