‘Becoming Storm’ recalls Final Moments of ‘Heart-broken’ Nehru
Becoming The Storm by Rami Chhabra Cover Image credit BluOne Ink
Book Tells Tale of Gloom in Delhi After Chinese Invasion
By Amit Kumar
New Delhi, January 21: Veteran journalist Rami Chhabra in her new book has recalled “a fragile, red-eyed Indira Gandhi, standing on one side of the room, fighting resolutely to hold her composure” while the people came to pay respects to the body of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Chhabra gave vivid accounts of pall of gloom descending over Delhi after the newsbreak of China attacking India and sweeping through NEFA.
“One late October morning, people awakened to huge banner headlines in all newspapers and the incessant crackle of All India Radio as the newsreader somberly announced China’s dastardly attack on India’s borders,” Chhabra wrote in ‘Becoming the Storm’.
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She gave spontaneous outpouring of emotions in Delhi for the Indian army personnel transiting to the eastern border through the national capital. “Trains carrying troops from north India to the north-east to augment the defences on the borders were mobbed at stations all along the way as ordinary people turned up in droves to cheer the soldiers and provide drinking water and home-made fare,” Chhabra wrote in the book.
She further stated that “the women in every colony banded together in groups to knit woolen socks and sweaters for the men out there in the cold: roll bandages, pack biscuits and other eatables to give to the Red Cross or the Army Wives’ Associations to send on to hospitals”.
The 86-year-old author further stated that the Chinese attacks on India were “major personal shock for Nehru”. She described the Chinese betrayal as “the biggest setback of his political life”.
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“His health suffered sorely, and he was never able to recover his former elan. Two years later, he would suffer a massive stroke even as he participated in a major political meeting. After a few weeks he would pass away,” stated Chhabra in the book.
Thousands of people lined up to pay their personal homage to Nehru as he lay in state at his Teen Murti residence, wrote Chhabra in the book.
Recalling the reactions in Delhi of the newsbreak of the Chinese attacks in NEFA, Chhabra stated that “people could scarcely believe what they were hearing or reading. The army too was taken by surprise as China suddenly attacked, not on one but two different border fronts simultaneously: North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) in the east and Ladakh in the north.”
“As reports poured in of casualties, patriotic fervor rose to a pitch in the capital. But the news from the front grew more dismal by the day. Within a matter of a mere week, a huge territory had been captured by China in the mountainous Askai Chin area beyond Leh, and word came of pitched battles fought around the higher reaches of Ladakh,” mentioned Chhabra in the book.
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She also mentioned “a heroic Kumaoni regiment perishing in large numbers near a place called Chishul”. “It was worse in NEFA where the Chinese simply swept down the mountains onto the plains,” she added.
Chhabra also gave accounts that the people in Delhi felt sombre after knowing that “most soldiers had been equipped with little more than outdated rifles and lacked even basics like snowshoes, unlike the well-clad and superiorly armed Chinese soldiers”.
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