BENGALURU: The man who led India to its glorious victory in the 13-day war in the winter of 1971, which ended with the creation of Bangladesh and surrender of 93,000 Pakistani troops whom he treated with dignity and respect -- the late Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw - Sam Manekshaw (1914-2008) -- was a warm, demonstrative father to his two daughters. On his 112th birth anniversary (April 3, 1914) his younger daughter Maja Daruwala, a long-time advocate of human rights and presently Chief Editor of ‘The India Justice Report’, recalled to TNIE that her father was very human; a very demonstrative and warm person.
“We had a very happy childhood. He could have directed us and pontificated like parents do, but he absolutely didn’t lecture us ever. But at the same time, it was very easy to follow him. Guidance from both our parents came unspoken through their example,” she said. “At home, father wore no aura of heroism. He saw his role in the military as doing his duty, which had to be done and done with professionalism and honour. There was no question of glorifying it,” she said.
Recalling instances of her childhood, Daruwala said she and her sister were good at playing crossword puzzles, and their father “who could solve much fewer of the clues would nevertheless sit between us and would insist on holding the book and pen to write down our answers. He used to laugh at himself and that was so endearing to all. He had many hobbies and he took the whole family along with every new passion.
He taught us about fishing. He took up photography and my sister had to pose for him under hot lights. He loved creating a garden. He would hold our hands and take us around teaching us the names of every tree and flower. He did the same with my children. He teased his siblings and cracked the same jokes for 50 years,” said Daruwala. As a young captain, Manekshaw was hit by seven to nine machine-gun bullets in the stomach and lungs at the Battle of Sittang Bridge during the 1942 Burma Campaign of World War II.
The then Maj Gen DT Cowan pinned his own Military Cross on Manekshaw for his valour. “His sense of humour saved him when he joked to his surgeon, who was about to leave him lying there critically wounded, saying that he was kicked by a mule. The surgeon, impressed by the boy’s sense of humour, worked to save him,” she recalled.
“Once, as a child, I was looking at his wounds and I said vengefully that I hoped that the Japanese soldier, who had emptied his weapon into him, was killed. I still remember what my father said, ‘Poor bugger, he was just a young boy. I was lucky I survived and got home. But he never got to go home!’ The way he answered spoke a lot about him; about the futility of a war in which two young soldiers of equal value were involved. One survived, the other did not. He conveyed the immense sense of tragedy therein,” said Daruwala.
Much later, in December 1971, Manekshaw demonstrated that same humanity when he was in charge of 93,000 Pakistani troopers held prisoners of war in India after the India-Pakistan war. “He treated them with utter respect, as per the Geneva Convention, like a soldier should treat another soldier. It said a lot about India, the Indian Army; its ethics and values, the duty to your country. That people, including the young, remember him with such fondness is deeply gratifying for us” said the fond daughter.