The man and the legend

Roopinder Singh

Arjan Singh was a great man,’ said a stranger at a function that I attended recently. ‘He definitely was,’ I said and heard him out as he recollected his meeting with the only Marshal of the Indian Air Force (MIAF) at Rashtrapati Bhavan years ago. In the two decades since I wrote his biography, I am used to people recounting anecdotes about MIAF Arjan Singh DFC.

Arjan Singh was born to Kishan Singh and Kartar Kaur on April 15, 1919, at Kohali village in Lyallpur, now in Pakistan. He led the IAF, which he helped build and guide throughout his life. He went on assignments to Switzerland, the Vatican and Kenya, was a member of the Minorities Commission and served as Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. As I got to know him better, the picture that emerged of the man was one of a hard-working go-getter, firm, with a ready smile, and the drive to see the tasks through to their logical culmination.

The book Arjan Singh DFC: Marshal of the Indian Air Force was released in 2002. MIAF Arjan Singh and his wife, Teji, gave me full access to their records, meticulously maintained, including his logbooks.

He was commissioned in the Royal Indian Air Force in 1939. Old Biggles books came alive as he narrated his sorties in the NWFP. The planes they used were Westland Wapitis, biplanes that used fabric and wood extensively. He had to make an emergency landing when tribesmen damaged his aircraft with rifle fire. His gunner was injured, but Arjan Singh dragged him to safety, and they were rescued. In 1944, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) by Lord Mountbatten while fighting the Japanese forces in Assam, this time on Hurricanes.

On Independence Day, August 15 1947, he led the IAF fly-past over the Red Fort. In 1964, he was appointed the Chief of Air Staff. His leadership in the war against Pakistan led to the rank being upgraded to Air Chief Marshal in 1965 and the award of Padma Vibhushan to him that year. After retirement in 1969, he went to Switzerland as Ambassador and later to Kenya.

The affection I saw for him when he got his Marshal’s baton at Rashtrapati Bhavan in January 2002 is still vivid in my memory. In 2004, with the support of his family, he sold his farm near Delhi and used the proceeds to create the corpus for Air Force veterans. The trust continues its good work.

The loss of his wife Teji in 2011 was a body blow, but he soldiered on. An IAF base at Panagarh in West Bengal was named after him in 2016, a rare honour. He passed away on September 16, 2017. He was accorded a state funeral, a 17-gun salute and a fly-past in the missing-man formation.

The man is missing, yet he lives — in his deeds, through the trust that he founded, and the intangible legacy that is a part of the lore of the IAF, a feat redeemed on his birth anniversary.