New book chronicles National Defence Academy’s tri-services journey

“To know the true story of NDA as a tri-service institution, we must travel back to the 1940s, when renowned military training academies of the world were run by individual services. The germinal phase of today’s NDA was between 1941 to 1948. The book narrates how an idea took shape to set up an Indian National War Academy at this time,” says Dr Lal, 76, who retired from NDA in 2007.

“At the time, Indian officers and cadets used to be trained in service specific military academies in the UK. Military commanders envisaged that if any war came to be fought in India in the future, it would have to be fought by it to protect its territory and integrity. After attaining independence, the founding fathers and foresighted leadership took a conscious call to depart from the western custom of having separate academies to an integrated training academy,” Dr Lal adds.

In January 1949, our nascent country began a new chapter by establishing an experimental ‘inter-service wing’ later known as ‘joint services wing’ at Clement Town in Dehradun, a precursor to NDA.

Dr Lal, who still spends most of his time on research, says, “I have tried to present to the reader how this marked the end one era and heralded a unique system of combined military training under one roof, to become the world’s first tri-service institution. This pictorial biographical time capsule talks of visions and visionaries, topography of transformation and NDA’s journey to become the finest tri-services institution.”

“To attain a common target by the three fighting forces in any operation, the most essential prerequisites are mutual understanding, co-operation, teamwork, understanding of interdependence, and seamless unity. It cannot be grafted on the battlefield. This was a lesson from World War II. The pre-requisites of brotherhood, jointness and bonhomie are traced back to the inter service wing India established in 1949, with the objective to enable youths to integrate effectively in peaceful conditions at the grassroots level. I have tried my best to capture this notion in the book,” he says.

Dr Lal has written over half a dozen books till now, which document all facets of NDA, including a book that captures only the humorous side of the premier institute. He says the driving force behind his work has been his long innings as faculty at the military academy, and also as chief editor of the NDA Journal for more than a dozen years.