Express View: Remembering the Param Virs
On January 23, the birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose, 21 of the largest unnamed islands in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were named after soldiers who have been awarded India’s highest military honour , the Param Vir Chakra. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the renaming conveyed a message about the “immortality of the sacrifices ” that the soldiers of the Indian Army, all from different states, speaking different languages and dialects and leading different lifestyles had made, as they united “in the service of Maa Bharti”. During an earlier visit of the Prime Minister to the Union Territory in 2018, Ross Island had been renamed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island, and Neil Island and Havelock Island were, respectively, renamed Shaheed Dweep and Swaraj Dweep.
In his address on Monday, the Prime Minister invoked the image of the “sea that connects different islands” as a metaphor for the “feeling of ‘Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat’” that unites Indian citizens, including the soldiers who “ dedicated themselves to national defence”, many of them laying down their lives in the process. With the renaming done in their honour, the islands have become more than just distant outposts of a vast country — they become a way of making those 21 soldiers a part of the very geography of this land, memorialised in earth and water. Thus it is that their stories — of Second Lieutenant Rama Raghoba Rane who, in the 1948 war with Pakistan, helped navigate a safe path for Indian tanks by crawling beneath one across a minefield ; of Major Shaitan Singh who, despite grievous injury continued to motivate his men and fight the enemy in 1962 war; of Company Quartermaster Abdul Hamid who, in 1965, helped destroy several Pakistani tanks before succumbing to injuries; of Lance Naik Albert Ekka in taking-down an enemy gunner in hand-to-hand combat in 1971; of Subedar Major (then Rifleman) Sanjay Kumar as he helped the Army capture Flat Top Point in the 1999 war — all are now an indelible part of the landscape of the nation.
Across the country and around the world, the sacrifices made by soldiers in the performance of their duties have been honoured in monuments and plaques . Memorials are built in stone, wood and metal, with the names of the fallen inscribed on them, their brave actions described and their sacrifices enumerated , as gestures of remembrance . The naming of 21 Indian islands after 21 soldiers is an imaginative new way of continuing this tradition.