‘Galwan’, ‘Daulat’..ITBP to Name its Dog Squad after Border Regions

Galwan is restless, Sasoma is quiet and Daulat is tirelessly playful. With their 14 Belgian Malinois siblings, these lively canines will now give Indo Tibetan Border Police’s (ITBP)’s dog squad more teeth and, significantly, begin what the border force plans a tradition to go “Indian” with names.

On Wednesday morning, these puppies, each month-old were lined up at ITBP’s training facility at Bhanu in Haryana’s Panchkula and ordained into the force — with a tip of the crutch-sword at an official ‘Naam Karan’ ceremony as the force has decided to junk its decades-old practice to call its canines with “anglicized western names”.

“It is for the first time since Independence that the canine wing of the country has today acknowledged its legacy and own ethos. These are desi names, inspired by areas that our forces guard,” ITBP DIG (veterinary) Sudhakar Natarajan told TOI.

“Second, imagine the sense of pride our troops, in bone-numbing and blood-freezing high altitude, will feel when they call out these names and say, ‘Shabash Galwan!’ instead of calling Tommy, Betty, Caesar, or Elizabeth. Finally, it is a way to honour our men deployed on 3,488 km of tough borders serving the nation,” he added.

Born to five-year-old sisters Olga and Oleshya, and six-year-old father Gala, all of whom served in Chhattisgarh, these 17 puppies are the first litter of the ITBP’s breeding program, which started a year ago, and have been named after strategic points in Ladakh.

So while one puppy has been christened Sultan Chusku, like the glacier, another is called Mukhpari, like the peak.

There is one called Rezang: a callback to the past, and so will be Ane La, Yula, Khardungi, and Imis.

There is also a pup Changthang, named after Ladakh’s “pashmina plateau”.

Chip Chap, Chang Chenmo, Shyok, and Charding are the pups with names that evoke Ladakh’s rivers. Rango is named after the border village and seventeeth will be Sirijap, after the southern Aksai Chin plains.

This move also begins, an ITBP official said, what will be a lasting tradition.

The next litters will be named, in batches, after strategic locations between Karakoram to Jechap La — in each of the sectors ITBP guards in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

Source: Times of India

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