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A soldier’s soldier

Occasionally one comes across an unusual biography which throws light on a forgotten central protagonist and in the process, illuminates a whole period of recent history. Born to Dare is one of those little gems and the author does not hide his enormous admiration and affection for his subject. This book “is by no means a military biography… (it) is the story of Inderjit Singh Gill, a rather uncommon type of person, who might have been born t o dare…” avers S. Muthiah, and there is little doubt that he tells a very absorbing “story” about one of the Indian Army’s more distinguished but little-known Generals.

Inder, as he was referred to, was born in England in 1922 a few years after his father, Gurdial Singh, a medical doctor in Edinburgh married a young local girl — Rena Lister. A year later the senior Gill received the King’s Commission in the Indian Medical Service and the family moved to India and lived in different parts of the country including Bareilly, Dehradun, Vishakapatnam, Vellore and Madras. Given the practice of the times, Inder went to England in 1938 to train as an engineer but his life was overtaken by the turbulence of World War II and the tumultuous events that followed.

I.S. Gill (1922-2001) had a very unusual professional career that straddled three armies for he had the rare distinction of joining the British Army as a private in 1939 and was later commissioned as an officer. His heroic exploits in World War II in Greece as part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) that undertook the covert Operation Harling is little-known and Muthiah has painstakingly researched this niche. The first part of this book is a detailed account of Captain Norman (Inder) Gill’s participation in the demolition of the critical Gorgoppotamos Bridge which was to have had a strategic impact on the Rommel-Montgomery battle in North Africa that was shaping up and Muthiah is at his dramatic best in recounting this phase of Inder’s life.

Subsequent chapters trace the transition of this remarkably brave, tactically astute but consistently blunt officer from the British Army to the British Indian Army a little before India’s Independence, and finally his joining the Indian Army in January 1948. A soldier to the core, Inder Gill soon found his natural calling as a paratrooper and became a legend in his lifetime. The 1948 Kashmir operations, peacekeeping in Korea and Gaza, command of a mountain division, Director, Military Training and concurrently officiating Director, Military Operations (DMO) in the Army Head Quarters, and finally Army Commander of the Western Army before it was bifurcated, Gill was an extraordinary soldier, modest to a fault and a very caring human being whose myriad qualities of head and heart Muthiah recounts with rare empathy.

The officiating DMO during the 1971 War for Bangladesh, there are many vignettes that Muthiah alludes to which testify to the pivotal role that Gill appears to have played in that critical period. The one that stands out is Gill — then a Major General — approving the movement of a mountain brigade on December 6, 1971 into East Pakistan and standing his ground with the Army Chief, Sam Manekshaw, who was reported to have been furious with such audacity. As the book adds: “Inder insisted he had ‘in the circumstances taken the correct decision and would do so again if he remained as Officiating DMO.’ Manekshaw later confirmed the order.”

While not being a military biography in the traditional sense, there are nuances and elliptical references that merit more detailed scrutiny which would highlight the central role played by Gill in the shaping of strategic thinking in the Indian Army. The strategic use of paratroopers — so effectively demonstrated in 1971 — and grooming Sundarji to nurture mechanisation are illustrative. Gill had his shortcomings and these are recorded in some detail but what emerges finally is a luminous portrait of a soldier, who is best remembered in the poignant, evocative lines of Robert Browning (The Lost Leader), rendered by Sukhjit Singh — the Maharaja of Kapurthala — who had served with Gill. Muthiah has rendered yeoman service by putting this biography together and it should be mandatory reading for all those who have more than passing interest in matters pertaining to India’s military security — including the political and bureaucratic constituency — at a time when the Indian “fauj” is facing complex internal challenges.

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