India's 1971 Desert War

Circumstances, abrupt and beyond my control, changed my deployment as a correspondent assigned to report the impending war in 1971. 

- MAHENDRA VED

NEW DELHI. Instead of going to the East Pakistan border, I was sent to Jodhpur, the Headquarters of the Indian Army's Southern Command. United News of India (UNI) news agency where I worked as a young reporter, felt that a senior colleague assigned earlier to Jodhpur was needed in New Delhi.

The Army gave uniforms to journalists, to let them merge in the colours of operational identity and camouflage, without any badges or ranks. Reassigned, the colour of my uniform changed from bottle green to khaki to match the terrain. Only the AIR correspondent, representing the official media, wore the Major's rank.

Preparations were on all across, and the media had been alerted and readied well in advance. Journalists moved, with speed, just as the Movement Orders came from the Ministry of Defence.

THE GLAMOUR OF WAR REPORTING

Perhaps there was no glamour as we had read in World War II books and comics, and unlike as in the 1991 Gulf War, we were not embedded with fighting units. Nonetheless, after the soldiers, we journalists were the heroes along the warfront as our reports were read eagerly everywhere.

I wrote to my family that while I would be on or around the border, I would be safe and they should not worry.

THE KILLINGS OF BENGALIS

Dark clouds of the impending war I had been there for some time due to the mass butchery of Bengalis by the Pakistani army, and the exodus of 10 million of them to India. By the third week of November 1971, there were no surprises in store. A direct skirmish occurred at Hilli on the eastern border between India and Pakistan on November 22-23. That was it.

BRILLIANT MEDIA PLANNING