General Rawat's project ready for Indian Army...

S Venkateshwari
General Rawat's project ready for indian Army...

The indian army is one of the largest armed forces in the world, but during many wars, lack of coordination has been seen in it. In the year 1965, during the reign of the then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, there was a war between india and Pakistan. In this war, the indian Air Force dropped bombs on its own soldiers many times. Apart from this, many examples of firing on own soldiers by mistake were also heard.

Author Anit Mukherjee has told in his book The Accent Dialogue that at that time there was a lack of coordination between the three armies and the then government neither tried to resolve these disputes between the armies, nor showed interest, nor forced them to work in harmony.

Differences in the indian army itself

During the 1965 war, the differences between the then army Chief General Choudhary and Lieutenant General Harbakhsh Singh are also not hidden from anyone. In his autobiography "In the Line of Duty," General Harbakhsh Singh states that the call from the army Chief arrived around 2.30 am on september 9. He wanted that the Indian Army should be brought behind the beas river to prevent it from being isolated from the Pakistani attack.

What General Choudhary meant by this was to evacuate a large part of punjab which included the districts of amritsar and Gurdaspur. But General Harbakhsh Singh believed that if this was done, it would be a worse blow to india than the 1962 Chinese attack. General Harbakhsh Singh declined to request this directive as a result.

Differences continued to exist among the indian army even throughout the conflict of 1971. Then Chief of Staff General Jacob said the indian Army's primary goal should have been to take Dhaka in bangladesh (then east Pakistan). According to General Jacob's book "Surrender at Dhaka," he personally intended to march straight to Dhaka prior to the commencement of the war, avoiding the Pakistani bases in the process. However, the divisions between General sam Manekshaw and Major General kk Singh, the director General of Military Operations, were apparent when they arrived at the Eastern Command headquarters.

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