Page 203 - Leadership in the Indian Army

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L IEUTENANT G ENERAL R.N. B ATRA ,

PVSM, OBE

Communicator par Excellence

Rajinder Nath Batra was one among the pioneers who helped lay the
foundations of the present-day Indian Army. Unlike most well-known

military leaders who commanded armies, corps and divisions, he was not a
commander in the strict sense of the term. He was, rather a team captain
and an achiever. Though he had all the qualities and qualifications for
making it to the top in the ‘general cadre’, he was destined to make his
mark not as a generalist, but as a technocrat. He is widely regarded as one
of the founding fathers of the Indian Signal Corps, and is credited with
having conceived and initiated the process of modernisation of military

communications in India. His contribution to the Indian Army has been
prodigious, and in terms of enhancing operational capability, ranks on par
with the achievements of some of our best known field commanders.
Rajinder (his family and a few close friends called him Inder) was born on
27 December 1916 at Jhang Maghiana in the Punjab province of undivided
India, where his father, Ram Lal Batra—an irrigation engineer in the Punjab

Civil Service—was then posted as the sub-divisional officer. His mother,
Puran Devi (Vidya), was an outstanding sportswoman who could outswim
and outride her husband. The couple had nine children, six boys and three
girls. Raj was the fourth child, having been born after a brother and two
sisters. After retirement, Ram Lal settled down in Montgomery, though he
also had a house in Lahore.
Rajinder began his education in 1922 at Modern School in Delhi. The

school had been established in Daryaganj in 1920, and his elder brother,
Rajeshwar, was among the first batch of the school’s 20 students. In 1923,
Rajinder’s younger brother Rabinder (Robin), who was then just 4 years
old, also joined Modern School as a boarder, as their parents were going
abroad. However, the brothers were not destined to study in Delhi for long.