IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 138 — MANJINDER HAS COOKED HIS GOOSE Brig PS Gothra (Retd)

“There is no future for Manjinder in the Army. I believe he has disobeyed an order. That too in operational area." remarked an officer casually one evening. The words hit me like a punch. I spent the evening wondering what Manjinder had done.

It was 1988. We were in Batticaloa,
Sri Lanka. The following day I met Manjinder at Nala Junction.

“What happened?” I asked.

He looked at me for a few seconds and then shrugged.

“You remember Rajiv Sandhu's column was ambushed three days ago?”

I nodded.

“Rajiv had fought bravely. He was grievously wounded. I organised first aid, evacuated the wounded and arranged helicopter evacuation for the casualties. Rajiv died on the way to the hospital. That night a captured LTTE cadre was sent to me. I was told to finish him at the ambush site to give a message to the LTTE,” said Manjinder.

“And?”

“I refused.”

The answer came without drama. Without anger. Without self-righteousness. Just a statement of fact.

“I thought about it,” he said. “We are soldiers. Not roadside goondas. Killing a man in a firefight is one thing. Killing a helpless prisoner is another. I don't know how the hierarchy took it, but I stood by my conscience.”

The matter ended there. At least for him. For me, it had just begun.

2/Lt Manjinder was my immediate senior in 19 MADRAS. We had already shared some very tough moments of soldiering in Manipur and Sri Lanka. Both of us had been given the rank of 'Barsati Captain'—a wartime arrangement under which our families would receive the pension of a Captain if we were killed in operations. There was another understanding between us. Neither spoken nor written. If one of us died in Sri Lanka, the other would carry the ashes home. Our villages were barely fifty kilometres apart. At that age such conversations seemed perfectly normal. War has a way of normalising abnormal things.

Manjinder is a brave man. Over the years, I have seen him in firefights. I have seen him move towards danger when common sense suggested moving away from it. Once, an armed helicopter engaged his column with machine gun fire after mistaking its movement in dense jungle for that of LTTE cadres. Later in J&K on another occasion, he entered a minefield to lift two injured soldiers.

Such actions require more than courage. They require a strange mixture of conviction, instinct and blessings from the Almighty.

Months later, while travelling back from Sri Lanka on leave, a course-mate proudly showed us his newly awarded gallantry medal. Manjinder looked at me. I looked at him. Neither of us said anything. By then we had seen enough death to understand that every medal has a story behind it, and most of those stories begin with somebody's mother receiving bad news.

When our aircraft landed at Tambaram, both of us quietly bowed and touched the ground with our foreheads. It felt good to be alive and back into the lap of Bharat Mata.

As the years passed, I realised there were many reasons I admired Manjinder. His courage was only one of them. I envied his intellect. I still remember him studying for barely two hours before a Tactics paper in YO course and scoring the highest marks.

Later he cleared Staff College in competitive vacancy without even attending the pre staff course.

On one occasion in Sri Lanka, he briefed the GOC so clearly that instructions were issued the very next day directing all company commanders to follow the same format.

That was classic Manjinder. Clear thought. Clear speech. Clear action.

His style of command reflected the same confidence. He gave clear instructions and trusted subordinates to execute them. He did not hover. He did not interfere unnecessarily. Perhaps that virtue of giving clear instructions came from his days as Academy Cadet Adjutant in NDA. Or perhaps some people are simply born leaders.

What impressed me most, however, was that the young officer I met in Batticaloa never really changed. The courage of conviction remained. Years later, when discussions were underway regarding thinning out Rashtriya Rifles south of the Pir Panjal, he disagreed with the view of the hierarchy. Because he believed it was professionally incorrect. He said so. And stood by it. Just as he had done decades earlier in Sri Lanka.

On 30 June, Lt Gen Manjinder retires as Army Commander, South Western Command.

When I think of him, I do not first remember the appointments he held, the stars he wore, or the positions he occupied. My mind goes back to a young Second Lieutenant standing at Nala Junction in Batticaloa. Calmly explaining why, he had refused an order.

At sixty, I admire him because he understood that courage is not merely the ability to face bullets. Sometimes it is the ability to face one's own hierarchy.

The Bhagavad Gita says:

स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः। ("Better to die in one's own dharma than to live by another's.")

Gen Manjinder lived by a soldier's dharma. Courage in battle. Compassion in victory. Conviction in command.

He carried men out of minefields. He faced bullets in jungles. He refused to kill a prisoner in cold blood. He spoke professional truth when silence would have been more convenient. That, to me, is soldiering. Not noise. Not medals. Not headlines.

Dharma.

Jai Hind.