|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Friday, 18 June 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Thousands pray to dead soldier at mountain shrine for Sino-Indian amity by Pratap Chakravarty NATHU LA, India (AFP) A Himalayan shrine to a dead Indian soldier has become a place of pilgrimage for thousands who each week climb to dizzying heights and pray for peace with China. Sepoy Harbhajan Singh of the 23rd Punjab Regiment has become something of a deity to India's elite border troops since he drowned in a stream in 1968 while escorting a mule column along the Indo-China border. "Both civilians and troops believe that it is his spirit that has ensured a ceasefire between Indian and Chinese forces here," said army major Rahul Chauhan at the 14,500-foot (4,400-metre) high Nathu La, where the two countries fought a bloody battle in 1962. The Sikh soldier has been bestowed the honorific "Baba" (saint), the shrine to his name drawing tens of thousands who believe that in his death he possesses healing powers. "The Baba is the saint-sentinel of the Himalayas where both of us (armies) are (deployed) in strength," Chauhan told AFP as devotees gasped in the rarefied air of Nathu La, one of the six Indian-held passes in the northeastern state of Sikkim. The army's 17th Mountain Division has virtually canonised the soldier and continues to pay his monthly wages to his parents in the northern Indian town of Kapurthala. "A train ticket is booked once every year when the Baba goes on furlough and a soldier escorts him home. A vehicle also goes from his post to the railway station," Major Chauhan said. The guard stands beside an empty berth in the carriage which is reserved in the dead soldier's name. Locals as well as the military abstain from liquor and meat on Tuesdays and Sundays as a mark of respect and the army supplies free rations to thousands of soldiers and civilians who visit the shrine on Fridays. In a tiny officer's mess near the shrine a stuffed chair is specially reserved for the dead soldier while army generals sit on plastic chairs in the brain-numbing cold of the mountain pass. "Our army is essentially secular in character but this is one shrine which is managed by the military because of the strong feelings for the Baba not only among our ranks but also among a large section of (Chinese) soldiers across the border," said Sergeant Manohar Singh. A reversed gun mounted on cement stands as his memorial. A team of four to five junior commissioned officers have the task of looking after the hand-painted shrine. "The temple was built after the Baba came into the dreams of a colleague and implored him to construct the memorial, saying the act would lead to tranquility in the region," said Deepak Shrestha, a visiting Hindu priest from Sikkim's state capital of Gangtok. India and China have not always had easy relations and exchanged artillery fire at Nathu La in August 1967, five years after the border war which gave the Indian army a bloody nose. "It is up to you to believe in the Baba's powers but who can explain how bedsheets laid out every night for the saint are crumpled the next morning," said Mohammad Salauddin, a Muslim devotee from Sikkim's plains. Spokesmen for the military, which deploys heavily-armed guards at the yellow-coloured shrine, said they would rather not comment on the claim. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
