IN A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN
Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh joined the force in 1938, when the IAF was only six years old. His demise on September 16, at 98, marked the end of an era for more than one reason. He was also the last of only three five-star officers India has ever had.
Early in his career, Marshal Arjan Singh was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. This was for his exploits as a combat pilot in World War II. But it was during the 1965 war that the air chief made his mark, leading the IAF to repel Pakistan’s better equipped air force.
He was ‘quietly efficient and firm; unexcitable but a very efficient leader’ as defence minister Y.B. Chavan noted in his personal diary. He became the IAF’s only fivestar officer in 2002. On September 18, in New Delhi, he was accorded a state funeral befitting a military hero— with a 17-gun salute, helicopters showering petals and a thundering fly-past of four Su30s in ‘missing man’ formation. Dignitaries— from the president to the prime minister and the three service chiefs—were there to pay their respects. It was a stark contrast to the send-off given to India’s first five-star officer, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, in May 2008. The victor of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, who passed away in the hill station of Wellington, Tamil Nadu, was given what might rank as one of the loneliest state funerals ever given to a military hero. Not a single cabinet minister or service chief attended. Even the then army chief stayed away, leading to a joke in the armed forces that the government seemed to have thought the funeral was in Wellington, New Zealand.
The government’s Warrant of Precedence, the pecking order for everyone from the president down to joint secretary, has no mention of a fivestar officer. With the passing away of the last officer of that calibre and with no other candidate on the horizon, there may never again be one like him.