Battles of 1971 come alive in documentaries

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 15

A Delhi-based institution has produced a series of videos in which veterans of the battles of 1971 are narrating the events. These are part of the larger military history project of “Stories from the battlefield”.

This brings alive some of the most important battles on the 1971 campaign. It is perhaps the first time that stories from the Army, Navy and the Air Force are being brought together and narrated by officers who commanded squadrons or companies. They drove the tanks, flew jets and helicopters and did hand-to-hand combat.

The ‘Brains Trust India’, in association with the British High Commission, has produced these dozen videos, which are in a documentary format. Each video takes up a specific battle, says Subroto Chattopadhyay, Chairman of the Peninsula Studios.

“I am not a military historian and these episodes narrated by the officers are minus the rhetoric and hyperbole and are simple war stories embellished with maps, pictures and information. Only facts, no edges,” Chattopadhyay said.

The series covers the entire spectrum of conflict. It narrates how the 20 Squadron of the Indian Air Force — then based at Pathankot — and commanded by Wing Commander Cecil Parker carried out audacious raids deep inside west Pakistan, including one over Peshawar.

One of his pilots was a naval aviator on an exchange programme with the IAF, who later rose to be the Naval Chief Admiral Arun Prakash. He narrates his experience of the 20 Squadron IAF 1971.

On the Eastern flank is the role of the 28 Squadron, led by Wing Commander BK Bishnoi, and how it cratered the airfield at Dhaka.

Lt Gen SS Mehta dwells on the larger issues of the war, humanism over barbarism, liberation over occupation, democracy over military rule, manoeuver over attrition in his episode of ‘Just and Unjust Wars’. Great commanders like Lt Sagat Singh, Major Gen Ben Gonsalves, Group Capt Chandan Singh and several others we tend forget come to life through these stories.