For over 50 years, Indian soldiers have entered Myanmar to carry out operations without making a song and dance about it. A soldier I know first entered Myanmar when he was a Major in an operation in the late Sixties, from Tuensang district of Nagaland in an operation that led to the capture of the biggest underground army contingent. The army intelligence had information that a Naga rebel army contingent was returning after training and preparing for one and a half years in Yunan province, China. The Major was dispatched into Burma with 12 soldiers. Their objective was to track, trail and report the progress of the Nagas, which was under the leadership of self-styled ‘General Mowu Angami’. After informing the local post Burmese commander, they entered Burma near Hkamti, then the biggest township. The Burmese strongman Gen Ne Win did not officially agree to joint operations. The border with India was never the priority for the Burmese who had to deploy their forces to fight other insurgencies elsewhere. The understanding was that the local tribals could travel up to 20 km into either country for purposes of livelihood and markets, and usually this loose arrangement provided some sort of a cover.
As the Major and his group of Indian soldiers slipped into Burma, each carried food provisions for four or five days and they were armed with small arms and light machine gun. They had to travel light. In all, they carried about 35 kilos each. It was difficult, mountainous terrain, the average height was 9,000 feet, and densely forested. They expected the Naga army to follow along the course of a river for a hundred kilometres, almost parallel to the border before they entered Nagaland. Once they got pinpointed information through the radio set which they carried, the Major and his soldiers camped on a hill where they could watch two villages through which it was most likely the Nagas would pass. For three days they watched, but there was no sign of the Nagas. With their food stock running low, the Major sent back eight of his sepoys to the brigade headquarters at Tuensang. The rest hunkered down. Soon they learnt from the villages that they had received word to stock up firewood, pork and madhu (local heady brew).
At that time of the year, in early March, it became dark around 4:30. A spotter saw the glow from burning pinewood tree barks, used as candles. Even in the far hills, sounds of laughter and shouts floated up faintly as the night wound on. The next morning, from a distance, the Major observed over a hundred people slowly filing out; the villagers later told them that they were headed towards Makware town. There was one among the Indian military detail who could speak the local language and the rest they managed through gestures. The tracking group found the remains of about 10 fires and a raised platform like a bed, on which the commander had slept. The villagers told them that about 10 or 12 Nagas had slept around each fire. How was the Major to get a more accurate fix on the number of people comprising Mowu Angami’s army? The first thing the Naga army, which like all armies marched on its stomach, had done on waking up was to answer the call of nature. The Major and his army followed their noses to wherever they could find foul smell emanating, and made a quick count of the number of fresh mounds of human excreta. They found over 200. This information was radioed. (To be continued…)
Sudarshan is the author of Anatomy of an Abduction: How the Indian Hostages in Iraq Were Freed
sudarshan@newindianexpress.com