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When the man who won the
1971 war for India ran on the streets of Delhi to save himself
It could not have got any bigger.
Kalam Nishan Singh
 He
had overseen the surrender of over 90,000 Pakistani soldiers,
stripped the epaulettes off a Pakistani general's shoulder,
something no one before or after him had ever done, and made him
sign an Instrument of Surrender at the very spot where Shiekh
Mujibur Rahman had declared freedom of Bangladesh about nine months
earlier.
Thirteen years later, the same man ran for his life on the streets
of Delhi. On October 31, 1984, "I alongwith Air Chief Marshall (retd)
Arjan Singh (and two others) left the house of Patwant Singh but
immediately saw on our way mobs attacking the Sikhs ... Within 15-20
minutes we returned," the retired general Jagjit Singh Aurora told
the Nanawati Commission.
"It
was shocking. I K Gujral was furious and said it is shameful that
the man who led the country to its biggest victory needed
protection," prominent Supreme Court lawyer H.S.Phoolka told me.
Aurora and his wife had to spend the night of November 1, 1984 at
the residence of Gujral. “It was apparent that the government of the
day was not interested at all in protecting the lives and properties
of citizens,” Aurora stated on oath before the Commission.
It could not have got any more shameful.
But
dignity came naturally to Aurora. He looks composed in the picture
as Lt Gen AAK Niazi signed the surrender. "He looked composed when
he barged into the house of India's Home Minister PV Narasimha Rao
on November 1, 1984 to demand action to stop rioting," Phoolka said.
And he looked composed and happy when General Niazi's
daughter-in-law came to meet the Auroras years after the surrender.
Just before his death, a depositor of a Delhi-based company,
Hindustan Financial Management Ltd, filed a case naming Aurora as
accused, Aurora's counsel argued that he was no longer associated
with the company, but the Patna judge refused the anticipatory bail
application. No one from the Indian government spoke up to say that
a giant cannot be insulted by any pygmy.
It could not have got more embarrassing.
But
Aurora remained composed. It was his nature.
"My
father was a soldier, but he could tell the most wonderful of fairy
tales. For him, my mother was the most beautiful woman till her very
end when she was very old. We learnt from this man of war what love
is all about," Aurora's daughter Anita Kalra said, as she stood by
the side of a frame which has a picture of Aurora watching Niazi
signing, a picture which is a full stop in the nation's memory.
"My
father was fond of telling us a story of a dead Pakistani soldier
from whose pocket he found a letter from his wife. So poignantly had
the wife beseeched the soldier husband to return home safe and sound
that papa's eyes would well up with tears w hile telling us the
story. He could never complete it. Now, he never will," Kalra said.
Nor will he ever tell us anymore how it feels like to run on the
Delhi roads for one’s own life, particularly after one has saved the
life of a nation.
What India does to its heroes?
25 October 2006
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