What Makes a Param Veer?
The Param Vir Chakra and India's Warrior Tradition
Discover the meaning behind India's highest wartime gallantry award - the Param Vir Chakra. Learn about Savitri Khanolkar who designed it, the 21 recipients, and the Sanatana warrior tradition that inspires Indian soldiers to fight not for glory, but for Dharma.
The Wheel of the Ultimate Brave
On the morning of November 3, 1947, barely two months after India gained independence, a young Major named Somnath Sharma stood with his company at Badgam airfield near Srinagar. Over 700 Pakistani tribal raiders were advancing toward them. Outnumbered, outgunned, and with reinforcements nowhere in sight, Major Sharma made a decision that would define the spirit of independent India's military.
He chose to stand and fight.
His final radio message would become the first lines written in the legend of the Param Vir Chakra:
"The enemies are only 50 yards from us. We are heavily outnumbered. We are under devastating fire. I shall not withdraw an inch but will fight to the last man and the last round."
Major Somnath Sharma didn't know it then, but he would become the first recipient of India's highest wartime gallantry award - an honor that didn't even exist when he made his last stand. The medal that would bear his name was still being designed, its purple ribbon not yet woven, its bronze not yet cast.
This is the story of that medal, and the extraordinary men who earned it.
The Birth of an Honor
In June 1948, as India's first war continued in Kashmir, the newly independent nation faced a question: How do we honor those who display the highest valor in battle?
The British had their Victoria Cross. The Americans had their Medal of Honor. India needed something uniquely its own - an award rooted not just in military tradition, but in the deeper soil of Dharmic civilization.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru entrusted this sacred task to Major General Hira Lal Atal, India's first Adjutant General. And General Atal made an inspired choice: he asked Savitri Khanolkar to design the medal.
The Artist Behind the Medal
Savitri Khanolkar was born Eve Yvonne Maday de Maros in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1913. Her father was a Hungarian academic; her mother, a Russian educator. In 1932, she married Captain Vikram Ramji Khanolkar of the Indian Army's Sikh Regiment, embracing India as her homeland and adopting the name Savitribai.