Forgotten Courage |
For decades, the 1962 war has occupied an awkward place in India’s national memory. It is recalled more for strategic failure than for individual courage, more for loss and less for resistance. In that shadowed landscape, certain stories were left to fade ~ not because they lacked meaning, but because they complicated a narrative of defeat. The battle at Rezang La is one such story, and its recent return to public attention through Bollywood, more than 60 years after Chetan Anand’s classic Haqeeqat, is a reminder that courage is not always remembered, even when it is extraordinary.
Rezang La does not fit neatly into triumphalist storytelling. There was no victory, no turning of the tide, no dramatic rescue. What it offers instead is something far starker: a small group of soldiers, ill-equipped, poorly acclimatised, and vastly outnumbered, choosing to hold their ground in conditions that were almost........