Defence

I come from a family of warriors

Eldest among six children, I was born to Rani Jaspal Kaur and Lieutenant Colonel Jaswant Singh Marwah on 17 September 1945 in Bahawalpur, which today lies in Pakistan’s Punjab.

I grew up listening to grandpa play Colonel Bogey’s march and other martial music. He would tell us tales of the Great War and we would listen to each word with rapt attention. I remember he was forced to become a ‘lefty’ because he had been shot through his elbow during the World War I. I too am a left-hander and was often nagged for it as a child. I’d simply retort and tell them I too have a gunshot like grandpa. Owing to Dad’s career path, I got the privilege to stay in different parts of northern India. Growing up in quaint places, I found life to be quite adventurous. Those were the times of the gramophone, the times when a telephone was a status symbol. Kids my age would spend a lot of time outside, exploring the countryside and playing games like Gilli-danda1, hide and seek, marbles, top spinning, kite flying, Cricket and Badminton. We learnt swimming, not in swimming pools but hauzis2 with ropes tied around the waist.

Of all the influences I had from the family, I’d say my parents were my greatest inspirations. Mom was pious and loving beyond comparison; she had brought up a large family very efficiently. I like to believe that I was her favourite among the six of us siblings, especially since I was her first-born. I till date feel strange how long she continued with her frail health to live to see me become the Army Chief. The very next evening, in February 2005, she breathed her last peacefully in sleep. As for my father, he was proud to have his three sons serving in the defence forces. I was in Maratha Light Infantry; second among us siblings, Squadron Leader Sutinder Jaswant Singh, was an ace fighter pilot; the third, Captain BJ Singh, was a doctor in the Army Medical Corps. The three of us and Dad were all serving the nation, in different capacities, during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. Then was Inderjeet Singh, a distinguished entrepreneur; DJ Singh is an enterprising banker; Veena, the youngest and the only sister, is an educationist and administrator.

A majority of my education was at convent schools. Two of them, St Anne’s Convent, Bolarum, Secunderabad, Telangana and St Mary’s Presentation Convent, Jammu, were girls’ schools. That readily gave admissions to the wards of military personnel, including boys.

I enrolled at the National Defence Academy, Dehradun, right after school. While I was at the Indian Military Academy (IMA), the 1962 Sino-Indian War broke out. My batch’s one-year training was cut short to seven months and consequently, my class got commissioned as second lieutenants in 1964. When grandpa saw me receiving my officer’s pip from Dad, he said, “God be with you, the son of a soldier will be a colonel, and the colonel’s son shall be a general!” It now looks like his blessings worked in more ways than he would have expected.