Page 368 - Leadership in the Indian Army

the house, yet I have some very major and serious reservations about the
proposed concept.’ He went on to outline his objections and finished by
declaring that the concept could not be executed in even a full-scale

‘Exercise with Troops’, let alone in war.
There was a stunned silence, and everyone started looking at the Army
Commander, Lieutenant General Gill, who intervened, to say: ‘Hanut, you
are not one man against the house. I too do not agree with this concept.’ He
then asked him whether he had any alternative to suggest. Hanut presented
what he thought was a workable solution. During the summing up that
followed, both the Army and Corps Commanders agreed with his views,

and the proposed concept was scrapped.
A few months later, an Exercise with Troops was held in which his
brigade was tasked to execute a breakout. At the planning stage itself,
Hanut pointed out to the commander of the infantry division which was
establishing the bridgehead, that the site selected was incorrect. Because of
the presence of lakes on two sides, the armour would have to break out

through a defile, which could be blocked very easily by the enemy. Hanut
was overruled, and was assured that his tanks would be given safe passage.
When the exercise began, the situation developed exactly as he had
predicted. Hanut immediately called off the breakout and ordered his tanks
to deploy. Next morning, when the Army and Corps Commanders asked
Hanut why he had aborted the manoeuvre, he replied: ‘I am not prepared to
order my leading regiment to undertake a mission which I know to be

suicidal.’ They left without a word. Subsequently, Hanut was given a clear
passage through the defile, and the armoured brigade broke out as planned.
In January 1978, Hanut was nominated to attend the course at the
National Defence College, after which he was posted to the MO
Directorate, where he remained for an unprecedented three-and-a-half
years. In May 1982, he was promoted Major General and given command

of 17 Mountain Division in Sikkim. Hanut’s first brush was with
Talyarkhan, the State Governor, a man with an enormous ego. He never
tired of telling anyone he met how close he was to the Nehru family,
particularly Mrs Indira Gandhi, who had specially selected him to oversee
the transition of Sikkim from an independent kingdom to a state of the
Indian Union. Hanut found that Talyarkhan behaved more like a colonial
ruler than a constitutional head of government. He demanded various perks

and privileges that were beyond his entitlement. One of these was that he