BAPORA VILLAGE (BHIWANI, HARYANA): General Vijay Kumar
Singh comes from a Rajput family of this quaint village whose generations have
proudly served in the Indian Army. But now there is anguish among the village
patriarchs, and none of the younger generation wants to join the force after
seeing the controversy that hit the “upright officer”.
“Earlier, my father and his five brothers had served in the
army and we three cousins, including Vijay, were in the force. Now after he
retires, only his nephew will be there and we also do not want anybody else to
join,” said Hari Singh, the Army Chief’s cousin. The septuagenarian, sporting
handlebar moustache and sitting too upright for his age, has seen the bloody
war of 1962 and retired as a Sipahi from the Army.
Said to be about 700-year-old, Bapora with a population of
about 20,000 has soldiery in its blood with the village sending scores of
valiant Rajputs to the Army. Locating the Army Chief’s home, about 160 km west
of Delhi, is not difficult. Reach Bhiwani and ask anybody where is General
Sahab’s village and one will be automatically guided to his modest pink and
yellow house, equipped with bare minimum things. Only his drawing room seemed
to have got a new sofa few years ago.
“What did he (the Army Chief) get for being honest? See his
home; he has not added any property in his career, everything is ancestral. Had
it not been the case, politicians would have fixed him by now for standing up
against corruption,” his other cousin Honorary Captain (retd) Krishan Pal Singh
chipped in. He was a jawan in 25 Rajput and was deployed as part of Indian
Peacekeeping Force in Sri Lanka along with the Army Chief. Gen Singh was
awarded a Yudh Sena Medal for his stellar role in the operations in the island
nation.
The village is proud of the General’s achievement as he is
the first to have risen to the highest rank; earlier his father Col Jagat Singh
was the highest-ranking army officer from the village. In his career spanning
42 years, the Army Chief has always topped the merit list. He is a graduate of
the Wellington-based Defence Services Staff College as well as the US Army War
College at Carlisle. He also did a Rangers Course, a prestigious commando
training, at Fort Benning in the US.
Now the village is preparing for a grand party post the
General’s retirement. “We will honour the son of the soil with a grand
function. People from nearby villages also want to be part of the function,”
said Tejbir Singh, who also sat on a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi last month
in support of the Army Chief. “I had asked the General to get my son recruited
in Army as jawan. He said if somebody is fit, he will get chance on his own. I
will not recommend anybody. He is that honest,” Tejbir Singh added.
The whole lane of houses in Gen Singh’s village sends at
least one person to the Army and the General makes it a point to meet all the
ex-servicemen, including 90-year-old Capt (retd) Gugam Singh who is unable to
move due to old age now. The villagers have one proposition for the government
to make the son of the soil President—the Supreme Commander of the Armed
Forces. “President should be somebody outside of politics. There can be no
better candidate than the General. However, even if he decides to join
politics, we are with him,” said Krishan Pal.
End of an Era
When Army Chief General V K Singh hangs his boots on May 31,
an era of Indian military history will come to an end —as he would be the last
of the Army Chiefs to have seen action in India’s last full-fledged war of 1971.
His successor Lt Gen Bikram Singh was commissioned into the force in 1972.
As a young Sub Lieutenant in the Rajput Regiment in 1971,
General Singh had started training the Mukti Bahini army for the liberation of
former East Pakistan on June 19. The experience in the 1971 war laid down the
foundations of a keen strategist that he is known as presently. “Just before
the war, Vijay had come to the village on leave. And he especially went and
bought a lungi so that he can easily mix with the Mukti Bahini troops he was
going to train,” said his cousin Krishan Pal Singh.
Also during 1971 war, one of his fellow officers had stepped
on an anti-personnel mine and got blown up. He was severely injured and the
General—then a young Sub-Lieutenant—carried him on his shoulder all the way to
hospital. The officer lost a limb but survived to tell the tale of General
Singh’s dedication towards his troops and fellow officers.
In 2011 when V K Singh again set foot on Bangladeshi soil as
the Indian Army Chief, he carried along with him some “relics of 1971 war” to
gift his Bangladeshi counterpart.
“Participating in an operation gives an army officer an
experience which no amount of theory or courses can impart. So in that sense
this experience will definitely be missed in the higher echelons of the Indian
Army,” said an officer. The Army Chief, first commando to rise to the highest
rank, later took part in Operation Pawan of the Indian Peacekeeping Force in
Sri Lanka against LTTE. “He is an expert in operations and planning and using
the arms to their maximum. He turned all the rifles into LMG (Light Machine
Guns) in Sri Lanka; even the LTTE guerillas were scared of him,” said Krishan
Pal who had accompanied him as part of the troops who had gone to the island
nation.
The Army Chief had learnt his first lessons of the war in
1971. The 13-day Bangladesh Liberation war in 1971 is one of the shortest wars
in the modern history that also resulted in the formation of a new country.
During the war, the Indian armed forces fought in both the eastern and western
frontier before the Pakistani Army signed an Instrument of Surrender, and over
90,000 Pakistani soldiers were taken as Prisoners of War by India.
As a build-up to this, thousands of Bangladeshis were given
shelter in refugee camps on the Indian side. These camps were used for training
the fighters of the Mukti Bahini.
