Bharat Rakshak

'Great Battles' by Vishnu Som, a tribute to the Indian soldier opened on NDTV on Sunday 19th June at 10 PM.Using very rare, hitherto unseeen footage of Indian troops in combat, the series attempts to portray the Jawan in all his glory, in this the 60th year of the end of World War 2 and the 40th Aniversary of the 1965 War.

The first episode featured the Italian Campaign of WW 2 with the focus being on the Battle of Monte Cassino. The second part was on the North African Campaign featuring the epochal Battle of Alamein.

Excellent stuff, with BRite Vishnu Som doing a great job, intermixing footage of actual combat with interviews with WW 2 vets.

The series will conclude with the Kargil War and the Battle for Tiger Hill, including within its spread the Burma Campaign,the 1st J&K War 1947-48,1962, 1965 and 1971.

Not to be missed !

Interviews with real veterans? wow... is there a chance of a repeat?

The repeats are on Sunday morning at 1130 hours. Maybe Vishnu can post some of the other timings too.

Apart from interviews , the video footages are not only very relevant but extremely good.

The video footage comes from recordings of actual combat scenes made by the authorities during WW 2. Never seen before, this film was discovered by Vishnu Som and his colleagues at NDTV.

Did they show a footage of Indian and German Soldiers breaking bread together after they called a momentary cease fire to retrieve their wounded. Footage I saw was germans offering Indian Soldiers chocolate and Indian Soldiers offering them Gur, chana, sharing cigrattes, taking pictures together, that lull only lasted for 4 hours, afterwards they were back at their job.

Well I hope someday soon MOD will release the real footage of Kargil war, I have seen some raw footage, man it was raw courage, just sheer raw courage of Indian Soldiers and Young officers. Some soldiers did freeze to death due to lack of warm clothing in the initial days of operations. Initial operations that were carried out in summer camo was murderous, someone should be held responsible for that.

Hi Guys ... its been a while since I have posted ...

Anyway .... here are a few more details on our series Great Battles ...

The series is based on never-before broadcast footage of Indian soldiers in action in North Africa, Italy, Burma, 1947-1948 and 1962. Some of the footage of the 1965, 1971, Kargil and Siachen episodes has aired in the past ... though there will be new inputs as well ...

The series has been my labour of love for the last year or so ... ever since I visited Monte Cassino and did a small episode on the battles there. Since then, I have re-visited Cassino and have collected the aforementioned footage to put together a much more comprehensive account of Cassino. I have also been to El-Alamein where we filmed extensively as well at the stunning memorial ... These two episodes have already aired and the episode on Burma airs on Sunday at 10pm on NDTV 24/7. . Sunday 10 pm is when we air fresh episodes once a week.

The following is the repeat schedule for the episode on El-Alamein:

Thursday: 5:30 pm IST
Saturday 10:10 am IST
Sunday 11:30 am IST.

This series would not have been possible without the active inputs of Mandeep Singh Bajwa whose knowledge of the history of the Indian Army exceeds mine by a long way ..

More details later ... Please be free to contact me ...

Vishnu Som
Spl Correspondent
NDTV

vishnu@ndtv.com

You can get the video here..
Honoring the heroes of Monte Cassino
I think the rate is about $5 per month. The preview video quality is pretty bad, it's only 100K.

Vishnu - put everything on a DVD after showing the stuff on TV. I'll be one of your first customers. Good job !

it will be gr8 if sum one cud post each episodes..cant wait till all episodes r finished...pls guys....hope some one will do it....

Vishnu,

Thanks for the details on the reruns - will definitely catch the show.

It would be a start if NDTV can start offering its programs for sale like other channels do in the US. I will definitely buy this series!

Please suggest to the NDTV Top Brass about offering the episodes on tapes/dvds on a comercial basis.

Mandeep - I think this show deserves some publicity on SAGongs - dont you think?

regards

Jagan

With India's pathetic civilizational record of documenting and transmitting history - Vishnu Som's effort must not go waste.

I strongly urge Vishnu to ask if these episodes can be put on sale to the general public on a commercial CD/DVD. That would save us the trouble of doing what will inevitably be done - i.e. recording the episodes and distribution for private circulation.

Believe me ... there is nothing more that I would like to do other than sell this series on a commerical basis ... My goal ... indeed NDTV's goal in this series ... is to spread the word ... on what is an almost entirely forgotten chapter of our history.

Unfortunately, there are riders ... We share joint copyright with the Defence Ministry and we will need to moot the idea of joint sales of this ... All this will take time ... perhaps months ... I am presently swamped with work on the episodes ... but this is something I have in mind ... and I will do at a later stage. For the moment ... catch the episodes ... remember, Sunday 10 pm on NDTV 24/7 ...

More later ... perhaps even the story on how we actually located the archive footage ...

Cheers
Vishnu Som

Honoring the heroes of Monte Cassino

Did anyone else try this link? If the link does not work, go to the ndtv site and then browse from there to the Monte Cassino video. It is under exclusives. I found the streaming video quality to be very low.

For now, can someone in India record the show at high quality and put it up as a bitorrent ? When the DVD with all the episodes, we can buy it and that should take care of the copyright issue. There's a greater public good to served here and if NDTV can't provide high quality streaming videos of these episodes due to bandwith limitations, it's probably ethical that we get to see them using a bitorrent.

This is a terrific move by Mr.Som and also by the folks at NDTV. I always considered the people who took part in WW1 n WW2 as our unsung heroes, and always tried to make a point regarding that. It enrages me when other Indians fail to recognize their contributions. Almost all the nations who fought had a direct stake in the conflict but not India, not many europens also known abt them. Some time back when I pointed to an Italian friend of mine abt the Messina campaing he was utterly surprised. I hope that sometime in the near future History channel will also air something similar. Its never too late to narrate one's forgotten history. My sincere wishes to the people who contributed to the project.

India may not have direct stake but if not for WW2 britian would not have let their "crown jewel" go from their hands.

If you read yogananda or Aurobindo they say that one of the effects of WW2 would be countires would gain independence from Colonial rule. This was predicated while the war was going on..

to Dr shiv's point

Someday ought to start a channel similar to hisoty channel in US or for that matter history international, in India so that future generations won't lose memories of thier civilisation. Trust me it will be have hardcore fan base (all the BR jongos and lurkers) plus occasional viewers.

I think this is the step in right direction. Kudos to Vishnu som and all other NDTV folks.

may be that now Ajay shukla aka arjun killer/T-Tank lover left NDTV we might see more of these in future.

OK folks.

Put your money where your mouth is and RECORD these programs. I will try and do exactly that but depending on one guy is no good.

Just a reminder for the people in India to try and record this program.

thanks.

Vishnu is kind as always. I'm happy I contributed a little bit to his series.It was entirely a labour of love for me too and reflects my admiration, respect and love for the Indian Jawan.

Vishnu deserves kudos for making the programme and so well too !

Dude he is very much there and hosts a program called foreign correspondent/special correspondent something...

Looking forward to the Kargil episodes and some interviews with actual combatants which were not available at that time

Vishnu - do you have some good footage ofUS bombing in afganistan

Interference from Wimbledon mixed doubles finals ensured that I got only the latter half of last night's program.

Dammit, I cant believe i have missed all the shows till date, what was the recent episode about?

Vishnu,

Would it be possible for NDTV to provide some airtime/coverage/attention to the new Bharat Rakshak book on the 1965 air war (co-authored by the IAF site webmasters)?

www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Books

Please do let Jagan or myself know.

Thanks,
Samir

I have the last two and they are real keepers. I am requesting .. no .begging that someone else should also record these in case I miss one or two. I will make a VCD/DVD at the end for private distribution.

Hi Guys ... The repeat timings for the 1962 episode of Great Battles ... what I consider the best episode so far ... is as follows ....

1. Thursday 5:30 pm
2. Saturday 10:30 am
3. Sunday 11 am.

The next fresh episode is on the 1947-1948 war (The Battle for Zoji Pass) which features some colour footage of tanks on the Zoji La ...

Thanks
Vishnu

Hi Guys ... The repeat timings for the 1962 episode of Great Battles ... what I consider the best episode so far ... is as follows ....

1. Thursday 5:30 pm
2. Saturday 10:30 am
3. Sunday 11 am.

The next fresh episode is on the 1947-1948 war (The Battle for Zoji Pass) which features some colour footage of tanks on the Zoji La ... That episode airs on Sunday at 10 pm

Thanks
Vishnu

I saw the 1962 episode today...good stuff. Very informative and somewhat emotional.

Don't forget to get the program tonite folks.

Thanks for the heads-up Shiv.

Thats what i have been doing.Reminding non-jingo folks to watch it over SMS.Hopefully a few would convert.

I finally managed to catch the episode of the show, and I should say WOW, WOW WOW!

What great footage! and some of it in COLOUR!! I couldn't believe my eyes. Hats off to Vishnu , NDTV , the MoD and whoever was involved in unearthing such rare footage.Some of the BW footage I have seen earlier, the Skardu raid clip in the IAF site was from a film made in that era.. But it was great to see the men in action... Gen Thimayya, Shri nagesh, Sparrow and hear thier voices too..

The accompanying snippets by veterans provided some more color to the narrative, but its the rare footage that steals the show.

Finally i learnt the connection between Mr. Serbjeet Singh and the battle of zoji la, i always wondered how he ended up authoring the book on that battle (never read it) Now I know!

This show definitely deserves an A!!

I now have about 60-70 minutes from 3 shows - enough to make a VCD for private distribution and sharing.
I urge people to record future episodes - they are too precious to be lost as electromagnetic radiation just in case I miss one of them - as I did the first episode.

Vishnu Some deserves to be commended for doing, like Jagan - what Indians are no good at - i.e. recording history. The interviews of people he has done are unique and absolutely precious. In a few years some of those peope may be gone forever. We must now do our bit and preserve this.

Two minor whines - the color scenes are fabulous - but often change to monochrome for "effect". Perhaps that was done where the color had faded.

The second whine is not a whine at all - because it seems to have changed as of last night.

The advertisements in the show are Indian army recruitment ads some of which I am retaining in my recording. But I must admit I was irritated that some of the other ads featured Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar. I am not that much of a sportsman. I was relieved to see that they did not appear yesterday.

I had to spend 3 hours re-encoding the my earlier recordings to remove Pakis from appearing alongside India army recruitment ads and Indian war history footage

Shiv could you share the recorded video by uploading it on to http://www.megaupload.com/

you can upload up to 500MB on to it.

or u can use Azureus to seed it as a torrent using its decentralized torrent seeding feature. we can create our little private torrent network.

Edited: message noted shiv

I am not Siva and I refuse to upload 600 MB anywhere. I am willing to send a CD to someone who may want to do that after I have made the CD

Oh - and Praveen please don;t quote the entire message with your reply.

Vishnu - the episode on zozila was super and out of the world . I did read about the tanks being made to climb 10000+ ft but never could visualise the type of terrain they had to negotiate . Could not get up for the entire duration of the episode including the ads for fear of missing out

interestingly there was a documentary on DD national on the 47-48 war on the same night. It had footage of the air war too with intercepts.etc, wonder why that didn't feature in NDTV.

I think DD were trying to pre-empt NDTV. But in th eevent I had my hardware set up and recorded half the DD program - which had a repeat of Jagan's Skardu raid video

Hey I missed that episode. Shiv garu, keep a copy for me please. I need a better clear version of it than the one i have on site (But then it may not be usable due to the news ticker and logo and all.. but worth keeping a copy anyway)

Jagan

Jagan garu the skardu raid thing was on DD - so no news ticker.

But also jai adobe premiere pro - so no news ticker in the NDTV recording either.

Video onleeeee

The AIS Glass ad is a good surrogate one coz it shows Shoaib Chucktar clearly and explicitly chucking yet again.