Man of the world
By Shashi Tharoor
"The Hindu", Online edition of India's National Newspaper
September 29, 2002

A veteran of the undivided Indian army, Indar Jit Rikhye went on to devote his military career to the United Nations. His memoirs, therefore, are of great interest to a student of world affairs. A veteran of the undivided Indian army, Indar Jit Rikhiye went on to devote his military career to the United Nation. His memoirs, therefore, are of great interest to a student of world affairs.

The spirit of peace

OF the handful of distinguished Indians who have made major contributions to the field of international peace-keeping, Major-General Indar Jit Rikhye's is probably the name that most deserves to be better-known in his homeland. Joining the British Indian Army with the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi (who said "We want good, educated boys to become officers of the army of free India"), the young Indar Jit saw action in World War II as a cavalry officer in the Middle East and Italy before returning home to the traumatic events of Partition. His regiment splintered as the Punjabi Muslim soldiers (including a certain Zia ul-Haq) opted for Pakistan, and the Rikhye family themselves became refugees; meanwhile, Indar Jit was parachuted into Kashmir in the first military engagement of the new India.

With such a background one might easily have imagined Indar Jit Rikhye rising to the top of the Indian Army, seeing a great deal of action on the way, since he was just the age to have served on the frontlines in the 1962 and 1965 wars. But the man of war instead became a peacekeeper. Despite Prime Minister Nehru's aversion to military matters, he saw United Nations peacekeeping as a natural activity for a peace-loving nation, and offered an Indian contingent to the first armed U.N. operation, the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) posted in Egypt to deal with the Suez crisis and its aftermath. In 1957 Indar Jit Rikhye was assigned as its commander.

For the next 13 years, except for a brief stint in Ladakh in 1960, his military career was devoted to the U.N.. He became UNEF's Chief of Staff in 1958 and later its Acting Force Commander; two years later he was appointed Military Advisor to the U.N.'s legendary Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, a remarkable figure for whom Rikhye does not conceal his admiration. The fatal plane crash that ended Hammarskjold's life was poignant in more ways than one: it was the first flight the Secretary-General had taken in over a year without Rikhye on board.

All this and more is told with acuity and grace in Indar Jit Rikhye's new book of memoirs, Trumpets and Tumults (Delhi: Manohar, 2002). There is much of interest for the student of world affairs in that period, since Rikhye was involved in the Congo crisis, the decolonisation of West Irian (today the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya), the African states then known as Ruanda-Urundi (today's Rwanda and Burundi), and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He continued to serve Hammarskjold's successor, U Thant, first at Headquarters in New York and then as Commander of the second U.N. peacekeeping force in Egypt, UNEF-II. He was thus in the centre of the controversial U.N. decision to pullout of the Sinai when the Government of Egypt withdrew its consent for the Force to remain there an action that led directly to the 1967 war between the Arab states and Israel.

When his term at the U.N. was completed, Rikhye discovered he was too senior and prominent to be absorbed back into the Indian Army (as Gen "Muchu" Chaudhari, the chief of staff, said to him: "Where do I fit you in the army after your service in the U.N.? Do you want my job?") After a brief stint in business, Rikhye established, with funding from the American philanthropist Ruth Forbes Young, the International Peace Academy (IPA), making it the world's leading institution for peace education "training diplomats, international civil servants and (of course) military officers from around the world in seminars and projects designed to further their appreciation of the challenges of peace-keeping and peace-making. When he retired from IPA after nearly 20 years, having trained a generation of peacekeepers from a wide variety of countries, he remained active as an author, adviser and consultant on issues of international peace and security. His is a truly international legacy, something that can be said of few of our compatriots.

I first met Indar Rikhye as a graduate student in the United States when he came to address my class at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1975. We exchanged a few words, but I really got to know him only upon my own entry into the world of peace-keeping at U.N. Headquarters in 1989. Ironically, my first encounter with him was at his own retirement party from IPA that year. But we have kept in touch over the years and my admiration for his personal and professional qualities remains unbounded. Indians are not, as a breed, very good at handling their own importance; the Indian VIP is all too often an insufferably arrogant boor. Not so Indar, as he insisted I call him despite the three dozen years between our ages. His graciousness, intelligence, and generosity of spirit make him a rare friend indeed; and these reminiscences are all the more worth reading because these human qualities shine through the otherwise matter-of-fact text.

If I were to single out one element in his book of particular interest to the general Indian reader, it would be his almost incidental observations on Indian-Pakistani relations in the U.N. context. As a veteran of the undivided Indian Army, Indar had friends who rose to high rank in the Pakistani armed forces, and his descriptions of the "fun" he had in their company, despite all the bitterness that had crept in between the two countries, is instructive. (The role of the Punjabi language, and in one case of a specific Punjabi dialect from the Dera Ismail Khan region, in cementing ties between Indians and Pakistanis in New York is amusing to note: who can forget that Prime Minsters Gujral and Nawaz Sharif briefly made Punjabi into a language of international diplomacy?)

Most striking of all is Rikhye's account of his dealings with his old subordinate Zia-ul-Haq, who had served under him as a Lieutenant in1946 and who might not have received his regular army commission were it not for a positive recommendation from Indar. When President and former commander met at the U.N. General Assembly, an invitation to visit Pakistan's Zia's guest duly followed. Indar's account of his visit and of their conversation is worth buying Trumpets and Tumults for, so I will not spoil it for the reader by summarising it here. This is a worthy book by an exceptionally fine human being which deserves to be read not just by students of peace-keeping but by anyone interested in the story of a remarkable Indian life which has left its mark on the world we live in today.

Shashi Tharoor's new novel, Riot, is published by Viking Penguin.