The ‘Last Post’ for India’s first CDS, General Bipin Rawat

‘We seek neither gratitude nor applause,’ Gen Rawat had once said about the life of Indian soldiers.

The Russian-American aviator, Igor Sikorsky, who pioneered the rotor configurations of the modern-day helicopters, famously said, “It would be right to say that the helicopter’s role in saving lives represents one of the most glorious pages in the history of human flight.” True as that might be, the invariable admixture of humans, machines, skills and the unpredictable prevailing conditions, has too often led to unavoidable accidents. The latest tragedy of the Mi-17V5 helicopter with the Indian Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, along with 13 others on board, is a national catastrophe beyond words.

The Indian Armed Forces, like any other international armed forces, have known the risks and vagaries that accompany the combatant-machine-operating space experiences. In 1963, an Aerospatiale Alouette III helicopter crash in Poonch had accounted for six senior officers i.e., Lt General Daulet Singh, Lt General Bikram Singh, Air Vice-Marshal Pinto, Maj General NKD Nanvati, Brigadier Uberoi and Flt Lieut SS Sodhi. In 1993, Army Commander Eastern Command, Lt General Jameel Mahmood, was killed with his wife in a helicopter crash in Bhutan whilst on an official visit.

'Realm of Uncertainty'

Barely a couple of months back, Major Anuj Rajput and Major Rohit Kumar of the Army Aviation Corps were lost in a helicopter crash in a dense forest area in Udhampur, during a training sortie.

Ironically, General Bipin Rawat, too, had earlier survived a helicopter crash in Dimapur, Nagaland, in 2015. The lone survivor in this incident involving General Bipin Rawat’s ill-fated flight, Group Captain Varun Singh, had been awarded the Shaurya Chakra for saving his LCA Tejas fighter aircraft during an aerial emergency last year.

The profession of arms must deal with inevitable uncertainties that accompany the turf, during war and even otherwise.

Carl Von Clauswitz famously said, “War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”

In 2015, British Royal Air Force’s Puma Mk 2 helicopter crashed in Afghanistan, earlier this year billionaire French politician Olivier Dassault (scion of the Dassault aviation family, which famously produces the Rafale Fighter) died in a helicopter crash, and on 31 August, a US Navy MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter crashed during routine flight operations off the coast of San Diego.

Situation Demands Dignity, Not Speculation

Such tragic loss of life happens to the best of military forces, machines, and trained pilots. While an official enquiry has already been initiated into this crash, extreme care and sensitivity must be undertaken by all of not speculating, propagating, or attributing any unsubstantiated hypothesis without adequate knowledge of the case or its facts. The poignant situation demands a certain dignity, sobriety, and restraint for the institution to heal from the loss of its top officer and others.

General Bipin Rawat hailed from a distinguished military family, and the author had served under his illustrious father, Lt General Laxman Singh Rawat, both proud ‘Gorkha’ officers of the 11th Gorkha Rifles. General Bipin Rawat was to be India’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), and for the ‘Sword of Honour’ at the Indian Military Academy in 1978, a meteoric destiny in the ‘Uniform’ was almost preordained, as he also died in harness.

In a public conclave, General Bipin Rawat had succinctly captured the life of an Indian soldier in the hallowed institution:

“We seek neither gratitude nor applause because we firmly believe in the eternal wisdom of the Urdu couple: Khamoshi se banaate raho pehchaan apni, hawaaye khud tumhara tarana gaayengi (Let silence be your identity and your actions will speak for themselves).”

The soldiers across the seas have their own philosophical way of rationalising life, as the irrepressible General George S Patton once said, “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”

Today, in its wounded moment, the nation salutes its ‘Soldier’ and the ‘Institution’.

(Lt Gen Bhopinder Singh (Retd) is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands & Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)