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Some facts from the IPKF's battle of Jaffna University

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Many of you would have seen the Hollywood movie “Black Hawk Down”. The movie depicts the events of the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993 when a unit of the US army sent to extricate the Somali rebel leadership, was ambushed, their helicopters shot down, and had to be evacuated by armoured carriers. It was the result of a major intelligence failure, where the Somali rebels had prior information of US operations that day. What you might know is how 6 years prior to that event, in October 1987 the Indian army found itself in exactly the same scenario during the Battle of Jaffna University in Sri Lanka - An airborne commando operation to extricate the LTTE leadership was ambushed, attacked and then had to be evacuated in a now legendary tank operation. My intention is not to detail out the events of October 11-12, 1987 when the Battle of Jaffna University occurred but to give some interesting facts from it. You can read about the complete battle on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.or
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My views on the current situation in Afghanistan - August 2021

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While a lot has been discussed on the internet on what happened in Afghanistan, as a history enthusiast I cannot refrain myself from adding my thought here - As they say, history often repeats itself and those who don't learn from it are bound to fail. The British learned their lesson in 1842 the Russians in 1989 and the Americans in 2021.   This is precisely what happened in 1840, when the British invaded Afghanistan in the hope of using the divide between the then ruling factions (Barakzai and Sodozai) to have their puppet king installed. The Afghan warlords united against the British and such was the uprising that only 1 man returned from the 15000 strong army from India.   The same happened during the Soviet invasion of 1970s, and the same was repeated now. One very interesting aspect was the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif to the Taliban. This was one of the first cities to fall a few weeks back. Those who have knowledge of the 1990s war in Afghanistan will recall that this city has t
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Some Interesting facts from History

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An interesting fact from history (1) - there is a town called Buffliaz on the jammu-srinagar highway in India. It apparently gets the name from the famous Macedonian king Alexander's horse Buceaphalus, who was killed in the battle of Hydapes in 326 BC, and was buried here. The horse was very dear to Alexander, having been with him right from its youth days. ___________________________________________________________________________________ An interesting fact from history (2) - Did you know the sitting Chief Minister of an Indian State was killed when his civilian plane was shot down by Pakistan? The incident happened on 19th September 1965, when Balwantrai Mehta was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The 2nd Indo-Pak war had started and forces from both sides were engaged in combat throughout the international border. Balwantrai Mehta, his wife and 6 others were in Beechcraft aircraft being flown by Jehangir Engineer, travelling from Mithapur to Kutch. The plane lost its path and ca
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A Photo Blog of Jaipur and Bhangarh

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India has some of the most massive ancient and medieval age forts in the world . Nothing comes close to sheer size and strategic geographic location of some of these. Of these forts, the best are to be found in the state of Rajasthan, the land of the brave and chivalrous Rajput warriors. Most of their forts are what are called hill forts, situated on a hill or ridge line and considered the most difficult to conquer for an invading army. Six of these majestic forts in Rajasthan are also a UNESCO World Heritage site ( https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/247 ). No other place will mesmerize a history lover as much as the state of Rajasthan, and in my last visit to India, I was lucky enough to get a chance to visit the city of Jaipur. The capital of Rajasthan is also home to one of the 6 UNESCO forts, the Amer fort and palace, also known as Amber. I wanted to do a detailed photo blog of my visit, but the sheer number of things to see in Jaipur, plus my increasing laziness made me do a
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Hind and Hindu

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While watching a movie today, I recalled a news coverage from an Indian news channel sometime around the Iraq war post 9/11. An Indian lady reporter (whose name I cannot recall now) was talking to villagers somewhere in remote Iraq. She told them she is from India and the villagers had a confused look. She then said she is from “Hind” and yeah they had a smile and knew where she was from. Now I am very passionate about history, and thus could not stop myself from sharing my thoughts on this. When a Hindu person says – “Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life” it has deep historical rather than religious meaning. Hind is the word by which most of ancient Persia and middle East knew India by. Hind referred to the area east of the River Sindhu, or what we now know as River Indus. The word India itself is believed to be derived from Indus. This river usually marked the western boundaries of ancient Indian empires. People of Hind were known as Hindi. Muhammad Iqbal, in his famo
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British troops in 18th century Portuguese Goa

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Tucked away in a small corner outside the Raj Bhavan complex (Governor House), in my home town of Dona Paula in Goa, is a small cemetery. A short white wall surrounds the 103 graves which appear to be spread in non-geometric pattern. It appears indifferent to anyone walking past, considering every village in Goa will have it's own church and an attached cemetery until one looks closely and reads the information plaque about this being a cemetery to British soldiers. Now why would you bother considering Britain ruled India for almost 200 years. The major difference here being this is Goa - which was a Portuguese colony until 1961. So why do we have a British cemetery in Goa and what were British soldiers doing in Goa? The answer lies in the Napoleonic wars of 18th century Europe, and the struggle between 2 European powers to get a stronghold in the Indian sub-continent. Cemetery as visible from some distance due to road construction View of the graves from the entranc
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Battle of Kohima - The Stalingrad of East

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When You Go Home Tell Them Of Us and Say For Your Tomorrow We Gave Our Today - Epitaph at Kohima war Cemetery in Nagaland (India) View of the war cemetery in Kohima The year was 1944 and world war II was at its peak. In Asia, the Japanese imperial army was going like a blizzard, conquering countries across south east Asia. China, today an economic and military power, had already fallen to the Japanese in 1937 and the important British trading port of Singapore fell in 1942. The Japanese were rapidly pushing across Burma towards their ultimate prize, India. In March of 1944, the Japanese forces arrived at the border between India and Burma. Before I go deeper into this article, let me remind that as always my intention is not to detail the complete event, as there are numerous articles on the internet for those who wish to read into the details of a battle or event. Here I intend to present some interesting facts and my own understanding of significance
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