Major General Indar Jit Rikhye, who passed away, unsung and unnoticed, in the US on May 21, will remain India’s most distinguished and unassuming ‘soldier turned UN peacekeeper’. After he retired from the UN in 1969, General Rikhye (IJR) conceived and nurtured for 20 years the world’s first peace studies institute: the International Peace Academy, New York.

He was born in Lahore and his father, Dr Madan Lal Rikhye, was a veteran of the First World war. Despite his mother’s predictable reservations, young Indar opted to join the army. The clinching argument was that Mahatma Gandhi had approved of Indar’s career choice. As IJR recounted later, when taken to meet Gandhiji by his father, the apostle of peace remarked, “This is good. We want good, educated young boys to become (military) officers.”

After a stint at the IMA, Dehra Dun, IJR was commissioned in the 6th Lancers and saw action in World War II as part of the 8th Indian Division. On the eve of Partition in August 1947, the 6th Lancers was awarded to Pakistan and, by a quirk of fate, IJR remained the last Hindu officer to command a Pakistani army unit till September that year when he repatriated to India with his family. By that same quirk of chance, IJR found himself leading the first units of Indian armour to ward off Pakistan’s military in J&K in the war of 1947-48, and his book, Trumpets and Tumults, (2002) provides rich first-hand archival material of Pakistan’s direct support to the so-called irregulars.

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