By Col Satish Singh Lalotra (Retd)
‘The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea’—-Mao Zedong.
The fascination with the unorthodox and often radical measures to solve an equally radical problem besetting a nation, tribe or an entity foisted on terms of deceit or treachery cum subterfuge has been always the call of chosen few. Often such chosen few take up the cudgels on behalf of others to keep the flame of resistance burning with undiminishing glow. The Tibetans of this world are those chosen few who have been relentlessly giving hell for leather to the forcible occupants (read Chinese) of their homeland for decades, with covert or overt support across the world from like-minded countries, entities and even media houses like the redoubtable RFA (Radio free Asia) from the US. Six years ago, on the night of 29-30th August 2020, a little known force emerged from the shadows of India’s security establishment and rewrote the military equation on the heights overlooking Pangong Tso during the zenith of the ‘Galwan Crisis’. Six years later, the significance of that night has only grown that came to be later known as the famous ‘OP Snow Leopard’ which was a watershed in Sino-Indian military relations. Reams of paper have been written about that intrepid operation by military experts for me to preclude any more shedding of light on the same. My sole aim of penning down this piece is an ode to these brave highlanders of Tibet with whom I had a chance encounter during my training days at the IMA & later on in my service in ‘OP Meghdoot’.
Spending a little more than a term in my formative years of training at IMA as a cadet in the early 1980s, I was initiated into the intrepid and secretive world of Tibetan guerrillas as part of a short and intense course of rock climbing and mountaineering at ‘Chakrata’ the Alma Mater of the SFF (Special Frontier Force) from the academy. Little did I realise at that time I would be continuing this association in my army career after more than a decade post my commissioning from the IMA in varied terrains of our country serving with them shoulder to shoulder. Already reputed for having etched their names in the annals of world history by their daredevilry right from the ‘Great Game’ days of early nineteenth century as scouts and spies and vanguards of the British empire against the rising Czarist Russian hegemony to training the BLF ‘Bangladesh Liberation Force’ during the Bangladesh liberation war, we were overawed by their towering performance by the time our short course took off. Though discussing the subject of Tibetan fighters is considered an anathema in Indian security circles owing to Chinese proclivity of the subject as a ‘No Go’ area for the rest of the world, the presence of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) has rendered this Chinese proclivity as redundant.
Having created this elite outfit (SFF) in the shadows of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, India understood lately that confronting the ‘yellow race’ required soldiers who could think, act, move, and survive the mountains with an intimacy few conventional formations possessed. SFF’s personnel brought something more than military training—an inherited familiarity with the Tibetan plateau, its terrain and its brutal climatic conditions.
There is a place in the lower Himalayas where the mountains seem to guard their own secrets. Wrapped in pine forests, mist and silence, Chakrata in Uttarakhand is far removed from the headlines of New Delhi and the clamour of conventional military history. Yet tucked away in this quiet Himalayan landscape, a remarkable chapter of India’s strategic history took place. It was here that ‘Establishment 22’ named after the famed ‘22 Mountain Regiment’ commanded by Maj Gen Suban Singh during 2nd WW came into being. It was in these salubrious climes that I undertook some basic mountaineering and rock climbing lessons imparted by redoubtable Tibetan commandoes cum instructors as a cadet from the IMA. As mentioned above, the force born in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 was conceived as an unconventional threat to the Chinese hegemony in the TAR (Tibetan Autonomous Region). Its original warriors were largely the ‘Khampa fighters’ from the Kham region of Tibet and formed the core of ‘Chushi Gungdruk’ – the Tibetan national army. They were the same fighters who were seething with anger and an uncontrollable urge to take on the PLA which had overran their country in the early 1950s.
Chakrata became their crucible. Here refugees from Tibet were transformed into soldiers; grief was forged into resolve, and an army of mountain cum guerilla fighters was chiseled on the anvil of hard training. Training that no Indian formation had previously undertaken leave alone conceived. The choice of Chakrata was more than geography. The Mountains demanded a rigour and resolve from these refugees who could sustain punishing endurance, thin air and such like elements of nature which could stand them in good stead when the moment of reckoning came. It was as if the Himalayas themselves were training the men who would eventually be sent to guard them.
Decades later, that legacy found its most dramatic expression on the Kailash range in the Eastern Ladakh region. Six years ago, when the confrontation with the PLA (Chinese army) threatened to turn the high Himalayas into another theatre of strategic contest, the men of this elite force stepped into a terrain where mountains themselves became weapons. In the dead of the night, under conditions in which altitude, darkness, cold and sheer verticality became adversaries, these Tibetan warriors dwarfed all of them with their superlative cum sterling qualities of endurance. For the PLA, the confrontation was with an adversary (India) accustomed to thinking in terms of roads, logistics, mass and infrastructure. SFF injected the intangibles of ‘vertical limit’. A limit which no Tibetan warrior was ever scared of, being a born highlander. That is the inheritance of Chakrata.
Chakrata should not be seen just a small speck on the military map of India, but as a lived symbol of boundless sacrifice, patriotism, and exile branded on the mental and physical firmament of Tibetans. From Chakrata to Kailash, their journey is therefore more than a military story. It is a tale though tangled, has untangled India’s renewed relations with its Tibetan brethren. For these hardy dwellers, slopes of Chakrata became their classroom, with entire Himalayan range spanning from Ladakh till Arunachal Pradesh their training ground. On high ridges of Himalayas where every crest can decide the fate of valley and every height alter the balance of a frontier, the presence of such a force speaks louder than publicity ever would. Chakrata gave these resistance fighters from Tibet a pause in their flight from their homeland only to renew their cause with a vengeance that was so visible on the intervening night of 29/30 August 2020 in the frigid environs of Eastern Ladakh.
(The author is a retired gunner officer from the regiment of artillery. Was commissioned in June 1985 from IMA Dehradun and is the 4th generation from his family in the armed forces and belongs to Jammu. Has served in various units of artillery and commanded troops in Gurez valley in 2003/04. Has served as well on the highest battlefield in the world (Siachen Glacier) way back in 1995. Retired in 2017, settled in Pune and took to the pen thereafter. Has written 4 books till date. He is also a regular scribe of Rising Kashmir paper which gets published from Srinagar (J&K) plus writes for Daily Excelsior of Jammu too.)
