As India and England enter the cricket arena in a must do game for the latter, some of the attention and passion involved with the ICC World Cup in England and Wales has been diverted by an unusual phenomenon; the colour of the new jersey worn by the Indian team.
Traditionally called the ‘men in blue’, Virat Kohli’s boys are sporting a new jersey to differentiate from the blue that England’s team is wearing. The colour of the jersey is orange with a splattering of blue as displayed by Virat himself.
Many of course find all kinds of political linkages to that colour with saffron being the colour of India’s ruling political party. For me, that is irrelevant as long as a good game of cricket ensues. More pertinently for me, it brings back from memory an event at the Line of Control (LoC) in J&K which involved the challenge posed by colours.
Throwback to Painting an LoC Bridge
7 April 2005 was a crucial day for the Uri Brigade, the Indian Army formation immortalized by the film, ‘Uri, the Surgical Strikes’.
I was in command of the brigade as we transitioned through the period from heavy intensity exchanges across the LoC, to ceasefire. Around 26 January 2005, we were informed that the old cart road from Uri to Muzzafarabad would be activated for the first trans LoC bus service for the divided families and other people of Jammu and Kashmir, and we were ordered to make sure it was ready for the bus to roll on 7 April 2005.
Two months plus to activate a road link closed for 57 years was no easy feat. It would involve resurfacing 20 kilometers of dilapidated road after demining four kilometers near the LoC, and most importantly, laying a new bridge over the piers of the existing foot bridge.
It led to a plethora of visits by every possible VIP to oversee how we were going to achieve this impossible task in the dead of one of the worst winters in J&K.
It’s a story by itself to recount how the task was accomplished and done well in time. I sometimes suspect that the fine art of tasking the Army to construct bridges in unrealistic timeframes for the Railways or the Commonwealth Games was triggered by our success at Uri.
What’s in a Colour?
What is more important is to tell you that the bridge was constructed by the Indian Army engineers and readied in its original colour with which the segments came; can’t expect an Indian Army bridge to come in any colour other than olive green (OG). Then came the orders from somewhere but passed on to us, that the colour of the bridge should be orange and green.
The ownership of the bridge was wholly Indian; it had taken much to convince our counterparts on the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) side that ours was a sturdier bridge awaiting launch just a few metres away from the actual side.
No one thought this would be a particularly onerous enterprise, but that is the first time in my career I realized just how much paint it takes to actually paint a military bridge (only) 75 metres long.
Cans of paint were flown by fixed wing aircraft to Srinagar as the road from Jammu to Srinagar was closed, and then by helicopter to Uri.
By 3 April 2005 the orange and green bridge was glistening in the faint rays of the sun over Uri. None of us had bothered to even consider whether there was anything political about the colours. The government at Delhi was of the UPA but the colours appeared to be that of the BJP.
Some smart guys did eventually point this out but heads were all down for the big day and there wasn’t any time to consider such ‘irrelevant’ thoughts entering a few minds.
How ‘White’ Colour Averted a War
Relaxing on 3 April 2005 and basking in my perceived self-importance for having achieved what appeared an impossible job I was jolted by a call from the company commander at the location of the Kaman Aman Setu Bridge (that is the name which had been decided).
An excited young officer told me that the Pakistan Army had invaded the bridge and was painting it white, or at least their half of it.
First thoughts are always dangerous and mine went to the extent of saving our honor by resisting the paint work they had launched, though I realised this would just lead to unpleasantness as I had more time to think about it. My second thought was to ensure that the Pakistan Army does not paint any more than one third of the bridge on their side as technically the LoC crossed at the two third point of the bridge. But that was our perception and the Pakistanis always contested it.
By the time I could get to the site in about 45 minutes or so the battle to get to the half way mark was already on. Messages to the Military Operations Directorate in Delhi were already being flashed breaking all channels of communication.
While we sought to stave off their efforts to invade 12 metres of extra space on the bridge someone pointed out to the Pakistanis that they were actually helping in making the bridge Indian in ownership and design because the white paint was only ensuring that the colours were truly Indian, all three of them.
There is nothing like placing a doubt in the mind of the opposing force, at a crucial point in time. Work stalled for the day and everyone retired awaiting another decision. That came from Delhi in the morning and was a reflection of some ‘deep thinking’ by some diplomat, general or perhaps even a political leader; the true ownership of the order will probably never be known.
Since the bridge was called Kaman Aman Setu why not just have the entire bridge the most neutral colour, the perceived colour of peace, white?
Orders are fine but implementing them is something else. The Pakistan Army was told to hold on. We would apply a second coat and execute the painting work to leave no signs of any other colour. Paint was flown from deep inside India again to Srinagar airfield and to Uri by helicopters, hundreds of cans of it.
On the nights of 4-5 April 2005, the greatest painting effort in history was commenced by Indian Army engineers, under floodlights and terrorist threats.
Sappers hung from ropes on the bridge painting everything metallic. Generators and compressors were pressed into it. Mercifully the weather held and the quality of the paint to the credit of the suppliers was a quick drying one. By the morning of 6 April a gleaming white bridge was ready to be presented and photographs flashed to Srinagar and Delhi.
When the inauguration ceremony commenced next morning on 7 April 2005, not a soul knew what had gone on at the bridge site 48 hours prior.
How a ‘paint war’ was averted will remain in the memory cells of the fortunate few who served at Uri in momentous times, as momentous as the ones now when India take on England in their brand new jerseys which are ‘orange and blue’ and not ‘orange and green’, the colour of the original Kaman Aman Setu.
Ultimately it’s the quality of their game which will matter and not the colour of their jersey.
(The writer, a former GOC of the Army’s 15 Corps, is now the Chancellor of Kashmir University. He can be reached at @atahasnain53. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)