Former Navy Chief Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas (1933-2024): A war hero who carried the courage of conviction

He played a crucial role in establishing the Naval Academy in Cochin. And it was during his tenure as the 13th Chief of Naval Staff between 1990 and 1993 that women were inducted into the Navy for the first time.

Ramdas won the Vir Chakra, the country’s third-highest gallantry award, for the immense bravery he displayed during the 1971 war when he commanded INS Beas, which played a crucial role in the blockade of East Pakistan.

“Some of the highlights of our action were bombardment and amphibious landings at Cox’s Bazar, interception of gun boats, encounter and boarding of Pakistani vessels masquerading as foreign merchant vessels, and anti-submarine operations,” he once told The Indian Express in an interview.

During his career, Ramdas also served as Fleet Commander of the Eastern Naval Command, and commanded both the Southern and Eastern Naval Commands. He was also the Indian Naval Attache in Bonn, West Germany (1973-76).

Former Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) said the passing away of Ramdas will be deeply mourned by the Navy and the nation. “An ardent patriot, he carried the courage of his convictions, in and out of uniform, and stood resolutely, by his beliefs and principles till the end,” he said.

A decorated veteran, Ramdas remained vocal in expressing dissent on various social and political issues after his retirement.

“He always spoke his mind, did not tilt to political windmills and campaigned for the right causes, even after retirement. He and Lalita ‘Lolly’ Ramdas were always a power couple, rooted to the ground,” said former naval aviator Commander K P Sanjeev Kumar (retd), adding that while at the helm, Ramdas took the Navy towards “much more with much less”, making the best use of frugal resources.

Despite his war achievements, Ramdas was a strong advocate of nuclear restraint and disarmament, as well as peace talks with Pakistan. He won the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award for 2004 for advocating peace between the two nuclear armed neighbours when he was the chairperson of the India chapter of the NGO Pakistan-India Peoples Forum.

Commodore C Uday Bhaskar (retd), who heads New Delhi-based think tank Society for Policy Studies, said Admiral Ramdas had envisioned the idea of an ‘Indian Ocean panchayat’ in the early 1990s, way ahead of time as the then prevailing geopolitical environment was not conducive to nurturing this novel concept.

“This later evolved into what is now better known as Milan (multinational naval exercise) and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS),” he said.

According to Bhaskar, Admiral Ramdas was perhaps the first former Navy chief to enter politics “in a significant manner with the anti-corruption movement and later the AAP”. “But it was short lived,” he said, referring to Ramdas’ sudden removal as internal Lokpal by AAP in 2015.

In 2022, Ramdas joined Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

He also launched a range of signature campaigns on several issues, including writing an open letter to former President Ram Nath Kovind seeking his intervention in directing all political parties to desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, or actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas.