Monday, October 6, 2008

The KongKa-La Incident: Vivek Ahuja

Now up for review and comments:

"Unforgiveable Mistakes: THE KONGKA-LA INCIDENT 21ST OCTOBER 1959"
by Vivek Ahuja

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

very nice article - reminds me of the good old BRM days.

rjk23 said...

The ITBF was conceived on October 24, 1962. The Hot springs incident involved CRPF jawans. There was no ITBF before 1962.

http://crpf.nic.in/home1.htm

regards,

Ranjeet

Anonymous said...

ranjeet, you are confusing the ITBF and the ITBP

Hari Prasad said...

Excellent article Vivek.

rjk23 said...

The ITBF later became the ITBP..

My grandfather (Mr G.K. Nair, served till 1970) was one of the first officers who went on deputation(from A.P.) soon after the 1962 war. The 'force' was changed to police owing to an agreement with the Chinese that the border was to be manned by 'Border police' and that both armies would be pulled back 10km on either side of the LAC.

rjk23 said...

the ITBF cannot be compared to the CRPF. They were the elite and along with the SFF(Est 22) were one of the first 'special forces' of the sub continent. As time passed, the 'force' was watered down to 'police' (with a subsequent increase in Bn's)

In the early '60s, the force had green beret instructors as well british SAS. The green berets left in the mid 60s and the SAS stayed on till later and they too left by the late '60s.

Amitabha said...

A very well written piece ...