Three generations of my family – from 1914 to 2007 – have served in the great Indian Army, making it almost a century of family military tradition in the service of the nation. And rising from the ‘ranks’ to a four-star general in this period has been a unique achievement for us.
Our family roots take us back to the Aryans, or so was the conviction of my great-grandparents. I would like to believe this even if it is a myth! There appears to be a difference of opinion about the advent of the Aryans (between 2000 BC and 1500 BC) in the Indus Valley, the plains of Punjab and beyond up to the Indo-Gangetic region. Marwaha (Merwaha), our clan, is believed to have come to the Punjab from Merv or Marusthal, and claims to have its origins in Central Asia. They are said to have entered southwest Punjab through the Bolan Pass, and their earliest traceable settlement was at Goindwal, near Amritsar (Sketch 1.1). They belonged to the Khatri Sarin group and were descendants of Bhai Balu of Goindwal, who was appointed by the third guru of the Sikhs, Guru Amar Das, and whose shrine is at Dadan, near Ludhiana.1
My grandfather, Sepoy Atma Singh, was a burly Sikh. A fair-complexioned man, his rosy cheeks used to turn ruddier under the summer sun. He was a simple, down-to-earth sipahi, a private in the army. An accomplished drummer, he was in the Pipes and Drums platoon of 1/67 Punjab Regiment (presently 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment). In the good old days, the ‘pipers’ were the traditional vanguard of the infantry battalions and led them into the battlefield. My grandpa’s pay was a meagre seventeen rupees or even less! We grew up hearing Colonel Bogey’s march, or other martial music of the army, which he used to play with his knuckles on the dining table at dinner every day. He made us kids recite the ‘mool mantra’, the first stanza of our holy scripture, before food was served. After dinner, he would regale us with stories of the Great War. We would hear him with rapt attention.
Sketch 1.1: Punjab and the Sikh Empire.
Once, he recounted a story about his return to Daultala, our ancestral village near Rawalpindi, when he was discharged from the army after the war in 1918. As he had been wounded and his right hand had been incapacitated, he could not maintain his beard and long unshorn hair. Consequently, he had to shave them off. On reaching home, he knocked on the door but my grandmother, Ram Rakhi, refused to let him in, asking, ‘Who is this firanghee,’ the native word for a European. She could not recognize him. Besides, he had acquired an even fairer complexion while recuperating in a hospital in the south of France. Theirs was a child marriage, as was customary then in the Punjab and in many other regions of India. It was only when he recounted to her some intimate details that she realized that he was, in fact, her Atma Singh, and she let him in. Then she asked him, ‘What have you done to yourself?’ He simply raised the right sleeve of his shirt and uncovered his dangling arm. That said it all! Some in the family had told her that those who crossed the seven oceans didn’t ever come back. Of course, thousands didn’t – they died in Kut-el-Amara or in Flanders. So she was delirious with joy and relief at my grandfather’s homecoming and couldn’t contain her tears.
When I was commissioned from the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun in 1964, my grandfather asked me, ‘Kaka, kedi “paltan” mili hai tainu?’ (Son, which regiment did you get?) When I told him it was the Maratha Light Infantry, he was very pleased, saying, ‘Mahratte2 bade bahadur te tagre honde han; taan hi unhan noon “lite infantry” da khitaab us jang vich milya si’ (the Marathas are a very brave and hardy race; that is why during the war they were given the title of ‘Light Infantry’). The bravery of the Marathas in battle was renowned from the days of Shivaji, and Maratha soldiers have been traditionally called ganpats. During the First World War, a letter from a German soldier describing the valour of the Indian soldiers and printed in the Frankfurter Zeitung said this:
Today for the first time we had to fight against the Indians and the devil knows that those brown rascals are not to be underrated. At first we spoke with contempt of the Indians. Today we learned to look on them in a different light – the devil knows what the English had put into those fellows … with a fearful shouting thousands of those brown forms rushed on us…. With butt ends, bayonets, swords and daggers we fought each other.3
Grandpa was proud to see me, a wiry young officer of nineteen, wearing my new olive-green uniform with one pip, a green lanyard around my neck, and a red-and-green hackle, one of the few regiments with such unique embellishments, on my turban. Moreover, he was pleased that I had joined the infantry and that too the Maratha Light Infantry. One fine day in 1965, when he was in an emotional and reflective mood, he patted me on my cheek, and said, ‘Kaka, rab rakha, sepoy da beta karnail, te karnail da beta jarnail banega.’ (God be with you, the son of a soldier will be a colonel, and the colonel’s son shall be a general!) I just smiled innocently. At that juncture, my father was a major and I was a young second lieutenant, fresh from the mint. Destiny has its own way, and these words proved to be ‘prophetic’; although, at that time, they were taken merely as the blessings and good wishes of a respected elder.
The grand old man passed away peacefully in his sleep a few years later, when he was in his late seventies. ‘Son, when one’s path is “righteous” and the cause is “just”, one is bound to succeed,’ was grandpa’s refrain, and his words still ring true.
1 A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, compiled by H.A. Rose, based on the census report for Punjab 1883 and 1892, pp. 524 and 697, and Phulkian States Gazetteer, 1904.
2 The British called the soldiers from the region ‘Mahrattas’ and not Marathas as we do today.
3 Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour, EBD Educational Pvt Ltd, Dehradun, p. 413.