This is what army about

When Sam Quoted Chapter & Verse to Mrs Gandhi

President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser
Henry Kissinger had only one question for the United
States chief of army staff who had just returned from
India: how long will it take the Indians to liberate East
Pakistan?

General William C Westmoreland, who was shown around
the garrisons in West Bengal and elsewhere in the country
by his Indian counterpart General Sam Manekshaw, did
not hesitate: ''one-and-a-half months to two months,
sir,'' he replied.

The conflict ended in only 13 days giving t to
Bangladesh and upsetting US calculations. ''What is it
Sam that you did not show me,'' Gen Westmoreland, who got a thorough dressing down from Nixon, later asked the
Indian war hero. Interestingly, the American general did
not know that for Manekshaw, at that time it was only a
thin line between getting promoted or being sacked.
''I have seen several angry women, including my wife. But
never one like Mrs Gandhi,'' said the field marshal while
releasing last evening in Delhi the book, Liberation and
Beyond: Indo-Bangladesh relations , written by J N Dixit,
former foreign secretary.

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
Chauhan, External Affairs Minister Sardar Swaran Singh,
and a special invitee, army chief Gen. Sam Manekshaw.
''What are you doing?'' a fuming Mrs Gandhi asked the
general, throwing reports of refugee influx from East
Pakistan sent by the West Bengal Chief Minister,
Siddartha Shankar Ray, on the table, Manekshaw recalled.
''I want you to walk into East Pakistan,'' Mrs Gandhi told
her army chief. ''That means war,'' the general said. ''I
don't mind if it is war,'' was Mrs 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 Mrs Gandhi, disapproving the idea of an immediate
attack.

Mrs Gandhi, who adjourned the meeting to 1600 hrs 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. Mrs 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 a 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.