Army’s calming influence

THE news that the holy relic — the Prophet’s hair kept in a glass tube at Hazratbal mosque in Srinagar — had gone missing spread like wildfire. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the town and started damaging government property. They burnt down the local police station and the tehsil office and set fire to the Chief Minister’s under-construction five-star hotel. Fire brigade vehicles called up to douse the flames at the hotel too were set on fire.

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I was then officiating General Staff Officer (GSO-2) at the local Sub Area. A call was made to the Army for providing firefighting vehicles. The Ordnance Depot’s firefighting vehicles, along with an armed platoon of the infantry, were dispatched. Though the crowd kept hanging around, no one ventured near our vehicles.

It was the winter of 1963 and the state government had moved to Jammu. The situation was rather grim and well outside the control of the civil administration. The then Srinagar Divisional Commissioner (who later became the Defence Secretary) sent a letter to us, handing over the city of Srinagar to the Army.

We deployed our battalion in the town and asked for two battalions from the division at Baramulla. Around 200 vehicles, earlier used for the stocking of Ladakh, were still with us and these were dispatched to Baramulla. The bulk of them were halted short, while enough went forward to pick up the two battalions. All 200 vehicles with two battalions drove back, zigzagging their way through the town.

These two battalions (less one company each) were deployed in the town and night curfew was imposed. People were driven into their homes and crowds from surrounding villages pushed out of town. One of these battalions was the Sikh battalion, camped opposite the Tourist Centre (old polo ground). First thing in the morning, the Sikh troops started bayonet practice. As the battlecry ‘charge’ reverberated through the town, it added to the calming influence of the presence of troops. Srinagar remained under the Army’s charge for the next three days. No untoward incident took place during this period.

In those days, the Army’s presence had a considerable salutary effect on mobs. With indiscriminate deployment of the military and copying of the military uniform by the Central police forces, this effect has weakened and often force has to be used to control a situation. During the 2017 riots in Haryana after the court verdict in the Ram Rahim case, military personnel had to carry posters to convince crowds that it was indeed the Army in action!