1966–67: Warriors Arrive at the Watershed
Throughout 1965 and 1966 the relationship between India and China – on the Sikkim border in particular but also otherwise – remained tense. In this chapter we meet the characters who played the leading roles in the 1967 battles of Cho La and Nathu La.
The Gorkhas of Nepal were an elite fighting force during the British period who served valiantly in several wars in India and across the world. At the time of India’s independence in 1947, 1 some Gorkha soldiers slated to be absorbed by the British army opted to stay back and serve in a newly formed Indian army. Thus, 11 Gorkha Rifles was born in 1948 as one of India’s newest infantry regiments. 2
The Indian army is organized into several commands. Currently there are six operational commands and one training command. Each command is led by a senior lieutenant general and comprises military formations known as corps. Under each corps, there are a number of divisions (usually three to four). A division comprises several fighting and support elements, which could be from the infantry, artillery, signals, engineers etc. (like 17 Mountain Division in Sikkim did). Under each division are a few brigades. Each brigade, in turn, comprises a few units known as battalions.
The battalion comprises companies, each made up of three platoons. A platoon has three sections, which are the smallest units in the army organization structure (for more details refer to Appendix 1).
In 1964, Kul Bhushan Joshi (KB) of the 5th Battalion of 11 Gorkha Rifles (commonly referred to as 5/11 Gorkha Rifles or 5/11 GR) 3 came to Sikkim and established the Cho La post at the border, according to the sources interviewed for this book.
Three years later, he would lead an energetic but inexperienced bunch of Gorkha soldiers in the battle of Cho La as commanding officer of the 7th Battalion of the 11 Gorkha Regiment. Alongside the 11 Gorkha Regiment in Sikkim were the Grenadiers, 4 amongst the most illustrious and experienced regiments of the Indian army. The Grenadiers’ 2nd Battalion commanded by Rai Singh would arrive in Sikkim in 1967 and later move to the border at Nathu La. All the brigades in the Sikkim sector came under the leadership of Sagat who was the division commander of 17 Infantry Division based in Gangtok. 5
Commissioned in 1950 as a second lieutenant into the 5th Battalion of 11 Gorkha Rifles, Kul Bhushan Joshi accompanied the battalion in 1964 to Sikkim. KB – who had grown up in Burma at the time when Japanese planes fighting the British and their allies were bombing that country during the Second World War – was tasked with establishing a forward post at the Sikkim–China border, where weather conditions were expectedly harsh and roads nonexistent. In 1964, the forward post he established borrowed its name from the pass on which it stood. It would be called Cho La. Lacking adequate warm clothing, boots and digging implements, KB and his men almost perished in the freezing winds and blizzards, while doggedly building bunkers and trenches among the rocks to prepare for the eventuality of a battle. At that time, however, there were no PLA troops on the Chinese side and hence the perception of threat was lower. After this posting KB and his battalion were moved elsewhere. Little did KB know that a few years later, in 1967, he would return to Cho La to fight a battle that would change history forever.
In 1967, KB was appointed second in command of the 7th Battalion of 11 Gorkha Rifles, stationed at Cho La. The battalion was raised in Dehradun in the wake of the 1965 war. He found, to his surprise, that there were seventeen subalterns (consisting of lieutenants and second lieutenants, with the latter being the entry level rank of a commissioned officer in the army at that time) in the battalion – an unusually high number. It began to be called the subaltern battalion and was sometimes mockingly referred to as the kancha paltan (a battalion of young tyros).
The new battalion was untested and it was the first field posting for many of the boys. A hard taskmaster, the colonel who headed the 7th Battalion prepared his soldiers for imminent battle. He put them through rigorous drills, honing the battle skills of his hardy Gorkha troops who, having grown up in the hills of Nepal and Darjeeling, already had the advantage of stamina. But destiny had in store a twist in the script for KB. Upright but obdurate, the colonel hadn’t been on the best of terms with his boss, the brigade commander. Furious at his battalion being given poor stores and equipment, the impulsive colonel hollered to his commander: ‘I am not commanding a labour army,’ and abruptly quit the army to settle in his farm in the hills of Himachal. 6
One day before leaving he called the officers and told them, ‘Keep your khukris sharpened for the Chinese. If the Chinese ever try to break through Cho La, they would be khukried by the Gorkhas.’ He had sensed the dark portents ahead. Next in the chain of command, KB found himself at the helm of the 7th Battalion of 11 Gorkha Rifles as its new commanding officer.
The situation in Sikkim along the border with China had grown thorny in the past two years. As mentioned in Part 1, in 1965, the Indian army had chosen to occupy and not withdraw from Nathu La. There were serious concerns that the intermittent firing between India and China that characterized the Sikkim–Tibet border could turn into a larger military confrontation. No one wanted a war. But who could predict the reactions of hostile men in an isolated high-altitude zone where a lack of oxygen could turn a soldier dizzy enough to pull the trigger of a loaded weapon, despite years of training to control their impulses.
In 1964 when KB had set up the Cho La post, the land around it was mostly unoccupied. Now, in 1967, however, barely a few metres separated the Indians from the bristling Chinese army.
KB was catapulted into a role he hadn’t envisaged for himself so soon in life. A man who loved a good evening of drinks, KB would join the young officers for a round of the tipple at the end of a hard day. 7 In fact, the 7th Battalion was sometimes criticized for encouraging a culture of drinking among youngsters and KB occasionally found himself at the receiving end of such snide remarks. But his bonding time with the greenhorns of the 7th Battalion gave him great confidence in their potential.
One of the youngsters in KB’s battalion was Narayan Parulekar. In the aftermath of the 1962 war several young men in India joined the army as officers inducted through a fast-track route called the emergency commission. 8 These young men had followed the war on the radio, listening intently to stories of the bravery of soldiers who gave up their lives in the conflict.
Narayan Parulekar, or Paru, was working with the Bombay Port Trust at that time. Like many others, he answered the call of duty to the nation and applied for an emergency commission as an officer. 9 He was commissioned into the newly raised the 7th Battalion which KB now commanded.
Paru, the first adjutant of the battalion, was also given the charge of a rifle company. An adjutant of the battalion is the staff officer to the commanding officer of the battalion and assists the commanding officer in operational planning, induction, training and utilization of troops in a battalion. 10 Though an adjutant is an appointment manned by a senior captain or a major, Paru was a newly appointed captain. 11 He was also given charge of one of the four companies in the battalion (in 1967, a battalion had four rifle companies under it. A rifle company, comprising three platoons with a strength of around 130 personnel each, was commanded by a company commander who was usually a major. In 7/11 Gorkha Rifles those days, there was a paucity of captains and majors.) Alongside KB and Paru, there were several young officers from different parts of India, with backgrounds that were varied and interesting. One of them was Lieutenant Ram Singh Rathore, a devout Rajput officer from Rajasthan with a fondness for weapons, who also played a key role in the battle of Cho La. 12
In his new, expanded role as the commanding officer, KB would also spend time walking from one post to the other at Cho La, visiting his company commanders and men, taking mental notes of any trace of advantage the landscape afforded. He had to think like a battalion commander – how he could best motivate his officers, decide who would be the most suitable to lead a raid or attack, and so on. He believed his young battalion would rise to the occasion when the moment arrived.
While the commissioned officers in a battalion came from various parts of the country, the soldiers were drawn from a more defined community or region. In this battalion of 7/11 Gorkha Rifles, the troops mostly came from the Rai and Limbu tribes that lived in the rugged, severe terrain of eastern Nepal – where men were known as much for their ferocity as for their quick temper. While the officers would gather for a drink in the evenings, the officers and ‘men’ would only get an opportunity to socially mingle with each other at community meals such as barakhanas – grand feasts for the troops to promote camaraderie between soldiers and officers in a battalion. In remote areas such as Cho La where troops were isolated for long periods of time, which was mentally and emotionally challenging, a barakhana was an occasion to strengthen bonds, revitalize spirits and rejuvenate physical energies before returning to their posts. On such occasions the forward positions of battalions would be substituted by others.
As mentioned earlier, the soldiers of 7/11 Gorkhas hadn’t served in the field before. They were struggling to become familiar with the Ishapore rifle – a weapon that had recently been inducted into the Indian army. There had been limited issues of the rifles in 17 Division. Local training cadres were organized within the division to familiarize the boys with new weapons such as the rifles. They practised in makeshift firing ranges. Most of the boys, however, continued to use the old rifles. Whenever vacancies arose, a few would be sent to attend military courses to train on new, more specialized weapons the army had inducted as part of the scramble to furbish itself with modern weapons after the debacle of 1962. Mhow (Military Headquarters of War), a cantonment town founded in 1818 in Madhya Pradesh, had become one of the Indian army’s best-equipped operational training establishments.
Among those who arrived at the Infantry School in Mhow to attend the gun course in the summer of 1967 was Havildar Tinjong Lama of 7/11 Gorkhas – a short, burly lad from the hills of Lamahatta, near Darjeeling. When his commanding officer sent him to Mhow for the Recoilless Gun 13 (RCL) course, Tinjong, who had not attended secondary school, could not read or write proficiently. Yet, the irrepressible lad from the Bhutia tribe simply wouldn’t give up and studied hard, long after the day’s training was over to attain a good grade. The instructor noticed the skilled manner in which Tinjong handled the weapon, though he struggled to get marks in the theory section of the course. He soon picked up nuances about the use of the weapon in higher altitudes such as Sikkim. 14 When Tinjong returned to Sikkim after the course, he was one of the few qualified weapon experts in the battalion.
One of Tinjong’s colleagues in the 7th Battalion was Rifleman Debi Prasad, who came from a modest background in Nepal like most other boys who had been recruited from the hills. Debi would routinely unsheathe his khukri and twirl the weapon in his hand. It was a tool he had trusted from his teenage years when he roamed the lonely forests near his village; the cold steel of the dagger in his hand filled him with the confidence to overcome adversity. Young boys like Debi came from villages in eastern Nepal, having grown up on stories about soldiering in faraway lands that involved roaming the jungles, scaling mountains and exploring forests in natty uniforms. He had heard legendary tales of the Gurkhas in the Second World War – some of them from his Limbu village – such as how a brigade full of Gurkhas took out the famed 48 Division of Japanese troops in Burma – after the latter had defeated 1,30,000 British and Australian troops in Singapore. In a counterattack at Kyaukse, they lost ten men and killed 500 Japanese troops 15 and earned the title of ‘bravest of the brave’. Since the time of the Raj, soldiering was a badge of honour that took the boys to Africa and Europe – and this tradition of recruiting Nepalis into the Indian army continued in independent India. Debi and others like him wanted to fight, like every soldier, and maybe win an honour one day if he fought well. Just like his heroes – Gaje Ghale and Ganju Lama – both Victoria Cross awardees from the Second World War in the 1940s. The newly issued 7.62 mm Ishapore rifle slung over his shoulder, a khukri by his side, Debi knew his turn would come.
Another battalion that played a key role in 1967 and arrived in Sikkim around that time was 2nd Grenadiers. While 11 Gorkha Rifles was one of the youngest regiments, the Grenadiers was amongst the oldest in the Indian army. In fact the 3rd Grenadiers battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel V.P. Airy, had fought a fascinating battle at Jarpal against a Pakistani battalion led by Lieutenant Colonel Akram Raza in 1965.
The Pakistani soldiers, under the intrepid Akram Raza, proved hard to overcome and put up a tough fight. Despite being finally defeated by Indian forces, Raza fought valiantly and led his troops with such ferocity that he won the admiration and respect of the Indian forces. By the time Raza died fighting the Indian army, he had proved himself to be the true hero of the battle of Jarpal. Lieutenant Colonel Airy admired the bravery of his counterpart and shot off a handwritten note to the Pakistani army headquarters praising Raza’s bravery. Based on Airy’s note, Pakistan awarded Raza the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan’s highest honour. It was one of the rare instances in history when a soldier had won a country’s highest honour based on a citation drafted by an enemy commander who had watched him fight from the other side. The Grenadiers had acquired a name for themselves not only on account of their bravery but for their noble conduct on the battlefield as well. 16 The 2nd Grenadiers, posted in Sikkim in the mid-1960s, had an impressive history of its own in battles over the previous two hundred years. The battalion had earned laurels fighting against Napoleon in Egypt in 1801, in the Third Anglo-Maratha War in 1808, the first Afghan War in 1840 and in the First World War. The 2nd Grenadiers was part of an elite regiment of the Indian army which had the unique distinction of being among the largest secular forces in the world. The regiment had Ahirs, Dogras, Gujars, Muslims, Rajputs, Jats, Kaim Khanis, Kutchis and Saurashtrians, Meenas and others. Lieutenant Colonel Rai Singh helmed the battalion which occupied the defences at Nathu La in Sikkim. Hardy and ebullient as a kid, Rai Singh had enrolled in the army as a sepoy in 1944, before his twentieth birthday.
In 1945 the Grenadiers regiment, which had been known as the Bombay Grenadiers then, was redesignated Indian Grenadiers. It was assigned to India around the time of Independence. Rai applied and became a commissioned officer in 1950. Ambitious and forever keen to learn about military tactics and warfare, Rai did well as a young officer and was chosen to attend the prestigious Defence Services Staff College course at Camberley in England. 17 The 2nd Grenadiers that arrived in Sikkim was a mix of calm, unflappable company commanders such as Bishan Singh and intrepid youngsters such as P.S. Dagar. Rai, Bishan Singh and Dagar all played critical roles in the battle of Nathu La in 1967.
Meanwhile, along the watershed, tensions had mounted in the period between 1965 and 1967. Often, Chinese spokespersons would invoke the ‘lessons of 1962’ to remind India about the possible result that awaited it in case the two armies clashed again. Patrols, commonly called ‘Billy patrols’, that walked along the border often clashed, resulting in casualties. 18 The key source of the dispute was the precise location of the border, which was unmarked. The Indian government asserted the watershed principle to determine the border. 19 The correct border, they stated, was the ridgeline (or drain) that ran along these passes and marked their deepest points. But as the border was not marked – and an expansionist and aggressive China wanted to creep into and grab Indian territory – Peking was wrongly trying to claim several vantage points on the watershed. 20
China’s psychological pressure and aggression had caused India’s withdrawal at Jelep La in 1965. But an adamant posture in Nathu La – thanks to Sagat – meant that India didn’t vacate the watershed along the crest and the two countries’ armies were pitted against each other in a potential face-off.