Chennai: Lieutenant General Bobby Mathews, the much decorated Commandant of the Officers' Training Academy (OTA) here, is hanging up his uniform today. Four decades of illustrious service in the Indian Army had taken him to several hard and sensitive assignments before crowning him with the leadership of the OTA in October 2015. Officers at the Academy rave about the 'substantial metamorphosis' that OTA has undergone both in substance and form, and reel out a long list of improvements and additions under his charge.
An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasala, Lt. Gen Bobby Mathews holds a M.Phil in strategic studies from the Madras University. He has held numerous important commands, staff and instructional assignments, besides having the rare distinction of doing six tenures in the most prestigious training institutions in the Indian Army. He had commanded a Mountain Brigade in the Eastern Theatre and was the commander of the Mumbai sub-area during the terror attack in November 2008. He has had the privilege of commanding the only Desert Corps of the Indian Army during 2013-14.
The general found some time between his final lap of classes to the gentlemen cadets (GCs) and farewell speeches to the staff to share some thoughts with Deccan Chronicle in his well-appointed office. “People of Chennai, and of Tamil Nadu, should take pride in OTA here. This is a very unique military training academy. Our Drill Square where the passing-out parade is held is the best in the world. We are the only academy training women cadets in Indian Army”, starts off the general, adding that OTA also has a high percentage of foreign cadets getting trained -there are 37 in the present batch out of a total of about 600.
“We have been preserving our heritage buildings as good as new. For instance, our officers' mess is about 201 years old, the White House is some 150 years old, and so on. Yet you will see them maintained so well. We want that OTA should be known not only for the achievements and laurels of the officers it produces but also its heritage”, says the general.Speaking of the laurels and decorations of its alumnus, he mentions Maj. Parameswaran who was given Param Vir Chakra besides any number of officers who had won Ashok Chakras, Shourya Chakras and so on. And Ashok Chakra awardee Mukund Varadarajan was not only an OTA alumnus but also a Chennaiite. “We churn out only a fourth of the Indian Army intake from here at OTA but if you see the percentage of the awards and achievements of our alumnus, we are truly proud”, he says.
Asked about the emerging challenges posed by the increasing threat of terror that has gone hi-tech, the general said, “Our training is not just about weapons and battle technology; it is about training the head to react to a situation - react quickly and effectively to neutralise it. You may have the best systems but the chances of avoiding (terror attack) 100 per cent are not there anywhere, not even in the US. And so, what do we do? We train the heads to react fast to neutralise it.” The general had an interest analysis on how logic does not actually work in the Army. “Everything in Army cannot be analysed purely on logic. You cannot say this is how it works in civil life and so why can't it work the same way in the Army. Some fool says why honour a soldier who died in an operation when you don't do that to a fireman dying at work. It's not about just dying but about voluntarily giving up your life for the country. We are the only mandated force for that; how can you compare us with anybody else?”
Asked why we continue to import weapons at such huge cost whereas China is way ahead of even the US in making weapons, the general said that was because the Chinese were denied technology by the US and the Russian technology was not good enough. “So they went ahead and made the best themselves”, he said, explaining that since India found the easy option of importing, it went ahead with that. But things have been changing these last couple of years, he insisted, pointing to the Dhanush missile.
