Story of Jaswant Singh and Sela in Arunachal

This one is a tale of love and bravery redefined. Those were some ice-cold chilly times and only the sound of bullets pierced through the moisture-laden heavy winds in the alpine ranges of the North-Eastern frontiers. That atmosphere gave birth to one of the little-known spine-chilling finest moment of love and bravery in India.

The Indo-China battle is nearing its end and the result almost visible to everyone with the Chinese hovering in the alpine ranges of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and the Indian troops withdrawing in the face of the Chinese onslaught but one man hasn't still lost hope.

There is a particular kind of cold that settles into a mountain valley in the third week of November, the kind that makes bootlaces stiffen and breath hang in the air like smoke from a fire nobody lit. In 1962, that cold sat over a ridge near a village called Nuranang in what was then the North East Frontier Agency, a place so far from the capitals making decisions about it that the war being fought here often felt like an afterthought to the rest of the country. It was not an afterthought to the men holding the line.

The ridge that would not fall

By the third week of the Sino Indian War of 1962, the position along the eastern front had turned grim. Chinese forces had crossed deep into Arunachal Pradesh, Tawang had already fallen, and Indian units were pulling back toward Tezpur in the plains of Assam under orders that made painful sense on paper and almost none on the ground. Retreat meant survival for a larger force. It also meant leaving behind a narrow bridge and a ridge at Nuranang that commanded the only practical route the Chinese advance could take toward the rest of the valley.

The 4th Battalion of the Garhwal Rifles had been given the job of holding that bridge for as long as possible. On the morning of 17 November 1962, three separate waves of Chinese assault broke against the Garhwali position, backed by a medium machine gun that had crept close enough to rake the Indian trenches with accurate fire. Two waves were thrown back. It was during the third and heaviest push that most of the defenders received orders to fall back with the rest of the retreating force.

Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat chose not to go.

He was as cunning as the obstructions in the opposite side and with the help of his beloved Sela, single-handedly fought the Chinese soldiers for 3 days by actually fooling them. He is none other than the brave martyr Jaswant Singh Rana.

Jaswant Singh On October 20, 1962, Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rana of 4 Garhwal Rifles, laid down his life in the battle of Nuranang and was later awarded the Mahavir Chakra. Sela was a local girl who loved Jaswant but her father didn't approve of it.

What followed was one man deciding to be the last survivor of a small, stubborn unit refusing to abandon a position that the entire Chinese advance needed to pass through, because he understood, in the plain arithmetic of a soldier, that every extra hour bought here was an hour the retreating Indian forces further down the valley did not have to fight for.

Three nights, one man, many guns

What Jaswant Singh built over the following three days was less a defence than an illusion, engineered with almost nothing. He set up a trench on the high ground overlooking the river approaches the Chinese would have to use, and instead of holding a single firing position, he distributed rifles and light machine guns across several points along the ridge. He rigged some of the triggers with cord so they could be fired from a distance, sprinted between positions in the dark to fire from each in turn, and varied the rhythm of his shooting so that no two bursts sounded like they came from the same weapon.

Jaswant Singh was at an advantageous position on a hilltop overlooking the two river valleys. He positioned himself in a long trench and placed a few guns in different directions and tied the shutters with ropes and randomly fired from them. The Chinese had come through the river route, who thought that the Indian army had a huge Indian battalion at different locations, so they didn't move forward, whereas he was just alone.

To a Chinese reconnaissance patrol listening from the valley floor, the ridge sounded like it was defended by a full company, not one exhausted rifleman running on cold rations and no sleep. The advance stalled. Local tradition places the toll of that stalled advance at roughly three hundred Chinese casualties over the three days, a figure passed down through regimental lore rather than an official after action report, and it is worth reading as testimony to how effective the deception was rather than as a verified body count.

None of this would have been sustainable without help, and this is where the second half of the legend, the half that gives Sela Pass its name, begins.

Sela and Nura, the sisters of Nuranang

Two young Monpa women from the area around Nuranang, sisters named Sela and Nura, began making the dangerous walk between their village and Jaswant Singh's trench, carrying food, water and fresh ammunition through terrain that was actively being shelled. They helped him move between firing points, kept his makeshift arsenal loaded, and by every account that has survived, did so entirely on their own initiative rather than under any military order. Local memory holds that Sela had grown close to Jaswant Singh in the months before the war reached their door, an attachment her father did not approve of.

During the 3 days great heroics, Sela used to carry ammunition from the army camp along with food and water to Jaswant. Jaswant Singh was the only one who decided to stay back when the Indian troops retreated from Nuranang. With the help of his beloved Sela, he managed to stay off the enemy advance for 72 hours. Sela helped him in loading the guns and bringing him meals.

The betrayal

The Chinese did not realize that the Indian Army had retreated till Jaswant Singh was betrayed by the girl’s father, who went over to the other side to inform the Chinese troops of the actual position in the Indian side, due to the disliking of his daughter's intentions. The invaders then surrounded his positioned and captured him. He was tied to a tree and strangled with an iron wire and beheaded.

The bust that came back from China

The Chinese cut off Jaswant Singh's head and took it back to China and after the ceasefire, the Chinese government, impressed by the soldier's bravery, returned the head along with a brass bust of Jaswant Singh, as a memento for his sharp wit.

The bust, created in China to honor the brave Indian soldier, is now installed at the site of the battle, a location now known as Jaswant Garh, en route to Tawang. In the meantime, the soldiers found out Sela also, after which she jumped from a hillock in her agony when she understood the fate of her beloved.

Baba Jaswant, the soldier who still wakes at 4.30 am

What makes Jaswant Garh genuinely unlike any other war memorial in India is not the museum cabinet of medals and photographs, though those exist too. It is that the Indian Army has never treated Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat as a name on a plaque. Soldiers of the Garhwal Rifles posted at the memorial maintain his room as though he still occupies it. His bed is made every morning. His uniform is washed and pressed. His boots are polished and set beside the bed. Tea is brought to his room at four thirty each morning, breakfast at nine, dinner at seven in the evening, on a schedule kept without exception for more than sixty years.

For a unit stationed at nearly ten thousand feet in one of the most exposed sectors on India's northeastern border, caring for Baba Jaswant, as he is affectionately known, functions as a quiet daily reminder of what a single soldier's refusal to retreat once meant for everyone behind him on that ridge.

A pass, a lake, a waterfall and now a tunnel

The most visible legacy of this story is written directly onto the map of Tawang district. Sela Pass, the high mountain crossing at roughly thirteen thousand seven hundred feet that every traveller heading to Tawang must cross, carries Sela's name, as does Sela Lake near its summit, one of a group of lakes considered sacred within Tibetan Buddhist tradition in the region. Nuranang Falls, a dramatic waterfall visible from the road not far from the memorial, is also known locally as Jang Falls and is remembered by many as carrying Nura's name, the quieter of the two sisters whose part in the story is so often left out entirely.

Visiting Jaswant Garh and Sela Pass today

Jaswant Garh sits close to Nuranang village, roughly twenty two to twenty five kilometres from Tawang town depending on the route taken, and is a near mandatory stop for anyone travelling the Tezpur to Tawang road. The memorial itself is small, a white temple like structure holding Jaswant Singh's uniform, cap, belt, watch, personal letters and the bronze bust, along with a marble plaque listing the men of his battalion who died in the wider battle. Most travellers combine it with a stop at nearby Nuranang Falls and the crossing of Sela Pass itself, where the newly opened tunnel now offers an alternative route during the harshest winter weeks when the pass above still closes.

The Sela Pass, world's second highest pass at 14,000 feet, is a symbol of love and courage and named after this brave girl. For the soldiers guarding the frozen Sela Pass, Jaswant baba, as was popularly called, continues to be a source of life and inspiration.

There is a particular quality to standing at that ridge today, with the pass behind you and the tunnel entrance visible somewhere below in the valley, that no photograph fully carries home. The wind still moves through Nuranang the way it must have on that November night, indifferent to the decades between then and now, and somewhere inside the small white memorial, a soldier's tea is going slightly cold, waiting for a man who never really left.