Re-raised after Independence from men of the 7th and 10th Gurkhas, 11 Gorkha Rifles fought at Chola in 1967 and won a Param Vir Chakra at Khalubar in 1999.
Point 15450, Chola
On 28 September 1967 C and D Companies of 7/11 Gorkha Rifles relieved 10 J&K Rifles at Chola, on the Sikkim border. D Company held Point 15450, at 4,720 metres, with Indian and Chinese sentries standing on either side of a boulder. At about 9.15 on the morning of 1 October a Chinese section surrounded the sentry post.
Lance Naik Krishna Bahadur, the post commander, led a charge against Chinese troops forming up to attack. He was hit and could not go on, but kept urging his men forward. Rifleman Devi Prasad Limbu, directly behind him, fought at close quarters with his khukri and is credited with killing five Chinese before a direct hit killed him. He received a posthumous Vir Chakra. The company came off Point 15450 under covering fire by about 11.30, and fog ended the day's fighting around 4 pm. Major K.B. Joshi launched a counter-attack at 6.40 the next morning and retook the point at about 8.15. The Chinese returned Krishna Bahadur's body with full military honours, and Bharat Rakshak quotes a Chinese officer as saying the Indians "fought like tigers".
Two Raisings
The number was first used in May 1918, when four battalions were formed in Mesopotamia and Palestine by pooling companies from other Gurkha regiments. They served to the end of the war and in the Third Afghan War of 1919. The regiment was disbanded in 1922, and the men went back to their parent units. No separate insignia had been authorised.
Its second life came out of the 1947 division of the Gurkha regiments between India and Britain. Soldiers of the 2nd, 6th, 7th and 10th Gurkhas could choose. Many men of the 7th and 10th, which recruited in eastern Nepal, chose India, and the army revived the number so that it would keep a contingent from that area. Official orders for the regiment, its centre and two battalions were issued in December 1947, and the centre was raised at Palampur on 1 January 1948. It went on to Jalapahar and Clement Town before settling in Lucknow. The first regiment's honours were not carried over.
Recruitment is mainly from the Kirant tribes, the Rai and Limbu, with smaller numbers of Sunuwar, Tamang and Yakkha, from eastern Nepal, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, the Dooars, Sikkim and the North East. The nickname is the Kirantis.
Bunkers on the Khalubar Ridge
In the summer of 1999, 1/11 Gorkha Rifles was at the end of a Siachen tenure when it was sent to the Batalik sector, under Col Lalit Rai, with 70 Infantry Brigade. Its objectives included the Khalubar-Padma Go ridgeline. Captain Manoj Kumar Pandey, who had been commissioned into the battalion on 7 June 1997, commanded No. 5 Platoon of B Company.
On the night of 2/3 July his platoon came under fire from both sides of a hillock on the way to Khalubar. He moved it to a better position, sent one section to clear enemy positions on the right and led the left himself. He cleared two bunkers and was hit in the shoulder and legs at the third. He went on to the fourth and destroyed it with a grenade, then was struck in the forehead by a bullet and died. He was 24. The platoon took six bunkers and killed eleven of the enemy. The Param Vir Chakra citation records that his action gave the companies the firm base that led to Khalubar being captured.
Col Rai, Havildar Bhim Bahadur Dewan and Lance Naik Gyanendra Rai received Vir Chakras. The battalion received the battle honour Batalik and the theatre honour Kargil.
Ashoka Chakras and Ganju Lama
Second Lieutenant Puneet Nath Datt of 1/11 led a team that cordoned a three-storey building held by foreign militants in Jammu and Kashmir on 20 July 1997. After nearly three hours of firing without result, he went over the compound wall, shot a militant trying to escape and killed the last one in an exchange that gravely wounded him. He died of the wounds and received a posthumous Ashoka Chakra. Captain Man Bahadur Rai, seconded to 8 Assam Rifles, had received the same award for flanking a fortified position up a ravine in the Naga Hills on 3 May 1961.
The regiment also claims Rifleman Ganju Lama's Victoria Cross, though he won it at Ningthoukhong in 1944 with the 7th Gurkha Rifles, one of the regiments that supplied its men. Its own battle honours are Shingo River Valley with 2/11 and Bogra with 5/11, both from 1971, and Batalik with 1/11.
At a glance
- Raised: 1918 (first raising, disbanded 1922); re-raised after Independence, with the Regimental Centre set up at Palampur on 1 January 1948
- Regimental centre: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
- Motto: Yatraham Vijayastatra
- War cry: Ayo Gorkhali