NRIs irked by poor Manekshaw farewell

Indians living abroad have been quick to express their angst over the response - rather its absence - of the top Indian leadership to the final farewell for Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw.

Within hours of the Indian media reporting on their websites the absence of top national leaders at the state funeral, NRIs across the globe were hammering away at their keyboards to express their anger about this faux pas.

A scathing comment appeared in a newspaper that somebody should have told the geniuses in Delhi that Sam, the Bahadur, passed away in Wellington, Ooty, not Wellington, New Zealand. The nearest civil airport is Coimbatore, just 80 km away. A Kiwi Indian from down under wrote that whenever "a digger" (an Australian) dies in Iraq, the top government leaders or officers attend his funeral but when the first Field Marshal of India dies, not even the defence minister can be bothered to attend.

Manekshaw is reported to have once said: "I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla."