J. F. R. Jacob

Lieutenant General Jack Farj Rafael Jacob (2May 1921 – 13January 2016 ) was a general officer in the Indian Army.

Jacob, motivated by reports of the Holocaust of European Jews during World War II, enlisted in the British Indian Army in 1942 as "Jack Frederick Ralph Jacob."

His father objected to his enlisting.

Jacob graduated from the Officers' Training School (OTS) in Mhow in 1942, and received an emergency commission as a second lieutenant on 7June.

He was initially posted to northern Iraq in anticipation of a possible German attempt to seize the oil fields of Kirkuk, and was promoted war-substantive lieutenant on 7December.

In 1943, Jacob was transferred to an artillery brigade that was dispatched to Tunisia to reinforce the British Army against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.

The brigade arrived after the Axis surrender.

From 1943 to the end of the war, Jacob's unit fought in the Burma Campaign against the Empire of Japan.

In the wake of Japan's defeat, he was assigned to Sumatra.

On 27October 1945, Jacob was granted a permanent commission in the rank of lieutenant.

After World War II, he attended and graduated from artillery schools in England and the United States, specialising in advanced artillery and missiles.

He returned to India following its partition, and joined the Indian Army.

In May 1951, Jacob was selected to attend the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, the staff course started in October of the same year.

As the first commanding officer, he raised 3 Field Regiment on 14 May 1956.

On 20 May 1964, he was given command of an artillery brigade, with the acting rank of brigadier.

During his 36-year long career in the army, Jacob fought in World War II and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

He later served as the governor of the Indian states of Goa and Punjab.

During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, he commanded an Infantry Division, which later became the 12th Infantry Division, in the state of Rajasthan.

During this period, Jacob composed an Indian Army manual on desert warfare.

Jacob was promoted to substantive brigadier on 17January 1966, and took command of an infantry brigade on 30 September.

On 2 October 1967, he was promoted to the acting rank of major general and was given command of an infantry division, with promotion to the substantive rank on 10 June 1968.

On 29 April 1969, he was appointed the chief of staff (COS) of the Eastern Command, by General Sam Manekshaw (later Field Marshal).

As the COS, Jacob's immediate superior was Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, the General officer commanding-in-chief (GOC-in-C) Eastern Command.

Jacob was soon tasked with dealing with the mounting insurgency in Northeast India.

He was best known for the role he played in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.

Jacob, then a major general, served as the chief of staff of the Indian Army's Eastern Command.

Jacob gained prominence during his stint as the chief of staff of the Eastern Command; the command helped to defeat the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

Jacob was awarded a commendation of merit for his role.

In March 1971, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight to stem the Bengali nationalist movement in East Pakistan.

The action led to over 10million refugees entering India, fuelling tensions between India and Pakistan.

By the monsoon season Jacob—as chief of staff—was tasked with drawing the contingency plans in case of a conflict.

After consulting with his superior officers, Jacob developed a plan for engaging Pakistan in a "war of movement" in the difficult and Swampy terrain of East Pakistan.

An initial plan, given to the Eastern Command by Manekshaw, involved an incursion into East Pakistan and the capture of the provinces of Chittagong and Khulna.

Senior Indian Army officers were reluctant to execute an aggressive invasion for fears of early ceasefire demands by the United Nations and a looming threat posed by China.

That, together with the difficulty of navigating the marshy terrain of East Pakistan through three wide rivers, led the commanders to initially believe that the capture of all of East Pakistan was not possible.

Jacob said in 2010, "I am proud to be a Jew, but am Indian through and through."

Jacob was born in Calcutta to a deeply religious Baghdadi Jewish family originally from Iraq which had settled in Calcutta in the mid-19th century.

His father, Elias Emanuel, was an affluent businessman.

After his father became sick, Jacob was sent at the age of nine to Victoria Boys' School, a boarding school in Kurseong near Darjeeling.

From then on, he went home only during school holidays.