One of the last, but quite far-reaching, decisions taken by Lal Bahadur Shastri in his short but significant tenure as prime minister was the creation of the Border Security Force on 1 December 1965. The immediate spur for its creation was the ongoing border skirmishes between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch area from January to April 1965.
While the boundary demarcation (and population exchanges) in Punjab and Bengal had been formalised by the Radcliffe Award, no such discussion was held for RoK, as it was clearly a part of the Western Indian States Agency, the erstwhile name of the Saurashtra Union. This position was reiterated by the gazetteers of the province of Sind, the Presidency of Bombay and the maps of the Survey of India.
However, the genesis of the BSF can be traced to Shastri’s term as the helmsman of the Home Ministry from April 1961 to August 1963. Back then, in the meetings of the zonal councils, established under the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 to foster cooperative working among adjacent states, he had proposed the establishment of a ‘reserve police force’ to be available for use within zones when needed.
LP Singh of the Indian Civil Service, then an additional secretary in the ministry, and later India’s longest-serving home secretary (from 1964 to 1970), wrote about it in his book Portrait of Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Quintessential Gandhian.
“It was [a] practicable idea as every state in a zone does not normally need reinforcement at the same time…the arrangement would have prevented some avoidable expenditure in each of the participating states besides promoting harmony and cooperative relations among states,” wrote Singh. However, the proposal could not be carried out as states were extremely reluctant to relinquish any of their ‘powers’ in the State List to the Union government.
Singh further wrote: “If Shastri had stayed longer as Home Minister or lived long enough after becoming PM, he may have secured an agreement among the states.”
But in the aftermath of the 1962 war with China, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) started assigning State Armed Police (SAP) and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) battalions from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh to Assam, and Punjab Armed Police to Jammu & Kashmir to guard the vulnerable borders of these two states. The skirmishes in RoK from January to March 1965 convinced Shastri that India needed to pull its border guarding act together.
Pakistan had entrusted this task to the West Pakistan Rangers from 1958 and placed them under its Defence Ministry.
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A bureaucratic exercise
In April 1965, the MHA formed a committee under Lt Gen PP Kumaramangalam, the Vice Chief of the Army Staff, to “examine and recommend the most effective way of manning the entire Indo-Pakistan border”.
His report was examined by LP Singh and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen JN Chaudhuri. They briefed the Prime Minister. After deliberations with his cabinet colleagues, notably Defence Minister YB Chavan, Home Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda and Foreign Minister Swaran Singh, Shastri extended the consultation with leaders of the Opposition including NG Ranga of the Swatantra Party, Surendranath Dwivedy of the Praja Socialist Party, Hirendranath Mukherjee and Bhupesh Gupta of the CPI, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and UM Trivedi of the Jana Sangha, Mani Ram Bagri of the Samyukta Socialist Party, K Manoharan of the DMK, BP Maurya of the Republican Party of India and Independent members Prakash Vir Shastri, Indulal Yagnik, NC Chatterjee and Frank Anthony.
As the discussions progressed, it became clear that the establishment of a border force was not just a response to immediate threats but also a part of a broader strategy to instil confidence among the people living in the region, prevent cross-border gold smuggling and human trafficking and ensure the territorial integrity of the country.
On 22 April 1965, the Chief of Army Staff wrote a column, under the non de plume ‘our military correspondent’, in which he marshalled his arguments in favour of a federal border-guarding force under the MHA in The Statesman, then a very influential newspaper.
Soon thereafter, in the first week of May, a meeting of the home ministers and inspector generals of state police (IGPs) was convened to discuss the “possibility and desirability of a border force.”
PM Shastri addressed the meeting and dwelt on the Pakistani troop movement on the Gujarat border. As the groundwork had already been done, there was a general consensus on the issue. In an extreme irony of sorts, K F Rustamji, who went on to be the first director general of the BSF, raised an objection on behalf of the Madhya Pradesh government. Rustamji was then the Inspector General of Police of Madhya Pradesh. He had been instructed to do so by his chief minister, DP Mishra, who had never reconciled to being pipped for the top position by Shastri.
An ‘in-principle’ decision was taken to establish a new border force under a senior police officer, to be tasked “mostly with police duties”, but “expected to work under the command of the Army during an outright war”. On 17 May 1965, LP Singh held a meeting with COAS Chaudhuri and Defence Secretary AD Pandit. After the meeting, he submitted the minutes for approval to the HM and the PM.
Rustamji was anointed BSF’s first director general, with stars and stripes equivalent to a lieutenant general of the Indian Army. One reason for selecting Rustamji was his excellent rapport with Gen Chaudhuri. He had worked under Chaudhuri in the Operation Polo—the police action against the recalcitrant Nizam of Hyderabad due to his refusal to accede to the Union of India
Although Rustamji reported for duty to the MHA, his services were used for coordination among the different police forces along the Pakistan border. The actual raising of the BSF had to wait until after the end of the India-Pakistan war, when 25 state armed police battalions were merged under the new force.
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The BSF now
From then to now, BSF’s expansion has been manifold. It is now the world’s largest border guarding force with 200 battalions and a strength of over 2,70,000 personnel. Its mobility and logistics are supported by its own aircraft, water vessels and a trained contingent of horses and camels. Its canine squad has rendered yeoman service in mine detection and anti-narcotics operations. It is now readying itself with its first dedicated drone squadron to enhance surveillance and strike capabilities along the India–Pakistan border.
The force is not without its challenges, especially in the Eastern sector, where the work of border fencing has been stalled on account of the rather tardy pace of land acquisition, especially in West Bengal. The Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government is critical of the BSF’s role in the ‘pushback’ of unauthorised immigrants from Bangladesh.
Officers directly recruited into the BSF through the UPSC-conducted CAPF examination also resent the domination of the IPS officers at the highest echelons—at the level of IGs, ADGs and of course the DG of the force. However, these minor glitches notwithstanding, the force established by Shastri now holds a pride of place among the uniformed forces in the country.
Last but not least, the creation of the BSF paved the way for the reorganisation of Punjab. The States Reorganisation Commission of 1956 had rejected the demand for Punjabi Suba on the argument that states with an international border had to be large enough administratively, with adequate financial heft to maintain an armed police for guarding the border. With the formation of the BSF, this argument was no longer valid, and eleven months later, on 1 November 1966, Punjab’s reorganisation came into effect.
The credit for the establishment of the linguistic state of Punjab (Punjabi Suba), Haryana and the (then) Union Territory of Himachal was appropriated by Shastri’s successor, Indira Gandhi, as his life and achievements receded into the background.
This is the last in the series of articles on the six institutions founded by Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
Disclosure: The columnist is a trustee of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial (LBS Museum).
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)