Page 271 - Leadership in the Indian Army

After a short stint in Delhi, Sagat was promoted Brigadier and given
command of 50 Parachute Brigade at Agra in September 1961. This was
unprecedented, since he was not a paratrooper and would have to earn his

‘wings’ before he could become one. He was then over 40 years old, and
few people had started jumping at that age. But Sagat knew that he had to
get the coveted wings before he was accepted into the fraternity of
paratroopers, and could wield any authority. He had to undergo a tough
probation course before he could begin his jumps. To save time, he
sometimes did two jumps a day and got his ‘wings’ in record time. For a
person of his age, this was no mean achievement. Paratroopers place a high

premium on courage and physical toughness, and his success hiked up his
stock in the brigade as nothing else could have done. At the time, 50
Parachute Brigade had only two battalions, 1 Para and 2 Para, with the latter
having recently joined the formation from Jammu and Kashmir. To get to
know his command and gauge the state of training, Sagat set tactical
exercises for both battalions. This was to prove useful subsequently in the

Goa operations, where 2 Para had to perform a similar operational task.
It was while commanding 50 Parachute Brigade that Sagat really
blossomed, and his genius as a combat leader became apparent. During the
Goa operations, he displayed tactical brilliance and the ability to seize
opportunities in battle—qualities that few commanders are gifted with.
Sagat proved the adage that the timorous rarely succeed in war, while the
bold invariably triumph, even against heavy odds. His exploits during the

Goa operations are now part of the Indian Army’s folklore, and are often
used as examples for students of military science.
At this point, a brief history of Goa is in order. Of the three Portuguese
enclaves in India, Goa was the largest, with an area of 3,635 square
kilometres and a population of approximately 600,000—of whom over half
were Hindus. The other two enclaves were Daman and Diu, located more

than 500 kilometres to the north of Goa. Daman, including the parganas (a
pargana is a subdivision of a district) of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, had an
area of 213 square kilometres and a population of about 60,000. Diu was
even smaller, measuring just 39 square kilometres, with a population of
about 20,000. As in the rest of India, freedom movements had sprung up in
these colonies, and when the British left in 1947, the demand for
independence by the people of Goa also intensified.