Name Kuldip Ludra | Role Armed force officer | |
Died February 12, 2008, Chandigarh Books The Pen Supports the Sword, Kargila Report | ||
Kuldip Ludra was born on 23 June 1935 at Lahore, to Prof Ram Kumar and his wife Shukla. The eldest of four children, Kuldip joined the Indian Army as an officer in 1954. He died on 12 Feb 2008 at Chandigarh.
Contents
In 1967, he married Veena Sawhney at Amritsar. They have three sons - Ajay, Anup and Ranvijay.
Army career
Having left school at Ludhiana in 1950 at the age of 15, Kuldip joined the Joint Services Wing (JSW) at Clement Town, Dehradun. He graduated from the Indian Military Academy, and on 6 June 1954 was commissioned in the Army Supply Corps. Kuldip was not comfortable in a non-combat service, and represented against it. He was shifted to the Corps of Artillery in 1955, and stayed a gunner officer throughout. His first unit was 2(Derajat) Mountain battery (Frontier Force), the senior most Piffer unit in the Indian Army. The battery was a part of 22 Mountain Regiment, the Corps D'Elite of the Indian Army. He was the brigade major of an artillery brigade from August 1965 to March 1968. He was later the general staff officer grade II of a corps artillery prigade from February 1972 to June 1975. He took part in the 1962 Operations as an observation post officer, at Bomdila near Tawang. He was the second-in-command of the Heavy Regiment during the 1971 Operations at Tangdhar. Towards the later years, he commanded NCC units at Vishakhapatnam, Patiala and Kohlapur. He hung up his uniform on 30 June 1986, as a lieutenant colonel.
Post Retirement
After retiring in 1986 at Kohlapur, the family shifted from Patiala to Chandigarh, to the 'ancestral home' - at 1519, Sector 18D. Constructed in 1962, this house was always considered 'ancestral' as it was partly in compensation of assets left behind at Lahore, Pakistan during partition of India in 1947.
At heart still a fighter, Lt Col Kuldip Ludra settled down to a retired life by 1992, and took to writing books on the subjects closest to his heart - India's National Security. In the nearly two decades after his maiden effort, Lt Col Ludra churned out a total of twenty-four books - mostly researches, using the media as fodder, and his understanding and vision as catalyst.
In the process of research and writing, Lt Col Ludra also taught briefly at the Faculty of Military Studies at Punjab University, Chandigarh as a Guest Speaker. He collaborated with Maj Gen Rajinder Singh (Retd) to form the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (ISRA), headquartered at Chandigarh.
Trivia
The first book's manuscript was type-written on his personal Remington Rand typewriter. Not much of a typist, he dabbled with one finger of each hand to "search and strike" the letters - a very patient and pains-taking process to type out a whole book. Soon he acquired his first personal computer, an Intel-386 which saw him through most of the manuscripting.
Work Credits
All works are published by the Institute of Strategic Research and Analysis. The list of works, in chronological order, with the year of publication of the first edition, revised edition (if any), and the list price is tabulated:-
- Understanding War: It's Implications and Effects, 1991, $60
- Pakistan: India's Bete Noire, 1997, $100
- Operation Pawan, 1998, $40
- India Besieged, 1998, $120
- The Defence of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, 2000, $60
- The Serpent Strikes, 2002, $75
- China - The Dragon across the Mountains, 2004, $105