The Sikh Regiment

Saragarhi: what the record holds

The last signal from Saragarhi came shortly after 3 p.m. on 12 September 1897. Sepoy Gurmukh Singh, working the heliograph, asked permission to stop signalling and join the fight. The post was a signalling station on the Samana Ridge between Fort Lockhart and Fort Gulistan, held by Havildar Ishar Singh and twenty men of the 36th Sikhs, now the 4th Battalion.

The tribesmen surrounded it at about 9 a.m. By noon one sepoy was dead, an NCO wounded and three rifles damaged. Lieutenant Colonel John Haughton, commanding at Lockhart, sent Lieutenant George Munn with twelve men as a diversion, and it had no effect. Two further attacks were repulsed. At about 3 p.m. Haughton set out with Munn and 98 men, and had gone barely a kilometre when part of the wall collapsed, undermined from a dead angle the defenders could not see. By about 3.30 p.m. the garrison was dead. A civilian follower named Daad also died fighting, which is why some accounts count 22.

All 21 soldiers received the Indian Order of Merit, then the highest award open to Indian soldiers. The rest is less certain. No defender lived, and no Pashtun account exists, so the sequence inside the post is partly inferred. The size of the attacking force is given as anything between 1,000 and 10,000 or more, with one former officer of the battalion arguing for the low figure from its Digest of Service. Attackers' dead at Saragarhi are usually put at about 180, and higher popular figures are disputed. Fort Gulistan held until relief reached it on the night of 13 to 14 September. The regiment observes 12 September as Saragarhi Day.

Ferozepore and Ludhiana, 1846

The first battalion was officially raised on 1 August 1846, shortly before the partial annexation of the Sikh Empire. The Ferozepore and Ludhiana regiments, later the 14th King George's Own Ferozepore Sikhs and the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, were among the earliest wholly Sikh units of the Bengal Army. Captain Thomas Rattray raised a Bengal Military Police Battalion in 1856, which became the 45th (Rattray's) Sikh Infantry in 1901 and the 3rd Battalion, 11th Sikh Regiment, in 1922. The regiment was allotted to India in 1947.

It remains a single-class regiment recruiting Jat Sikhs. Its centre, earlier at Meerut, is now at Ramgarh Cantonment.

Nand Singh: VC and MVC

Acting Naik Nand Singh of the 1st Battalion, 11th Sikh Regiment, won the Victoria Cross on the Maungdaw-Buthidaung Road in Burma on the night of 11 to 12 March 1944. His section led a platoon up a steep ridge under heavy fire. He was wounded in the thigh and took the first trench with the bayonet, was wounded again by a grenade and took a second, and with his whole section killed or wounded dragged himself out to capture a third. As a Jemadar he was killed at Uri on 12 December 1947 and received a posthumous Maha Vir Chakra. His body was never recovered.

The 1st Battalion, 1947 to 1962

On 27 October 1947 two companies of 1 Sikh were flown from Gurgaon to Srinagar, the first Indian unit into the Kashmir war. Lieutenant Colonel Dewan Ranjit Rai judged that the raiders had to be stopped as far as possible from the town and the airfield, and took his men up the Baramulla road. He was killed the same day near Pattan. He is recorded as the first recipient of the Maha Vir Chakra.

The battalion won two Param Vir Chakras. Lance Naik Karam Singh, who already held the Military Medal from the Admin Box fighting in Burma, commanded a forward post at Richhmar Gali, south of Tithwal, on 13 October 1948. The Pakistani force outnumbered his section about ten to one and, according to the citation, made eight separate attacks that day. Twice wounded, he carried wounded men to the company position, refused evacuation and led a counter-attack that drove the enemy out of the platoon locality. The award was gazetted on 21 June 1950, and he retired in 1969 as an Honorary Captain.

Subedar Joginder Singh commanded a platoon of about twenty men on a ridge near Tongpen La, on the Bum La axis, when the Chinese attacked at 0530 on 23 October 1962. They came in three waves of about 200 each. The first two were stopped at the cost of half the platoon. Joginder Singh was hit in the thigh, refused evacuation and manned a light machine gun. When the ammunition ran out the survivors fixed bayonets and charged. He was overpowered, captured and died of his wounds in Chinese custody. The Chinese returned his ashes to the battalion on 17 May 1963.

At a glance

• Raised: First battalion officially raised 1 August 1846
• Regimental centre: Ramgarh Cantonment, Jharkhand
• Motto: Nische Kar Apni Jeet Karon (With determination, I will be triumphant)
• War cry: Jo Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal