Lt Gen S K Sinha
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A brief biography
Lt General SK Sinha, a former guv, Nov 18 2016 : The Times of India
Born in 1926, Lt-Gen Sinha graduated with honours from Patna University in 1942 at 17.Joining the Army , he saw combat during World War-II in Burma and Indonesia. After Independence, he commanded a battalion of the 5 Gorkha Rifles in Ladakh, a brigade in Manipur, a mountain division in Assam, a corps and field Army in the western theatre.
The former Army vice-chief Lt-Gen S K Sinha, served as India's ambassador to Nepal as well as the governor of Assam and Jammu & Kashmir during turbulent times
Lt-Gen Sinha, who was from the Gorkha Rifles, is remembered as “a soldier-scholar-statesman“ who quietly resigned after the then PM Indira Gandhi superseded him to appoint General A S Vaidya as the Army chief in 1983.
“Behaving in a dignified manner, he did not complain or file a court case. He was, of course, later appointed the ambassador to Nepal in 1990, which was followed by long stints as the governor of Assam in the late 90s and then of J&K in the early-2000s,“ said a military veteran.
Lt-Gen Sinha's strategy of “unified command“ and economic development led to major successes against the then rampant insurgency in Assam.A prolific writer, he authored five books and numerous newspaper opinion articles.
He passed away at the Army hospital in New Delhi in 2016. He was 90 [according to some
Ashok Malik’s tribute
IN MEMORY OF A SOLDIER AND A GREAT STATESMAN, | Ashok Malik | Saturday, 19 November 2016
Lieutenant General Srinivas Kumar Sinha: No doubt he will be remembered by several generations in the Army, those who served with him, and many more who still benefit from what he did to ensure welfare, housing and schooling facilities for the ordinary soldier and his family, and for his clear-headed and determined arguments before the Third Pay Commission in 1971.
Nevertheless it is not the Army community alone that is poorer today. Lt Gen Sinha will be mourned — genuinely mourned, with regret and a personally-felt sorrow — by just so many across several States. A proud son of Bihar, he was an iconic figure there. In Punjab, he is still recalled as the sensitive, sympathetic and enlightened general who urged a different path in the mad summer of 1984.
In Jammu & Kashmir, a State he went to as a young officer in the 1940s, just after independence — having organised the first airlift of Indian soldiers as raiders from Pakistan threatened to overrun Srinagar — and then went back to decades later as Governor, he will leave behind friends from across the political spectrum.
The Kashmir valley both enchanted and ultimately bewildered Sinha. He was an eloquent spokesperson of its once pluralistic culture and spoke often of the unity of Muslims and Hindus in the State in 1947. However, when he was forced out as Governor for no fault of his own, he could only remark wryly about how Kashmir politicians agreed with him in private and then went out and denounced him in public.
In Assam, Sinha was the most popular Governor in decades, and a man who made honest attempts to understand and address local grievances. Coming to the State in 1997, he went a long a long way in undermining popular sympathy for separatist groups such as United Liberation Front of Asom, with a combination of expansive social and political outreach and a deft security strategy involving the army, paramilitary forces and the police.
He also spoke straightforwardly about the degree of illegal migration from Bangladesh and the danger of refusing to acknowledge this reality. Well before many others, he pointed to how ridiculous and unsustainable the Illegal Migration Detection by Tribunal Act was.
If one adds Sinha’s achievements as Ambassador to Nepal in 1989-90, where he used his diplomatic acumen, personal charm and decades of camaraderie with Gorkha soldiers to overcome the bitterness of the trade embargo imposed by the previous Rajiv Gandhi Government, there is just so much to celebrate. Sinha lived more in one lifetime than most of us will in three. Just where does one begin to tell his story?
Perhaps one should go back, as the man himself so often did, to his beloved Bihar. The Sinhas were part of Patna’s intellectual and public service aristocracy. Sinha’s father and paternal grandfather were officers of what was then the Imperial Police. His father was Chief (Inspector General) of Bihar police from 1949 to 1960. His grandfather had been IG for a short period in the 1930s, the first Indian — if this writer remembers correctly — to be Chief of Police in any British Indian province.
In the early 1940s, it was to the Army rather than the police that the young Srinivas turned. It almost never happened, and here one must turn to another of the many delightful and delicious stories Sinha told. To his last moments, his memory and recall of detail were immaculate; eventually the body gave up but not the mind.
It was 1943, the aftermath of the Quit India Movement. Bihar was in ferment. Sinha, still in his teens, was waiting to be called up for the Army, having been all but selected. One day, he found himself joining like-minded friends in an anti-colonial protest that turned unruly. The protestors were arrested. As it happened, the police officer they were taken to was a colleague of the senior Sinha.
An Englishman, but a fair-minded one, he realised that if he took matters to their logical conclusion the young man before him would never be recruited by the Army, and so he let him go. It was a gentlemanly thing to do, and Sinha was gentleman enough to remember it with affection even six decades later. That avuncular nudge set Sinha on a long and distinguished military career, which included World War II operations in Burma (Myanmar) and Indonesia.
Life in the military was satisfying but the end was unpleasant. In the early 1980s, as the Congress first created and was then consumed by the toxic phenomenon of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Sinha was chief of the Army’s Western Command. He was asked by Darbara Singh, then Chief Minister of Punjab, to arrest Bhindranwale from Mehta Chowk. Sinha was reluctant to have the Army involved in policing tasks and understood the risks of getting domestic religious and political disputes into the army, especially since he commanded thousands of outstanding Sikh troops. He urged a rethink and the request was dropped.
Anticipating a situation where the Army may be called upon to take on militants in the Golden Temple or a similar shrine, he drew up an elaborate plan and laid down protocols that included a long siege, cutting water supplies, and resisting outright aggression that may be seen as provocative by ordinary Sikhs. Part of this protocol was followed during Operation Black Thunder II in 1988.
In June 1984, keen to make a political statement and dependent on flamboyant generals who impetuously moved tanks into the Golden Temple, Indira Gandhi had no time for Sinha’s caution. The result was the tragedy of Operation Bluestar, with the Khalistani militia led by, ironically, Shahbeg Singh, a former general of the Indian Army and a man Sinha saw as “a dear friend”, even though their world views differed.
By then, of course, he had retired, following his supersession by Indira Gandhi in 1983 even though he was vice-chief of the Army and expected to become the next Chief. Held against him were his views on Army involvement in Punjab — where Sinha was clear that he would not refuse civilian orders but would want the Army’s assessment considered — as well as a 1970s Intelligence Bureau report.
The report spoke of his “political connections” because he was once seen carrying Jayaprakash Narayan’s bag as the two men disembarked from a flight at Delhi airport. Narayan was his father’s friend and meeting him on the plane, Sinha helped the older man with his hand luggage. The next day he was informed that a report to this affect had reached the Prime Minister!
It was a strange story, and one the General recounted in his characteristic and understated manner. Indeed, those of us who were privileged to know him will miss those stories and will miss him. Those who didn’t know him will never know what they missed.
(The author is distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com)
