In the early decades of independence, top Indian and Pakistani military officers, trained together at academies such as Sandhurst as a group of tightly-knit cadets selected based on shared features, maintained bonds despite hostilities and the tumultuous partition
Indian Army chief General Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri (1908–1983) responded approvingly when American academics Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph asked him about Ayub Khan’s 1958 coup against President Iskander Mirza in Pakistan. He thought Ayub Khan must have felt obliged to move in and ‘put things right’, finding Mirza playing ducks and drakes with the political situation.
Chaudhuri’s assessment two years before he led the Indian Army in the second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir in 1965 echoed Khan’s claim of having been forced to act and getting drawn into politics to prevent Pakistan from descending into political chaos. It was significant as the two knew each other well. Ayub Khan and Chaudhuri were batchmates at the British Royal Military College in Sandhurst and among many top Indian and Pakistani military officers, who shared much affinity in the early years of India and Pakistan as nation-states.
Tightly Knit
The officers trained and served together in the British Indian Army before Pakistan’s creation in 1947. They were among a group of tightly knit cadets chosen for training at Sandhurst from 1919, following a selection process based on shared features. Most of these officers came from the so-called martial races and families seen to be loyal to the British. They were thought to be compatible with British values and norms and were concentrated in a few platoons to overcome distress from being away from home in unfamiliar surroundings and to accommodate the biases of the British.
Iskander Mirza, who retired from the army as a major general and was the scion of an aristocratic Bengal family, was also trained at Sandhurst. He served in the British Indian Army and was part of the 17th Poona Horse before becoming a joint secretary in the Indian Defense Ministry in New Delhi. Mirza served as Pakistan’s first defense secretary. He spent a year with a British regiment after training before his posting to an Indian regiment, like other Indians at Sandhurst.
Close Bonds
The Indian officers trained at Sandhurst were sent to eight Indianised units, or a 10th of the total number of battalions. This was due to British prejudices about serving with Indians and doubts about their leadership abilities. In his book Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy Since Independence, Steven Wilkinson writes that the links, as such, between these Indian officers were much tighter than if they had been spread across all the units of the army at the beginning of their careers.
Ten Indian officers trained at Sandhurst were commissioned from 1920 to 1929 into just one of these eight units, 1/14 Punjab Regiment, which was later merged into the Pakistan Army in November 1947. Steven Wilkinson writes that these officers ate, drank, trained, often went on leave, and served in the field together. By 1951, six of them were in service in the Indian Army, with one retiring the year before because of ill health. They included three of India’s 22 major generals. On the Pakistani side, their batchmates included Ayub Khan. The officers forged close bonds during training at Sandhurst, staff colleges, and during the Second World War.
Close Shave, Enduring Bonds
Sam Manekshaw, who led the Indian Army in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and Muhammad Musa Khan, the Pakistani Army chief from 1958 to 1966, were part of the first batch at Dehradun’s military academy in 1932. In Manekshaw’s obituary in 2008, Pakistani columnist and fellow Parsi Ardeshir Cowasjee wrote about having heard much about Manekshaw from his friend, Attiqur Rahman, a lieutenant general in the Pakistani Army. Manekshaw and Rahman served in the British Indian Army as young officers on the Burma front.
Rahman was with Manekshaw when he was critically wounded in Burma in February 1942. Cowasjee quoted Rahman comforting Manekshaw, and that all would be well when the future Indian army chief asked for his pistol to shoot himself. It was a close call, with the surgeon treating Manekshaw, almost giving up. Rahman and Manekshaw met again in 1945 when the latter was one of his instructors at the Quetta Staff College, which became the Pakistan Army’s institute for training mid-career officers in 1947.
General Yahya Khan, who led Pakistan in the 1971 war, was also a good friend of Manekshaw. The two were part of British Indian Army Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck’s staff in 1947. Yahya Khan bought Manekshaw’s motorcycle for Rs 1,000 but failed to make the payment after shifting to Pakistan. Manekshaw is quoted to have said after the 1971 war that Yahya Khan never paid me the money for the motorbike, but has now paid with half his country, referring to Bangladesh’s creation.
Cowasjee wrote that when he met Manekshaw, he told him that Yahya Khan had not forgotten the debt, but never got around to paying it. He offered to pay back the Rs 1,000 with interest on Khan’s behalf. Manekshaw refused the offer, calling Yahya Khan a good man and a good soldier. He recalled serving together. ‘There was not one mean or corrupt bone in his body. Your politicians are as bad as ours. Yahya was condemned [after the 1971 war] without being heard. After he was put under house arrest at the end of December 1971, up to his death in 1980, he clamoured unceasingly for an open trial. Why was he condemned unheard?’ Manekshaw asked Cowasjee.
Ties Against Odds
Many of these officers maintained such cordial ties despite continuing hostilities between the two countries. Asghar Khan, who led the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and is known as its father, spoke to Indian veteran Squadron Leader Dalip Singh Majithia days before his death in January 2018. In October 2017, Asghar Khan phoned his Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) roommate Randhir Singh to offer condolences over Air Chief Marshal Arjan Singh’s death.
In the 1940s, Arjan Singh and Asghar Khan were batchmates. They maintained their relationship despite heading adversarial Indian and Pakistani military forces. Their bond also helped avert an all-out war following an India–Pakistan skirmish in March 1965 in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch. Asghar Khan could phone Singh and urge him not to get the IAF involved, as it would force them to respond and broaden the theatre of war. Singh was convinced and prevented a full-scale conflict before Pakistani incursions into Kashmir in 1965 triggered a full-blown war later that year.
Lives Saved
These bonds helped save the lives of Asghar Khan and his family when they were caught in the middle of the partition bloodbath. Khan was the chief flying instructor at RIAF’s Advanced Flying Training School in Ambala on the Indian side when the violence began. His successor at RIAF, Wing Commander Nair, convinced Asghar Khan against taking a train across the newly created border. ‘Wing Commander Nair did us a good turn and saved our lives,’ Asghar Khan wrote in his book, My Political Struggle. Nair contacted PAF chief Air Vice-Marshal Allan Perry-Keene to arrange a plane for Asghar Khan and his family’s evacuation to Pakistan.
In 1965, Ayub Khan offered to release K C Cariappa, who was taken as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down on the last day of the war that year, as a special gesture since the Indian Air Force officer’s father, General Kodandera Madappa Cariappa, was the Pakistani military leader’s senior. Ayub Khan directed Pakistan’s envoy to India to meet General Cariappa, the first Indian commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, and brief him about his son’s condition. General Cariappa, who was later conferred with the Field Marshal rank, instead asked the envoy to look after all the captured Indian soldiers.
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