His was a strand of thinking that disrupted and questioned settled assumptions of the day, forcing Nehru to carve out a special corner for him as matters worsened. For a pilot, who had done numerous missions in WW-II including the most challenging flights over the ‘hump’ – a name allied pilots gave to the eastern end of the Himalayas – from Assam into China to reach supplies to Chang Kai-shek’s forces, Patnaik had a different, more aggressive approach to take on China.
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Yes, he saw merit in collaboration with the US to build up India’s defences, a line Nehru was compelled to adopt after the 1962 debacle. He sent Patnaik to the US to set the stage for military cooperation, followed by the then President S Radhakrishnan’s visit. In that period were sown the first seeds of Indo-US cooperation, a legacy that found its real bloom in the Vajpayee era.
In an era when politicians had little knowledge of military affairs, Patnaik combined in him the know-how and the ability to execute complex defence strategies. As Nehru would respond to Parliament in 1963 on queries over Patnaik’s role: “He is a man with considerable ideas, considerable experience, actual experience, which hardly anyone of us here has, certainly not I.”
So, what is Biju Patnaik’s strategic legacy and how is it still relevant?Special Frontier Force
During the 2020 Galwan crisis, SFF called Vikas Battalion comprising Tibetan soldiers was pressed into action under Operation Snow Leopard to capture heights – Rezang La and Rechin La – around Pangong Tso to keep a check on Chinese forces who had set up posts in the area. They also participated in the capture of Kailash Hills that took the Chinese PLA by such a surprise that they have now started raising Tibetan battalions of their own.
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The original idea to form such a covert force came from Patnaik. While it may now get casually passed on by trigger happy politicians as ‘CIA link’, this was in fact a very complex effort started in 1959 to counter China and help Tibetan refugees with American support. Patnaik managed to convince Nehru that this was in India’s security interest.
In 1962, when China attacked India, Patnaik was Odisha chief minister. He was agitated and as Nehru himself recorded in a letter to BK Nehru, then Indian Ambassador to the US, that Patnaik was so “worked up” that he wanted to “give up his chief ministership” and join the effort but was advised against doing so. “We gave him a room in the external affairs ministry. He comes here for three or four days at a time, goes back to Orissa and after a few days returns to Delhi.”
It was in these days that Patnaik along with BN Mullick, then DIB, recast SFF. A new training centre was set up in Chakrata, Uttarakhand, with the first batch of 5,000 Khampa refugees under Maj Gen SS Uban. Later, it was planned to expand the model to Tibetan refugees in Assam and raise them as a guerilla force.
SFF acquitted themselves bravely in the 1971 war as well, known for their capture of areas around the Chittagong hill tracts. And while the US changed its India policy in the Nixon administration, SFF found its own feet and was brought under the Cabinet Secretariat after RAW was created. Galwan operations have underlined the relevance of this legacy.
U-2 to UAVs
There was an information haze that followed the Chinese withdrawal from Indian territory in 1962. Beijing had declared a unilateral ceasefire, claiming its forces had gone back 20 km from the Line of Actual Control. But how to verify these claims on ground? In those days, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft were the closest to present day drones.
So, after Nehru’s appeal for American help in November 1962, the first sorties were flown from Ta Khli base in Thailand over the India-China border. But the first four successful flights, according to CIA declassified records, could only be carried out in January 1963. “Photography from these missions was used in January and again in March 1963 to brief Prime Minister Nehru, who then informed the Indian Parliament about Communist Chinese troop movements along the border,” as per the declassified documents on U-2 operations.
While Nehru never disclosed the source, the information is borne out in his March 23, 1963, response to a calling attention motion in Parliament, where he explains why Chinese claims cannot be trusted: “We have also received reliable information of additional induction of troops into Tibet, of projects of further road construction along our borders…by Chinese Armed Forces in Tibetan areas… Though the Chinese forces have withdrawn 20 km from what they call the line of actual control, their concentration beyond this narrow strip continues unchanged.”
Patnaik had a pivotal role in working these arrangements with the US. Subsequently, Washington dropped a request with President Radhakrishnan during his US visit in June 1963 for a dedicated base in India for practical reasons of accessing border areas. It was again Patnaik, who came up with Charbatia, a WW-II airbase in Odisha, as an option.
This partnership has today evolved into a deeper collaboration. In the 2020 standoff with China, US shared surveillance data with India, also American Predators on lease to the Navy were used for surveying the India-China border areas. And now, 31 such UAVs with armed capabilities are on order with the US besides indigenous efforts.
Five-year defence Plan
For all the speculation over then 46-year-old Patnaik becoming defence minister after Krishna Menon’s resignation in 1962, Nehru chose YB Chavan instead. However, he gave him a special role and mandate as the leading voice of the alternate strategic line.
India managed considerable US support for its first 1964-1969 five-year defence plan that saw massive infusion of funds, equipment and expansion of the armed forces. The ‘Biju Way’ was the first pioneering effort at thinking outside the non-aligned box, breaking the US phobia to access best available technologies and build strategic strength.
In the years ahead, Patnaik politically parted ways with Congress and the Centre but the bold pragmatism, effectiveness and intent the ‘Biju Way’ brought to security policies is an approach that has never left the decision room of any government since 1962 – in fact, only gained in currency.
