Ramesh Kulkarni - Siachen, 1987: Battle for the Frozen Frontier

To the Indian soldier for his extraordinary grit, exemplary courage and exceptional resilience in the service of the nation.

Siachen glacier in relation to India and the neighbouring countries

All maps in the book courtesy of Harish Kapadia.

Eastern Karakorum Siachen glacier

Pakistan Claim Line and Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL)

Siachen glacier and neighbouring areas

Contents

W RITING THIS BOOK has been a labour of love, but the range of words, phrases, descriptions and elaborations has been possible only because of my daughter Anjali. While my memories today are as clear as the light of day, it has been possible to set them out in words because of Anjalis probing, nudging and arguing. There were moments when my feelings froze because of the intensity of reliving an experience and there were times when memories darkened with the pain of recall. Through it all, Anjali helped me piece together this narrative and so, in some ways, we travelled this journey together.

Lt Gen. Ramesh Kulkarni

Stepping into my fathers shoes, reliving the time of his most strenuous posting, and digging ever deeper into his mind and experiences was revelatory. We argued and we discussed and sometimes we just fell silent. There were easy days when the words flowed freely and there were days of mental blocks when words simply couldnt capture what needed to be said. Through it all, I got to understand what my fathers Siachen days were about all the events and experiences that he had closely guarded and not shared with us. And I also got to understand him much better as a soldier, a commander and a human being.

Anjali Karpe

I N EARLY 2020, before our lives were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, I had decided to write about my Siachen tenure. My family was utterly surprised, considering I had studiously and most deliberately refused to write about this period for the longest time. It took me some time to get used to the decision as well, and for the first few months I struggled to begin with the actual penning down of my experiences. Not because I couldnt recall that period well enough. Quite the contrary, in fact. That whole stretch of time was so clearly etched in my memory that I could hear the voices of shared conversations while sipping chai at 20,000 feet. I could feel the biting chill of that wind that blew across the snows and the sweat that beaded my brow during intense decision-making. My struggle was more to do with finding a starting point and the words with which to share this superhuman experience for the Indian soldier on the glacier the challenges of commanding the troops and conducting operations that were momentous for our national security.

Why had I been suddenly overcome by this urge to share experiences I had kept under wraps so zealously over the years? The answer to that question can be found in multiple factors that came together, one after the other.

The primary reason was a sense of frustration at the coverage of the 1987 Siachen operations in other books that were published: they were consistently brief, sketchy and lacked a deep understanding of the gravity of the battles fought. I can hardly blame those authors because their range and reach were definitely limited; when I read what was put down on paper, it almost always felt incomplete. Time and again, my wife and children urged me to do something about it, but the more they coaxed me, the more I dug in my heels.

And then came a bit of a turning point in 2015 at the 28 Infantry Division (28 Inf Div) get-together in New Delhi. In recent years this has become an annual feature but it had been difficult for Meena and me to attend earlier, given that we had settled in Pune. Things worked out in 2015 as we made a days trip to Delhi. Gen. Subroto Mitra, the general officer commanding (GOC) of the Delhi area, had served as a young officer in 28 Madras which was part of my brigade in Nagaland and had also been GOC 28 Inf Div earlier. He insisted we stay as his guests at the Area HQ Mess. Comfortably settled there, we set out for the lunch organized on the lawns of the mess, looking forward to an afternoon of nostalgia and shared memories. There were warm and polite welcomes and the easy banter of belonging to the same formation, but there came a moment that was somewhat troubling: the video made on the 28 Inf Div that was shown as part of the event. While this covered a lot of the commendable work being done at the divisions present location at Kupwara, there was absolutely no mention (even in passing) about the period when the HQ was located at Nimu in Ladakh.

Gen. Ram Gaur was present at this event. He had raised the Div HQ at Kupwara in 1985, then moved it to Nimu in Ladakh in 1986, and handed over the reins to me in 1987. We conferred about this and he suggested I address the gathering to enlighten everyone about the historic events of 198788. It was obvious from the looks on the officers faces that they simply had no idea about this period of time. None of the details of the events there had made it to the collective memory of the later generations of troops and commanders. When the Div HQ had been moved to Ladakh in 1986 it was in fact called the Siachen Division. With the change of operational setting in July 1991, it had come back to Kupwara and it was only this Kupwara stretch that the recent set of officers seemed to remember.

That same year Meena and I travelled to Delhi again for the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the 9 Garhwal Rifles, the battalion I had commanded in 197073. The Commanding Officer (CO) of the 8 Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (Siachen), which was also located in Delhi, had been invited to the same celebrations. As the senior-most officer of the battalion, I received him. Introducing myself, I spoke to him of the momentous period of 1987, where his battalion had been part of 28 Inf Div on the glacier. The CO listened to me graciously but obviously could not relate to the period I was talking about. The next day he happened to mention my name to the subedar major (SM) of his battalion who insisted on meeting me. The CO protested at the propriety of this visit but eventually checked with the GOC Delhi Area, who assured him that the meeting desired by the SM was not improper. An appointment was sought and the SM along with the CO came over.

SM Lacchaman Das had been part of the Siachen tenure, having served as Sepoy in 198788. In fact, he had been part of Op Rajiv, which had been our first lethal encounter with Pakistani forces on the Siachen glacier in June 1987. For his stellar contribution, valour and daring he had been awarded the Vir Chakra.