He showed Indira the door, she asked him to lead the Army

Popularly called ‘Sam Bahadur’, Manekshaw’s greatest moment was the 1971 war when the entire East Pakistan Army surrendered in Dhaka after a 14-day operation that is still studied at military colleges across the world.

Even his earlier feats on the battleground continue to inspire soldiers. The ‘architect of Bangladesh’, as Manekshaw is now known, almost died during the WW II in Burma, when fire from a Japanese machine gun severely wounded him during a counter-offensive on the Sittang River in 1942. He was famously pinned the Military Cross on the battlefield by a Major General who did not expect him to survive the wounds.

Yet another unforgettable incident that sheds light on his remarkable character took place almost a decade before the 1971 war. As a Lt Gen commanding the Tezpur-based 4 Corps in 1963, Manekshaw was asked to brief prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and defence minister Y B Chavan on the debacle of the Sino-Indian war. However, he refused to let Indira Gandhi into the operations room for the debriefing, as she had not taken the oath to secrecy. Nonetheless, the incident, recounted in a book by Chavan’s personal secretary R B Pradhan, did not stop Gandhi from appointing him as the Army Chief six years later or from building an excellent equation with him.

Manekshaw, insiders say, enjoyed the full confidence of the PM at a time when some thought the Army would take over the country. He is believed to have told Gandhi that he would not poke his long nose into other people’s affairs in reply to a question on whether the Army was looking at assuming power.

Of course, this was not the officer’s first brush with controversy during his seven-decade career. In 1961, he was almost sacked for ‘anti-national activities’ — mostly ‘loose talk’ about the then-defence minister at social gatherings. However, one of the first things that Chavan did after taking over as Defence Minister in 1962 was to quash the proceedings against the General.

Manekshaw was born on April 1914 in Amritsar to Parsi parents who had settled in Punjab in 1899. Army records say that Sam Manekshaw was the fifth of six children. After completing his schooling at Sherwood College (Nainital), he joined the first batch of the newly opened Indian Military Academy at Dehradun and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in February 1934.