Tarun Vijay visits 20 Durga Puja pandals in five towns in Bangladesh and comes back impressed.
'He deserved to be field marshal because he carried the air force and navy with him in '71. Remember we were fighting on two fronts -- east and west. He stood out.'
'The era of conventional wars is almost over in the Indian context.' 'In such a scenario, special forces could play a decisive strategic role in the spectrum of conflict.'
In super-human acts of valour, Havildar Abdul Hamid personally knocked out five tanks over two days, effectively derailing the enemy offensive in the 1965 Indo-Pak War. 'Decades later, I realised not only how much the nation owed to this great son of India but also that my entire family was probably alive thanks to him,' says Vijay Dandapani.
In spite of being wounded in battle, Lieutenant Colonel A B Tarapore fought for six days before meeting a hero's death on the battlefield in the 1965 war. A legend in the Indian Army, he is the highest ranking officer to be awarded the Param Vir Chakra.
The world had almost completely forgotten about Partition, and many never learned about it, says Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the woman who founded the 1947 Partition Archive.
