A sailor's monumental record of the war dead.

By Manoj Joshi

A monument for the Armed Forces was Vice-Admiral (retd) K.K. Nayyar's dream for long. It was a long wait and arduous work. But it was worth it, and on the 50th year of Independence, Nayyar has come out with his remarkable and elegantly produced Amar Jawan, A Book of Remembrance (India Book House). What makes the book memorable is that it lists the names of every single Indian soldier, sailor and airman who died defending the country in its wars and border skirmishes since 1947.

"The idea had been building up over time, but the impulse came when I was talking to a number of army generals about the Indian Peace Keeping Force's operations in Sri Lanka. No one seemed to know how many soldiers had died and all kinds of rumours were floating around," says Nayyar.

What was the hardest part of the project? "Getting hold of the data and cross-checking it," says Nayyar. Industrialist Lalit Mohan Thapar funded the project with a generous grant of Rs 30 lakh. "Writing the cheque was the easiest part," said the industrialist who called on the corporate world to fund other such projects during the book release function.

Nayyar's credentials for taking on such a project are impeccable: he was the first person to command both the eastern and western fleets. He retired as vice-chief of naval staff in Delhi. In 1990, he was the naval member of the trail-blazing Committee on Defence Expenditure headed by Arun Singh, and has kept himself busy with a variety of projects since.

The difficulties in compiling a list of the war dead were formidable since there are no centralised records available. Fortunately for Nayyar, all three service chiefs aided in opening up the records which were often available at the level of the regiment or squadron. A research team, headed by Maj-General Afsir Karim, went through the huge pile of documents to trace and cross-check the names. The book also contains a succinct account of the operations where the soldiers fell. The only regret, says Nayyar, is the lack of a photographic record since the government does not permit photographers on the front.

A people who forget their past, someone once said, are condemned to repeat it; but what of a country that does not honour those who died for it ? Soon, say some old war-horses, they will have no one to defend it.

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