CHENNAI: “I was attacked by the locals, some had guns and some axes. I didn’t know what my fate would be,” recalls veteran pilot Tejwant Singh who was taken prisoner of war (PoW) by Pakistan during the 1971 war after he ejected from his aircraft.
Tejwant, who spent eleven and a half months in Pakistan after being taken prisoner on December 1, 1971, recalls only 12 Indian pilots were accounted for. The remaining were not, as Pakistan did not adhere to the Geneva Convention.
Tejwant says he was also beaten up by locals like Wing Commander Abhinandan Vardhaman was after his capture. “They took away whatever I had but returned back the Gurbani. I was saved by nice people,” says Tejwant, an alumnus of Rashtriya Military School, Bengaluru. “Despite the war rhetoric, the people from both countries are the same. They have a similar culture,” he added.
Recalling his days in captivity, he said he was unable to sit on account of a spinal injury. “A soldier forced me to sit and asked another soldier, a Bajwa, to sit next to him. When I told them that my wife was a Bajwa who migrated to India, there was a sudden transformation and the soldier was nice to me.”
Tejwant is bitter that the then Indian government never laid down the terms for release of the Indian prisoners who were captured by Pakistan, despite having an upper hand in 1971. “The leadership ignored us immediately after the war.”
He says he had maintained a daily diary with details of all that happened in Pakistan, but it was taken away by the Pakistanis after three of his colleagues escaped from the prison. Tejwant says war is in the mind and not in the hearts: “After all, we are all the same people.”