1971: The Anniversary

My ballad recalls March 25, 1971--the Pakistan army crackdown “in history's most horrendous civilian annihilation dubbed ‘Operation Searchlight’” and its aftermath that shocked us deeply. Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas’ exposé in London’s Sunday Times was a remarkable eye-witness account. The refugee exodus across our borders and my conversations with some of them, Ian Cardozo’s short story “The Race to Dhaka”, Simon Dring’s reports, Kishor Parekh’s photographs, among others, were thought-provoking.

The ballad frames simple questions to which the answers were elusive:

What happened to the campaign of genocide?  

Did the United Nations respond?

What happened to the elimination of democratic rights?

Did the United Nations respond?

What happened to the millions of people driven from their homes?

Was any solution found?

And again, the ballad lets the audience decide for itself this time:

Why did three distinguished Corps of the Indian Army

Go into action on the Eastern front,

In a 13-day fierce war from December 4?

Was it for a principled humanitarian intervention?  

The victory of democracy over military rule?                 

The victory of humanism over barbarism?

The victory of liberation over occupation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHFv0Pn91Q0

The Captain

This ballad is dedicated to the legendary Captain (IN) M. N. Mulla, MVC (posth.), commander of the 14 Frigate Squadron of India’s Western Fleet, and his great personal valour and sacrifice. Undeterred, he stoically stood by his men on his torpedoed anti-submarine frigate on the high seas, going down with them on 9 December 1971. Born in Gorakhpur, UP, May 15, 1926, Mahendra Nath Mulla joined the Royal Indian Navy as a cadet in January 1946 and was commissioned in the Indian Navy on May 1948. He served on the Hunt-class destroyer INS Gomati, as executive officer of the Black Swan-class sloop INS Krishna, and commanded the R-class destroyer INS Rana, before taking over as Captain of the ill-fated INS Khukri. Swami Vivekananda, the philosopher-monk, was an important influence in Captain Mulla’s life.

The words from Shakespeare’s Hamlet I.3.78-80 that Captain Mulla inscribed in The Rubaiyat [“Quatrains”] of Omar Khayyam—a renowned classic of lyric poems--he gifted to his eight-year-old daughter Ameeta, characterize an existential courage and integrity that marked him all through:

…to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

When the Khukri’s sister ship Kirpan returned the next morning, 67 sailors were pulled out of the sea. Since that fateful night, the wrecked Khukri at the sandy bottom of the Arabian Sea remains a war grave containing the remains of its crewmen, the accretion of  thick layers of silt on it over fifty years.

Between February 4-6, 2009, close to The Khukri’s last reported position, over 40km south of Diu, the navy's hydrographic survey ship INS Jamuna was instrumental in locating the wreckage— a sonar image of an approximately 300’ long silt-covered hump with steel inside it, apparently sitting on its keel on the seabed 80m below the sea surface, with the mast protruding in a north-east south-west orientation through the silt.

Naval opinion ranged between leaving the wreck undisturbed [Admiral S.M. Nanda]; sending a recce dive to ascertain where and how much damage was inflicted by the fired torpedo [Admiral O.S.Dawson]; raising the wreck [Vice-Admiral Vinod Pasricha].

“The pain of not being able to cremate the bodies is still deep-rooted. My mother always told the other widows…Jis din mera ghar wala ayega, us din tumhare ghar wale bhi aayenge,” [The day my husband comes back, your husbands will also come back that day] Ameeta Mulla Wattal said wistfully of her [late] mother to Arvind Chauhan of TNN, 16 December 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcPWScZGdk4

The Battle of Rezang La

The Battle of Rezang La stands out in the annals of world military history as a stark example of rare courage against the heaviest odds. The 5,000m. high mountain pass of Rezang La, located on the eastern watershed of the Chushul Valley in Ladakh, was the site of a major battle of the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Charlie ‘C’ Company of the 13 Kumaon battalion fought super-heroically “to the last bullet and the last man” on November 18 in lethal combat with the Chinese PLA troops to block them from crossing the ridge into the Chushul Valley.

 Major Shaitan Singh (b. 1 December 1924, Jodhpur) is remembered for the extraordinary leadership and courage that inspired and motivated his men. India’s highest decoration of gallantry--the Param Vir Chakra (PVC)-- was awarded to him posthumously.

The often-quoted first four lines from the Indian Army’s War Memorial raised by all ranks at Chushul, Ladakh, “to the sacred memory of the heroes” who died in the Battle of Rezang La, aptly read:

How can a man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his Gods. 

--Macaulay, Thomas Babbington (1847) The Lays of Ancient Rome

The lines are from the first poem “Horatio” in Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s immensely popular narrative ballads Lays, which recount heroic episodes from early Roman history with strong dramatic and tragic themes, and most of which were written during a sojourn at Ooty and a voyage in the Bay of Bengal, while he was serving on the Governor-General of India’s Supreme Council [1834-38]. The idea of the ballads themselves occurred to Macaulay while he was at the foot of the Nilgiri Hills in a jungle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NncbFMdRJ40

Abide With Me

Through the decades in the ceremonial tradition of post-independence Indian armed forces, and with notable civilian empathy, Abide With Me—one of Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite hymns—has been a befitting, powerfully evocative commemorative conclusion to the Republic Day celebrations. 

Since 1950, an idiosyncratic coalescence has inspired pride in being Indian. It has to do with a military tradition dating from the days when troops, including from India, disengaged from battle at sunset. Also with Massed Bands of the Indian Armed Forces playing Abide With Me—a simple, universal, deeply moving prayer to a steadfast God through life and death--at the Beating the Retreat ceremony with bugles, pipes and drums on January 29 at Vijay Chowk. The imposing backdrop of the red sandstone Rashtrapati Bhavan, majestic, stock-still BSF camels lining Raisina Hill. And right on cue the aesthetic illumination of the adjoining North and South Blocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slL47YSj4Po