Kargil Vijay Diwas: In memory of the martyrs

Wars are not won in a day — or by one man. Alas, it is often one man, the hero, who gets feted while the rest remain lost in the footnotes. Havaldar Yashvir Tomar, who died on Tololing during the Kargil War, is one such figure.

The Battle of Tololing, a peak overlooking Dras town and the Srinagar-Leh highway, was a decisive battle — the toughest, it lasted three weeks and accounted for a good chunk of the Kargil War's body count. Yashvir Singh was one of 90 men led by Major Vivek Gupta who made the final assault on the peak on June 12. Of the 90, 11 were Tomars, a community with a long tradition of serving the army, and Yashvir told his commander that all "11 would return victorious". But it was not to be. Sometime in the dead of the night, with the Pakistani forces proving had to dislodge, Singh decided to take matters, literally, in his hands. He gathered 18 grenades and charged the enemy bunkers.

Singh was killed, and when his body was recovered, he had an assault rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other.

Yashvir Tomar is one of 292 Kargil War martyrs to feature in Honourpoint.in, a website that describes itself as an "online memorial for every Indian solider". Launched around two-and-a-half months ago, Honourpoint.in is a venture by three retired Air Force officers — Wing Commanders MA Afraz, Rajendra Prasad and LK Chaubey.

"The idea was to create awareness about our heroes so that they are not forgotten by later generations. But we realised that there was no memorial in India for all the martyrs — neither physical nor virtual. You could have a physical memorial, but not everyone can go there and it wouldn't be possible to update it. An online memorial solves these encumbrances," says Afraz.

Afraz, Prasad and Chaubey began work two years ago, researching for content, trawling the army websites, news reports, books, etc. for information on the martyrs — bootstrapping the entire project with their own funds. The website currently has narratives about martyrs going back to the 1947-48 India-Pakistan War, and coming up to soldiers such as Lance Naik Ranjit Singh who died in the skirmishes with Pakistan on the LoC in July 2017. There are, on Honourpoint.in, all the stalwarts — going back to Shaitan Singh of the 1962 war with China, Abdul Hamid of the 1971 India-Pakistan War, and up to Vikram Batra in Kargil to name a few.

Even so, Honourpoint.in is yet to cover all the martyrs who've ever died in the course of duty. For instance, of the 533 official death count in the Kargil War, only 292 have been covered — among them, the little-known story of Yashvir Singh.