11th Gorkha Rifles
The 11 Gorkha Rifles is a Gorkha regiment of the Indian Army that was re-raised after independence. The regiment consists of primarily the Kirant Tribes Rai, Limbu, Yakkha, Sunuwar of Eastern Nepal, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Dooars of West Bengal, Sikkim and other parts of Northeast India.[2][3] Though it is considered to be the youngest of the Gorkha regiments its lineage is as long as those of the 7th Gurkha Rifles and 10th Gurkha Rifles.
The regiment has participated in all major military operations India has undertaken since independence including in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, Operation Polo in 1948, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and the Kargil War in 1999. Units of the regiment have also deployed abroad on UN missions.
The 11th Gurkha Rifles was raised as an ad hoc unit in 1918 with troops and officers being drawn from the various Gurkha regiments. The regiment, consisting of four battalions,[4] saw service in both Palestine and Mesopotamia at the end of the First World War, as well as during the Third Afghan War in 1919, before being disbanded in 1922 and the troops being reverted to their original units.[5] There were no separate insignias authorized for this regiment and the personnel wore the badges of distinction of their parent units, though there have been instances where unofficial badges were made and worn by some personnel.[6]
Following Indian independence in 1947, the Gurkha regiments of the British Indian Army were divided between the new Indian Army and the British Army. A referendum was held among the soldiers of the four regiments (2nd, 6th, 7th and 10th Gurkhas) that would transfer to the British as to whether they wished to join the British Army, as the decision to do so was made entirely voluntary.[7] Of the four regiments, one battalion (4th battalion, 2nd Gurkhas) opted en masse to join the Indian Army and became part of the 8 Gorkha Riflesas their 5th battalion. In the event, large numbers of men from the 7th and 10th Gurkhas, which recruited predominantly from eastern Nepal, opted to join the Indian Army as against the British Army to whom their regiments were allotted. So, in order to retain a contingent from this area of Nepal, the Indian Army made the decision to re-raise the 11 Gorkha Rifles.
11 Gorkha Rifles was officially re-raised on 1 January 1948, with the regimental centres at Palampur and Santa Cruz, Mumbai. The regimental centre was subsequently shifted to Jalapahar in Darjeeling, and then moved to Clement Town, Dehradun for a brief period, and finally to Lucknow where it was firmly established. The regiment was raised predominantly with the manpower from the non-optees of the 7th and 10th Gurkha Rifles. As the regiment was raised by the Indian Army after independence, it was decided not to retain the honours and traditions of the first 11th Gurkha Rifles of the British Indian Army.
During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the 5th battalion was involved in the action to fight against West Pakistan in East Pakistan(now Bangladesh), fetching the unit battle honour Bogra and theater honour East Pakistan. In the operations in East Pakistan, the unit had secured the Bogra town as part of 20 Mountain Division. In a daring operation, Lt. Teja Bedi single-handedly captured the headquarters along with the commanding officer and regimental medical officer of the Pakistan Army's 52nd battalion, Baloch Regiment, the regimental flag of which is still displayed upside down in the officers' mess of the unit as a prized possession.
