Lieutenant General Premindra Singh Bhagat, PVSM, VC (14 October 1918 – 23 May 1975), can aptly be described as an outstandingly courageous soldier, a brilliant and very effective administrator and above all, an excellent human being with a great sense of humour to boot. This writer’s admiration of General Bhagat is not only because of a very brief but delightful interaction as a year old Second Lieutenant shortly after the General raised the Northern Command, but because he relentlessly asserted himself with his superiors on what he believed in as correct course of action on various matters and in particular, of ameliorating the lot of all ranks of Indian Army.
While being a strict task master, he constantly strove to improve the quality of life of all ranks serving under him. The enduring image of Prem Bhagat remembered by those who knew him or in published photographs is of his peak-cap or felt-hat tilted to his left-he probably never wore a beret. However, this quirk of his was backed by a tremendous reserve of moral and physical courage with great mental endurance, which won him the Victoria Cross, England’s highest award for outstanding bravery in war. This was an award strictly meant for whites only. The Brits were compelled to break that code during the Word War I, when Sepoy Khudadad Khan became the first Indian to be bestowed with it. Prem Bhagat was the first Indian to be awarded the same in World War II.
In the years following February 1941, when Prem became the first Indian commissioned officer to be awarded the Victoria Cross, his face with the tilted cap became popular in England even before the news of it got around in India. His Instructors in the Indian Military Academy (IMA) must certainly have been surprised as they did not consider him a very promising Cadet. IMA’s Adjutant, the dreaded Captain AG Bennet, who, infuriated at Bhagat wearing his peak cap at a rakish angle, despite getting checked for it, had him marched up. When the angry Adjutant asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”, Prem replied, “Nothing, Sir, I just like to wear my cap that way.” When the Adjutant thundered, “Don’t you know, that only the Prince of Wales has the privilege of wearing his cap at an angle?” Imagine his plight when Prem replied, “Sir, I am no less than the Prince of Wales.”
Colonel Bhandari, an Army Medical Officer in WW I, who later became Superintendent of Nasik and Yerwada Central Prisons, when Gandhi was jailed there and who was to become Bhagat’s father-in-law, was initially not very well disposed towards his son-in-law to be. He was playing golf with Mr Mac Lachan, then Commissioner of Poona, who was indeed very perceptive. The two of them were teeing off at Poona’s Golf Course when Bhagat, then courting his daughter, Mohini, arrived noisily driving a model T Ford dangerously close to a culvert “What does my daughter see in this mad man?” Colonel Bhandari asked MacLachan, who smiled and remarked, “That chap is going to the wars. You mark my words. He will either get shot or win the VC.”
Losing his mother at the age of nine and his father by the time he was twenty years old had a profound effect on him. Shortly afterwards, he was commissioned into the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners and posted to its 21 Field Company, which was shipped out to Africa in 1940. The action for which Second Lieutenant PS Bhagat was awarded the VC was detecting and supervising the clearing of fifteen minefields over a distance of 55 miles for 96 hours without rest or breaks for food himself, despite his vehicle being blown off by a mine and a punctured eardrum.
In 1942 during the Quit India movement, when Bhagat met Gandhi with Major (later Major General) Arjan Singh and both expressed keenness to join the movement Gandhi advised them against it saying that after Independence the Indian Army would need experienced soldiers. Incidentally, Lieutenant General Nathu Singh, is believed to have received similar advice from Motilal Nehru. Obviously, such incidents are conveniently overlooked by our political leaders who still question the role of Indian Armed Forces in the independence struggle. In fact, the over 2.5 million Indian personnel, who made a very decisive contribution to the Allied victory in WW II and the Naval mutiny thereafter were major unacknowledged factors in the Brits making a hurried exit-but not without cleverly engineering India’s dismemberment.
During the bloody partition in 1947 Bhagat was part of the Punjab Boundary Force. However, even before he witnessed the unprecedented mayhem and suffering of history’s largest human displacement, in 1946, when India was going through the painful phase of Jinnah demanding Pakistan, Bhagat wrote a masterpiece of a paper titled “My Land Divided”, though not allowed to be published it should be read by every politician, bureaucrat, scholar, teacher and many others.
Another work which he wrote jointly, the Henderson-Brooks/ Bhagat inquiry, according to Major General KK Tiwari, who
spent over six and a half months in a Chinese PoW camp after the 1962 Chinese Aggression, says that it directly points to the role of the political establishment and the higher echelons of the army. Tiwari, is quoted in a weekly magazine saying “They (Chinese) loved taunting us about everything, from our poor equipment to pathetic clothing to laughable strategies.”
Whichever organization Prem Bhagat commanded, be it the Bombay Sappers Centre, the Indian Military Academy, delineation of the Line of Control after the 1972 War, raising the Northern Command, saving Lucknow from floods and not to forget, the Damodar Valley Corporation, which he got as a sop for not being made the Army Chief, he made a quantum difference/ invaluable contributions to all, Of course, he could not be made the Army Chief-that too just after another assertive commander like Sam Manekshaw.
Every year on 31st January, coinciding with Prem Bhagat’s gallant action from 31 January to 03 February 1941, for which he got the VC, the Bombay Sappers Centre, which was gifted his Victoria Cross after his death in 1975, celebrate VC Day, with a parade where the VC is brought from safe keeping to be displayed for all to see. Then comes a visit to the General Bhagat Museum, where the citation, medals, photos, press clippings and his uniform are kept to inspire future generations.
