The Driving Test

From the testimony of Maj Gen Alok Kacker, AVSM — Indian Army, Gorkha Rifles

General Kacker told me he wanted to give me two stories rather than one, and then gave me both without pausing. The second is about telling the truth to a journalist when a lie would have been easier. The first is the one I have not stopped thinking about.

He was a young Captain then, at a post near Batalik in the Kargil sector, somewhere around seventeen thousand feet, astride the Indus. He is precise about how little there was up there: no generators, no electric light, a kerosene wick lamp to read by for an hour before sleep. When a Petromax arrived it was a luxury, because it lit a whole bunker and you could find your toothbrush in the morning.

He had been detailed for a driving course. He could ride a scooter and nothing else, and the rule was that you were tested on a heavy vehicle on the first day and returned to your post if you failed. He had counted on coming down early to practise. Then it snowed, continuously, for seven or eight or ten days.

On the thirteenth or fourteenth day there was a window and he was told to come down. He left at half past five in the morning. Because of the snow, a walk that should have ended at breakfast took him until half past two in the afternoon, when he reached the transit halt at Hut Area.

They fed him. The JCO told him to stop there for the night — nine hours on his feet, and nobody travels alone on the Line of Control. He describes how movement worked: two men from the lower post, two from his own, handing him on at a central point, so that nobody is ever by himself.

He went on anyway, because he was worried about the driving test and wanted the extra hours.

He reached the battalion at half past five, drank a cup of tea, and lay down with the headache you get dropping from seventeen thousand feet to eight. At half past nine that night they woke him. An avalanche had hit Hut Area. The JCO had walked halfway down, found a telephone line, connected a set to it, reported what had happened, and gone back to dig.

General Kacker started back up at nine-thirty at night. Short of Hut Area he collapsed — blacked out, he says, simply stopped — and came round an hour later and kept going.

They dug for three days. Seven men were dead. The ice had come off an unstable slope and flattened a stream bed full of rocks into a level sheet the size of three football grounds, so hard they could barely walk on it. There had been no reaction time at all. Four or five were in the langar. The JCO lived because his bunker sat slightly higher than the rest.

And every one of those men had handled him that day. One party had brought him down from the post above. One had left him at the halfway point. Someone had served him his food.

“Had I not got the fear of failing in my driving test, maybe I would have also stopped.”

What he draws from it is not luck. It is that the men who got him down the mountain were gone by nightfall, and that you never know what tomorrow brings, so you do what you can for others while you can.

The rest of the interview is full of the same attention to people. He grew up a fauji child — his father was also a Gorkha officer — and went to RIMC at eleven because the family moved too often. He talks about the Gorkhas as men who will tell you to your face if something is wrong, and who then stop telling you, because after a while they expect their officer to know from a man's expression that Ram Bahadur is not all right.

And he tells two pension stories from his years at the Embassy in Kathmandu that belong together. In the first, a cashier came to him at the end of a disbursement day and reported a surplus — which never happens. They worked out it had to be an elderly widow given a bundle of fifty-rupee notes instead of five hundreds. She had not counted it. She had simply folded her hands, thanked the Government of India, and gone home. They found her and paid her what she was owed.

In the second, a widow in her eighties had been refused her pension for years because the name on her husband's record was a pet name and not hers. She described to him, from memory, a journey she had made as a girl of seventeen or eighteen: ten days on foot to Gorakhpur, a train to Bombay, a ship to Karachi, a train to Landi Kotal, and a vehicle to wherever her husband was posted. He listened to an illiterate woman describe the North-West Frontier and knew no one could have invented it. He got her paid.

I.A Kerosene Lamp at Seventeen Thousand Feet

InterviewerYou joined the NDA in 1982 and left the Army in 2023. What did you think the Army was as a seventeen-year-old, and how far was that from what it turned out to be?

OfficerI am a second-generation officer, which means I'm a fauji kid. Now they say fauji brat, Army brat. We were not brats in our time — we were simple kids. My father was also in the Gorkhas, so I always interacted and moved around with Gorkha boys and jawans. When I joined RIMC¹ we were young, about Class 7, eleven years old. In our time NDA was after the eleventh, so we did only the eleventh and then joined.

OfficerWhen we joined, the Army was very different. There weren't comforts. Field areas were difficult. My second posting was in Kargil, a place called Batalik² — Batalik is where the Indus gets into Pakistan. We were deployed at sixteen, seventeen thousand feet, astride the river, north and south. There were hardly any comforts. I used to read a book with a kerosene wick lamp. We read and passed time at night for an hour before sleeping, because there was no concept of lights, no concept of generators. It was only after a year of living like that, reading Liddell Hart³ with a kerosene lamp, that a Petromax⁴ became a luxury — it would light a whole bunker, and you could read comfortably, you could locate your toothbrush in the morning when you wanted to brush your teeth, or look for a soap.

OfficerOur staying conditions were not that comfortable, our equipment was not very good. Now that I have retired I find a lot of facilities, which is part of growing up — India itself has become more economically strong, so a lot of good things for the Army.

OfficerWhat has changed a lot is the troops. In our time we used to get a large number of Nepalese from the hills, the interiors of Nepal. They were more hardy, more sincere, more loyal, but they were not well educated — Class 3, Class 4 pass. Academically they were not good, but terrific soldiers. Now you have more educated people, all of them tenth, eleventh, twelfth pass. And in any case, for the last four and a half, five years there has been no recruitment⁵, which as senior officers we feel bad about. But that's the government policy between both.

OfficerBut yes, the Army has changed, and changed for the better, and become more challenging — because for us in the infantry we were basically managing men, humans, and that is the most dynamic kind of person. Where do they come from, what problem do they have, how do they want to be addressed. It's a good challenging life.

Contextual Notes and Historical References

1 · RIMC: The Rashtriya Indian Military College at Dehradun, which admits boys at about eleven and prepares them for the National Defence Academy.
2 · Batalik: A sector of the Kargil district of Ladakh on the Line of Control, where the Indus crosses into Pakistan. In 1999 it became one of the four main battlefields of the Kargil War.
3 · Liddell Hart: Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the British military historian and theorist of the indirect approach — standard reading for a young officer.
4 · The Petromax: A pressurised kerosene mantle lamp, far brighter than a wick lamp, and for decades the best light available in places without power.
5 · Recruitment from Nepal: Recruitment of Nepalese citizens into the Indian Army's Gorkha regiments has been suspended since 2022, when Nepal declined to send recruits under the Agnipath scheme.

II.A Fauji Household

InterviewerBeing a second-generation officer, how much of your decision to join was shaped by your family, and how much was something you arrived at independently?

OfficerWe joined school in the early seventies. I started my schooling at Cambrian Hall, because that was a time when my father was posted in Sikkim, which was a non-family station, and my mother stayed in Dehradun. Then our unit came to Kanpur. So I grew up in a fauji house, and the Army was always there as one of the options.

OfficerIn '76 my father took the initiative. I am the eldest — I have a younger sister, then a brother. He said, because of so much shifting, let's put him in RIMC. So I took the exam from Madhya Pradesh, got selected, and joined.

OfficerOnce we came into RIMC it was a no-brainer that all our seniors went to NDA. It became more or less focused — we hardly had people who went out, except those who were medically unfit or couldn't make it. In our time the concept was purely: get into NDA. And this is the late seventies, early eighties. There weren't too many options out in the street. It was not so easy for us to think, and we were actually not as smart as you all, to take a call after the tenth and say let's do something else. Some did, and they're doing well, but they were far and few. So for us NDA was a very natural progression.

III.What the Gorkhas Expect

InterviewerWhat did serving with the Gorkhas teach you about the relationship between an officer and his men?

OfficerYou would have heard the famous line of Field Marshal Manekshaw — that if a man says he is not afraid of death, he is either lying or he is a Gorkha¹. That speaks a lot. And it's well documented right from British times. The British never conquered Nepal; having fought the Anglo-Gorkha Wars of 1815–1816² they had a treaty, and they realised these chaps are good fighters — why fight them, why not get them into our Army. That is how the Gorkhas came to the British Indian Army.

OfficerWhen India became independent there was a Tripartite Agreement³ between the Government of Nepal, the Government of India and the Government of the UK, to say that we will recruit Nepalese citizens into our Army and they will all be treated at par with our own.

OfficerGorkhas are extremely simple and honest. They will tell you on your face if they have a feeling or if they find a problem. And they will also expect their commanders to know their problems — so after some time they will not tell you. They expect that just by seeing his expression, seeing his attitude, seeing his behaviour, you as a commander are supposed to know that Ram Bahadur is not okay, and to find out what the problem is.

OfficerAnd the only thing they expected was that their officer should be as good as them or better. So it was difficult to be accepted. The interesting part is that in the British Indian Army the British never found Indian officers competent to officer Gorkha troops. They always had British officers, and it was very late, in the early forties, that Indian commissioned officers were given to Gorkha battalions. At Partition they were absolutely sure the Gorkhas would all ask to be taken to the UK. They were shocked when, out of the ten regiments, six wanted to stay back in India⁴. That was a big shock — how can these Gorkhas agree to being officered by Indians? But by then the Indian officers had proved themselves.

OfficerSo you learn so much from them that after spending time with them you become one of them. You start exhibiting the qualities of your troops. And you also start expecting that your superiors should judge you fairly, because you're doing a job. That is the attitude most of us developed.

Contextual Notes and Historical References

1 · The Manekshaw remark: The best-known tribute to the Gorkha soldier, attributed to Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, who was himself commissioned into the 12th Frontier Force and later affiliated to the Gorkhas.
2 · The Anglo-Gorkha Wars: Fought 1814–1816 between the East India Company and the Kingdom of Nepal, and concluded by the Treaty of Sugauli. British respect for Gorkha soldiers in that war led directly to their recruitment.
3 · The Tripartite Agreement: Signed in 1947 by Britain, India and Nepal, governing the service of Nepalese citizens in the British and Indian armies. It remains the legal basis of Gorkha recruitment.
4 · The division of the regiments: At Partition, four Gorkha regiments transferred to the British Army and six remained with India. A seventh, 11 Gorkha Rifles, was later re-raised in India.

IV.Kathmandu

InterviewerYou went to Kathmandu in 1998 and stayed until 2001. What kind of years were those to be an Indian officer in Nepal?

OfficerFor a Gorkha officer, a posting to Nepal is always prestigious. We were three officers in Kathmandu and one each in West and East Nepal — five Gorkha officers, all part of the Embassy of India. Our primary job was to take care of Indian Government pensioners, of whom Army pensioners were the largest group. Disbursement of pension, their welfare if they faced problems, communicating with the Government of Nepal, trying to get aid from the Government of India for them.

OfficerAnd since we knew the language, since we knew their culture, we knew where our men came from. Some of us trekked in Nepal even on leave. Unless you know — even in India, if you were to command Sikh troops and you don't know the culture, the language, what they eat, how they dress, it doesn't make good sense. In the Gorkhas the regimentation is much stronger. Not only me: my wife picked up fluent Nepali too, because you have to interact with the families, with the wives. How do you, if you don't know the language? Language is one of the best things.

OfficerWe had two earth-shaking events while we were there. One was the IC 814 hijack¹ — the Air India flight hijacked from Kathmandu to Delhi, which ultimately landed in Kandahar. It was challenging because there were staff from the Embassy on that flight. For us it was day-to-day meetings, what's happening, what can we do.

OfficerThe second was the Royal Massacre², where the entire Shah dynasty got wiped out — leaving aside two of them, everybody was killed. That was again a very challenging period. We were told not to travel outside, because typically there may be an India hand, till things came out as to what happened and what didn't. So it was difficult, interesting, but we always had a way around, because we knew the people and we had made good friends.

Contextual Notes and Historical References

1 · IC 814: Indian Airlines Flight 814, hijacked on 24 December 1999 shortly after leaving Kathmandu for Delhi, and flown eventually to Kandahar in Taliban-held Afghanistan. One passenger was killed; the surviving hostages were released a week later in exchange for three prisoners.
2 · The Royal Massacre: On 1 June 2001, at the Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu, King Birendra and most of the Nepalese royal family were shot dead. The event effectively ended the Shah dynasty's standing and hastened Nepal's transition from monarchy.

V.The Surplus, and the Journey to Landi Kotal

OfficerTo share a small anecdote. When I came to Nepal we used to disburse pension. Those were days when banks were not many in the interiors, so from Kathmandu we would build up to a place that had a bank, and for eight or ten districts we would conduct pension-paying camps once in four, five, six months. We would draw out a massive amount of money — five crores, six crores — and disburse it over two days, then draw again and disburse again.

OfficerAt the end of a day, somewhere in Western Nepal, the cashier comes and says we have surplus money, forty-five thousand surplus. Now, normally there would be shortages, and the concept is very simple: if there was a shortfall, the cashier would make it up. There was no question of somebody else chipping in. So count, recount, and give — and it was all a massive melee. So it was quite surprising that something was surplus. Who tells you today that there is a surplus?

OfficerSo we put a filter and worked out who it could be. We realised it had to be an elderly widow collecting pension after eight or nine months — a substantial amount. We identified four or five and sent some people, and lo and behold, we found a lady of eighty-plus. The cashier, instead of giving her a bundle of five-hundred-rupee notes, had given her a bundle of fifties by mistake. And she had not counted. They would just take the money, do namaste, thank the Government of India, and carry it home and put it wherever it is, and never count. She was so sure that no Indian would ever cheat her of her dues.

OfficerSo: the cashier reporting a surplus; the lady not questioning; and the fact that we located her and paid back her dues. That is the entire cycle of trust between the pensioner, the cashier and the paying officer. And similarly, we had cases where a pensioner got surplus money, and when asked, owned up and returned it.

InterviewerIn September 2023, in your last months in service, you went back to Kathmandu. What was that like?

OfficerIn the infantry you have a Colonel of the Regiment¹, and I was fortunate to be Colonel of the 9 Gorkhas, my regiment, for three and a half, four years. Every year two Colonels of the Regiment out of the seven Gorkha regiments travel to Nepal, interact with pensioners, with the Government of Nepal, with the Nepalese Army. So first was to meet and greet our old people, see what improvement is taking place in our offices, what more we are doing for them, what their problems are.

OfficerAnd I went at a time when there was no recruitment from Nepal, so we had good discussions with the Ambassador and with the Nepalese Army about how we can get Nepalese troops back into the Indian Army, who had done so well. Some of my staff were still there. They had all aged — they were young clerks then, and they were still there, some of them. It was a good feeling.

OfficerLet me narrate another incident of how simple and honest they are. Pension is disbursed to the next of kin — once you marry, your wife's name is endorsed, and when you pass on, the pension goes to her. Now, this is pre-Independence. A young soldier of seventeen or eighteen got married, and when his documentation was done he probably didn't know her full name, so the pet name was entered — Sati Maya. Over time, in the sixties or seventies, he died. And the lady coming forward to claim was, by her real name, Dhan Lakshmi. So the problem came: who is the real claimant? For years she didn't get the payment.

OfficerI happened to interview her. Can you imagine — this lady is in her eighties, and she is describing how she went from Nepal to a place your generation would not know. Have you heard of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa? There is a place called Kohat. So this is the description of a journey by an illiterate Nepalese woman of seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. She says: I walked up to Gorakhpur, over six, seven, ten days. From Gorakhpur she sat in a train and travelled to Bombay. She got down, and embarked on a ship to Karachi. From Karachi they were put in a train, and she went up to a place called Landi Kotal². And then in a vehicle she was taken to where her husband was located.

OfficerSo I said, where is the doubt? Today, this illiterate person is describing a journey from the hills of Nepal to the North-West Frontier Province. It cannot be fudged. It cannot be a lie, because our children today would not know it — even people who study geography would not know this kind of a journey. And she is describing it because she experienced it. That is the kind of truthfulness.

OfficerSo we explained to the head of pension disbursement in India: the mismatch of name has already happened, Sati Maya is actually Dhan Lakshmi, but both are one person. At least, if you want to keep it for the sake of documentation, give her fifty per cent. And in our time we managed to get that done — give her fifty per cent, and after five years, if no Sati comes, give her a hundred. Very fulfilling. Just imagine a widow not getting the pension.

OfficerWe could have just done away with it — names not matching — the way you go to a bank and they take ten of your documents and say the documents don't match, the name doesn't match, the spelling is wrong, you're not the same person.

Contextual Notes and Historical References

1 · Colonel of the Regiment: A senior serving officer appointed as the ceremonial and pastoral head of a regiment, responsible for its traditions, its serving soldiers and its veterans.
2 · Landi Kotal: The town at the head of the Khyber Pass, in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, and the last stop on the old North-Western Railway before the Afghan frontier.

VI.What You Teach a Cadet

InterviewerYou were at the Indian Military Academy from 1993 to 1995. What were you trying to put into those cadets?

OfficerNDA and IMA are pre-commission training institutes. Who comes to IMA is a graduate, a boy or a girl. So the focus is on military subjects — tactics, signal communication, military history, map reading, drill, physical training, getting him fit, letting him fire, letting him know how things are done.

OfficerBut the most important aspect was the officer-like qualities, the leadership qualities. Because the moment you are commissioned you are expected to lead men, or women now, both. And leading here means leading them to battle. And that would mean leading them into a wall of fire. How do you motivate a person that — like in Kargil — let's climb that peak overlooking the national highway, and there are Pakistani soldiers there, and you know that there is no way you will survive, you will all die. How do you lead is the most difficult thing, and that is a thing which starts at IMA. First your men should accept you as a leader, and then they should trust you implicitly — blind faith. If our Saab is going, or what he is saying is correct, we will follow him wherever.

OfficerThe time period was less — three terms for a direct entry, two for ex-NDA — but a beginning was made, and later in their battalions they built on those qualities. As you read military history, you read the performance of the junior leaders of the Indian Army, you will find we have had a very large percentage of casualties, and this happens because you lead from the front. If you were behind them you wouldn't be a casualty. So the Indian Army has been good in training its junior leaders, and our junior leaders have exhibited all that in actual war.

VII.Manesar, 2020

InterviewerIn 2020 you were involved in creating the isolation facility at Manesar, when very little was known about COVID. What was the most difficult decision?

OfficerCOVID surprised all of us. Delhi Area, where I was posted, was known for ceremonial — Republic Day Parade, Independence Day Parade. That was the major national-level task we would handle. And I remember it was February when we got a message that there are Indian tourists stuck in Japan who are not being allowed to disembark from a ship, and they have to be flown back to India.

OfficerTypically, wherever nobody works, the Indian Army is brought in. We were told these Indians have to be tested and isolated. It was difficult, because we couldn't get them in close proximity with the other troops. Nobody knew how things were going to pan out; the medical branch was trying to figure out the effects.

OfficerWe put them in Manesar, where the battalions going to UN missions were placed. It was just a piece of ground — nothing else. No facilities, no sewer lines, no water pipes, no nothing. Back of beyond. And there we had to create an isolation facility. What would be the shape, we didn't know. We used to discuss and talk it out: will you test them daily, can we change the staff who's inside.

OfficerBut the most difficult job was to find people who would agree to work in those facilities — the housekeepers, the sweepers, the ones who would go inside. The uniformed people, like I said, have no choice; anybody who is deputed, a doctor or a nursing assistant or a nurse, they were all there. But the other staff, the administrative staff — very difficult. So we had to understand their apprehensions. Ultimately we realised that if you give them more money they will agree. So we created three rotations of the staff, and we paid them double the normal rates. And because we had a deadline and had to be functional, we did that.

OfficerDifficult time, but then that model got replicated and became better, and it was always called the Manesar Model. Other places came around in India, by the Army and by other hospitals.

VIII.Leading by Example

InterviewerYour career moved between field command, training, intelligence, diplomacy, wargaming and senior administration. Which taught you most about leadership?

OfficerMilitary leaders continue to learn all through their careers. You never say that now I have become a Brigadier, or a Major General, I know everything about leadership. It doesn't happen like that.

OfficerCommand is the most difficult and the most satisfying, and I would say the last of the direct command is the battalion command, where a Commanding Officer actually has to lead his battalion. And the simple part we realise is: leading by example. There is no shortcut to that and no replacement for that concept. If you are there with them they will follow you wherever. If you're not scared, if you're not afraid, if you are with them — they just have to see that you are there, and then they know they have faith that this gentleman will let us complete our mission while taking care of our security, our safety, our life.

OfficerOn instructional assignments, again, as a guru you can't say I know all and end all of my subject and nobody knows more than me. If you go with that mindset you will definitely make a mistake, or you will not correctly judge a subordinate or a student. There is an equal amount of learning from the young students being trained under you. It's never good to close your mind.

OfficerAnd wargaming was a typical thing for a Gorkha officer — into a total technical arm. By nature I like technology and I'm not scared of trying it out. The drones were just being talked about in our time. What it taught me was: embrace technology, rather than being scared of it. Normally people who are not comfortable say, you know, security — there will be so much data, there will be data overload. But the fact is you have to find ways to harness technology for effective utilisation of your troops and firepower.

InterviewerFinally, I would like to request you to share one story that you do not want lost to time — something you have been carrying, and something close to your heart.

OfficerLet me talk about two stories.

i.The Avalanche

OfficerI was located at a post at nearly seventeen thousand feet, and I was detailed to attend a course on driving. We were so naive in our time — as a young Captain I only knew how to ride a scooter, not a four-wheeler. And we were to drive heavy vehicles, and to be tested on the heavy vehicle, and if you failed you were returned on the first day itself. So I thought, I have fifteen, twenty days, maybe I'll come down two, three days early and learn driving. But the weather turned bad, and for seven, eight, ten days it snowed continuously. After about the thirteenth or fourteenth day there was a window, and I was told: today you can come down.

OfficerComing down from this post we had two or three transit halts, walking. One was Tent Area, about an hour and a half; the other was Hut Area, about two and a half hours, and that was the main administrative base from where we would get our supplies. The target was to reach Hut Area by breakfast, have breakfast, and reach the unit by half past eleven or twelve. But because of the bad weather it took me — I started at half past five in the morning, and by half past two in the afternoon I reached Hut Area.

OfficerI had my meal, and the JCO¹ told me: Sir, you're tired, you've been walking for eight, nine hours, you should sleep here today. Take a rest, and tomorrow morning. And you don't travel alone. We were on the Line of Control, which means there are Pakistanis across and you can get lost. So you do a halt, which means two men come from the lower post and two men accompany from my post, and they leave me at a central point, and the other party takes over, and like that link we would travel, so that we are always in a group of two or three.

OfficerBut I was a little apprehensive about not knowing driving. So I said I should go and do a little bit of driving, I'll reach by late evening, I'm okay, I'm fit. I took two boys from there, went to another place, and I reached the battalion at half past five and had my cup of tea. Tired, and with mountain sickness, because you have come down from seventeen thousand feet to about eight thousand. So you get a headache.

OfficerAt half past nine I was woken at night, to say: Hut Area, avalanche, and there's nobody else, and you have to go and rescue. We don't know the state. The JCO had just walked halfway down, and there were physical lines laid, so wherever he saw a telephone line he connected a telephone and told us this had happened, and he went back to look for the boys. Everybody was missing. That place had eight, nine boys, and everybody was buried.

OfficerSo I started walking at half past nine back up to Hut Area, and a little short of Hut Area I collapsed — physically exhausted, just collapsed, blacked out. After about an hour I regained consciousness, and I reached. And over three days we did a little bit of digging, and we found we had lost seven boys. They died. They were just buried.

OfficerIt was heavy ice off an unstable mountain, which became loose, and it just plastered everything. It became so hard that an area which had a stream flowing, all ragged with rocks, became a flat piece of ice about three football grounds in size, where we could just barely walk. It flattened the whole thing, thick ice, and people just got buried. There was no reaction time. The JCO, because he had eaten his food and come back to his bunker, and his bunker was a little higher than the others, was all right. The rest just perished. Four or five in the langar² — the langar is where we cook and eat food.

OfficerAnd all of them I had interacted with that day. Somebody got me from the top, somebody left me down below, somebody served me food. So seeing death at such close sight totally shook me up — and I would also have been there. Had I not got the fear of failing in my driving test, maybe I would also have stopped. My body was saying: take a break, what is the harm, this is just two and a half hours from here. Take a break. I wouldn't have been here talking to you. But something pushed me. That's called destiny.

OfficerWhat remains with me are these brave men who help you to survive, and then they are no more. Just one little avalanche. So that is one lesson with me which remains for life: you never know what comes tomorrow. So live your life, do what you feel is right, whatever you can for others.

Contextual Notes and Historical References

1 · JCO: Junior Commissioned Officer — a rank between non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers, unique to the Indian and Pakistani armies, and usually the most experienced man at a small post.
2 · Langar: The cookhouse and mess where a unit prepares and eats its food.

ii.The Truth, and the Journalist

OfficerI commanded my unit in Assam, in a counter-insurgency area in Lower Assam, where we had a tribal insurgency of the Bodo tribals¹. CI is very challenging and very dynamic, because the situation changes, the people change, the grievances change, the support they get changes, district to district. There was a ceasefire which had taken place with this group — ceasefire means both don't fire at each other, and you just patrol.

OfficerOne of our companies was along the Indo-Bhutan boundary, out on a normal morning patrol on cycles. We would patrol on cycles because it was faster than walking, and vehicles had the problem of IEDs being blown and more casualties. So the via media was a cycle patrol. And around half past six I get a call: we were fired at from this particular village, and we fired back, and there appears to be somebody hit — a man and a woman.

OfficerBy evening the whole thing had blown up, because that lady had died, and she had two young children. The farmer was probably going to the field, and the wife had brewed a cup of tea. The terrorists fired — they were not supposed to fire, but they fired, for whatever reason — and our people retaliated in self-defence, and the result was that this woman had died and the man was injured.

OfficerBy evening the national highway was blocked totally — chakka jam². National Highway 31C; if you know your geography, nothing could move to Guwahati and beyond. The local leaders had all descended, saying human rights violation, this and that. Political leaders from that tribal party came and had a meeting in that village and said, our Army has killed. Major pressure. And the journalists were looking, and there were already two days of blame on us, and the Students' Union was not speaking with us.

OfficerBut the Deputy Commissioner of that place was also of the same tribe, from the state cadre. And he told the journalist who had come from Guwahati — not from the local papers — that I have seen this Gorkha unit operating here, it cannot be a deliberate action, please understand what actually happened. Those insurgents went into Bhutan, so they were not traceable. There was only one party on the ground, which was our patrol, so the entire blame fell on us.

OfficerThen the DC rang me and said, Sir, Times of India would want to speak with you, are you okay? I said I'm okay, no problem. He came in the afternoon. I thought I'd have an hour's chat, but I was surprised — he had so many questions, quoting minute by minute: this happened, you got hold of the children, you wiped the blood, you did this and that. So I said, hold it, we will go step by step.

OfficerWhat I thought would take an hour took me six to seven hours. For six to seven hours the two of us just sat and talked, the journalist from Guwahati and all his doubts. And at the end I gave my side of the truth, and I said: this is the truth, exactly what I'm telling you, and the rest I leave to you. I have no control over what you want to say, and I don't want to control it. This is exactly my interpretation of what happened.

OfficerI said, I don't know whose bullet that is. Yes, we have taken responsibility for the injured. But I don't know whose bullet — the terrorists also have AKs, we also have AKs. I don't know. But it happened in our crossfire, so we will look after this family, we will do everything we have to do. The fact remains that this is not what you are saying.

OfficerHe said, Sir, this is your part, let me now independently analyse. And he called me after reaching and said: Sir, I believe your story, and I'm writing that. And the whole thing turned on its head by the next day, by just one interaction of telling the truth. The leaders calmed down, the roads opened.

OfficerAs a Commanding Officer you are alone taking that call. So many things happen in your mind — this will finish my career, my boys, my unit will get a bad name. Because a casualty has taken place. And the only thing is, if you stick to truth, it works. Yes, it may take more time. And you can't blame the troops, why did you open fire — if somebody fires at you, you will fire, because that is how you are.

OfficerThe long-term takeaway is that if you do your job sincerely, it tells. That DC had nothing to gain by defending us. The journalist came to him, and he had seen us operate for five, six months, he had met us and spoken to the boys, and he said: I trust them more, you speak to the Commanding Officer. He trusted the unit. And then the journalist, after six or seven hours, also agreed with my line of thinking — because, you know, like a two-coloured car, it looks black from one angle and it is actually red from the other.

Contextual Notes and Historical References

1 · The Bodo insurgency: An armed movement among the Bodo people of western Assam from the late 1980s, pressing for a separate state or homeland. A series of ceasefires and accords followed, culminating in the Bodo Peace Accord of 2020.
2 · Chakka jam: Literally ‘wheels locked’ — a protest in which a road or highway is blockaded so that no traffic can move.

Maj Gen Alok Kacker, AVSM

The full story, as I was told it

The Shape of Memory

I.A Kerosene Lamp at Seventeen Thousand Feet

II.A Fauji Household

III.What the Gorkhas Expect

IV.Kathmandu

V.The Surplus, and the Journey to Landi Kotal

VI.What You Teach a Cadet

VII.Manesar, 2020

VIII.Leading by Example

The Keystone

i.The Avalanche

ii.The Truth, and the Journalist

Photographs & Service Record