Remembering Sam Manekshaw on his birth centenary

Popularly known as Sam Bahadur -- a name purportedly uttered by a Gorkha soldier after failing to recall his tongue-twister Parsi name- it literally means - Sam, the fearless and remains his most easily remembered name till date.

Sam cheated death on a few occasions, both in a battlefield and away from it. He, however, lived on to be nonagenarian. Sam wanted to be a doctor much like his military-doctor father but ended being a field marshal.

As a young captain, while posted in Burma and fighting a war with the Japanese in 1942, he was critically wounded with as many as nine bullets lodged in his body. While battling for life, his valiant Sikh orderly sepoy Sher Singh came to his rescue and saved him from certain death.

The valiant Sikh soldiers of his platoon had proclaimed, “Captain Manekshaw is the crown of our head and has to be rescued at any cost.”

Sam's orderly, Sher Singh, carried him on his back a good distance to the medical aid post where the Army doctors were forced to treat him on priority.

Sam Manekshaw was decorated with a Military Cross (MC) for his exemplary courage during this period as it was feared he might die. MC, it may be known, was not awarded posthumously until 1979. Sam not only survived the ordeal but lived on to the age of 94.

Sam would eventually leave all his admirers on June 27, 2008, peacefully in his sleep in his Conoor home - Stavka - in the Nilgiris hills, surrounded by family members and well-wishers at the age of 94.

It was the afternoon of April 29, 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had called an urgent cabinet meeting. Those present were Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram, Agriculture Minister Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Finance Minister Y B Chavan, External Affairs Minister Sardar Swaran Singh, and a special invitee, Army Chief Gen. Sam Manekshaw.

''What are you doing?'' a fuming Indira Gandhi asked the General, throwing reports of refugee influx from East Pakistan send by the West Bengal Chief Minister, Siddartha Shankar Ray, on the table.

''I want you to walk into East Pakistan,'' Indira Gandhi told her Army Chief. ''That means war,'' the General said. ''I don't mind if it is war,'' was Indira Gandhi's characteristic reply.

Manekshaw was unruffled by the outburst. ''Have you read the Bible,'' he asked the PM in his usual breezy manner. ''What has the Bible got to do with this?'' Swaran Singh intervened. ''In the beginning there was darkness. God said let there be light and there was light. He then divided light from the darkness,'' Manekshaw quoted the Genesis to impress upon the ministers that the Army was not prepared for a sudden war.

''I have only 30 tanks and two armoured divisions with me. The Himalayan passes will be opening anytime. What if the Chinese give an ultimatum? The rains will start now in East Pakistan. When it rains there the rivers become oceans. I guarantee 100 per cent defeat,'' Manekshaw told Indira Gandhi, disapproving the idea of an immediate attack. Indira Gandhi, who adjourned the meeting, held back Manekshaw, who was the last man to leave the room. ''Shall I send in my resignation, on grounds of health, mental or physical,'' he asked. Indira Gandhi finally gave her Army Chief the time he wanted to elaborate his strategy.

Seven months and four days later the war began when Pakistan President Gen. Yahya Khan lost patience and ordered his forces to attack Indian troops near the border on the evening of August 3, 1971. Manekshaw had by then amassed two brigades within the border for going in the next day.

Thirteen days later Bangladesh was born marking one of the high points in Indian diplomacy: in nine months the country was able to isolate the US, bring Western Europe on to our side and win over the world media.

Manekshaw was at his evocative best when he recalled his acquaintance with President Yahya Khan when the latter had worked under him in the military operations directorate of the British Indian Army just before partition.

Yahya Khan, then a Colonel, was impressed by Manekshaw's James motorcycle which he had bought for Rs 1400. ''I told him that he could have the vehicle for as much. He said he would give only Rs 1000. I said okay,'' Manekshaw recalled.

''But I don't have thousand rupees now, I will send it to you later,'' Yahya Khan said. It was August 13, 1947. Twenty-one years later Yahya Khan became the president of Pakistan. ''I never received the Rs 1000, but he gave me the whole of East Pakistan,'' Manekshaw said amid thunderous applause.

(Excerpts from the book Liberation and Beyond: Indo-Bangladesh relations, written by J N Dixit, former foreign secretary)