June 27 marks the death anniversary of India’s first Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, also popularly known as “Sam Bahadur”. He served the Indian Army for four decades, including leadership during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war.
Born in Amritsar to a doctor father and came from a family with military connections where his brother Jemi rose to the rank of Air Vice Marshal in the Indian Air Force. Throughout his remarkable career, Manekshaw participated in five wars, beginning with World War II and including the conflicts against Pakistan in 1948, 1965, and 1971 and 1962 Indo-Sino War.
Manekshaw died due to complications from pneumonia at the Military Hospital in Tamil Nadu, on 27 June 2008, at the age of 94.Reportedly, his last words were “I’m okay!”He was buried at the Parsi cemetery in Udhagamandalam (Ooty), Tamil Nadu, with military honours, adjacent to his wife’s grave.
Today we honour him with his famous quotes and sayings that are remembered till date:
- He who neither drinks, nor smokes, nor dances, he who preaches & even occasionally practice piety, temperance and celibacy, is generally a saint, or a mahatma or more likely a humbug but he certainly won’t make a leader or for that matter a good soldier
- If anyone tells you he is never afraid, he is a liar or he is a Gurkha.
- Don’t you think I would be a worthy replacement for you, Madam Prime Minister? You have a long nose. So have I. But I don’t poke my nose into other people’s affairs.
- Bhutto has made a monkey out of you
- You mind your own business, I’ll mind mine. You kiss your own sweetheart, I’ll kiss mine. I don’t interfere politically, as long as nobody interferes with me in the Army.
- Give me a man or a woman with common sense and who is not an idiot and I assure you can make a leader out of him or her.
- You should have to fight and fight to win. There is no room for the losers. If you lose, don’t come back. You will have disgraced the country, and the country won’t accept you.
- Whether an atom bomb is necessary or not, in this world if you want to be recognized, if you don’t want to be kicked about, you have to be powerful both militarily and economically.
