A TANGENT PERIOD IN INDIA'S MILITARY HISTORY

Commanded by Destiny is a memoir of the country’s third Indian Army Chief, General S. M. SHRINAGESH, published posthumously. The book is strongly recommended both for those who enjoy reading accounts of the legacy of the Indian Army and scholars who might want to dive deep into the post-Independence political history of India,

- says Rudro Sanyal

IN COMMANDED BY DESTINY, the posthumously published memoir of India's third Indian Army Chief, General Satyawant Mallannah Shrinagesh, the real life account of a tangent period of Indian military history starts like a melodrama, in which the pilot and all senior army officers miraculously survive an air crash after the plane's engine catches fire and peels off in midair.

The pages that follow are less dramatic but spring surprises with revelations including details from the country's first 'Kargil war' of 1948. If any screen play were to be written for this memoir, some of the more famous military leaders like Field Marshal S.F.H.J. Manekshaw, Gen. K.S. Thimayya and Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh would feature as middle level Brigade and Division Commanders under supervision of the author, General S.M. Shrinagesh.

Sandhurst

Like two of his predecessors and the British chiefs before them, Gen. Shrinagesh was a King's Commissioned Officer trained in the United Kingdom, long before the Indian Military Academy was established in Dehradun. The author quickly busts the myth that King's Commissioned Indian army officers had a special bond with the British; on the contrary, he points out, these Indian military officers were charged up with nationalistic sentiments that started building up in their young minds as soon as they landed at Sandhurst, the Royal Military College where discrimination against Indian cadets was not even subtle: “We realised that we had a long way to go before we could take our proper place with the others.

At the same time, we were made aware of the fact that we were unlike British cadets in many ways and that we could not participate,