Page 59 - Leadership in the Indian Army

At that time, although Indian officers were members of the officers’ mess, they
were not given membership of the club, which admitted only Europeans. This
created a peculiar situation, which was resolved by making them honorary
members. In 1933, three Indian officers, who were honorary members of the
Peshawar Club, applied for permanent membership and were blackballed. When
Nathu Singh heard about it, he was furious. He had already resigned from his
honorary membership, and he now advised other Indian officers to do the same.
As a result, all Indians resigned en masse. This caused great consternation and the
club president wrote to Nathu, on 21 November 1932:

The Club Committee hopes that you will accept their invitation to become an Honorary Member of the
Club, as they consider it would help the matter when, at a suitable time, the case for full membership is
again brought up for discussion. The Committee much regretted your decision to resign from the Club
the year before last.

Copies of the letter were sent by the Club to other Indian officers. Nathu Singh’s
anger shows in his remarks on the letter, which is marked ‘strictly personal’.

Left to me, I would have much liked to get the Bar ploughed by donkeys or better still by the breed
mules, where the plot for blackballing of a few of the WOGS, who wanted to join as permanent
members instead of Hon. was hatched.

Soon after this, a dinner was held at the club to celebrate the satisfactory
conclusion of the Mohmand operations, for which Nathu was later mentioned in
*
dispatches. He decided to boycott the dinner, and the other Indian officers did
the same. There was a furore. His CO, Lieutenant Colonel V.R. Munton, who was
on leave at the time, wrote from England on 16 November 1933:

Blaxland tells me he has put you in for a mention and I met Gen. Coleridge yesterday and he tells me he
has forwarded it, so I hope you will get it and I add my heartiest congratulations. But about this dinner at
the club question. Gen. Coleridge told me that you engineered the whole refusal. At this distance it is
very difficult to visualise the show and to gauge what the atmosphere was at the time—I will look into
this on my return. But I do feel it was a damned silly thing not to go to the dinner. A regiment is rather a
sacred thing if you work it out, and it is hallowed by a hundred odd years of tradition & blood. To let it
down merely to vent a private grievance sounds very petty. You probably didn’t mean it as such but it
savours of non-cooperation—and the latter in the Army is absolutely disaster. To take up the attitude of a
die-hard isn’t going to do much good. Quite apart from the fact that at the next show the Bn. will
probably be left behind, your own military career may be affected. A successful staff officer has to show
tact and sympathy, and be prepared to advance to a halfway line.

On his return from England, when Lieutenant Colonel Munton investigated the
affair, he found that the mischief had been caused by some British officers and not
Nathu Singh. Of course, he had declined to attend the dinner, but this was in
response to the blackballing of the three Indian officers. In fact, by standing up for
his Indian colleagues, Nathu Singh gained the respect of several British officers,
who felt that the club rules were unfair.
In 1934, 1/7 Rajputs moved to Secunderabad in the Deccan. By now, Nathu
Singh and the battalion had got used to each other. At that time, as it is now, the