OBIT: ZORAWAR CHAND BAKSHI
In 1971, Zoru’s cool resolve in dealing with the ‘Akhnoor dagger’, a wedge of Pak territory extending into J&K, is army folklore
Lt Gen. Zorawar Chand Bakshi stood five foot and five inches tall and was the most decorated Indian general alive until May 25, 2018. He was 97 when he died. Nice numbers at either extreme and though they can’t do him justice, they do express some of the humility and well…grandeur of his rather magical and inspiring career.
In India, he is likely to be best remembered for his role in three wars with Pakistan—in 1948, 1965 and 1971. He was awarded a Vir Chakra for bravery in 1948 and a Mahavir Chakra in 1965 for his involvement in the capture of the strategic Haji Pir pass. In the 1971 war, Zoru’s cool resolve in dealing with the ‘Akhnoor dagger’, a wedge of Pakistanheld territory extending into J&K, is an army folktale. “It’s a chicken neck and I’m going to wring it,” he said, before doing just that.
Before the Indo-Pakistan wars, Zoru had commanded Pathan troops in the Arakan campaign in World War II, where he earned a ‘Mention in Despatches’ in 1943. In 1947, he served with the Punjab Boundary Force, a short-lived and tragic unit of the undivided Indian army, which attempted to oversee the turmoil of Partition only to be consumed by it. His original Baloch regiment was assigned to Pakistan and Zoru was transferred to the 5th Gurkha Rifles, a.k.a. the ‘Frontier Force’. In 1949, he would be awarded the MacGregor Medal for a mysterious secret mission in Tibet—it seems he may have been the last of the ‘Pundits’ reconnoitering the forbidden land disguised as a Buddhist pilgrim. ‘Nehru’s Pundit’ as it were.
In 1962, serving the Indian contingent in a UNO peacekeeping force in the Congo, he would confront one of the true ogres of the 20th Century, Moïses Tshombe—the warlord who tortured and murdered Patrice Lumumba. It’s best recounted by one of Zoru’s officers, Brigadier A.S. Narula:
Zoru was just 5 foot 2 [an underestimate, it turns out] but with a very tall ego. And none of us could look into his eyes for more than a few seconds. He defied his height. He went and met Tshombe, and while they were talking, Tshombe pointed his finger at him…
Well, Zoru just hit Tshombe’s hand with his baton and then prodded him. “Don’t do that again with any Indian officer,” he warned.
“He was a very tough man,” Narula chuckled. “Actually, in our regiment, officers didn’t carry a baton. That was just Zoru.”
It wasn’t long before Tshombe’s army was mopped up by the Indian UNO forces in an offensive called ‘Operation Grand Slam’ in December 1962.
Returning to India, Zoru had no respite from conflict. Another highly decorated nonagenarian general, S.K. Sinha, remembered Zoru as his ‘big boss’, as GOC of the 8thMountain Division in Nagaland in 1969, at the height of the secessionist insurgency there. Sinha was a brigade commander at the time, and apparently out of favour with
the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), Sam Manekshaw. “Manekshaw told Zoru to fix me,” Sinha remembered, “because he thought I was a Kaul man.” Zoru, on the other hand, was well liked by the CoAS, who would teasingly address him as ‘Handsome’. Sinha remembered Zoru standing up to Sam in his defence, and he was always grateful.
But there is a coda to the story, which I’m not entirely surprised Sinha left out. As Zoru took charge of the Nagaland operations, he had to deal with an allegation that two Naga civilians had been picked up by the army and killed in cold blood on Sinha’s watch. Zoru investigated and found out that his soldiers were guilty. Two officers and a JCO were court-martialled and imprisoned for the crime and Zoru withdrew a recommendation of an AVSM medal for Sinha’s service as brigade commander.
It is perhaps a credit to both officers that these events would not interrupt their life-long friendship—Sinha passed away in 2016. Zoru retired from the Indian army in 1979 and never sought or received any further official office. Add that to the many reasons why the general’s quiet but forceful example is worth remembering.