Major General Indar Jit Rikhye

Major General Indar Jit Rikhye (Retired Indian Army) died Monday, May 21, 2007, of respiratory failure at the University of Virginia Medical Center, two months short of his 87th birthday.

General Rikhye was born July 30, 1920, at Lahore in pre-Partition India, scion of a distinguished Punjabi Brahmin family. From an early age he was bent on a military career despite the misgivings of his parents. His father, who had seen service as a military physician in the British Indian army during World War I, took him as an adolescent to see Mahatma Gandhi, partly in the hope that the great man would talk him out of it. On the contrary, the saintly personification of nonviolence said that India needed good, educated young boys to become officers and gave him his blessing and in effect, his permission. The aspiring soldier's future was sealed.

On graduation from the Indian Military Academy in 1940, General Rikhye was commissioned by King George VI in the Sixth Duke of Connaught's Own Lancers, the famed Bengal Lancers cavalry regiment. With this regiment he served during World War II in the Persia and Iraq Force, the British Ninth Army in Syria and Lebanon, the British Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy, and also with the United States Fifth Army in Italy. Returning home to the convulsions of Partition, his regiment splintered, his family was forced to leave the Punjab, and General Rikhye brought a troop train that included family members, now refugees, across the new border between Pakistan and India in a harrowing two-week journey.

Leaving his beloved Lancers behind in the new Islamic state and joining the Ninth (Royal Deccan) Horse, an armored regiment in India, General Rikhye then saw two operational tours of duty in the 1947-48 War with Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir after the independence of India from Britain. Thereafter, his military career followed the conventional patterns of a peacetime professional officer: training troops and moving up the ladder of command.

The year 1957 changed everything. That was when he assumed command of India's contingent to the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) in Gaza and became Chief of Staff of the Force the following year. Briefly returned to India as commander of a brigade group in Ladakh, General Rikhye, having come to the attention of the United Nations SecretaryGeneral Dag Hammarskjold during his service in UNEF, turned from warrior to peacemaker. Hammarskjold, with the approval of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, called him to New York to be his Military Adviser, and at the outbreak of civil war in the former Belgian Congo in July 1960, sent him to Leopoldville (Kinshasa) to lead peacekeeping operations there.

After Hammarskjold's death and during the tenure of the next Secretary-General, U Thant, General Rikhye's work took him from one global hotspot to another, wherever the United Nations was seriously involved: RuandaUrundi, West Irian, Cuba (during the missile crisis and again to bring home the remains of the American U-2 pilot who had been shot down), Yemen, Cyprus, Jordan, and the Dominican Republic. As Force Commander of the United Nations Emergency Force in Gaza and the Sinai in 1966-1967, he oversaw the withdrawal of that force, which found itself in the path of advancing Israeli Defense Forces after Egypt, under Nasser, withdrew its consent to the United Nations presence and the Six -Day War erupted in June 1967. For two years thereafter he was Middle East adviser at the United Nations Headquarters. He was promoted to Major General in 1962 but never returned to India as a military man. He sometimes joked that his country, having lent him to the United Nations so many years before, forgot to collect its debt.

On leaving the United Nations in 1969, General Rikhye founded and served as President of the International Peace Academy, a non -governmental institute for research and training in peacekeeping and the promotion of peacekeeping curricula at national military academies. For the next 20 years, the warrior-peacemaker taught military officers and diplomats from around the world the conflict-mediation and negotiation skills he had learned at first hand, often creating venues in which protagonists from current conflicts might come warily together but leave as friends. He became the confidante of world leaders, lectured or taught in numerous countries, and was the author or co-author of many books and articles on peacekeeping.

After his third retirement General Rikhye became a Visiting Distinguished Fellow, and later adviser on the United Nations, at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington; an honorary professor at the School of Policy Planning of George Mason University; and an associate of the University of Virginia's Center for South Asian Studies on his relocation to Charlottesville. His memberships included the India International Center and the United Services Institute in New Delhi; the Army and Navy Club in Washington D.C.; the Charlottesville Committee on Foreign Relations; Nadir, a world-affairs discussion group; and the Blue Ridge Virginia Chapter of the United Nations Association of the United States, which recently honored him on its annual International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers.

His honors and awards included the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1985; the Medal of Honor from Kyung Hee University of Seoul; Doctor of Laws from Carleton University of Ottawa; the Order of Merit (Golden Knight) of the Republic of Austria; and the Distinguished Peacekeeping Award from the International Peace Academy of New York.

General Rikhye is survived by his wife of 33 years, Cynthia de Haan Rikhye; two sons from a previous marriage, Ravi Rikhye of Takoma Park and Bhalinder Rikhye of New York City; four grandchildren, Evan, Kartikay, Kiran, and Gaia; and one great-grandaughter, Sheela. A sister and two brothers in India also survive him, as well as many nieces, nephews, and cousins both in India and abroad.

At General Rikhye's request, no memorial services are planned, but remembrances of him might include donations to The Stolen Chair Theatre Company, 64 East 94th Street, #6-G, New York, NY 10128; The Miller Center of Public Affairs, 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, VA 22904; the Hospice of the Piedmont; or the Senior Center for the benefit of the Second-Wind Band.

Arrangements were undertaken by Teague Funeral Services on Wednesday, May 23, 2007, with Swami Sarvananda officiating and immediate family in attendance.