In the summer of 1965 the situation in Kashmir looked grim. Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar had sent scores of insurgents over the Cease‑Fire Line, and New Delhi’s orders were to stay defensive. Among the staff officers listening to the casualty reports was Major Megh Singh Rathore, a lean Rajput from Rajasthan with the wiry moustache of a cavalryman and the combat experience of a veteran. He had served in the Italian campaign in World War II, fought guerrillas in Nagaland and, now in his early forties, was languishing in a staff job after being passed over for promotion. When the Army Commander lamented aloud, “Can’t we do something about this?”, Megh Singh stood up. “Sir, let me take a few men across,” he reportedly said. This is the backdrop of how Meghdoot Force came into being.
The general he addressed, Lt. Gen. Harbakhsh Singh, was not known for timidity. He listened to the audacious proposal: pick a handful of volunteers, slip across the line and hit the infiltrators where they lived. “If you succeed,” the commander is said to have smiled, “I’ll pin your rank back on myself”. Thus began one of the most remarkable chapters in India’s military history.
A unit born of boldness
Megh Singh travelled to Srinagar and hand‑picked his men from 3 Rajputana Rifles and 3 Rajput, regiments steeped in the folklore of Rajasthan. Retired special‑forces veteran Colonel Awadhesh Kumar later wrote that there were only two officers, two JCOs and fewer than eighty soldiers, and that around thirty of them were Kayam Khani Muslims. He wasn’t making a political point; he wanted Pakistan to know India could fight as one. On 27 August 1965, he addressed the volunteers: “We have met for the first time today,” he acknowledged, before reminding them that their forefathers had fought together for centuries. He promised to lead from the front, to be the first man over the enemy line, and gave anyone who wished to leave an honourable way out. No one walked away.
They had no name at first. Within four days they were taught demolitions, navigation and the dark art of moving silently on mountain trails. Someone jokingly called them the “Meghdoot Force”, after Meghdoot, the mythical cloud messenger in Sanskrit literature, and after their leader Megh. The name stuck.
Into Pakistan: the Poonch raids
On the night of 1/2 September a dozen pairs of boots crossed the line, their owners carrying explosives and Sten guns. Their first target was a culvert on the Dwarandi–Bandigopalpur road. As memoirs and newspaper accounts note, the raiders slipped past pickets, laid explosives and watched as a blast tore out the culvert, flooding the stream beneath and choking the road.
A few days later, on 6 and 7 September, they crept up on the Pakistani pickets Neja Pir and Ari Dhok. These were formidable outposts guarding the approaches to Haji Pir Pass. Megh Singh’s men attacked at dawn, throwing grenades and charging up slopes that would have daunted a full battalion. By afternoon both posts had fallen. The unexpected blow allowed Indian brigades to outflank the stronger Raja and Chand Tekri defences and paved the way for the Haji Pir assault.
The Kahuta link‑up
On 10 September the Mehdgoots were given what may have been their most important assignment: reach Kahuta, two miles inside Pakistani territory, and link up units advancing from Uri and Poonch. Under mortar and machine‑gun fire they fought their way to the rendezvous point and signalled success. Lt. Gen. Harbakhsh Singh, true to his word, later pinned a Lieutenant Colonel’s stars on Megh Singh’s shoulders. The government recognised the action with a Vir Chakra. The official citation lists three raids – the culvert demolition, the capture of Neja Pir and Ari Dhok, and the Kahuta link‑up – and praises the officer’s “exemplary courage and initiative”.
A new front: Chhamb
Before the unit could celebrate, orders came to relocate south. Pakistan’s armoured assault in the Chhamb sector threatened to sever Akhnoor and cut off Kashmir. Megh Singh again improvised. In addition to his regular volunteers he enlisted a band of ex‑servicemen from the area, men with old rifles and older grudges, who became known as the Badal Force.
On 19 September they picked their way through scrub and ravines to the village of Thil, about four kilometres inside enemy lines. At dawn the raiders swept in, firing from the hip and hurling grenades. Pakistani troops panicked and ran, leaving many dead. Three nights later they struck Nathal, an administrative base eight miles behind the line. According to officers who were there, the garrison fled in such haste that cooking fires were still burning. Thirteen bodies lay in the yard.
The return journey almost ended in disaster. At Thuggi a Pakistani patrol ambushed the column, and in the vicious hand‑to‑hand fight that followed Megh Singh was shot in the shoulder, hand and thigh. “He refused to be evacuated until the last man was out,” one of his comrades remembered later. In twenty‑two days of raiding, the Meghdoots had struck seven times and, by some estimates, inflicted hundreds of casualties while losing only one man.
From legend to institution
The Meghdoot story quickly passed into legend. Lt. Gen. Harbakhsh Singh wrote in his war dispatches that the raids proved how a small, well‑trained team could disrupt an enemy’s rear. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri personally authorised the creation of a permanent commando unit. On 1 July 1966 the Army raised the 9th Battalion (Commando) of the Parachute Regiment at Gwalior. Many of the original Meghdoots formed its core. A year later the unit was split to create 10 Para (Commando), and in 1978 1 Para was converted to the commando role. Today, Para (SF) has nine battalions.
The ethos of Meghdoot survives in these units. The motto of the Para (SF) – “Men apart, every man an emperor”, echoes Megh Singh’s pledge to lead and his insistence that every volunteer mattered. Their operations in later wars, from the 1971 campaign in Bangladesh to high‑altitude battles on the Siachen Glacier, owe a debt to that first ragtag band of 1965.
A story worth remembering
For decades Meghdoot Force veterans rarely spoke of their exploits. Official histories focused on tank battles and divisional actions. Only in recent years have their stories resurfaced in newspaper columns, military memoirs and online tributes. Their tale reads like fiction, a demoted officer convinces his commander to authorise an unsanctioned raid, recruits a handful of men, trains them for four days and proceeds to blow up bridges and seize enemy posts. Yet it happened, and it changed India’s Army forever.
As India’s special‑forces units take on missions at home and abroad, it is fitting to remember the group that started it all. The Meghdoot Force, named after a cloud messenger and led by a man who refused to accept failure, proved that audacity and imagination could trump numbers. Their story is not only a military footnote; it is a reminder that when rules fail, daring can make history.
