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TAMIL NATION
LIBRARY: Eelam
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[see also
India &
The Tamil Eelam Freedom Struggle
Rajiv
Gandhi's War Crimes
Rajiv
Gandhi Assassination
- The Verdict
Till the LTTE get Eelam, they will not stop
- Major
General Harkirat Singh, March 2000]
Review by A.G. Noorani in
Frontline, 8 September 2007
“On the night of 14/15 September
1987, I received a telephone call from Dixit, directing me
to arrest or shoot Pirabakaran when he came for the meeting.
Telling Dixit that I would get back to him I placed a call
to the OFC. Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh directed me to tell
Dixit that we, as an orthodox Army, did not shoot people in
the back when they were coming for a meeting under the white
flag. I then spoke to Dixit in Colombo and conveyed the
message, emphasising that I would not obey his directive. I
pointed out that the LTTE supremo had been invited by the
IPKF in order to find a solution to the problems in the
implementation of the Accord. Dixit replied, ‘He [Rajiv
Gandhi] has given those instructions to me and the Army
should not drag its feet, and you as the GOC, IPKF will be
responsible for it.’
 In his memoirs Maj Gen. Harkirat Singh has reproduced
contemporary documents that reveal a lot that was not known
about the IPKF in Sri Lanka. Major General Harkirat Singh
(Retd.) is an upright gentleman and a fine soldier;
altogether a man of integrity. He was Divisional Commander
of 54 Infantry Division when, on July 29-30, 1987, he was
sent to Sri Lanka as General-Officer-Commanding (GOC) of the
Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF). In January 1988, he got
orders “posting me out of Sri Lanka”. The Overall Force
Commander (OFC) of the IPKF was the GOC-in-C Southern
Command, Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh, who praised him in his
memoirs The IPKF in Sri Lanka (Trishul Publications, Noida,
1991).
The “cheerful and enthusiastic” soldier had the misfortune
of having to work with two egotistic and flamboyant figures,
the Army Chief Gen. K. Sundarji and the High Commissioner
J.N. Dixit. On retirement as Foreign Secretary in 1994,
Dixit lost no time in setting a unique and disgraceful
record as the first officer to denounce his successor
publicly in a press interview. Harkirat Singh paid the price for uprightness:
an early
ouster in January 1988. Depinder Singh wrote:
“All I could do at that stage was to suggest to Harry
that he could represent against the posting as the
change [and his transfer] were not at my instance. He
did and though I recommended his case, it was some
months before he was posted from the staff assignment he
was on to command Maharashtra and Gujarat Area. Later, I
was to question the COAS as to why we had been unfair to
Harry; he agreed that we had been unfair but stated that
redressal could only come from his successor (Sundarji
was to retire on April 30, 1988, and General V.M.
Sharma’s name had been announced as the next COAS).”
The wrong was
done by Sundarji himself. He passed the buck of redress to
his successor, cynically enough. Depinder Singh’s book
(The IPKF in Sri
Lanka ) contained a damning indictment of the
political decision-making process in New Delhi; of the
material help the LTTE received in Tamil Nadu even while its
men were killing the IPKF’s jawans; of the Research and
Analysis Wing’s incompetence and of much else. The IPKF knew
that the LTTE remained powerful even after the surrender of
arms pursuant to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 29, 1987.
It is unnecessary to recount here the fallout between the
Government of India and the LTTE on October 7, 1987, when
the IPKF was obliged to go to war. Depinder Singh writes:
“Regrettably, the view taken in New Delhi
was that these feelers [from the LTTE] indicated that the
end was close and, therefore, the requirement was to stop
talking and turn the screw some more. It was quite apparent
that Ministry of External Affairs and RAW were recommending
a contrary course of action to what the Army was; the
tragedy was that their view was prevailing. I remember a
telegram the High Commissioner sent from Colombo to Delhi
stating inter alia that, according to information available
to him, the LTTE collapse was imminent…
The reason why the
Army view did not or could not prevail, perhaps, can be
ascribed to the lack of rapport between the COAS and the
Prime Minister – undesirable in normal times, completely
fatal in an emergency. I am not aware of why such a
situation developed; perhaps it was a fallout of the days
preceding Exercise Brasstacks in early 1987 when we almost
went to war with Pakistan. Be it as it may, what I do know
is that when I queried the COAS as to why our point of view
was not being projected, his revealing reply was, ‘Woh Sunta
Nahi Hai’ (he does not listen).”
Harkirat Singh was replaced by Lt. Gen. S.C. Sardeshpande
whose memoirs, Assignment
Jaffna - IPKF in Sri Lanka (Lancer Publishers, 1991), record
the same story of ineptness and confusion.
Harkirat Singh’s
memoirs are different. He has reproduced whole texts of
contemporary documents that fully support his version and
reveal a lot we did not know despite all that was written.
“The only orders received by the Commander of 54 Infantry
Division in Sri Lanka were the contents of the Indo-Sri
Lanka Accord sent at midnight on 29/30 July 1987 from the
COAS” with instructions to read out that document “to all
ranks prior to their departure” for Jaffna. The chiefs of
the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy “had their
reservations” about the despatch of troops. “The OFC had no operational control over the IAF and the IN,
or on the employment of the Indian Army Para Commandos based
at Colombo and Palaly. The OFC acted as a link between 54
Infantry Division, and through the Army Headquarters with
Air and Naval Headquarters. Unfortunately, Lt. Gen. Depinder
Singh believed in giving only verbal instructions. His staff
officers, under Maj. Gen. A.S. Kalkat, the MGGS [Major
General, General Staff] who headed the Operational and
Intelligence Staff at Headquarters OFC, took full advantage
of this situation by holding the formation and unit
commanders responsible for any act or omission, instead of
shouldering the responsibility themselves. The
responsibility for issuing written orders was that of the
staff who unfortunately never bothered to issue confirmatory
orders directive…. It is sad that Maj. Gen. A.S. Kalkat and
Brig. Manjit Singh, Commander 41 Infantry Brigade, did not
stand by their formation and unit commanders. This can be
attributed to the greed for personal benefits. Gen. V.N.
Sharma, who took over as COAS after Sundarji, bluntly told
me, ‘The Commanders who initially launched the campaign have
to pay the price for it and in this scenario, Harry, you had
become the prime target.’”
Palaly was the headquarters of
the IPKF; Chennai of the OFC whose base as Commander,
Southern Command, was Secunderabad. The author writes:
“I am unsure of what prompted the Army
Chief, Sundarji, to shift me out of Sri Lanka, but one of
the factors must have been the letter that India’s High
Commissioner J.N. Dixit reportedly wrote to Sundarji in
September 1987 since I did not accept his order to
shoot/arrest the LTTE supremo. Moreover, someone in the
governments of India and Sri Lanka took exception to my
remarks to the media in December 1987, that the IPKF took
its orders from the Indian government and no one else, and
that Indian troops would not leave the island ‘until the
Tamils are satisfied and their aspirations are met’. It was
probably the turning point which eventually led to my
transfer out of Sri Lanka.”
This brings us to three important disclosures.
First, RAW
began rearming other Tamil groups even while the LTTE was
being disarmed in August 1987. The author gave Dixit the
damning videotapes which the LTTE had given him.
Secondly,
on September 11, 1987, he met Dixit.
“According to Dixit,
the ultimate objective of the IPKF was to discredit the LTTE
in the eyes of the local Tamil population. In short, the
IPKF was expected to play a double game. I realised that
these tactics would not work since the Tamils had already
understood that their aspirations for Eelam could be met
only by the LTTE. Dixit then turned towards me and said,
‘General, please ensure that the actions of the IPKF are in
line with my discussions with the Prime Minister at Delhi.
You should adopt a posture of gradual change from
negotiations to coercion. The junior commanders during their
contact should ascertain the view of the Tamils on the above
approach.’”
The last one is shocking:
“On the night of 14/15 September
1987, I received a telephone call from Dixit, directing me
to arrest or shoot Pirabakaran when he came for the meeting.
Telling Dixit that I would get back to him I placed a call
to the OFC. Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh directed me to tell
Dixit that we, as an orthodox Army, did not shoot people in
the back when they were coming for a meeting under the white
flag. I then spoke to Dixit in Colombo and conveyed the
message, emphasising that I would not obey his directive. I
pointed out that the LTTE supremo had been invited by the
IPKF in order to find a solution to the problems in the
implementation of the Accord. Dixit replied, ‘He [Rajiv
Gandhi] has given those instructions to me and the Army
should not drag its feet, and you as the GOC, IPKF will be
responsible for it.’ The next morning I received a call from
Lt. Gen. B.C. Joshi, the then Director General Military
Operations, who supported my stand on Dixit’s directive.
However, the COAS, Gen. Sundarji, expressed his annoyance.”
In fairness to Rajiv Gandhi, Dixit’s claim that he spoke on
his behalf must be rejected. Dixit was prone to bragging and
braggadocio. A meeting was fixed at which Depinder Singh, Dixit and
Prabakaran were present. “The talks took place and were very
successful and most of us concluded that the IPKF would be
out of Sri Lanka by December 1987. All those who attended
the meeting felt that the deadlock had at last been broken
and that peace was in sight.” That was not to be. The boat tragedy in October and the
suicides by the captured LTTE men led to the break. Dixit
and Sundarji thought that Harkirat Singh was soft on the
LTTE. The texts of his assessments on September 17 and 20
and on December 5, 1987, show him to be far more perceptive
and realistic than Dixit. The Army lost 1,155 men when the
IPKF withdrew. Harkirat Singh paid the price for his uprightness and for
being right. The book confirms the need for clear directives
to the armed forces at all times. On October 8, 1987,
Sundarji ordered him “to launch operations that night
itself. I could have prevented the COAS from leaving the
Palaly airfield and demanded his orders in writing. Brig.
Naveen Rawlley (later Lt. Gen.) did this at Salong airstrip
to Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul, General Officer commanding IV Corps,
during the Indo-Chinese conflict in 1962. Headquarters 2
Mountain Division produced this document, written in green
ink, with the Division’s War Diary before Lt. Gen. Henderson
Brooks during his investigations into the Indian Army
debacle.” If that report had been published many a blunder might have
been avoided. It is time to invoke the Right to Information
Act to secure publication of the Henderson Brooks Report, 43
years after its submission to the government. |
