Celebrating its 89th anniversary, the Indian Air Force on Friday put up a dazzling show with 75 aircraft, drawn from its vintage and modern fleet, performing skilful manoeuvres also marking the platinum jubilee year of India's Independence.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi lit the 'Swarnim Vijay Mashaal' at the National War Memorial on Wednesday to mark the 50th-anniversary of the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
The UAE is the second country after France to send its troops to participate in the Republic-Day parade of India, a tradition started last year.
Brigadier M P Bajwa (retd), commander of the troops that captured Tiger Hill, tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih how a band of young soldiers won the Kargil War's most famous battle with their blood and grit.
Many big Bollywood's big movies have been pushed forward to 2021, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Among them are quite a few bio-pics.
Major Adhikari was a man par excellence and had won our hearts. His supreme sacrifice for the nation shook us till the roots. A fascinating excerpt from Param Vir Chakra Captain (Honorary) Yogendra Singh Yadav's book, The Hero of Tiger Hill.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying tributes to the valour and sacrifices of Bangladeshi freedom fighters and Indian armed forces on the 50th anniversary of the occasion 'Vijay Diwas'.
An old fighter pilot remembers the best days of his life.
'We will see footfall returning to pre-COVID levels by January.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday visited Shauryanjali, a military exhibition to mark the golden jubilee of Indo-Pak War of 1965, and said that the valour and sacrifice of the armed forces during the war would remain etched in every Indian's memory.
'It was not surprising that joining the armed forces was one of the priority professions that the students strived for. Probably, the training in school helped adjusting to the regimentalised life of the fauj.'
The terrorists were armed with AK-47s, grenades, pistols, knives, many rounds of ammunition. Sepoy Jagdish Chand's weapons were his bare hands and enormous courage. He died, but not before he felled one of them. Archana Masih/Rediff.com speaks to the family of Sepoy Jagdish Chand, one of the 7 soldiers martyred in the terrorist attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station.
Get your low down on what's happening in the world of Bollywood, right here!
'It would not be incorrect to say that the Chinese-Pakistani strategy of containing India began in the aftermath of the 1965 war.'
'Wherever in the world there is political instability, those countries are beset with severe crises today. But India is in a much better position than the rest of the world due to the decisions taken by my government in the national interest,' President Droupadi Murmu said in her address to both Houses of Parliament.
Decorated with a Vir Chakra for leading an attack that destroyed four tanks, Risaldar Ayub Khan shared a name with the Pakistani president who ordered the invasion of India in 1965. India's Ayub came from a family of soldiers and made his country proud.
'As a course mate who has followed closely this star on the Bombay Sappers firmament, my heart swells with pride to see his extraordinary brilliance and focus; his commitment and his dedication; his hard work; and his technical as well as tactical knowledge,' says Colonel K Thammayya Udupa (retd) of his batchmate General Manoj Pande who will take over as chief of the army staff on May 1.
The Light Combat Helicopter is heavily armoured to protect its two pilots from enemy fire, and has a 'stealthy' fuselage that is hard to detect with radar. Ajai Shukla reports
50 years after the 1965 War, India still thinks we can have a 'limited war' when our opponent has time and again shown it does not believe in a limited war, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
True Indian scenes most often lie on less travelled routes, along roads that have fallen off the map, after modern highways have come up. On the fourth leg of their 2,148 km journey, Rediff.com's Archana Masih and photographer Rajesh Karkera discover one such forgotten place in the Thar Desert.
There are 11 actors, who are among Bollywood's busiest, working on multiple films simultaneously. Just who are they?
Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde was awarded the Mahavir Chakra, the second highest honour in battle, for winning an epic battle in Pakistan. In a brilliant and gruesome assault, what he and his men achieved that September 50 years ago had never been seen before.
'Why isn't the story of the valiant 13th Kumaon a part of every child's textbooks?' 'Why have we let these brave men die unwept, unmourned, and unsung?' asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
When Rediff.com's Archana Masih and Rajesh Karkera set course from the foothills of the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, they could not think of a better place to begin their journey than the stately campus that has given India some of its greatest military heroes.
'If we can award Madan Mohan Malaviya who died in 1946, then why not the Mahatma who died in 1948?' 'Why not go a little further back in time and give the award to Rabindranath Tagore who died in 1941?' 'And should we mark Lokmanya Tilak's 100th death anniversary in 2020 by giving him a Bharat Ratna,' asks Amberish K Diwanji.
'Pakistan's recent utterances and tendency to use pinpricks to try our patience appear reminiscent of 1965. We are a strong nation, emerging stronger,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
Glimpses of the final days of the 1965 War, as seen from the diary then defence minister Y B Chavan maintained during the war.
'Captain Haneef-ud-din, pulling his sinewy body forward, crawled, rifle in hand, in the snow on 6 June 1999. He died on this craggy mountainside exactly two years after he had passed out of the IMA...'
'Why has the rhetoric gone down on the Indian side, Durrani wondered aloud.' 'I said because almost total normalcy and peace had returned on the ground in Kashmir,' recalls Shekhar Gupta. 'The general gave me that career spook's laser look. And he said: "That situation on the ground can change in no time".' 'This was precisely when the Pakistanis began their first incursions into Kargil.' 'Durrani had been retired for five years.' 'But once the ISI boss, you are always in the know.'
'We don't know what the reasons were that we gave back the Haji Pir Pass which was strategically very important. Today the entire infiltration into Kashmir takes place from that area. If we had retained that post that we had captured, things could have been different.' 'A lesson we need to learn is if you start losing the gains of war at the negotiating table, they become a disincentive for future wars,' says Lieutenant General D B Shekatkar (retd), reviewing the lessons from the 1965 War.
Modi took on the opposition parties, especially the Congress, saying it is the corrupt who are sleepless now.
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.
'The Indian Air Force wanted to fight. My squadron leaders and flight lieutenants, all of us were eager to fight. Unless they are keen I can't have confidence.' Marshal of the Air Force, the legendary Arjan Singh, on the 1965 War.
Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat, 21, received the Mahavir Chakra in the 1962 War with China. Such was his valour that a temple and museum stands on the land he died defending in the icy valley of Arunachal Pradesh.
Here's a list of the favourites of the billionaires.
'A close look at the time-lines tells you that exactly as the back-channel negotiations were in their most crucial stage, "somebody" was planning the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai,' says Shekhar Gupta questioning Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's account of a peace deal with India.
Tubes gone, Irom Sharmila the brand is dead. As long as she was trying to kill herself, she had value to the cynics trying to build their careers over her fast, says Shekhar Gupta.
Lieutenant General Harbakhsh Singh, GOC, Western Command, disobeyed the then army chief and took on a superior Pakistani armoured column. The Indian Centurion tanks outgunned the more modern Pakistani Patton tanks in the battle at Khem Karan, that proved the turning point of the 1965 War. Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd) salutes the Soldiers' General.
Claude Arpi reveals how Wing Commander Jag Mohan Nath won a second Maha Vir Chakra in the 1965 War.
Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday attacked the coalition partner on issues like Pakistan, beef, Ram temple and inflation but ruled out walking out of the Maharashtra government any time soon.
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