Officers and their love for guns

By Maninder Singh

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Unlike Indian Civil Service officers of the days of Empire, many of whom may have kept weapons and participated in “shikar” expeditions, members of the IAS have not really had the need or necessity to bear arms.

Nevertheless, there have been many celebrated officers of a “martial” disposition. Their proclivities have sometimes emerged unusually early in life, on their joining the Academy. The ones passionate about guns contest an election for the post of the Secretary of the Rifle and Archery Club.

An officer, who has found honorable mention in this column earlier, was elected as the Secretary of the prized club and was fond of displaying a gun or two in his hostel room. When friends used to walk in, one of them would invariably pick up the weapon to get a feel. Unwittingly or wittingly, the stern barrel of the gun would get pointed at someone or the other and there would be squeals of protest, amidst an air of imagined danger.

It was a subject of some wonderment, if there were any live cartridges embellishing the nether end of the weapon and the Secretary always acted, as if the guns were loaded. The wisest, amongst the assemblage, always managed to observe that a weapon ought never to be aimed at any man or beast, even if bereft of bullets.

Fingers on trigger

As Deputy Commissioner of Kokrajhar District in Lower Assam, I came across Prem Singh Brahma, who was the Chairman of the Bodoland Autonomous Council. He had been a militant of dreaded repute and was supposed to have been the man behind the blowing up of a huge bridge on the national highway over the Manas river. 

Perhaps swayed by the Biblical injunction that “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” or having undergone a metamorphosis and a happy change of heart, he had bid a farewell to arms and joined the political mainstream.

Sometimes, when we sat down for meetings, alongside each other and rubbing shoulders, I never ceased wondering how such a soft spoken man, with a great warmth of manner, could ever have been the leader of a terrorist outfit. 

Haring once resorted to the ways and paths of violence, he was always accompanied by a posse of state police. While standing up close to each other, at the conclusion of a lively meeting, I felt the hard metal brush of a concealed weapon, tucked into his trouser. Looking at me, with his under-stated smile, he confessed that he never felt secure unless he carried a pistol on his person. Then, smiling a wee bit more, he said, “There is a sovereign problem with carrying a weapon like this. Unconsciously, your hands and fingers always keep moving towards the trigger”.

Carrying bullet in head

A Commissioner of one of the Divisions was never at ease without displaying one of his weapons to shock, awe and over-awe. One of his revolvers was conveniently pointed at recalcitrant trouble-makers, who were often summoned to be warned.

It is sometimes said most weapons are destined to fire, sooner rather than later. It is also said the victims are pre-destined. Somewhere, in some far distant roll, the names are engraved, and a weapon, along with the hand that pulls the trigger, assigned and earmarked. That well meaning Commissioner, who probably never ever meant to fire his weapons, suffered the mortification of having one of his revolvers picked up surreptitiously by his wife, who then managed to shoot herself. Not being a very good shot, she survived. The surgeons having determined that the dislodging of the bullet could prove fatal, that brave lady still carries the bullet in her head. 

One of the honorable secretaries of the Rifle Club at Mussoorie had great difficulty in giving up his gun toting ways. Out to woo a lady, who was also in the service, he was hit with the bright and affable idea that when all else fails in love, it is righteous to draw a gun. Thereby, he threatened the lady that he would not only shoot her, if she refused to marry him, but her parents as well. That approach having floundered terribly, he wrote a suicide note that he would shoot himself and implicate her. When all the endearing options failed, he sold his weapon.

All those intrepid men and women, officers or otherwise, who have ever harbored a weapon or anchored it in the cavernous folds of their robes, need to keep in mind the injunction of Alan Seeger, an alumnus of Harvard and a poet of great repute:

I have a rendezvous with Death
at some disputed barricade,
When spring comes back with 
rustling shade 
and apple-blossoms fill the air, 
I have a rendezvous with Death…”