Seventy years ago, a momentous event took place in one of India’s remotest corners; Maj Ralengnao (Bob) Khathing took over the administration of Tawang in the Kameng Frontier Division of the North-East Frontier Agency.
In 1914, during the Simla Conference, the Tibetan Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary of British India, Sir Henry McMahon, had demarcated their common border in this sector, but the British Crown had not immediately taken control over this tribal area.
In January 1951, sensing a Chinese threat after the invasion of Tibet a few months earlier, the then Assam Governor Jairamdas Daulatram, in consultation with the Himatsinghji Border Defence Committee, ordered a young Naga officer to march to Tawang and start administration in the area.
On February 14, 70 years after Khathing hoisted the Indian flag in Tawang, a host of dignitaries celebrated this ‘true hero of independent India’. Arunachal Pradesh Governor Brig (Retd.) BD Mishra laid the foundation stone of the memorial at Tawang.
The Hindustan Times reported: “Khathing, who was more popular as ‘Bob’, is relatively an unknown figure for most of India and even parts of Arunachal Pradesh. But people in Tawang still remember him with respect for establishing Indian control over the area when the threat of China loomed.”
Gen Bipin Rawat, Chief of Defence Staff, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, Union Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs Kiren Rijiju and Khathing’s family members were also present at the occasion.
Chief minister Pema Khandu posthumously awarded the ‘Arunachal Ratna’, the state’s highest civilian honour, to Maj Khathing.
Maj Bob Khathing was one of these intrepid officers of the Indian Frontier Administrative Service, who did marvels on India’s northern borders in the 1950s and 1960s. With his distinguished military background and exemplary diplomatic skills, Bob was able to win over the local Monpa chiefs and establish India’s control over an area still claimed by China today.
Born on February 8, 1912, at Ukhrul in Manipur, Khathing belongs to the Tangkhul Naga tribe. Being extremely intelligent, Bob soon joined the Government High School in Shillong, then the capital of unified Assam State, with a handsome state scholarship of three rupees per month. He later studied in the Bishop Cotton College in Guwahati and became the first tribal from Manipur to graduate.
During World War II, Bob decided to join the British Army under an Emergency Commission, but he faced a serious problem. The British rules were strict: recruits had to be five feet four inches, with the exception of the Gurkhas; but with a clever hairstyle and the help of an understanding officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps, he made it. He was the first Manipuri to get a King’s Commission.
Bob opted to serve in a special intelligence-cum-sabotage unit, called the ‘V Force’ formed by the British in May 1942, to operate from Manipur.
For his devotion to duty and his brilliant organising skills, he was soon awarded Member of the British Empire in December 1943. Later, Bob fought the Japanese so well that in August 1944, he received the Military Cross.
After World War II, acceding to a request from the Maharaja of Manipur, he took leave from the Army to join the Government of Manipur as the Minister for Hills Administration; here too, he excelled.
When the Manipur Assembly was dissolved in 1949, he was asked by Akbar Hydari, the first Indian Governor of Assam, to join the Assam Rifles, where he served first as Assistant Commandant. His next assignment will forever remain in the history of India.
On January 17, 1951, accompanied by 200 troops of 5 Assam Rifles and 600 porters, Bob left the foothills for his historic mission. During the following weeks, the young Manipuri showed his toughness, but also diplomatic skills.
A few days after his arrival, he selected a high-ground near the Tawang Monastery for meeting the Dzongpens, the Commissioners from Tsona in Tibet and the village elders. Bob walked to the place, while 100 riflemen encircled the ground. The APO instructed his second in-command to ‘fix bayonet’: “One hundred click sounds of bayonets coming in unison seemed to say, we are even ready for blood,” wrote his biographer; then Bob spoke to the people about the Indian nation.
Local Monpas were delighted by the arrival of the Khathing expedition. The Tibetan administration had been forcefully collecting (in particular corvée) taxes, which the local people often could not afford to pay. Only a person like Bob, with his knowledge of the local tribes, his ‘human’ skills and his Army background, could succeed in this tricky operation—and this, without a drop of blood.
Neeru Nanda, an IAS officer who was posted in Tawang in the 1980s, recalled, “After watching Khathing and his men for about a month, the village leaders came in a deputation with folded hands and grave faces. ‘Well, sahib’, they said, ‘we have been watching your work and we like it but there is something that makes us very suspicious.’ Khathing was quite startled. ‘What is it?’ he asked. Had he done something wrong? ‘Sahib’, they said, ‘you do not take anything from us by way of tax, neither do you seem to be proposing to take any. This is causing grave concern to all of us.’”
The young officer smiled. “Is that all?” he asked them, and went on to tell them that the government would never exploit its own people.
On February 9, 1951, the day Bob reached Tawang, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a note to the Foreign Secretary: “The [Himmatsinghji] Committee appointed recently to tour the North East Frontier has taken some action which I consider of doubtful value. …Tawang has now been occupied. Probably the step taken was justified. But it was an important step and I should have been consulted about it. The instructions issued to the Officer Commanding should also have been placed before me before issue. This is a frontier matter involving possibly some complications and no step should be taken without full consultation. …If the Committee has any other step in view, I should be informed of it before-hand.”
Well, it was probably better for India this way. It was a dying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who had gotten the ball rolling and decided upon the operation sometime in December 1950; he had ordered Jairamdas Daulatram to go ahead with his faithful Naga officer. The experience of Kashmir was not to be repeated.
One can only hope that Arunachal will soon honour some of its ‘other heroes’; I am thinking in particular of Tsangyang Gyatso, the Sixth Dalai Lama, who is born in Urgyeling, a small village South of Tawang, a truly remarkable Monpa.
The writer is a French-born author, journalist, historian, Tibetologist and China expert. The views expressed are personal.
Maj Bob Khathing was one of these intrepid officers of the Indian Frontier Administrative Service, who did marvels on India’s northern borders in the 1950s and 1960s. With his distinguished military background and exemplary diplomatic skills, Bob was able to win over the local Monpa chiefs and establish India’s control over an area still claimed by China today.