When the women of Bhuj fixed a runway: During 1971 war, 72 hours of courage

Indian Express

4 days ago

A grainy black and white photograph published over 50 years ago in Kutchmitra, a vernacular newspaper in Gujarat, is proof that courage and determination have no shape, size or form. It shows a group of women in chaniya-cholis waiting next to a concrete mixer.
The photograph, proof of a singular act of courage, was from 1971, when nearly 300 women from a nearby village worked 12 hours each for three days to repair the 4-km airstrip at the Bhuj air base, rendered unusable after heavy bombing by the Pakistan Air Force on the intervening night of December 8-9, 1971.
Though the base had been bombed on December 4, 1971, too, the attack on the intervening night of December 8-9 had sent the labourers hired for repairs running for their lives. Later on December 9, women from Madhapar village, around 5 km from Bhuj, turned up at the base to 'save the country'.
During his visit to Bhuj on May 26 this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had greeted the virangnaas (brave women) from Madhapar village for their bravery during the third India-Pakistan War, which lasted around 15 days and culminated in the creation of Bangladesh.
Madhapar's Kanbai Shivji Hirani, 80, was among these volunteers. Inside her two-room house in the village, a showcase is overflowing with memento trophies acknowledging her act of bravery 54 years ago. 'There were three holes — as big as my house — on the airstrip (in 1971), along with several smaller ones,' she tells The Indian Express.
In her early 20s in 1971, Kanbai recalls brushing aside protests from her husband and mother-in-law after she informed them about her resolve to help rebuild the airstrip.
At the time of these bombings, the air base was under the command of then 30-year-old Commander Vijay Karnik. One of the youngest officers to command an air base in India, he had joined the Air Force in March 1962 and retired in 1993 as Wing Commander.
He says repairing the runway after the December 4 attack proved to be more challenging than anticipated. He says work on the tarmac had started, but the December 9 bombings made the workers flee.
'I approached the local administration for help but was told that the labourers had refused to return to the base. Having seen women of all ages work as construction labourers, then Kutch Collector (N Gopalaswami), the sarpanch and I turned to the local leaders for help,' Wg Cdr Karnik (retd), 86, says.
N Gopalaswami, the former Chief Election Commissioner who now lives in Chennai, told The Indian Express, 'I informed the sarpanch that getting men from far away would be difficult. Within two hours, he managed to gather women for these repairs.'
As dawn broke on December 9, 1971, a vehicle deposited around 50 Madhapar women at the base. Though men, including Kanbai's husband, were also present at the tarmac while the women worked from 7 am to 7 pm for three days, she says they were there 'only to shadow us and not to help'.
Sambai Karsan Khokhani, 83, says an Air Force officer told them about the damaged ranba (runway). 'It took us one whole day just to see the full ranba. We were scared at first but realised that if we don't repair it, no one else will.'
Bhavesh Bhudia, 33, a resident of Madhapar and a senior clerk with the Bhuj panchayat, says his maternal grandmother, Premibai Pancha Singhani, who was among the 300 volunteers, passed away at the age of 85 in 2024.
Jadavji Varsani, a trustee at the local Swaminarayan Temple who ran a groundnut oil mill nearby, was instrumental in inspiring these women to volunteer for the dangerous task.
In 1971, he says, Madhapar's Navavas area had around 500 houses and a small Swaminarayan Temple that had a siren. 'The village had just two landlines, including the one at my house. In case of danger, the Bhuj telephone exchange would call and say 'siren' thrice. I would sound the temple siren after that,' he says.
Having started working at the age of 18 as a small savings scheme agent, Varsani's contacts in the village helped him mobilise the women. 'Initially, I had to convince the women to do desh sewa (serve the nation). Other women joined soon. Refusing remuneration, they said, 'Humein desh ki sewa ka mauka mila hai. Iss se zyada aur kuch nahi chahiye (we have an opportunity to serve the nation and want nothing more)',' he says.
Kanbai, among the first lot, says 'nearly 250 more women' joined in the next day. The volunteers, says Wg Cdr Karnik (retd), turned up despite facing resistance from their families.
On their first day, the women turned up without food. Kanbai says they 'drank hot water' to quell hunger pangs. Wg Cdr Karnik (retd) discovered this the next day, when more women joined in. 'When we offered them food, they told us they cannot eat outside food as followers of the Swaminarayan movement,' he says.
Members of the Bhuj Swaminarayan Temple were informed. Soon, the locals collected jaggery, ghee and wheat to make sukhdi (a traditional Gujarati sweet) and chikki (peanut brittle) for the volunteers.
Wg Cdr Karnik (retd) said the volunteers were also given basic training on the dos and don'ts in case an enemy plane was spotted. 'We told them to hide under the green cover as soon as they heard the siren. One aircraft kept circling the base while these women fixed it.'
Recalling her training, Kanbai says, 'We were told to hide under the babool trees, the vegetation near the runway or in the trenches, and to exit our hiding spots only after the second siren. Sirens would blare two-three times a day.'
Kanbai, who has studied till Class 7, lost her husband in 2010. A construction labourer, she says her daughter, who got married in 1999 in Madhapar itself, and son-in-law forced her to retire in 2020 due to her advancing age.
'When I met the Prime Minister (on May 26), I told him that the women of Madhapar are ready to serve the nation, if required, even now,' she adds.
Like her, Kunwarbai Jina Varsani, 94, too helped fix the runway. Sitting on a charpoy in the verandah of her Madhapar house, she says she filled pits on the runway with sand, cement and gravel.
'Back then, two of my three children went to school. My mother-in-law took care of the third one while I was at the base,' she says, adding that she lives alone in the village since her children, two sons and one daughter, reside in the UK.
Predominantly inhabited by the Patel community, most young residents of Madhapar, also known as Asia's 'richest' village, are settled in countries like the US, the UK and Africa.
Lauding the valour of the Madhapar volunteers, Wg Cdr Karnik (retd) recalls, 'Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's visited the Bhuj air base on December 24, 1971. It was the only air base she visited after the war. She had lunch with the women of Madhapar. When men refused to repair the runway, these untrained women came forward to do the job. And what a fantastic job they did.'