In Memoriam: General Vishwa Nath Sharma

General Vishwa Nath Sharma, who served as the Chief of the Army Staff of the Indian Army between 1 June, 1988, and 30 June, 1990, passed away at the age of 96 on Friday, 31 July, in New Delhi.

A career Armoured Corps officer, General Sharma was commissioned into the Indian Army in June 1950. In a career spanning forty years, he served in various prestigious posts, including as the chief of the Eastern Command, as ADC to the President of India, as the Commandant of the College of Combat (now Army War College) in Mhow, as the Director General of Military Operations at Army Headquarters, and ultimately as the Chief of the Army Staff.

After completing his education at Sherwood College, Nainital, he studied at the Prince of Wales’ Royal Indian Military College in Dehradun before joining the 5th Regular Course at the Indian Military Academy. Following the completion of the course, he was awarded the Rajputana Rifles Gold Medal for tactics and leadership.

Gen Sharma was commissioned into 16 Light Cavalry and later commanded 66 Armoured Regiment, participating in the 1965 and 1971 wars against Pakistan. He was a mountain warfare specialist, and his skills came to the fore during the Sumdorong Chu standoff with China in Arunachal Pradesh.

Gen Sharma also took the helm of the Indian Army when the ugly spectre of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir was beginning to take root as a perennial challenge for India’s internal security and the plight of Kashmiri pundits living in the valley. He also led military operations in response to worsening militancy crisis in Punjab in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star.

His tenure also coincided with the ongoing deployment of the Indian Peake Keeping Force in Sri Lanka to weaken and eliminate the Sri Lankan Tamil militant group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and restore lasting peace in the island country. The IPKF withdrew from Sri Lanka shortly before Gen Sharma concluded his tenure as the army chief.

Early life and family

Gen Sharma was born on 4 June, 1930, in London. His father was Amar Nath Sharma, a medical doctor who passed out from the King Edward Medical College in Lahore in 1915 and joined the Indian Medical Service, a predecessor of the Indian Army Medical Corps which was constituted in 1943. Major General Amar Nath Sharma retired from the Army as a Deputy Director General of Medical Services.

What places Gen Sharma apart from a rich line of decorated generals who became the Army Chief is the illustrious military heritage of his immediate family. Hailing from the village of Dadh in Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra district, he wasn’t just a scion of a military officer, but also the younger brother of two elder siblings who etched their names in Indian military history with acts of sheer valour and leadership.

His eldest brother was Major Somnath Sharma, a name taught to every military recruit as the gold standard of military ethos, courage and leadership. Born in January 1923 in Dadh, Major Somnath Sharma joined the British Indian Army in 1942 and was commissioned into the 4th Battalion of 19 Hyderabad Regiment.

After serving in the Burma campaign during the Second World War, a wounded Major Sharma with his left hand in a plaster cast found himself leading a company of the 1 Kumaon Regiment in Budgam, Kashmir, where hundreds of Pakistani infiltrators were steadily advancing.

The Pakistanis had already taken control of Gilgit-Baltistan and large parts of the Kashmir valley by November 1947 when Major Somnath Sharma’s company was flown to Srinagar. With about a hundred men under his command, he faced an advancing horde of over 500 armed infiltrators intent on seizing Srinagar airport and cutting off Kashmir from the rest of India.

“Fully realizing the gravity of the situation and the direct threat that would result to both the aerodrome and Srinagar via Hum Com, Major Somnath Sharma urged his company to fight the enemy tenaciously. With extreme bravery he kept rushing across the open ground to his sections exposing himself to heavy and accurate fire to urge them to hold on,” reads his official citation.

Major Sharma died when a mortal round fell close to him, but his leadership and courage enabled his men to hold on for several hours even after his demise, enough for relief forces to arrive and push back the infiltrators. He was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra in 1950, the first Indian Army officer to receive the honour.

Major Sharma’s younger brother, Surindra Nath Sharma, also joined the British Indian Army in October 1944 and went on to serve the Corps of Engineers for 40 years. He retired in 1984 as the Engineer-in-Chief of the Indian Army.

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Lt Gen Surindra Nath Sharma was born in October, 1923, and was commissioned into the Madras Sappers, but was also an excellent paratrooper. The story goes that on the eve of his retirement at the age of 60, he chose to do a few parachute jumps in Agra rather than attend his retirement party.

The story of his wife, Kumudini, is as astonishing as the legacy of the Sharmas. She was the daughter of Major General Vikram Ramji Khanolkar and Savitri Bai Khanolkar, who got married in 1932.

Savitri was originally a Swiss citizen - using the name Eve Yvonne Maday de Maros. She was the daughter of a Hungarian father and a Russian mother. She first met her future husband in 1929 when he visited Switzerland during a term break of a training programme at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

Following their marriage in 1932, Eve moved to India, adopted the name Savitri Bai Khanolkar, and immersed herself in the study of the Vedas, ancient Indian texts and books on India’s cultural history. Her knowledge of Indian culture and history made Major General Hira Lal Atal to ask for her help in designing the country’s highest wartime medal - the Param Vir Chakra. It was only fitting that her daughter’s brother-in-law, Major Som Nath Sharma, became the first soldier in independent India to be awarded the medal.

Savitri Bai went on to design other gallantry medals such as the Maha Vir Chakra, Ashok Chakra, Kirti Chakra, Vir Chakra and Shaurya Chakra. Following her husband’s death in 1952, she moved to Ramakrishna Math and immersed herself in social service until her death in 1990. Kumudini was her eldest daughter.

General Vishwa Nath Sharma also had two elder sisters, one of whom, Manorama Sharma, was a renowned social worker who married an army officer. His other sister, Kamla Sharma, was a doctor by profession and also married an army officer - Major General Krishna Tiwari.

When Maj Gen Tiwari was taken prisoner by the Chinese PLA during the 1962 war, Kamla had to provide for her three daughters and had to face tough times as the government had frozen his salary payments. She joined the Army Medical Corps in 1963 and continued to serve till her retirement in 1976.

Following their retirement, the Tiwaris moved to Pondicherry where they built their own house and worked at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, providing free medical care to the needy. Major Kamla Tiwari passed away in 2020, four years after her husband. Their eldest daughter, Uma Tiwari, also joined the Army Medical Corps, following the footsteps of her grandfather and her mother.

Later career and retirement

Like his illustrious ancestors and siblings, General Vishwa Nath Sharma displayed excellent leadership skills and was known for taking control of the initiative. His determination was put to its sternest test in 1986 when he was serving as the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Command.

That year, the Chinese sought to alter the demarcated Line of Actual Control near Sumdorong-chu near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and established permanent posts in Wangdung close to the Namka chu valley. The Indian Army’s response came in the form of Operation Falcon, a two-day operation to move troops and equipment to Zemithang, occupy high-altitude ridges and establish control over the Hathung La ridge.

Over the course of the next six months, the army deployed about 50,000 troops in Arunachal Pradesh as the Chinese threatened a repeat of 1962 by deploying eight divisions in eastern Tibet. India responded by granting statehood to Arunachal Pradesh in February 1987 and launching a military exercise code-named Operation Chequerboard.

The massive military exercise involved ten army divisions along with several helicopter squadrons of the IAF. As many as three divisions were camped near Wangdung and the Air Force carried out round-the-clock supplies to the forward divisions. The show of force eventually led to a truce, followed by a visit by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to Beijing in 1988.

In an interview in 2008. General Sharma said the exercise was largely coordinated from his command headquarters and he refused to heed directions from the PMO to withdraw from forward locations where troops were literally face-to-face with the PLA.

On 1 June, 1988, General Sharma replaced the charismatic General Sundarji as the Chief of the Army Staff, becoming the first cavalry officer to attain the honour. He immediately went to work to manage large-scale military operations across multiple domains, including rising militancy in Punjab, worsening insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, violent confrontations with the LTTE in Sri Lanka, and disturbances in the North East.

Nick-named “Tich” by his fellow officers, the General was faced with the unenviable task of managing IPKF operations in Sri Lanka at a time when the new President Premadasa was not in favour of supporting military operations against the LTTE. He chose the most prudent path - creating the conditions for an orderly withdrawal of the peace-keeping force and re-deploying them in the Western sector.

“Along with then Naval Chief, we planned to send a flotilla along with an aircraft carrier which conducted exercises off the coast of Sri Lanka to send a message to President Premadasa of Sri Lanka who was in cahoots with LTTE,” he said in an interview. “I told the Sri Lankan navy chief that I will withdraw the IPKF and a proper sendoff should be organised in Trincomalee. If IPKF or anyone tries to create a problem, I will conquer the entire north Sri Lanka, including Colombo.” The plan worked, and the withdrawal took place peacefully.

Following his retirement, the General spent much of his time in his native region of Kangra, travelling to remote villages and towns to provide free aid and medical treatment to the vulnerable as well as military veterans. He moved back to Delhi shortly before he passed away at the age of 96.