Facile, politically convenient insinuations on Biju Patnaik warrant a closer look at a difficult phase in India’s national security timeline, one where clear and present threats stood at odds with Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-alignment model.
The two clashed head on when China attacked India in 1962 and through this predicament emerged the ‘Biju Way’.
His was a strand of thinking that disrupted and questioned settled assumptions of the day, forcing Nehru to carve out a special corner for him as matters worsened. For a pilot, who had done numerous missions in WW-II including the most challenging flights over the ‘hump’ — a name allied pilots gave to the eastern end of the Himalayas — from Assam into China to reach supplies to Chang Kai-shek’s forces, Patnaik had a different, more aggressive approach to take on China.
