Rawalpindi nuclear attack scenario

Posted by Shiv on Bharat-Rakshak Forum, a scenario about the effects of a 50 kiloton nuclear bomb attack on Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan.

Rawalpindi is dense housing. When you use a nuke you have to plan to cause the maximum pain and must select the most highly populated areas. 50 kilotons is proven and undisputed Indian capability in warheads that are light enough to be delivered by any and every of the delivery vehicles that India has, and Rawalpindi is within range of all of them, and is certain to get hit the day Pakistan launches any nuclear attack on an Indian entity. It is also small enough to reduce the likelihood of fallout reaching India.

The town has a population of about 700,000 and a population density of nearly 25,000 people per sq km. The streets of Rawal town are narrow with contiguous lines of poorly built old brick and mortar buildings or newer concrete constructions on either side. Most are two to three stories tall. Typically the first floor has a front balcony or verandah that is enclosed by a decorative (and highly inflammable) wood and glass frontage. Rawalpindi is home to some fabulous open air markets selling everything from food, to silk. The streets in these markets are seething with people, and the street vendors often use a highly inflammable plastic or canvas sheet as a sun shade.



A 50 kt bomb exploding causes intense flash of heat that melts ceramic and granite for a radius of about a kilometer below the point of explosion. This is followed by a devastating pressure wave that will destroy all concrete structures for a radius of about 2 km. From 2 to 4 km almost every building is brought down, if not severely damaged. In the central zone - winds of up to 800 kmph follow the blast. Even 4 km way there are winds of 400 kmph blasting glass into small shards and that find their way into people who survive a collapsed building. Even beyond the 4 km zone - people who have faces and other parts of the body exposed to the flash will develop "flash burns". Some will go blind while others will require hospitalization for burns.

In general, when a nuclear bomb explodes over a populated area, the people who are killed immediately are affected both by blast and burns and are closest to the hypocenter or "ground zero" above which the bomb exploded. For a 50 kiloton blast this area extends up to a radius of 2 km from the hypocenter. In the outer radius all buildings will be crushed burying people within them instantly. Many of the injured in this zone will additionally suffer radiation sickness adding to mortality. The decorated wooden frontages of buildings and the sun covers of street vendors, and gas cylinders and lamps will all catch fire instantly.

a single 50 kiloton blast over a crucial populated area of Rawalpindi will kill over 400,000 people and leave a similar number injured. This amounts to about 25% of the population of Rawalpindi. 250,000 injured people is a huge number. Many will go a few hundred meters or a few km and collapse on the road, with a huddle of relatives around them not knowing what to do. There is absolutely no chance of a city like Islamabad/Rawalpindi of handling 35 to 40,000 cases of flash burns simultaneously from a total of 350,000 injured people with all sorts of injuries. No country in the world can do that.

I believe Pakistani leaders who wish to start a nuclear war with India will have to consider very carefully what they are asking for, and remember that they will probably survive the Indian retaliation, and will emerge from their nuclear bunkers to live in a country such as what I have described above. They will then have to see how long they can continue to live under such circumstances or which country will accept them as refugees if they want to cut and run, after having started a nuclear war. Read More......

Prithviraj Vijay military and polity

The Prithviraj Vijay is a contemporary account of the 12th century Kingdom of Ajmer ruled by the Chauhan clan. In 1192 outlying portions of the kingdom fell to invading Turks, and the capital Ajmer later in 1195, but other parts under the Chauhan Rajaputras continued to resist the invaders for more than a century. The text helps to dispel many myths from that period, that have developed in later writings, for example the establishment of a Sufi shrine in Ajmer. Mythological accounts of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti state that he came to Ajmer and had conflicts with its ruler and people prior to the Turk conquest. But the author of the Prithviraj Vijay, who lived at the court of Ajmer from as far back as 1178, does not know of any such Sufi saint, much less of his "conflict" with the powerful ruler!

This blog post shall describe only the political and military details provided in the manuscript; the wealth and splendour in the Prithviraj Vijay is described elsewhere. Since the manuscript is in Sanskrit, the title should be phonetically spelled Prithviraja Vijaya, with a 'short a' at the end of both words for emphasis.

The manuscript, written on birch-bark, was discovered in 1875 by Dr. Bühler in Kashmir. The language was Sanskrit and the script Sharada. Sadly the manuscript is incomplete and mutilated; the lower portions of most of the bark leaves are gone, and of the twelve sargas (cantos) contained in the Prithviraj Vijay not one is complete. The author's name is also missing but he is believed to be a Kashmiri Pandit who lived at the court of Prithviraj Chauhan, for the following reasons:

1. Two other Kashmiri authors, Jonaraja and Jayarath quote from the Prithviraj Vijay in their works.
2. The writing style resembles that of another Kashmiri writer, Bilhana.
3. The land of Kashmir is praised.
4. The twelfth sarga records the entry of Jayanak, a Kashmiri poet, into the court of Ajmer.

Therefore this Jayanak is widely accepted as being the author of the work. The manuscript, in its description of the historical background of the Chauhan clan, clearly states that they were Suryavanshi. In much later times the Agnikula legend was created to glorify several Rajput clans, the Chauhans included, and European writers seized on that late legend to claim that many of these clans were "foreigners" purified by the Agnikula ritual. But the Prithviraj Vijay negates that absurd claim.



The Sambhar Lake, located north-east of Ajmer, as viewed from an isolated hillock. Named after the titular Goddess of the Chauhan Rajputs, Shakambari Devi, it is one of the largest inland saline depressions and makes Rajasthan the third largest producer of salt in India. At the base of this hillock is the temple of Shakambari Devi. The early history of the Chauhan clan revolves around this lake and town, which was an important commercial center in Ancient India.

The manuscript says that Vakpatiraju I had a large force of cavalry and was called " the enveloper in darkness from the dust raised by the heels of his horsemen."

The sixth sarga of the manuscript contains an account of Arnoraja, the grandfather of Prithviraj. Arnoraja completely vanquished the Mussalmans who had come via the desert, where for want of water they had to drink the blood of horses. Large numbers of them in heavy armour were killed by the heroes of Ajmer. The victory was celebrated with great elation, and in order to purify the place where the Mussalmans had fallen, the king constructed a lake called Ana Sagar after himself. These would probably be the Ghaznavi Turks of Lahore, but the text itself shows that they managed to reach Ajmer before they were vanquished.

Sadly Arnoraja was murdered by his eldest son, who seized the throne, and consequently the youngest son Somesvara was brought away to his maternal grandfather's Kingdom of Gujarat. Somesvara fought in the Gujarat army's campaign in the Konkan and was married to the daughter of the Kalachuri ruler of Tripuri, near Jabalpur in MP. Two sons, Prithviraj and Hariraj, were born to him.

Meanwhile his second brother Vigrahraja IV overthrew the elder parricide and ruled Ajmer till his death. He expanded the Chauhan kingdom to the foot of the Himalayas and came into conflict with the Mussalmans (Ghaznavi Turks) ruling from Lahore. Vigrahraj's family was overthrown by the parricide's son, Prithvibhatta, who defeated the Muslims on the banks of the Sutlej and captured a city named Panchpattan there.

After his death Somesvara was invited by the Ajmer ministers to ascend the throne. When Prithviraja was still a child his father passed away, and the state was administered by his mother Karpuridevi, the minister Kadambavasa and the general Bhuvanik Malla. The latter defeated the Nagavamshis of Central India.

The tenth sarga says that when Prithviraja attained manhood, several Princesses began to desire to marry him. An early military exploit by the young Prithivraj was the suppression of a rebellion by his cousin Nagarjuna, the son of Vigrahraja. Without taking Kadambvasa or Bhuvanik Malla with him, Prithviraj started with a large army of horsemen, infantry, elephants, and camels to attack Nagarjuna, and captured Gudpura from him. He brought to Ajmer the wife and the mother of Nagarjuna, and placed the heads of his enemies on the battlements of the fort of Ajmer.

The manuscript next describes the conflict with the Turk ruler of Ghor. "The land of the North-West where horses abound, the beef-eating mlechha, named Ghori, who had captured Garjani (Ghazni) hearing that Prithviraja had vowed to exterminate the mlechhas, sent an ambassador to Ajmer. This man had a wide forehead, but no hair on his head. The colour of his beard, eyebrows, and the eyelashes was of the grapes that come from Ghazni, and his speech was like that of wild birds ; it had no cerebrals. His complexion was like that of a leper, and he wore a long choga." The pages following this eyewitness account are missing but this seems to have occurred in 1178 when Muhammad Ghori invaded Gujarat, sacking Nadol and Kiradu on the way. The manuscript continues, "When these fiends in the shape of men took possession of Nadol, the warriors of Prithviraja took up their bows and the emperor became angry and resolved to lay Ghori's glory to dust."

In the eleventh sarga, the minister Kadambvasa says that just as Sundh and Upsundh destroyed each other for the sake of Tilotma, so the enemy will ruin himself by his desire to possess the emperor's wealth. The minister has not finished when the guard announced the arrival of a messenger from Gujrat with a letter. Hearing this, the Bharatesvara (the emperor of India) ordered him to be called in. The chamberlain presented the messenger, who informed Prithviraja that the king of Gujrat has utterly routed the Ghori forces. On hearing of the rout of the Ghori forces, Prithvibhatta, the chief of the bards submitted to the emperor that he must rejoice that he has got such a minister as Kadambvasa, for Ghori has been destroyed without any imperial effort.

The twelfth sarga provides autobiographical details of Jayanak and the reason why he left his native Kashmir. But here the manuscript tantalizingly and very abruptly ends, as the last page is too damaged to read. The very name of the poem, "Prithviraja Vijaya," shows that it was composed to celebrate the victories of Prithviraja, the most important of which was the great victory of Tarain near Thaneshwara in 1191 CE. Therefore it is believed that the author was at Ajmer at least till 1191. From the writings of Jonaraja, who lived in the 15th century, it becomes clear that the Prithviraj Vijay was at that time widely known and popular, but was subsequently lost and erased from memory till its rediscovery in Kashmir centuries later. In the popular memory the story of Prithviraj Chauhan was derived from later texts like the Prithviraj Raso.
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Princely States' contribution to the Indian Army

The first Indian officers, recruited into the Indian Army under the British in 1905, came from aristocratic families. They were Zorawar Singh of Bhavnagar Princely State, Wali-ud-din Khan of Paigah in Hyderabad, Kanwar Amar Singh of Kanota in Jaipur, and Aga Kassim Shah nephew of the Aga Khan. Although enjoying internal autonomy, the princely states were not completely disconnected from the changes occurring in British India. Their military forces in particular mirrored the organization of the Indian Army, and after Independence, were merged into the infantry and cavalry regiments of that army on the basis of their common recruitment areas.

The cavalry unit shown above, the Bhavnagar Imperial Service Lancers, depict the modern, lightly armed, and compact cavalry formations introduced by the East India Company (EIC). Most of the princely states could not afford to maintain such cavalry units, and fewer still had artillery units, but all of them had some form of infantry.

Eastern India

The EIC troops predominantly comprised soldiers recruited from Eastern India till the 1857 revolt. Subsequently recruitment for the Indian Army was shifted to Northern and Western India. The Eastern States Agency comprised princely states like Cooch Behar (in West Bengal), Mayurbhanj (in Orissa), Tripura in the North-East, Surguja (in Chhattisgarh), and many others. These states had very modest-sized armies, but some of them also contributed men and material to the Imperial Service Troops. For example Manipur sent a double company of Manipuri soldiers and a corps of labourers to take part in WWI, while the 1st Tripura Bir Bikram Manikya Rifles and the Tripura Mahabir Legion were part of the Burma campaign in 1943.

During the Second World War, the Bihar Regiment was raised to recruit men from Eastern India, and the Assam Regiment to take in men from the North-East. However after Independence they did not absorb any of the state forces units from their respective regions. The small armies of all these princely states in Eastern India were simply disbanded. Communist and other militant movements in these parts claim to have taken recruits and arms from some of these disbanded armies.

Southern India

Another point of expansion for the British power was Southern India, centering around the Madras Presidency. Initially local troops were recruited into the EIC forces here, but later stress was placed on getting soldiers from Northern and Western India. Towards Independence only the Madras Regiment recruited its men from south of the River Krishna.

After independence, the infantry battalions of Mysore, Travancore, and Cochin princely states were amalgamated into the Madras Regiment. The 1st Travancore Nair Infantry, tracing it's origins to 1741 and the Battle of Colachel, became the 9th battalion of the Madras Regiment, while the 2nd Travancore Nair Infantry became the 16th battalion. An infantry battalion from the Cochin State Forces became the 17th battalion. The 1st battalion Mysore State Infantry formed the core of the 18th battalion, but men from the other two battalions of the State Forces were also amalgamated.

There were other princely states scattered across the northern part of the Indian Peninsula, but in terms of size and population the largest was Hyderabad. Despite the agreement on Partition, Pakistan and elements in Britain encouraged Hyderabad princely state to chase the mirage of an independent existence, leading to conflict with India. The Hyderabad State Forces had Deccani Muslims, Marathas, and mercenary Arabs in their ranks, but for the most part followed the recruiting pattern of the Indian Army, and comprised men from Northern India, Rajputs, Jats, Ahirs, and Kumaonis, the last of whom came to replace Hindustani Muslims.

Following the success of Operation Polo and the annexation of Hyderabad into the Indian Union, all the fifteen battalions of the Hyderabad State Forces were disbanded except for the 2nd Hyderabad Infantry. This unit traced its history to 1853 when it was raised by Raja Rameshwar Rao I of Wanaparthi estate in Hyderabad. It was re-designated as the 22nd battalion of the Maratha Light Infantry and became a part of the Indian Army. Volunteers from the other disbanded battalions also joined this unit, which carried the honours of Hyderabad, and still has a unit composition of 50% Muslim and 50% Maratha. Two other units of the Maratha Light Infantry came from princely states; the Kolhapur Rajaram Rifles became the 19th battalion, while the 20th battalion came from the Baroda State Forces, even though Baroda was in Gujarat.

Northern India

The sprawling plains of Punjab, merging into Delhi, and the rugged ranges of the Himalayas were the recruiting ground of the greater portion of the Indian Army. This region also had a number of princely states, of whom the biggest was J&K. The State Forces of Jammu and Kashmir, fought well and withstood many a siege, during the Pakistani invasion of J&K State and were hence merged wholesale as a distinct regiment, the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, into the Indian Army.

The armies of the Sikh princely states of Patiala, Faridkot, Nabha, Kapurthala, and Jind were raised by the founders of these states in the 18th century. The 1st Jind Infantry became the 13th battalion of the Punjab Regiment, the 1st Nabha Akal Infantry became the 14th, the 1st Patiala Rajinder Sikh Infantry became the 15th, and the 2nd Patiala Yadvinder Infantry became the 16th. The 1st Patiala was also involved in the J&K war, when Maharaja Hari Singh sought aid from Maharaja Yadavendra Singh, during the Pakistani invasion. They reached Jammu in November 1947, helping to disarm rioters, and later manning the lines of communication while the J&K army faced the Pakistani invaders.

The newly-created hill state of Uttarakhand east of the Yamuna River, is home to the Gharwali and Kumaoni soldiers. The only sizable princely state here was Tehri, and personnel from the Tehri Garhwal Field Company were merged into the 39th Garhwal Rifles.

Between J&K and Uttarakhand were numerous states like Chamba, Mandi, Suket, Rampur, and Sirmur, all part of the recruiting ground of the Dogra fighting class, which extended into the Jammu region of J&K State. After Independence, personnel from Chamba Infantry, Joginder Infantry (Mandi), Sirmur Rifles, and Suket Infantry became the 16th battalion of the Dogra Regiment.

Western and Central India

The biggest concentration of princely states was in modern Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. These states, particularly in Rajasthan, had indigenous breeds of horses and with their pre-dominantly cavalry forces maintained independence throughout the period of Islamic invasions into India. Infantry remained a neglected branch, but under British rule these states began fielding battalions drilled and organized along the lines of the Indian army. The entire region, stretching into Central India as well as North India, was the recruiting ground of the Rajput Regiment, the Rajputana Rifles, the Grenadiers Regiment, and the Jat Regiment.

The states of Gwalior and Indore were founded by Marathas but their armies came to be manned by North Indians like Kumaonis and Ahirs. After Independence the 4th Gwalior Infantry became the 14th Kumaon Regiment while the Indore Infantry was designated as 15th Kumaon. The Bhopal State Forces were recruited from among Punjabi Muslims and after Independence were disbanded. The princely states in Kutch and Saurashtra had an independent existence from the Gujarat plains, which were under British rule. Personnel of the Kutch State Forces and from the princely states in Saurasthra, were organized into the 7th Grenadiers. Saurashtra Infantry also became the 18th Rajputana Rifles. The Sawai Man Guards of Jaipur State, was engaged in fighting in the J&K War, and became the 17th battalion of the Rajputana Rifles.

Mewar the greatest state in Rajputana contributed the 1st Mewar Infantry, which became the 9th battalion of the Grenadiers Regiment. A mounted unit from Bikaner State, the Ganga Risala (Bikaner Camel Corps), was amalgamated with the Jaisalmer Risala raised in 1948 and became the 13th Grenadiers. The Jodhpur Sirdar Infantry, the oldest battalion of the Indian Army tracing its history to the establishment of the Rathor clan in western Rajasthan circa 1212 CE, became the 20th battalion of the Rajput Regiment. The Bikaner Sadul Light Infantry became the 19th battalion.

The Ganga Risala, and other units of the Bikaner State Forces, march past Lord Linlithgow and Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner during the Viceroy's visit to the princely state in 1937.

The contribution of these princely states was not just in men and material; even before their amalgamation, many of these units were fighting in the J&K war or engaged in protecting the border and escorting refugees displaced by partition.
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