He secured borders, saved lives with valour and mirth

Former major general S P

Mahadevan

, a recipient of Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, was best known as the army officer who protected Mahatma Gandhi during the Calcutta riots in August 1946 and was later appointed by then Tamil Nadu CM M G Ramachandran as the chairman of

Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission

(TNPSC). But Mahadevan, who passed away on Monday, has left behind a much larger story of a hero who has been less sung about.

Commissioned in the Royal Indian Army in 1946 at the age of 21, Mahadevan joined the first battalion of Madras regiment. His regiment was sent to Kashmir to help Maharaja Hari Singh fight tribal raiders from Pakistan when he acceded to the Indian dominion in 1947. In his very first action Mahadevan was badly wounded.

He was also a part of the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo, between July 1960 and June 1964. On March 4, 1961, the 99 (Independent) Brigade Group, designated as the Indian Independent Infantry Brigade Group was tasked to capture Jadotwille in Africa, in January 1963. Mahadevan went to Congo as the officer commanding advance guard on December 31, 1962. As all the road and rail bridges between Elizabethville and Jadotville were demolished by the retreating Katangese Army, his party was left with the only option of crossing the crocodile-infested Lufira River. Mahadevan along with two of his team members managed to monkey crawl over the partially damaged rail bridge before ferrying across the rest of the advance guard over the river to establish a bridgehead.

Mahadevan was one of the youngest army officers to be promoted as major general at the age of 47. He retired as GOC of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Goa Area on June 30, 1982.

His presence of mind in the face of danger is what made him a great leader. In the 1972 while on a visit to a picket in Siachen Glacier, his chopper crashed due to turbulent weather. He and his men were covered in snow. In such a situation, he ordered his men to pray to God. He later admitted that he gave the order so that his men stretched their hands, and created space for more oxygen. It was the stretched fingers of the soldiers that helped the rescuers pull them out.

Not many know that he was an ardent devotee of Sri Satya Sai Baba. In his memoir, he recorded how he sought the counsel of the saint when pressure from politicians during his stint as the TNPSC chairman wore him out in 1983. "Bhagavan advised me not to resign and said, ‘you need not oblige all the time, but you can always speak obligingly’. This golden advice stood me well during my full six years tenure."

(The writer is a culture enthusiast)


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