CDS's Bengal connect: Eye for art & history, Lt General Anil Chauhan remains a Calcutta boy
Telegraph | 11 May 2025
An art enthusiast, a history buff and a man who doesn’t tire of talking about the Maidan — the country’s chief of defence staff, currently leading India’s charge on Pakistan, is a Calcutta boy who remains so.
Lt General Anil Chauhan, the country’s second CDS, had attended Kendriya Vidyalaya, Fort William in Calcutta, before joining the National Defence Academy in Pune.
The Maidan, an integral part of his childhood, stayed with him even when he moved out of the city and grew up to become a warfare specialist in the army.
“I picked up small Bengali books of Class II and III so I could relearn what I had earlier,” Lt Gen Chauhan had said during an interaction in the summer of 2021 before he hung up his boots as the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), Eastern Command. “Bangla aami bhujhtey pari,” he had said, breaking into laughter.
He assumed charge as the CDS in September 2022.
On Friday, hours after India neutralised a series of drone attacks from Pakistan, Lt Gen Chauhan was busy meeting defence minister Rajnath Singh and the three service chiefs in the South Block.
“Lt Gen Chauhan’s style of leadership involved total trust and transparency. He is very passionate about history, particularly military history, and is very thorough with India’s land borders,” a senior officer posted in Calcutta during Lt Gen Chauhan’s stint as the head of the Eastern Command said.
The officer added: “He was deeply interested in the history of India’s military formations, particularly their post-Independence operations and local military historians.”
Before taking up the charge of the Eastern Command, Lt Gen Chauhan was the director-general of military operations at the army headquarters in New Delhi, where he worked on formulating the national security policy.
“Encouraged by his artist wife Anupama, Lt Gen Chauhan is an art aficionado. Tibetan art forms remained his key area of interest. It was largely because of his prodding that the armed forces along the northern borders study Tibetology so they can connect better with the population of that region,” said another senior officer who was posted in the Eastern Command during the tenure of Lt Gen Chauhan.
Several of them recalled how the former alumnus of the Indian Military Academy and his wife put up an exhibition of over 200 vintage masks, collected over 40 years of travel across the country, in Calcutta.
Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar visited the exhibition as the then governorof Bengal.
The then GOC-in-C used to invite people to attend art exhibitions and literary meets inside Fort William, some of those who were part of such meets said.
“Anil’s bond with Calcutta possibly made him take the lead in organising an alumni meet of his batchmates from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Fort William, in the city. He flew from Bengaluru and ensured that the meeting went well. That was earlier this year,” said Gyanander Shukla, his junior in school.
“My elder brother, Shailendra, and Anil are batchmates. He has remained the same humble and grounded guy that he was in school, even after taking up the job of the CDS. He reaches out to his schoolmates in need and has no airs about him. A few days ago, we shared a hearty laugh after I sent him an old picture of my brother with him at Babughat when they were in Class XI. Anil’s sister, Sangita, is also an alumna of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Fort William,” Shukla added.
Some of Lt Gen Chauhan’s friends and acquaintances said he was planning to build a house in Uttarakhand after retiring as the Eastern Command’s GOC-in-C when the call for him to take charge as the CDS came.
“I will miss Calcutta. But the only thing that will keep me going is that I will continue to be invited every year to the Vijay Divas celebrations as a retired army commander. That will give me an opportunity to return to Calcutta every year,” Lt Gen Chauhan had told The Telegraph during the interaction in 2021.