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The General and a Stormy Nation
The Sundarji Story
Speakers
From hoisting the tricolour on Pakistani soil in 1947 to compelling the Chinese to withdraw in the Himalayas, General Krishnaswamy Sundarji’s 820-day tenure as Army Chief straddled the first six decades of a free India: bold, brazen, and fiercely debated.
His story runs through the 1980s, India’s most dramatic decade: Operation Brasstacks, Operation Bluestar, Operation Pawan, Bofors — each decision attracting supporters and detractors in equal measure.
Probal DasGupta, author of General Sundarji’s biography, is in conversation with Aditya Ramanathan this evening. Together they dive deep into the personality, quirks, and thinking of a military leader unafraid to make his own decisions, and the India he helped shape. The session will close with an audience Q&A.
Speakers
Probal DasGupta
Aditya Ramanathan
Aditya Ramanathan heads the Advanced Military Technologies and Outer Space Programme at the Takshashila Institution. His focus areas include the role of space in strategic affairs, nuclear weapons policy, the role of technology in India’s military transformation, and India’s maritime interests.
He is co-editor with Lt General (Dr) Prakash Menon of The Sheathed Sword: From Nuclear Brink to No First Use, a major anthology that brings together top scholars on nuclear weapons from around the world to debate the feasibility of no-first-use policies. He was previously involved in setting up Takshashia’s flagship podcast All Things Policy and was co-host of Yuddha: The Indian Military History Podcast.
