50 Fun Facts About Indian Army

Which Swiss-born woman, who married an Indian Army officer in 1932, designed the Param Vir Chakra medal?

Savitri Khanolkar, born Eve Yvonne Maday de Maros in Neuchâtel, also designed the Ashok Chakra and Kirti Chakra, and the very first PVC went to her daughter's brother-in-law.

Which African country's £100,000 gift, thanking Indian troops for its liberation, helped fund the NDA at Khadakwasla?

Sudan's gift reached Viceroy Linlithgow in 1941, which is why the academy's headquarters at Khadakwasla is called the Sudan Block, opened by Sudan's ambassador in 1959.

Which cricketer, an honorary lieutenant colonel in the Territorial Army's 106 Para, qualified as a paratrooper in 2015?

M. S. Dhoni was given the honorary rank in 2011 and completed five jumps at Agra; he has said that as a child he wanted to be a soldier, not a cricketer.

Which Mahabharata archer gives his name to India's home-built main battle tank, which entered service in 2004?

Arjun tanks first went to the 43rd Armoured Regiment, and in 2010 desert trials the Arjun reportedly out-shot the Army's Russian-designed T-90s.

Which two rivers are fused in the name of the supersonic cruise missile India builds jointly with Russia?

Brahmaputra and Moskva merge in 'BrahMos', the missile built by an Indian–Russian joint venture; it arms Indian Army regiments, and the Philippines has since bought it for its marines.

Which 1997 J. P. Dutta film, starring Sunny Deol, dramatised 120 Punjab Regiment soldiers holding Longewala in 1971?

Border cast Sunny Deol as Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri of 23 Punjab; the Army and Air Force lent real vehicles, weapons and uniforms to the production.

On which date does India mark Army Day, the anniversary of Cariappa replacing Roy Bucher as commander-in-chief in 1949?

15 January 1949 gave the Army its first Indian commander-in-chief; in 2023 the parade left Delhi's Cariappa Parade Ground for Bengaluru for the first time.

Which 1972 pact, signed by Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, turned the ceasefire line into the Line of Control?

The Simla Agreement bound both sides not to alter the line unilaterally; though dated 2 July 1972, it was actually signed at 00:40 on the morning of 3 July.

Which 18 Grenadiers soldier, decorated for Tiger Hill at 19, is the youngest recipient of the Param Vir Chakra?

Yogendra Singh Yadav led the climb up Tiger Hill's cliff, fixing ropes and fighting on with multiple bullet wounds; his award was first announced as posthumous, until he turned out to be alive in hospital.

Which 2021 film, titled after Captain Vikram Batra's wireless code name, casts Sidharth Malhotra as Batra and his twin?

Shershaah means 'Lion King'; Batra is also remembered for the advertising slogan he adopted, 'Yeh Dil Maange More!', and the peak he died capturing, Point 4875, is now Batra Top.

In which country did Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria earn the only Param Vir Chakra given for UN peacekeeping, in 1961?

Congo's breakaway Katanga province had blocked a road in Elisabethville; Salaria led a small party of Gurkhas in a bayonet and khukri charge that broke the position, and died of his wounds.

In which war did the 60th Parachute Field Ambulance serve from 1950, earning the name 'Angels in Brown Berets'?

The Korean War was answered by India with a medical unit rather than troops; the 60th PFA also treated North Korean prisoners and won citations from US and South Korean chiefs.

In which Soviet city did Shastri and Ayub Khan sign the 1966 pact ending the 1965 war, hours before Shastri died?

Tashkent's talks, moderated by Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, had both armies agree to pull back to their pre-August lines; Shastri's sudden death there bred decades of conspiracy theories.

Which slogan did Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri give India in 1965, the year of the war with Pakistan?

'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan' hails the soldier and the farmer together, pairing the war effort with Shastri's food-security push that created the Food Corporation of India.

Which lieutenant general, India's eastern commander, took the surrender of some 90,000 Pakistani troops at Dhaka?

Jagjit Singh Aurora attended with his wife Bhagwant Kaur, and the photograph of A. A. K. Niazi bowed over his signature became one of the war's best-known images.

On which date do India and Bangladesh both mark Vijay Diwas, the anniversary of the 1971 surrender at Dhaka?

16 December 1971 closed a war of under two weeks and is Bangladesh's Victory Day as well; the surrender spot in Dhaka is now the Swadhinata Stambha monument.

On which date does India mark Kargil Vijay Diwas, the day fighting ceased once the Dras sub-sector was cleared in 1999?

26 July 1999 ended India's Operation Vijay, fought to retake heights from which intruders could fire on the Srinagar–Leh highway, the road that supplies Ladakh.

In which mountain range does the Siachen Glacier lie, where Indian troops have held posts since April 1984?

Karakoram's Siachen, 76 km long, lies beyond NJ9842, where the mapped ceasefire line stopped; with the ice left undrawn, both armies claimed it and raced to occupy it.

Which operation, launched on 13 April 1984, put Indian troops on Siachen four days ahead of a planned Pakistani move?

Meghdoot pre-empted Pakistan's Operation Ababeel, expected by 17 April; planners chose 13 April, the Vaisakhi festival, as the day an Indian move would be least expected.

Which naib subedar of 8 JAK LI earned the Param Vir Chakra on the Siachen Glacier in June 1987?

Bana Singh's objective, which Pakistan had named for Jinnah, was renamed Bana Top in his honour; he retired as a subedar major and honorary captain.

Which major of 4 Kumaon became the first recipient of the Param Vir Chakra, for Badgam near Srinagar on 3 November 1947?

Somnath Sharma's award was gazetted only in June 1950, and his body was identified by his pistol holster and pages of the Bhagavad Gita in his chest pocket.

Four replicas of which mythological weapon surround the state emblem on the Param Vir Chakra's bronze face?

The vajra, Indra's thunderbolt, was chosen for the sage Dadhichi, who in legend gave up his body so the gods could forge the weapon from his bones: a symbol of sacrifice.

Which 4 Grenadiers soldier won a posthumous PVC at Asal Uttar in 1965 for wrecking Pakistani tanks from a gun-mounted jeep?

Abdul Hamid's recoilless-gun crew held fire until the tanks were close; so many Pattons were wrecked or captured around Asal Uttar that the battlefield became known as Patton Nagar.

Which major's 13 Kumaon company held Rezang La in Ladakh on 18 November 1962, bringing him a posthumous PVC?

Shaitan Singh, badly wounded, ordered the men carrying him to leave him behind a boulder and get away; his body was later found at the same spot and cremated in Jodhpur with military honours.

Which Poona Horse officer, commissioned in June 1971, won a posthumous PVC six months later in his tank 'Famagusta'?

Arun Khetarpal's tank was captured by Pakistan and eventually returned to India, and the Indian Military Academy's auditorium now bears his name.

Which president made sure Sam Manekshaw got his field marshal's pay, over 30 years late?

Abdul Kalam visited the ailing Manekshaw at Wellington and had the arrears cleared; the 1971 war's Army chief had been promoted in January 1973 but denied a field marshal's full allowances.

In which regiment, whose colonel Manekshaw became in 1955, did an orderly famously name the Army chief 'Sam Bahadur'?

8 Gorkha Rifles supplied the story: visiting a battalion in 1969, Manekshaw asked an orderly the name of the Army chief and was told 'Sam Bahadur', a name that became the title of Vicky Kaushal's 2023 biopic.

Which British decoration did Major General Cowan award Manekshaw on the spot after seeing him wounded in Burma in 1942?

The Military Cross was awarded by David Tennant Cowan of the 17th Infantry Division while watching the battle; Manekshaw recovered to command the Army three decades later.

Which British general opened the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun in 1932 with the speech that became its credo?

Philip Chetwode's line 'the safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time' is carved in oak at the hall that bears his name.

What is the Indian Military Academy's first batch called, having produced army chiefs of India, Pakistan and Burma?

The Pioneers, 40 cadets who began on 1 October 1932, trained for one army; Partition and Burma's independence later put classmates Manekshaw, Muhammad Musa and Smith Dun at the head of three.

Which regiment did Cariappa raise in 1949 as the Indian Army's first 'all-India, all-class' infantry?

The Brigade of the Guards took the senior battalions of the Punjab Regiment, Grenadiers and Rajputana Rifles in 1949, with 1 Rajput joining a year later.

Which counter-insurgency force, raised in 1990 from regular soldiers on deputation, serves mainly in Jammu and Kashmir?

Rashtriya Rifles began with six battalions, three of them sent not to Kashmir but to Punjab, where another insurgency was being fought; every soldier is on loan from a regular Army regiment.

Which unit, raised by Stringer Lawrence in 1758 from coastal sepoy companies, is the Indian Army's oldest infantry?

The Madras Regiment's 9th Battalion, raised in 1704 as bodyguards to Travancore's ruler, is older than the regiment itself; the war cry 'Veera Madrassi, adi kollu' means 'brave Madrassi, hit and kill'.

Which Indian Army unit marks 12 September as Battle Honours Day, for 21 men who held a Samana Range post in 1897?

The Sikh Regiment's forebears, the 36th Sikhs, made the stand at Saragarhi; all 21 received the Indian Order of Merit, and memorial gurdwaras were built at Amritsar and Firozpur.

Which regiment, re-raised in 1948, kept Rai and Limbu men who refused to follow the 7th and 10th Gurkhas to Britain?

11 Gorkha Rifles was the first regiment raised by independent India, with centres at Palampur and Mumbai, and chose not to inherit the honours of its 1918 namesake.

Which newly created post did Bipin Rawat take up in 2020, also heading the Department of Military Affairs?

Chief of Defence Staff also serves as permanent chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, whose chair had previously rotated among the three service chiefs by seniority.

Which city's Officers Training Academy, founded in 1963, trained the Indian Army's first women officers in 1992?

Chennai's academy opened in January 1963 because the 1962 war with China had shown the Army needed many more officers quickly; its first course for women began on 21 September 1992.

Which neighbouring country's men fill Indian Army units under a 1947 tripartite pact that sent Britain four regiments?

Nepal's recruits make up the six regiments that stayed with India against four that went to Britain, and the pact requires the same basic pay in both armies.

Which brigadier, the 'Lion of Nowshera', died fighting for India in 1948?

Mohammad Usman refused to join Pakistan's army at Partition, though promised rapid promotion there; he held Nowshera so well that Pakistan put a Rs 50,000 price on his head, and shellfire killed him at Jhangar in July 1948.

Which Mizoram town hosts CIJWS, the Army's jungle warfare school whose motto is 'Fight the guerrilla like a guerrilla'?

The school was set up in 1967, a year into the Mizo National Front uprising, and moved to Vairengte in 1970, where the same hills gave its instructors a live counter-insurgency laboratory.

Which song, written for Subhas Chandra Bose's INA in 1942, is now the Indian Army's quick march?

Qadam Qadam Badhaye Ja, composed by Ram Singh Thakuri, was banned by the British as seditious after the Second World War; the ban went in August 1947, and the song became the Army's own march.

South Western Command, raised in 2005 as the Indian Army's seventh command, has its headquarters in which city?

Jaipur got the new headquarters in April 2005, when sectors were carved out of Western Command so that southern Punjab and northern Rajasthan's desert frontier had a command of its own.

In which country did General K. S. Thimayya die in 1965 while commanding the UN peacekeeping force there?

Cyprus issued a commemorative stamp for Thimayya in 1966 and renamed the main east–west road through Larnaca after him.

Lieutenant General Satish Nambiar was the first commander of UNPROFOR, the UN force sent in 1992 into which collapsing country?

Yugoslavia's break-up brought the UN Protection Force in February 1992, first to Croatia; within months its task grew to keeping Sarajevo airport open for aid. Nambiar led it until March 1993.

Into which community was Sam Manekshaw born at Amritsar in 1914, the fifth child of a doctor?

Parsi parents Hormizd and Hilla were bound for Lahore in 1903 when her advanced pregnancy stopped them at Amritsar station; they stayed, and he opened a clinic there.

Which operation flew Indian paratroopers to the Maldives in 1988, the same day Maumoon Gayoom appealed for help?

Cactus put troops on Hulhule airstrip that night, against a coup attempt by Tamil PLOTE mercenaries who had reached Malé by sea.

What is the last step called that Indian Military Academy cadets take into the academy's hall at the passing-out parade?

Antim Pag means 'final step', and with it gentleman cadets become officers; the old cap-flinging celebration that followed has given way to celebratory push-ups.

In which West African country did Indian troops lead Operation Khukri in 2000, relieving UN peacekeepers at Kailahun?

Sierra Leone's mission, UNAMSIL, saw Indian, Ghanaian, British and Nigerian units break a two-month rebel siege of Indian peacekeepers surrounded at Kailahun.

Which motto do the Indian Army and the National Defence Academy, the world's first tri-service academy, both carry?

Seva Paramo Dharma means 'service before self'. The three services share the academy because a committee under Claude Auchinleck, set up as the Second World War ended, recommended in 1946 that their officers train together.

Which unit, raised by Warren Hastings in 1773 from 50 troopers, heads the Indian Army's order of precedence?

President's Bodyguard troopers are also trained paratroopers expected to lead airborne assaults as pathfinders, between escort duties at Rashtrapati Bhavan.