In 1986, as Indian and Chinese troops faced off at Sumdorong Chu in Arunachal Pradesh, a standoff ensued. An Indian general airlifted a brigade to occupy difficult heights, putting the pressure on the Chinese who were on the lower heights. The audacious General Krishnaswamy Sundarji had swung the momentum decisively in India’s favour, forcing the Chinese to backpedal in the Himalayas.
The next year, the same army chief planned Operation Brasstacks, one of the largest military exercises in the world after World War II. The move threatened Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions which unnerved General Zia, and he reached out to New Delhi for a rapprochement.
No other decade has matched the 1980s for its headlined procession of grand events, turns of history, tragic events that includes the assassinations of two Indian Prime Ministers. Besides Brasstacks, General Sundarji oversaw two of the most controversial events: Operation Bluestar, against Sikh militants inside the Golden Temple Complex, and Operation Pawan, the Indian Peacekeeping Force against Tamil militants in Sri Lanka. Sundarji was involved in the acquisition of Bofors and the controversy that followed, leading to the fall of the government.
The Indian army was called in to fight militants inside a religious complex, fought on Siachen for the first time; in the deserts of Rajasthan, the plains of Punjab, hills of Arunachal, the swamps of the northeast, jungles of Jaffna and the island country of Maldives. All of these campaigns had the imprint and bore the legacy of Sundarji.
But who was Krishnaswamy Sundarji? How did his predilection for bold decisions, often termed as brash, arise? Was he too ambitious? Was he ahead of his time in dreaming of advanced technology in wars or was he behind time as the decade witnessed insurgencies that warranted a bootstrapped approach? This definitive biography by bestselling author Probal Dasgupta will detail the life and times of one of India’s most charismatic, yet forgotten, army chiefs.
Sundarji straddled the timeline of the first six decades of a free India, his career often echoing the trajectory of India’s political choices in these years. He is the only military general who influenced the political dispensation and policy choices within India’s democracy. His brisk 820-day stint got the country battles, wars, standoffs, a modern fighting machine, victories, setbacks, controversies, praises and criticism alike – and by the end of it all, prompted two kinds of views about him. Either people loved him or hated him.
This biography seeks to highlight Sundarji’s role in building the modern Indian Army and explores his key role in the turbulent political decade of eighties in India. Krishnaswamy Sundarji is arguably the most important military leader in India’s history. A towering presence, his legacy remains profound, disputed and unresolved because of the seminal impact, political volatility, controversies and his own unrivalled ambition.
