 |
| Saturday, February 5, 2000 |
|
 |
WITH the beating of the retreat at Vijay Chowk in New Delhi on January 29 every year, the Republic Day celebrations come to an end. This function is considered to be one of the best of its kind in the world where massed-bands, both brass and pipe, from the Army, Navy and the Air Force attired in colourful dresses, enthral a select gathering.
Though reveille and retreat have no significance for the battles of today, they are still sounded as a routine. The reveille announces the day-break when the flag is hoisted at the quarterguard and the retreat announces the cessation of the day-time activities at sunset when the flag is lowered. There are several other bugle calls to pass certain orders in units such as officers’ call, JCOs’ call, havaldar majors’ call and so on. |
| The training centres of all arms and
services are authorised brass bands and most of them also
have pipe bands. Apart from this, almost all the infantry
battalions have pipe bands which are manned by their
medical platoons. The bands form part of the ceremonial
parades and other military functions. They also add
glamour to regimental dinner and guest nights, mess
parties, other social gatherings and sports’ events. The 14 Gorkha Training Centre, the only training centre in this region, located at Subathu, can boast of having one of the best brass bands in the Indian Army. This centre is the home of two regiments — 1 Gorkha Rifles and 4 Gorkha Rifles. Earlier 1 Gorkha Rifles had pipes and drums and in 1855, its strength was 32. Rulers of Tibet in the 19th century used to send their men to 1 Gorkhas at Dharamsala for training in band music. Colonel Hey inaugurated the pipe band of the 4 Gorkha Rifles in 1885. Its pipers were trained at Chamba by the 25th King’s own Scottish Borderers. There was a time when almost all officers were conversant with band music and they could tell the band-master if the band played a tune incorrectly or if the bands instruments were not properly tuned. Around the 70s, the officers started losing interest in bands. And a stage came when they could not distinguish one tune from the other, leave alone detecting any fault in the instruments. This resulted in the standard of bands declining over the years. Mercifully, corrective measures were adopted a couple of years ago to arrest the decline by creating a post of Inspector of Bands at each command headquarters. His job is to run short refresher courses for bands and supervise their training by visiting various units in the command. To improve the standard, band competitions have also been started among the bands of various units in each command. |
 |
 |
Military bands have a special significance
in a soldier’s life, for martial music is known to
have inspired soldiers during war-time. In the olden
days, battles used to commence at the sounding of
reveille in the morning and come to a halt at the
sounding of the retreat in the evening.