Neville Maxwell says India was aggressor in 1962, not China

[BanglaBhoot]

IndiaToday.in New Delhi, March 31, 2014

In his first ever interview following his outing of the controversial Henderson Brooks report on the 1962 Indo-China war, veteran Australian journalist Neville Maxwell has once again set the cat among the pigeons.

In the interview to South China Morning Post, Maxwell said that the dispute between India China was created by the British in the mid-1930s "when they decided that for strategic reasons they should push their north-eastern frontier out some 60 miles. They knew China would not agree to that, because they'd failed to persuade Beijing to give them that belt of territory by diplomatic pressure in the Simla Conference in 1914, and so beginning about 1936 they just took it, by force. Read: Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report

"China was too weak to put up any military resistance but it was late in the day for the Empire to get away with that sort of action. The British parliament wouldn't stand for it. So they falsified the record of the Simla conference by withdrawing and pulping a volume of the series recording India's treaties and replacing it with a forged version that indicated that at Simla in 1914, China had accepted the new border alignment that they now called the McMahon Line, after the man who had in fact failed to get that agreement at Simla!" Also Read: 1962 Indo-China war veteran Brigadier Lakshman Singh shares his experience

When asked why independent India would follow Britain's line, he said, "It was a Faustian offer: "You keep quiet about what we did, and you get to keep the McMahon frontier: baulk, expose our trickery, give up the McMahon frontier territory, and what would your public and opposition think about it, Mr Nehru?"

Neville, a known China apologist, while explaining the significance of the 50-year-old report, claimed that "all the talk about China's 'unprovoked aggression' is utterly false, the truth is that India was the aggressor in 1962. But of course it's not spelled out in those terms, the political conclusion is buried in dense military jargon, written by soldiers for soldiers, the report is hard reading for unversed civilians. Also Read: Army holds up declassification of the Henderson-Brooks Bhagat report


"But nevertheless, the story emerges. From its very beginning as an independent state, India, which is to say Nehru in this context, took the view that the alignments of India's borders was a matter for India alone to decide, unilaterally, privately and definitively.

"Without for a moment considering that good sense and good international manners pointed to the need to bring Beijing in to discuss their common border, Nehru and his close advisers selected the alignment themselves and put out new maps showing them as full, formal, final international boundaries...and including an area beyond what Britain had ever claimed, the Aksai Chin.

In new interview, Neville Maxwell says India was aggressor in 1962, not China : India, News - India Today

Also read The India Doctrine on Nehru's Forward Policy -

The India Doctrine (1947-2007) | Mohammad Munshi - Academia.edu

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Neville Maxwell interview: the full transcript


South China Morning Post - March 31, 2014


In his first interview after a Snowden-style disclosure of the contentious secret report on the 1962 China-India war, Neville Maxwell tells Debasish Roy Chowdhury of the South China Morning Post what the 50-year-old document means for the future of China-India relations.


Post: The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report (HBBR) was filed in 1963. You, it appears, gained access to it soon after. What took you so long to come out with it?


NM: I had been trying for years to get the report on to the public record. In 2012, I’d made the text available to several newspapers in India.


Post: What reasons did they give you for not carrying it?


NM: Well, they agreed it should be made public, but they thought that had to be done by the government. If the press did it, the result, they said, would be a fierce row, accusations of betrayal of national interest, fierce attacks on the journals who had leaked. In short, nothing good, a lot bad.


So it had begun to look as if the report might never be published, and I thought that would be dreadful, wasting all the efforts of the authors, denying historians access to a crucial aspect of that unnecessary but hugely consequential border war - so I decided to do it myself.


I must apologise, by the way, for the clumsy way in which it was done. The blog collapsed under its own weight soon after it was launched, not because of government censorship, as was thought in India. I saw reports in India on speculation that the government was blocking the site.


Post: Why have you disclosed only a chunk of Volume I of the report? Where’s the rest?


NM: I uploaded what I had. I never saw Volume Two. I understand it is mainly memos, written statements and other documents on which the authors based the report.


Post: What do you hope to achieve with this disclosure?


NM: I hope to achieve what I have been trying to do for nearly 50 years! To rid Indian opinion of the induced delusion that in 1962 India was the victim of an unprovoked surprise Chinese aggression, to make people in India see that the truth was that it was mistakes by the Indian government, specifically Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, that forced the war on China.


My putting the report online now deprives the government of India the excuse they’ve used to keep it secret, the false claim that it was to preserve national security. It’s clear to anyone who reads the report that it has no current military or strategic significance. So there is no good reason for the government to persist in refusing to declassify the whole report, including Volume Two, which I never saw.


Post: That’s not how Indians see it.


NM: Start with seeing that India inherited a border dispute with China, it was congenital to independent India. The British created it in the mid-1930s when they decided that for strategic reasons they should push their north-eastern frontier out some 60 miles. They knew China would not agree to that, because they’d failed to persuade Beijing to give them that belt of territory by diplomatic pressure in the Simla Conference in 1914, and so beginning about 1936 they just took it, by force.


China was too weak to put up any military resistance but it was late in the day for the Empire to get away with that sort of action. The British parliament wouldn’t stand for it. So they falsified the record of the Simla conference by withdrawing and pulping a volume of the series recording India’s treaties and replacing it with a forged version that indicated that at Simla in 1914, China had accepted the new border alignment that they now called the McMahon Line, after the man who had in fact failed to get that agreement at Simla!


Post: Why would independent India follow Britain’s line?


NM: It was a Faustian offer: “You keep quiet about what we did, and you get to keep the McMahon frontier: baulk, expose our trickery, give up the McMahon frontier territory, and what would your public and opposition think about it, Mr Nehru?”


Post: Why do you hate Nehru so much? Didn’t you start off as an admirer?


NM: “Hate” is too strong a word. I have only criticised his border policy. I knew Nehru well and liked him immensely, he was a man of great charm. I was twice the head of the foreign correspondents association, and that brought me into personal contact with him, and as the Times man, I could sometimes get in to talk to him.


That access and friendliness shows, to my shame, in my reporting of the dispute with China as that developed – throughout I took the Indian side, never seeing what should have been obvious, that China was not aggressive but was consistently trying for a settlement on mutually beneficial terms.


I became a marked man in Beijing, they said the Times correspondent must be either stupid or hired. I wasn’t either, but I was blinded by ideology…liberal anti-communism. You’ll see the same affecting many journalists today, as American policy continues the Cold War.


Post: Ever wondered why Nehru, a known China ally, took such a strong line?


NM: On that, I have come to some answers, guided by scholars like David Hoffman and Perry Anderson. Their reading is that the Indian leaders felt insulted by Zhou Enlai’s insistence on negotiations as they felt it impugned India’s character as an ancient nation with defined boundaries.


Post: Ok, back to HBBR. What’s the significance of this 50-year-old report today?


NM: It proves that all that talk about China’s “unprovoked aggression” is utterly false, the truth is that India was the aggressor in 1962. But of course it’s not spelled out in those terms, the political conclusion is buried in dense military jargon, written by soldiers for soldiers, the report is hard reading for unversed civilians.


But nevertheless, the story emerges. From its very beginning as an independent state India, which is to say Nehru in this context, took the view that the alignments of India’s borders was a matter for India alone to decide, unilaterally, privately and definitively.


Without for a moment considering that good sense and good international manners pointed to the need to bring Beijing in to discuss their common border, Nehru and his close advisers selected the alignment themselves and put out new maps showing them as full, formal, final international boundaries … and including an area beyond what Britain had ever claimed, the Aksai Chin.


Post: Your book India’s China War, whose account of the Indian Army’s collapse, was obviously based largely on the HBBR, challenged the entrenched “aggressive China” notion. The book came out in 1970, Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 – how much do you think your book influenced Western thinking on China?


NM: A great deal, and indeed Nixon personally! Kissinger read the book, in 1971 I suppose, when it came out in America and it changed his thinking on China, and he pressed the book on Nixon – all that’s on the record now, in the transcripts of Nixon-Kissinger-Mao talks. While Kissinger was in Beijing, Zhou Enlai sent me a personal message to tell me that Kissinger had said to him, “Reading that book showed me I could do business with you people.”


You have to remember, the belief that China had suddenly attacked an innocent India had really blackened the international view of the PRC, so my revelation that it was a frame-up came like a flash of light everywhere. At a banquet in Beijing, Zhou publicly told me: “Your book did a service to truth which benefited China.”


Post: Your book, India’s China War, didn’t go down very well in India when it first came out in 1970. What’s been the reaction like this time?


NM: I always saw the danger that if I published the report, there would be another outbursts of animosity against me but in fact there’s only been one such - and oddly enough from an old friend. Otherwise, there’s been concentration on the content and implications of the report.


Post: Any charges laid on you yet? After all, you are messing with one of India’s top national secrets.


NM: Not that I know of, this time. The Indian government had laid charges against me, breach of Official Secrets Act, soon after India’s China War came out. I was asked by the British government to keep out of India to avoid request [for arrest] - and for eight years I did so! Until at last Morarji Desai as prime minister annulled the charges, enabling me to return.


Post: Now that India and China seem to be talking again, do you see the border problem as ever being solved?


NM: Yes, I certainly do, and my hopes are rising. I noted with great relief that the magic phrase, the hey presto or abracadabra, “package deal” has recently emerged as jointly used in the official correspondence.


That points to the only, but simple and obvious, solution to the dispute: India recognises that since there is no legal foundation for the McMahon Line, it must be submitted to re-negotiation – but knows that China will accept the basic McMahon alignment. And China is glad to negotiate the western sector, knowing that in those negotiations India will retreat from its absurd, ahistorical claim to ownership of Aksai Chin. The negotiations will have to be lengthy, but both parties will know from the outset that at their conclusion lies the precious, buried treasure of the Sino-Indian friendship which Nehru once sought.


Neville Maxwell interview: the full transcript | South China Morning Post

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

India's own internal Army report said the same thing!

Many Indians were accusing Neville Maxwell of bias, but it turns out that Maxwell was the one who actually had a copy of India's "classified" internal Army report on the Sino-Indian War all along.

Why do you think they classified their own report?

So they could sell their line about how Nehru was an "innocent guy who had no idea", to protect their own Congress Party. Nehru, the same guy who launched a Forward Policy and started an unnecessary war. Nehru, the guy who thought he was clever enough to take our land without any repercussions.

 

[OrionHunter]

This is the gazillionth thread on this topic! I must have been outta my mind to even click it open!

Good night!

 

[chhota bheem]

India's own internal Army report said the same thing!

Many Indians were accusing Neville Maxwell of bias, but it turns out that Maxwell was the one who actually had a copy of India's "classified" internal Army report on the Sino-Indian War all along.

Why do you think they classified their own report?

So they could sell their line about how Nehru was an "innocent guy who had no idea", to protect their own Congress Party. Nehru, the same guy who launched a Forward Policy and started an unnecessary war. Nehru, the guy who thought he was clever enough to take our land without any repercussions.

Nothing new has been said,everyone in India blames nehru for the war.not because he was the reason for war as you claim but not preparing enough or taking miltary advisers seriously,he has been warned chinese build up along the border and not taking the inputs seriously and believing India chini bahi bhai.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Nothing new has been said,everyone in India blames nehru for the war.not because he was the reason for war as you claim but not preparing enough or taking miltary advisers seriously,he has been warned chinese build up along the border and not taking the inputs seriously and believing India chini bahi bhai.

Except that everyone agrees (including India's own internal Army report) that the "Forward Policy" was the cause for the War.

So the "bhai bhai" thing was pure BS, it was Nehru who started the War himself.

Do you backstab your brothers, by hosting their largest separatist groups, and then trying to steal their land while they are in the worst famine in their history? That's what Nehru did to us, this "bhai bhai" excuse is a complete lie. Unless you treat your brothers like that.

 

[chhota bheem]

Except that everyone agrees (including India's own internal Army report) that the "Forward Policy" was the cause for the War.

So the "bhai bhai" thing was pure BS, it was Nehru who started the War himself.

Do you backstab your brothers, by hosting their largest separatist groups, and then trying to steal their land while they are in the worst famine in their history? That's what Nehru did to us, this "bhai bhai" excuse is a complete lie. Unless you treat your brothers like that.

It has been discussed million times,lets not go over it all over again post by @nietzche covers prity much everything

What was the sequence of event that lead to the war?
Claims and counterclaims from both sides as to what really began the war.Indian perspective : Indian army tried to push back PLA squatters in one sector of AP (Chinese South Tibet). There was a routine here of PLA troops occupying Indian claimed territory and Indian troops pushing them back. Not much shooting so far. Arguments between the troops on where China ends and India begins. Steadily between 1958 to 1962 PLA patrolling and squatting gets progressively more aggressive. One such incident results in full scale PLA invasion across AP at multiple sectors.

Root cause: China does not accept McMahon Line as international border. As the demarcation was done in 1914 by Tibetan Government when Tibet was free. According to China , Tibet has always been a part of China and therefore agreements made by any Tibetan government is null and void. Maps from as far back as the Yuan dynasty in 1300 AD are produced to "prove" this. But the Yuan dynasty was founded by the Mongols so can Mongolia today claim China as its own?

The ratcheting up of tensions followed by a massive offensive means that the PLA had already concentrated and built up forces in those sectors and in the Aksai Chin area further north. Creating a flash point incident was therefore in China's interests. The coordinated strike caught the Indian defenders by surprise. India just did not expect an attack and therefore had not really built up much defenses in those sectors. Overall the Indian armed forces had not been built up since independence in '47 with the civilian government not prioritizing defense.


Was Nehru's fault?

Yes. As the PM since 47 till 62 , for 15 years , when the war took place he holds highest responsibility. For the criminal neglect of the Indian armed forces he and his government are culpable. He may have been India's PM but he was her defacto Foreign Minister too. He set the direction and tone for relations with China. He was a founding member of NAM and the policy of "equi-distance" from the superpowers. Perhaps if he had not kept such distancing policies China may have bitten more than it could chew eg. the Korean war and US involvement. AT the very least Indian troops may not having been fighting with outdated enfields when their PLA counterparts had Russian assault rifles. He should have seen it coming but he was blinded by his own hubris. Zhou Enlai in particular took him for a ride. When the war started he still believed that the out-manned, out maneuvered , out gunned Indian army could be a match for the PLA fresh out of fighting the US- UN. He vastly overestimated the Indian army's capability while underestimating the PLA. He died a broken man as he deserved to.


Was the 1962 war a result of China stabbing India in the back?

Yes. But China acted in its own self interests. Mao and Zhou never bought Nehru's "Indians - Chinese brothers and comrades in arms" BS. They were realists and pragmatists. Nehru was a dreamer and naive. Mao and Zhou had earned their bones risking their necks fighting the Nationalists during the long march. Nehru got handed the PM ship because he was close to Gandhi and political maneuvering within the congress party. Perhaps with a leader like Subhash Bose things may have been different.China may have stabbed India in the back but India had provided China the opportunity to do so. India's culpability is therefore more.



Do Indians think there are parallels to the reported incursion recently?

Yes. But there is more to it than meets the eye. India does not have territorial claims on China in AP. India accepts Chinese sovereignty over Tibet (A big mistake I think - Blatant appeasement and feeding the war mongerers) This is not the first time that such incidents have happened since 62. There were other incidents like the 87 Sumdorong Chu clash. Since India does not claim Chinese territory and the incidents happened on Indian territory it begs the question who is responsible? So why is the Chinese leadership doing these things?

Consider the "string of pearls" strategy to constrain India in the southern ocean. The build up of Pakistan, formenting the maoists in Nepal and in India itself. Support and aid to Sri lanka , B'desh and Burma. Pressuring the Australian government from selling uranium to India. The competition in Africa to garner mines and raw materials. This is a simple strategy to ensure the economic and military supremacy of China in south and east Asia. The constant tension is also part of a probing strategy to keep the pressure up to keep its only real competitor in Asia off - balance both militarily and economically.

This also serves to inject nationalism into the Chinese populace , the CCP's domestic constituency. Expect the ratcheting to notch a level up if China's economic hot balloon blown up on government spending and cheap exports deflates. The CCP in short wants to hold on to power and will invent demons and imaginary enemies to distract the people. The CCP is astride a galloping tiger and is finding it difficult to hold on and can't get off. So there are both internal and external dynamics at play.

The thing that has changed fundamentally since 62 is that the Indians underestimate themselves and the Chinese overestimate themselves.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

It has been discussed million times,lets not go over it all over again post by @nietzche covers prity much everything

That post by neitzhche is complete BS.

Do you think some random forum member knows more than the Indian Army's own internal report?

Nehru was the one who claimed that we were "brothers" (notice it is only said in Hindi, but never in Chinese). Then he stabbed us in the back, by hosting our largest separatist group in 1959, and then by starting the Forward Policy against us in 1962, which led directly to the Sino-Indian War.

This is not how you treat a "brother". We were suffering from the worst famine in our history (Great leap forward) and Nehru did all this to us, he was nothing but an opportunistic liar. Attacking us while we were in the middle of a famine, is this what you call a "brother"?

That is sick, it's a mockery of the word brother.

 

[scorpionx]

In India, there is hardly any enthusiasm against the fact that '62 was a failure both in terms of Political and Military.Lets admit it and move on. In fact India had moved on way ahead after it's '62 debacle. The sheer analysis of the blunders it made yielded indirect dividends in the later wars it had to fight on it's western front. So I see no reason to bring the topic again and again when India-China relationship has already entered into a new sphere of cooperation in Technology and trade & Commerce. Although there have been sporadic clashes in Ladakh sectors quite often but we can not ignore that every issue has been settled without a bullet fired. It shows both the government are keen to maintain peace and tranquility and look for a better prosperous future.Let see '62 war as an exceptional scenario and a dark chapter in the three thousand years old history of cultural exchange between the two ancient civilizations.

 

[chhota bheem]

That post by neitzhche is complete BS.

Do you think some random forum member knows more than the Indian Army's own internal report?

Nehru was the one who claimed that we were "brothers" (notice it is only said in Hindi, but never in Chinese). Then he stabbed us in the back, by hosting our largest separatist group in 1959, and then by starting the Forward Policy against us in 1962, which led directly to the Sino-Indian War.

This is not how you treat a "brother". We were suffering from the worst famine in our history (Great leap forward) and Nehru did all this to us, he was nothing but an opportunistic liar. Attacking us while we were in the middle of a famine, is this what you call a "brother"?

That is sick, it's a mockery of the word brother.

you are getting me started,have to go to class,any way let me try.

First the post is informative,instead of saying bs ,tell me which part you dont agree upon,it might not be according to what you belive or have been told.

And then you have been quoting the amry internal report ,provide a link plz.

It Is said only in hindi because nehru belived it and and may be chinese did not belive in it.

Even India had famine ,it was not china alone.

And India never supported or helped arm insurgents against china,if you think otherwise,let me know.you will never find media reports regarding the same ,i am not going to NE groups which received support from china in the past.so dont give that brother back stabing BS.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

you are getting me started,have to go to class,any way let me try.

First the post is informative,instead of saying bs ,tell me which part you dont agree upon,it might not be according to what you belive or have been told.

And then you have been quoting the amry internal report ,provide a link plz.

It Is said only in hindi because nehru belived it and and may be chinese did not belive in it.

Even India had famine ,it was not china alone.

And India never supported or helped arm insurgents against china,if you think otherwise,let me know.you will never find media reports regarding the same ,i am not going to NE groups which received support from china in the past.so dont give that brother back stabing BS.

You did stab us in the back though.

All your lies have been exposed by the Indian Army's own Henderson-Brooks report.

Nehru said that we were "bhai bhai" in Hindi. But we never said it in Chinese.

In 1959 we began having the worst famine in Chinese history, the Great leap forward. We were collapsing from starvation and internal unrest, and surrounded by two enemy superpowers in all directions.

So what did Nehru do? Instead of helping us, he hosted our largest separatist group in 1959 after their failed violent uprising.

Then he started the Forward Policy against us, setting up military outposts far beyond the McMahon line in the eastern sector, where India does not even claim any land!

From the report:

Dhola Post that triggered war was on China's side of McMahon Line | Business Standard

He attacked us when we were in the middle of the worst famine in our history. Even though he claimed that we were brothers.

So it was India that backstabbed us. Nehru said we were brothers, then he started a war against us. Nothing but a back stabber.

 

[sincity]

India forced China into the 1962 war because of Tibet issue on China side and India ocupy South Tibet with India hosted Dala Lama whom declared himself as a de facto ruler of the Independent movement to claim Tibet as a soveignty nation apart from China. India had the grand ambition to wrestle Tibet from China control by allowing Dala Lama to stay in India. India hosted Dala Lama served 2 grand strategy; Dala lama legitimize India Claim of South Tibet since Dala Lama annointed himself to be the ruler of Tibet, Dala Lama strong advocate for Tibet independent would provided India the opportunity to annex Tibet and be seen as a liberator. India forward policy intended to eventually take over Tibet if there was no 1962 war.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

You did stab us in the back though

India stabs everyone in the back eventually.

 

[FNFAL]

On a more current topic
Bangladesh taste shameful defeat to Afghanistan - The New Nation

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Why are Indians opening multiple threads on the same subject? What are they up to?