Remembering a war 1962

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The Rediff Special/Brigadier (retd) Chitranjan Sawant, VSM

In the summer of 1996, more than 35 years after the 1962 war with China, I had an opportunity to stand on the Chinese side of the Dhola ridge and see our own battleground in NEFA [the North East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh].

This was the same Dhola ridge from where the People's Liberation Army of China had attacked the Indian forward positions and rolled down Sela-Bomdilla till the foothills near Tezpur on October 20, 1962.

I was visiting Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, as an independent producer of TV documentaries on Tibet. Having seen NEFA from the Indian side, I asked my hosts if I could have a view of the area from the Chinese side.

There was stunned silence in the banquet hall where the Chinese and Tibetan administrators had hosted a dinner for me. Finally, the Tibetan head of administration, on a cue from his Chinese adviser, said: "Brigadier, you may see, but not shoot." I accepted his suggestion, and next morning Chinese army Mitsubishi Pajeros took me and the crew to the area.

Tough terrain indeed. But not tougher than the one on our side, was my silent verdict after a mental comparison. The altitude was high without causing respiratory complications because of thick foliage. And exactly like on our side, local cowherds tended to their flock unawed by our presence.

The Chinese military intelligence officer (so I presumed) who doubled as a liaison officer appreciated my desire to take a close look at the imaginary international border and touch the Indian soil with reverence. "Sying-sying," he said in Chinese mandarin, indicating his okay, and I lost no time in taking a military look at the massive Dhola ridge from where officers and men of the People's Liberation Army descended on the Indian territory using ropes, bypassing our formidable infantry positions and attacking the nerve centre, headquarters of the 7 Infantry Brigade.

The brigade commander, Brig John Dalvi, was literally caught with his pants down. The PLA had taken its first VIP red-tab prisoner of war.

Many more other ranks (junior commissioned officers and jawans) were to fall into their net later. It was indeed a disgraceful show and serving subalterns and captains like me felt let down by those who mattered in the military and civilian set-up.

On the ground hallowed by selfless sacrifice made beyond the call of duty by many of my brothers-in-arms, I stood in silence for more than the customary two minutes. Many images flashed across my mind as I recalled the dramatis personae, both the living and the dead. They seemed to communicate moments of agony and ecstasy depending on courage or cowardice. There were examples galore of both.

Sipahi (later Naik and in present folklore Captain) Jaswant Singh of the 4th battalion of the Garhwal Rifles manned a post with his light machine-gun on a road bend near Sela top. In that bitter snowfall, when the Chinese attacked his post, wave after wave, he stood his ground with grit and determination. His fellow soldiers fell fighting. Outgunned and outnumbered, he still kept the enemy at bay until he finally succumbed to his injuries.

His body was never found, but his memory remains fresh in folklore. Every evening, successive units at the post prepare a bed for him and food is served for his soul, and the local hill population describe him as 'Captain sahib'. I am told that even now his paltan (battalion) refuses to suffix 'the late' to his name.

Then there was Captain (now a retired colonel) S N Tandon, who won a Vir Chakra for gallantry. He and I were gentlemen cadets in the Naushera company of the Indian Military Academy in 1959. He confided in me in the late 1960s that when the soldiers of the PLA captured him as well as his commanding officer, the latter started crying, moaning that he would never be able to meet his wife and children in this life. Tandon being a bachelor had no such emotional outburst.

The Chinese commissars, Tandon told me later, devoted a lot of time and energy to brainwashing Indian officers and men in the PoW camps. But this did not cut much ice because of family loyalties, and most of them remained steadfast and committed to the Indian values of life.

My reverie was broken by my film crew, who pointed out that it was getting late and time to return to base.

Where did you face us in 1962, asked Mr Qiao, one of the Chinese officials, in a light-hearted manner. "Here, there, and everywhere," I replied, and we all laughed it away.

Tomorrow would be another day, I said to myself, and tried to sleep.

But sleep eluded me that night. The 1962 debacle of our army kept haunting me. Jawaharlal Nehru's words that China had stabbed India in the back by launching a dastardly attack crisscrossed my mind many a time. Now, four decades after the bitter war, I was their guest.

The Chinese always kept emphasizing that they were not the aggressors. Chou En-lai, the then Chinese prime minister, and other Chinese decision-makers had taken Nehru's off-the-cuff statement made in Madras on October 12, 1962, that he had "ordered the Indian Army to throw the Chinese out" very seriously.

The PLA in Tibet, where they were entrenched since 1950, mobilized to launch a pre-emptive attack on NEFA.

In an academic discussion with my Chinese hosts, I asked them: "Didn't you fire the first shot?" The Chinese hosts replied that after Nehru's provocative statement amounting to a declaration of war, a self-respecting nation like China could not have waited to be attacked.

I recall that the Americans were very sympathetic to the Indian Army's debacle in NEFA and were convinced that China was the aggressor. If memory serves me right, the Americans used the term 'Himalayan Pearl Harbour' to describe our discomfiture as akin to their own.

The other view was that we Indians got what we had asked for. The author of India's China war, Neville Maxwell, exonerated the Chinese and said blaming them was 'a soothing fantasy' for the Indians.

When I look back over these 40 years of my own experience in the Indian Army as a student of military history, I feel that the last word on the subject has not been said. Perhaps a latter-day historian with an unbiased mind and access to declassified war diaries may arrive at this image-shattering deduction: the unpronounced rivalry between Nehru and Chou En-lai to play a dominant role in Asia was the root cause of the military conflict in 1962.

Of course, undefined and undemarcated borders in the high Himalayas were a British legacy that the independent Indian government carried forward. The British imperial military power could sustain the theory of undefined borders and make inroads into Tibet. But independent India, without the backing of a mighty military machine, found the vagueness of borders a heavy burden, which was difficult to carry and not easy to shake off.

The Chinese were gaining strength day by day after October 1, 1949, when New China was born. Consequently, when the PLA moved into almost independent Tibet in 1950, the Indian foreign policy makers did not even whimper, let alone think of an intervention. The remnants of the Indian mission and post office in Lhasa were wound up post-haste.

The Indian Tri-colour was never to flutter in the Lhasa breeze again.

Reverting to the military operations in NEFA, we find that the 4th Indian military division degenerated into a complete rout without giving a sustained battle to the intruding Chinese. When the PLA launched its first wave of attacks on October 20, 1962, some Indian Army units in Walong on the far eastern side did offer determined resistance. But on the Dhola-Sela-Bomdilla axis it was a complete rout.

In all fairness to the Chinese, it must be mentioned that they had offered a ceasefire and a negotiated withdrawal from Indian territory when they met stiff resistance in the Walong sector. But the Indian Army and political leadership --- wishing "to throw the Chinese out" --- found that a humiliating proposition. But throwing the Chinese out remained wishful thinking.

On November 15, 1962, some Indian Army units launched a counter attack and gained limited success. There was a short thaw in the battle. Then the PLA inducted more men and new guns to renew a determined onslaught, which totally routed the Indian side. The magnitude of their attack had to be seen to be believed.

Rumours in the Indian rank and file aided the Chinese more than their own military tactics. A mere whisper of Chinese soldiers being seen in the vicinity would send rank and file running for cover where none was available. To our eternal shame, the commanding general and his colonels, leave alone the jawans, deserted their posts and gave the Chinese army a free run up to the foothills near the town of Tezpur. Disabled jawans who had lost their limbs in snow and literally walked into Chinese PoW camps cursed themselves and their officers for the sad state.

But military strategists all over the world appreciated that the Indian jawans even while retreating from battle, never abandoned their rifles. An unprepared army, ill-armed, ill-clad, and ill-trained for mountain warfare, had been ordered to give battle to seasoned PLA officers and men who had more than a decade's experience of mountain warfare in Tibet.

The majority of the Indian soldiers did not have suitable winter clothing and proper footwear for snowbound battlefields. Ammunition was in short supply because quite a few ponies carried commodes for officers instead of ammunition for soldiers. The command and control from corps headquarters downwards was non-functional.

Lieutenant General B M Kaul, commanding general of the newly raised 4 Corps at Tezpur, had never commanded an active fighting outfit notwithstanding his Sandhurst training. Instead of planning military strategy at Tezpur or in forward areas, he wasted crucial days in Delhi nursing a sore throat.

While the military situation of the Indian Army was in such a mess, the Chinese once again caught us by surprise by declaring a unilateral ceasefire as they had no visible Indian units to fight. In one stroke they scored a military-cum-diplomatic victory.

I shall be failing in my duty, however, if I do not pay tribute to the gallantry of those who fought till the last round and last breath. Among them stands tall Brigadier Hoshiar Singh, commander of the Sela Brigade, who gave a bloody nose to the Chinese even after being cut off from his division headquarters at Bomdilla. He made the supreme sacrifice in action.

Subedar Joginder Singh too went beyond the call of duty, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy and saving the lives of his men. The nation honoured him with the Param Vir Chakra, the country's highest gallantry award in war, posthumously.

They who died for the country still live in their countrymen's memory. We salute our martyrs, cherish their memories, and encourage our young ones to emulate them.

Brigadier (retd) Chitranjan Sawant is a Sinologist and a qualified interpreter of Mandarin. He was deputed by the Government of India to study the Chinese language and affairs in California after the 1962 Sino-Indian war, when he was posted in the Ladakh sector. He has visited China and Tibet thrice and produced television documentaries.

 

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The Rediff Special/Col (retd) Anil Athale

I think it was in 1988, at a talk at the IDSA (Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi) that Neville Maxwell peddled his thesis that it was India that was the aggressor in 1962, and claimed that China merely 'reacted'.

Maxwell is a self-confessed Maoist, and anybody who has had occasion to deal with the ideologically motivated scholars (?) of the pink variety knows how difficult it is to argue with them! Yet, having spent close to four years researching the subject, backed up by military experience/knowledge, field visits and hundreds of interviews, I was on sure ground.

The question I posed to Maxwell was simple... if it was merely reacting to provocations, how come the attack on October 20, 1962, took place at the same time in the Chip Chap valley in Ladakh and 1000km away on the Namkachu river? The precision and co-ordination speaks for a well thought-out plan and premeditation. To talk of these co-ordinated attacks over a wide front as 'reaction' is military nonsense.

The second and even more fundamental point is the huge resources in heavy artillery and mortars used by the Chinese during the operations, specially in the Ladakh sector. Tibet, in 1962, was a virtual desert, bereft of any local resources. Even a pin had to be brought all the way from the 'mainland', over a tortuous and single road from the railhead located nearly 2000km away. It is like the Indian Army fighting in Arunachal with the nearest railhead located at Kanyakumari.

In order to suppress the Tibetans, the Chinese indeed had a very large military presence in Tibet. But that was mainly infantry, not heavy weaponry. In fact, it was a journalist of The Hindustan Times who reported the rumours circulating in Kalimpong (Sikkim was then independent and heavily infested with Chinese spies) that heavy artillery from the Taiwan front had been moved to Tibet. The Chinese took a good six to eight months to gather all these resources. A reaction indeed!

Unfortunately for Indians, with no means to monitor Chinese movements, India was in the dark about these developments.

This does not mean that India, especially Nehru, did not make provocative statements. He did. The classic being the offhand remark while leaving for Colombo, when he told the waiting media that he had ordered the Indian Army to 'throw out the Chinese'! But there is a vast gulf between verbal and military provocations.

But the best-kept secret of the 1962 border war is that a large part of the non-military supplies needed by the Chinese reached them via Calcutta! Till the very last moment, border trade between Tibet and India went on though Nathu La in Sikkim. For the customs in Calcutta, it was business as usual and no one thought to pay any attention to increased trade as a battle indicator.

There is undeniable linkage between the Cuban missile crisis and the Chinese attack. This has been brought out in the official history and was also written about by me in the print media in 1992 (in The Sunday Observer).

The US ordered the call-up of reservists on September 11, 1962, when the Chinese attacked the Dhola post in the East. The naval blockade was ordered around October 16 and put in place by October 20, the exact time of the Chinese attack. Given the close Chinese relations with the erstwhile Soviet Union, it seems entirely plausible that the Chinese must have had prior information about the placement of missiles in Cuba. In December 1962, after the conflict was over, the Soviet Union charged China with 'adventurism' against India.

The unilateral Chinese ceasefire of November 21 and the quick withdrawal coincided with the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. The Chinese were afraid of intervention by the US Air Force. They were not very wrong, for literally within days the massive American airlift of supplies for India began on November 23/24, 1962.

In international relations there is no room for coincidences. Certainly not four or five! It would not be an exaggeration to say that had the Cuban missile crisis not taken place the Chinese would not have attacked on such a massive scale. This also explains Nehru's confidence that China would not attack. All these years, the need to maintain its non-aligned 'virginity' prevented India from acknowledging that it was the implicit American support against China that was at the back of Nehru's confidence.

It is best to quote Professor Thomas C Schelling (Arms & Influence, Yale University Press, 1966, page 53): "Our commitment is not so much a policy as a prediction... In the Indian case, it turns out that we [the US] had a latent or implicit policy [to support India against China]. It was part of the effort to preserve the role of deterrence in the world and Asia. Military support to India would be a way of keeping an implicit pledge...." (paraphrased)

Schelling then goes on to say that Nehru possibly anticipated it for 10 years and that was why he was so contemptuous of the kind of treaties Pakistan signed with the US. Nehru felt that his own involvement with the West in emergencies would be as strong without any treaty.

The tragedy was that Nehru could not anticipate the Cuban crisis that took away the 'shield ' of implicit American support.

Colonel (retd) Anil Athale, former director of war history at the defence ministry and co-author of the official history of the 1962 war, is a frequent contributor to rediff.com

 

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The Rediff Special/Col (retd) Anil Athale

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES World history is full of 'ifs' and 'buts' when it is commonly assumed that if only a certain action had been taken, history would have been different.

In India it is almost an industry since we have surfeit of disasters that litter our 5,000-year history. The 1962 military disaster is no exception and has spawned works like the 'Guilty Men of 1962' or self-justificatory works like the 'Untold Story' by General B M Kaul, et al.

The first missed opportunity to avoid the conflict came in December 1960 when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai made a brief stopover in Delhi. Under the so-called 'Krishna Menon Plan' it was mooted that India would lease the Aksai Chin area to China and in return the Chinese would lease the strategic (from the Indian point of view) Chumbi valley that is like a dagger pointed at the line of communication with Assam and the Northeast.

This would have been a very fair deal as the Aksai Chin area, besides being strategically useless to India, was also very difficult to defend.

But it is believed that under the pressure from the right wing of the Congress and fear of vociferous opposition, Nehru rejected it. A hint of this is available in Michael Breacher's 'India & World Politics: Krishna Menon's view of the world' (Oxford University Press, 1966, p 145-154) as well as an account of that visit in Swadhinta (January 26, 1966) by Pandit Sunderlal.

China at that time was no superpower and wary of American designs on it through Taiwan (then called Nationalist China, which occupied the Chinese seat in the UN Security Council). Indian friendship was of great value to China then.

But an obdurate Nehru missed the chance. In subsequent years this proposal was revived, but by now a confident China saw no merit in it.

From the professional military as well there were many warnings and suggestions that confrontation with China should be avoided till we build our strength. But these objections were summarily dismissed due to 'political considerations'. Once India embarked upon the disastrous, legalistic, and militarily foolish 'forward policy' (of establishing small posts in Chinese-dominated areas), the die was cast and like a Greek tragedy the events moved towards a disaster.

In the popular mind the 1962 conflict evokes memories of an unimaginable defeat. This is not strictly true. In the northern sector, on the Ladakh front, the Indian Army, despite heavy odds, gave a good account of itself and Chinese gains were small. The airfield at Chushul, one of the major prizes, remained in Indian hands.

The impression that it was an unmitigated disaster is fostered by the Indian rout at Sela. But for the Sela defeat and panic retreat, 1962 would have at worst been classed as a setback, not a disaster.

The discredit for this debacle belongs to Lieutenant General Brij Mohan Kaul and his catastrophic leadership. After the initial setback in Tawang district, in the last week of October, Kaul fell ill and Lt Gen Harbax Singh took over the command of 4 Corps.

Harbax consolidated the position at Sela and was quite confident of holding back the Chinese there. The order for withdrawal from Sela was a panic reaction by Kaul who had no fighting experience (he spent World War II in charge of a drama troupe for the entertainment of troops).

Harbax was a veteran and had faced the Japanese enveloping tactics in Burma. He was also confident that even if cut off from ground, Sela could be maintained by air. But to India's ill luck, as soon as Kaul felt that the situation had stabilised on the front, he hastened back to 4 Corps not wanting to miss on the 'credit'! The rest, as they say, is history. If instead of Kaul, Harbax had been in charge, the Sela disaster may not have happened at all.

But the biggest 'mystery' of 1962 is the non-use of offensive air power by India. The whole conflict was run as a personal show by Kaul and there was very little co-ordination with the air force. At that time the Chinese had barely two airfields in Tibet and their fighter aircraft were decidedly inferior to India's British-made Hunters.

The Indian Air Force was guaranteed virtual air superiority on the battlefield. With air power on its side, India could have overcome the tactical disadvantage of lack of artillery in Ladakh and could have intercepted the foot and mule columns of the Chinese in Tawang area (like it did during the Kargil conflict in 1999). But such was the irrational fear of Chinese retaliation against Indian cities that India did not use its air power.

This fear of danger to cities was a result of panic in Calcutta... The only long-range aircraft the Chinese had at that time was the Ilyushin 24, operating at extreme ranges. The Indian Air Force with its network of airfields in the East (thanks to World War II) was well capable of dealing with it.

Right till the end, Krishna Menon was in favour of use of air power, but was overruled by a leadership that had lost its nerve. Use of offensive air power could have tilted the balance on the ground and boosted the morale of our troops. The morale factor is of great importance as essentially even the Sela disaster was due to loss of morale.

The above analysis is not complete given the constraints of space. The full details will be before readers when the official history, of which I am the co-author, is released.

At the very basic level, the Indian Army was fighting a repeat of the 1947-48 Kashmir war, a campaign against tribal invaders, while the Chinese, veterans of the Korean War, were a well-oiled military machine.

The above analysis may seem unduly harsh, but that is the job of an analyst and it is time we face the truth, for in that lies the germ of future success.

Colonel (retd) Anil Athale, former director of war history at the defence ministry and co-author of the official history of the 1962 war, is a frequent contributor to these pages.

 

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The next article is a must read my friends, It dosent matter if u can read all the articles but dont even miss the next one

reading that made me proud to be an Indian

 

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The Rediff Special/Col (retd) Anil Athale

THE SILVER LINING November 20, 1962, was the darkest day in the history of independent India. The previous evening, a distraught Nehru addressed the nation. "Huge Chinese armies are marching into the Northeast of India... yesterday we lost Bomdila, a small town in Kameng division... my heart goes out to the people of Assam!"

4 Corps began preparations for withdrawal from Tezpur. That ill-considered move triggered a collapse not seen before or after. The civil administration in Tezpur collapsed. Prisons were opened and government officials began burning currency in the Tezpur treasury, as also other government records.

By evening a thick pall of smoke engulfed the city. Panic-stricken people used all means to get across the Brahmaputra. The airfield was clogged with foreigners (mostly working in tea plantations) clamouring to get a seat on the aircraft. Railway staff and civil officials had all left for Gauhati and safety. By evening Tezpur was a ghost town.

The whole nation was stunned by the reverses on the battlefront. Rightly or wrongly (from the military point of view at least) people perceived that the very existence of India was at stake. Nehru's loss of nerve and 'abandoning' of Assam had grave repercussions. Even 40 years after the event, ULFA extremists and common Assamese often cite that speech by Nehru and assert that at a time of peril India had abandoned Assam.

But in these otherwise dark winter days, there was a silver lining.

As if in a flash, all internal bickering and fights ceased. On October 23, the guard at Teen Murti House, the prime minister's official residence, was confronted by an elderly couple, obviously from a rural area near Delhi. When they demanded to see the PM, the sentry directed them to his officer, thinking they must have come with some petition. The officer was stunned into silence when the old man took out papers donating his land for the defence of the nation.

Women gave their jewellery, including their 'mangalsutra', to the National Defence Fund to buy guns to fight the Chinese. In Rajasthan, 250 families from Village Bardhana Khurd decided to send one son from each family into the army. All over the country people queued up to join defence forces. Trade unions all over India gave up their right to strike till the national emergency lasted. The donations in cash were more than $220 million, the total amount needed in the supplementary budget.

The DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam], a political party in the South that had been waging a political battle for secession, had to give up its plank owing to pressure from workers. The National Integration Council that met on November 1, 1962, decided that in view of the upsurge in national feelings it had no job left and decided to disband itself.

Lieutenant General (later Field Marshal) S H F J Manekshaw replaced the clueless Gen B M Kaul in Tezpur as the new commander of 4 Corps. On taking over the corps he called a conference of all staff officers and commanders at Tezpur. As the assembled officers waited expectantly to hear the plans of their new commander, Manekshaw walked in and told the officers, "Gentlemen, there shall be no withdrawals!' and walked out.

The stunned officers were told that the conference was over. It was possibly the shortest military conference in the history of the Indian Army.

The new leadership did a wonderful job of restoring the shattered morale. Many in the army seriously believe that but for the shock administered by the Chinese and the subsequent build of India's military muscle, India would have lost Kashmir to Pakistan in 1965.

Russell Brines, a British author writing on the 1965 Indo-Pak war, mentions that Pakistanis seriously underestimated Indian nationalism while embarking on the 1965 adventure in Kashmir. 'The current of Indian Nationalism that was so strong in 1962 had merely gone underground, but was equally strong even in 1965.'

I myself was among the countless that joined the armed forces in the wake of the Chinese aggression. For many of my [post-1947] generation, that was our first brush with nationalism.

But at personal level, when I researched and wrote the official history of the 1962 war, the overwhelming feeling was that we have hidden the truth so long that we have failed to draw appropriate lessons from history. It was a major factor in my own personal decision to give up a bright armed forces career and plunge into an attempt to reform the Indian mindset on politico-military issues.

It would be wrong to suggest that we did not learn anything from 1962. At the tactical level, many changes came about in the army and it became a more thoroughly professional force.

After the disaster that was Kaul, politicians stopped interfering in the internal promotion policies of the armed forces. But Nehru, by confining the Henderson Brooks enquiry to merely military matters, sidestepped the issue of weakness at the political decision-making level on matters of security. India paid a heavy price for that folly in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.

The sense of satisfaction for 'crusaders' like me is that through the establishment of the National Security Council and its attendant bodies, we have at last put our defence decision-making on sound institutional footing. There is as yet much work to be done, but the direction we have taken is right and through trial and error we will evolve a structure suited to our genius and needs.

One wishes to end this part with a basic thought on war and its nature. There has been some debate as to whether it is a science or an art, with the prevalent consensus being that it is an art. But unlike in other forms of art, be it literature, music, painting, et al, there have been only a handful of master strategists or military geniuses in the entire recorded history of mankind --- Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Shivaji, Napoleon, and maybe Rommel. So one must not judge the Nehrus or the Kauls of this world too harshly!

 

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The Rediff Special/Claude Arpi

Even if the Indian Government jealously keeps secret its own findings of the 1962 war with China, several authors, mostly retired generals and journalists, have covered the military sides of the conflict. Amongst them, Brigadier John Dalvi's Himalayan Blunder shines as a great classic, written by a soldier who paid for the foolishness and arrogance of the few in power at that time. However, as we mentioned in a previous article, several aspects in the conflict have never been researched properly, mainly due to the absence of archival documents and written memories.

One of these angles is the internal struggles within China between 1959 and 1962 and the role of Mao Zedong during these crucial years. A study of the Russian and East European archives, already partially opened, throws new light on the real motivation for the Chinese attack.

One of the greatest crimes against humanity, which began in China in February 1958, is known as the 'Great Leap Forward'. It resulted in the largest man-made starvation in humanity's history. By initiating his Leap Forward, the Great Helmsman's objective was to surpass Great Britain in industrial production within 15 years. For the purpose, every Chinese had to start producing steel at home, with a backyard furnace. In agriculture, Mao thought that very large communes would cater for a many-fold increase in the cereal production to make China into a heaven of abundance. Introduced and managed with frantic fanaticism, it did not take much time before the program collapsed. However, the more the plan failed, the more the party cadres provided inflated production figures to Mao and more people died of starvation.

Only one man tried to raise his voice against the general madness and sycophancy. This was Marshall Peng Denhai, defence minister and old companion of Mao during the Long March. Marshal Peng, who was a simple, honest and straightforward officer [the Dalai Lama once told me: 'He was my favourite Chinese'], wrote a long personal letter to Mao about what he had seen in the countryside and the misery of the people. Mao immediately distributed his friend's critics to all the Party cadres and 'purged' old Peng. The Great Leap Forward was to continue till 1961/1962 and it is estimated that between 30-40 million died of hunger in China during these three years. The book, The Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker has brilliantly documented this tragedy.

At the beginning of 1962, while tension was increasing on the Indian border, did Nehru realize that China was a starving nation? In fact, very few grasped what was going on in China at that time. On his return from a visit to Beijing in 1961, François Mitterrand, who later became the president of France, wrote: "Mao is a humanist…a new type of man in whom doctrinal rigour is allied with a vigilant realism."

Outside China how many knew that, by the end of 1961 Mao was practically out of power? It was Lui Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping who were ruling the country and struggling to introduce economical reforms.

Dr Zhisui Li, Mao's personal physician recounts how in 1961 Mao was: "…depressed over the agricultural crisis and angry with the party elite, upon whom he was less able now to work his will, Mao was in temporary eclipse, spending most his time in bed." A year later, at the beginning of the fateful 1962, Mao's situation had not improved, Dr Li noted: "1962 was a political turning point for Mao. In January, when he convened another expanded Central Committee work conference to discuss the continuing disaster, his support within the party was at its lowest."

During the Conference known as the 7,000 Cadres' Conference, Lui Shaoqi said: "…man-made disasters strike the whole country." He was targeting Mao. After a month, as the meeting could not conclude, Mao decided that it was enough: he would stage a comeback against 'left adventurism' and the 'capitalist roaders'. Dr. Li disclosed: "In the summer of 1962, he [Mao] emerged from his retreat. …I knew that his counter offensive was about to begin."

At that point in time, one person stood up and defended Mao: this was Lin Biao who had replaced Marshall Peng as Defence Minister. Lin, who would lead the attack on India a few months later asserted: "The thoughts of Chairman Mao are always correct." This newly found alliance between Mao and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Chief was, no doubt, one of the most important factors in the 1962 conflict.

In September 1962, at the 10th Plenum of the Party's 8th Central Committee, Mao took back the fate of China into his hands; he denounced 'the members of the bourgeoisie right in the party ranks'. He even attacked his mild Premier Zhou Enlai and Foreign Minister Chen Yi. They were accused to try to rehabilitate the intellectuals and the scientists: "the party has not yet properly educated the intellectuals. The bourgeois spirit hangs over like a ghost over their heads."

We should not forget that till the summer of 1962, Zhou and Chen were the two main makers of China's India policy and that Zhou had initiated negotiations with the Indian government on the border issue.

Though there is little archival evidence from the Chinese side, it appears that the attack on India was for Mao and his new protégé Lin Biao another way to reassert their supremacy over Lui Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

The timings of the October 1962 events coincide exactly with the beginning of Mao's return to the political stage in China.

Militarily, from the Chinese side, the 1962 attack was only a spank to an ill-prepared Indian army and once the blow was given, the PLA immediately returned to its barracks in Tibet. In this connection, it is worth noting the point made by Jasper Becker in his book: the PLA was the only section of the Chinese population who had not starved during the Great Leap. Mao and Lin had been careful to keep the army on their side.

A factor which may have pushed Mao to strike at that particular time, was the brewing discontent in Tibet which manifested itself by a 70,000-character petition sent by the Panchen Lama to Mao in April 1962. In the September CCP Conference, Mao denounced the 'poisonous arrow' sent by the Lama and called him "an enemy of our class". A longer war, with its supply base in Tibet, would have been very difficult to sustain in the atmosphere of 'rebellion' prevalent on the Roof of the World at that time. The Panchen Lama was openly siding with the 'reformists' camp led by Lui Shaoqi and Deng.

Another important factor that probably influenced Mao in ordering his troops to cross the McMahon Line was the split with the Soviet Union. Apart from border clashes that are always indicative of a larger problem, Moscow and Beijing were looking at several issues very differently. Their views were particularly diverging on the policy of 'peaceful coexistence' with the West initiated by Khrushchev. For Beijing, "to achieve peace without wars is sheer non-sense" and "imperialism will not fall if not pushed". One must remember that Nehru's government was, at that time, considered as a "lackey of the revisionists", meaning the Soviets.

The second issue dividing the two communist giants was the leadership of the Third World. When Mao had declared: "the wind from the East had come to prevail over the wind from the West", Moscow got the message: Beijing wanted to assume the leadership of the newly liberated Asian and African countries.

Two factors contributed to the split coming to the fore in October 1962: one was the Sino-Indian border row and the other one, the Cuban crisis that erupted on October 22. Though, Moscow had sided with Beijing in March 1959, when an uprising of the Tibetan population in Lhasa forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India, a few months later, when a first clash occurred on the McMahon Line, the Russians refused to support the Chinese. They believed that the flare-up had been provoked by China's intransigent attitude on the McMahon Line. They further advised both parties to settle the matter by 'peaceful means'. For China, this was a betrayal and the Soviet attitude was violating the "principles of proletarian internationalism". Mao at that time considered Nehru as "half-man and half-devil" and he thought that China should "wash off his face so that it won't be frightening, like a devil's".

Though Moscow systematically refused to be a mediator between the two parties or even organize a historical conference with scholars and historians from both sides to present their findings on the border issue, Khrushchev and his colleagues tried to influence the Chinese leadership to change their stance and accept some compromise. A report prepared by the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1959, concluded that a change in China's approach could only occur "as a result of review by the leaders of the PRC of their foreign policy conceptions as a whole". China was certainly not ready to change its stand. Mao still believed in usefulness of war, had he not said, "Some people have ridiculed us as the advocates of omnipotence of war. Yes, we are: we are the advocates of the omnipotence of the revolutionary war, which is not bad at all, but good and is Marxist."

The Cuban crisis did not improve the relations between China and the USSR. For a long time, Khrushchev tried to hide the built up of missiles in Cuba from the Chinese. He thought that he alone could reap the benefits.

In the September's Conference, while Mao was staging his comeback, his anti-Soviet mood hardened in Beijing. The day India was attacked, the Chinese government sent a memorandum to the Soviet government on the non-proliferation issue, directly attacking Moscow: "However strong the military capabilities of the Soviet Union, it is not able to solve the defence issue of all the socialist nations. For example, on the question of the defence by the Chinese of their borders with India, the Soviet side played just the opposite role."

The split had come into the open.

Since a first clash with India in August, Beijing felt that Moscow had become more pro-Indian, because prior to the event, the Russians had provided India with some military helicopters and transport planes which were used in the border hostilities. Mid-October 1962, Beijing made a last attempt to compel Moscow to take a "class position" on China's border dispute with India. They wanted "to teach certain comrades [Russians] to separate truth from untruth."

Only five days after the October 20 attack on India, the Soviets, isolated after Kennedy's ultimatum on the dismantlement of the missiles in Cuba and facing the possibility of a nuclear war, took a U-turn on the Sino-Indian conflict. The Pravda wrote in an editorial that the McMahon line was "notoriously the result of British imperialism," and "consequently illegal". Nehru felt betrayed and the Chinese did not answer.

In any case, it was already too late for the Russians. Beijing was winning on all fronts: they had humiliated India on the NEFA front and without Soviets support; on the Cuban front, if Kennedy had backed out, the Chinese would prove right: 'imperialists are paper tigers'; but if Moscow retreated [as it did], Mao would prove his point that "peaceful co-existence used by contemporary revisionists" could not help Asian or African [or Cuban] 'fraternal parties' in case of crisis.

Mao's stature within China and internationally emerged much taller from the double crisis. The great strategist had come out of his bed to strike back. The PLA could now withdraw from Indian territory.

Forty years later, India has not yet really digested the bitter pill.

As for Mao: "People may ask if there is contradiction to abandon a territory gained by heroic battle. Does it mean that the heroic fighters shed their blood in vain and to no purpose? This is to put the wrong question. Does one eat to no purpose simply because he relieves himself later? Does one sleep in vain because one wakes up and goes about? I do not think the questions should be asked thus; rather one should keep on eating and sleeping or fighting. These are illusions born out of subjectivism and formalism and do not exist in real life."

 

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The Rediff Special/Dr John W Garver

COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN? Dr John W Garver The probability of another war between China and India is not great. But it does exist.

Armed conflict on the scale of 1962, possibly greater, might arise out of three situations, singularly or in combination: Chinese intervention in an Indian-Pakistan war, a major uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, and the unresolved border dispute.

Chinese intervention in an India-Pakistan war is perhaps the most likely scenario. Since the early 1960s, a fundamental goal of Chinese policy in South Asia has been to maintain a balance of power between India and Pakistan --- to keep Pakistan strong enough to be willing and able to challenge India's ambitions in the South Asian region and beyond.

A Pakistan strong enough to challenge India will, perforce, prevent any Indian government from concentrating its diplomatic energies and/or its military forces against China.

A strong and anti-India Pakistan compels Indian defence planners to keep the better part of Indian forces on guard in India's west and away from China's borders. Indian preoccupation with South Asian challenges also greatly hinders India's ambition of acting as an Asian or global equal to China; it keeps India chained to the subcontinent.

Internecine conflict between India and Pakistan forces world capitals to view both those states in a regional context, leaving China alone on a higher global plane, as the only truly Asian power. Finally, the realities of the existing distribution of subcontinental power keep India cautious when dealing with problems relating to "China's Tibet".

China did not create the animosity between India and Pakistan. But China's strategists recognize the enduring reality of that enmity and use it to China's advantage.

China's strategic interest in a strong and self-confident Pakistan explains its robust assistance to Pakistan's military-industrial development efforts over the years. It explains Beijing's long record of assistance to Pakistan's missile and nuclear development efforts. It explains Beijing's insistence that China's various sorts of military co-operation with Pakistan will continue independent of improvements in Sino-Indian relations. It probably explains, too, China's decision, circa 1974, to covertly assist Pakistan's nuclear weapons effort.

At that point, the "great nuclear equalizer" probably seemed the last best chance for sustaining Pakistan's ability to resist Indian domination and thus sustain the existing South Asian balance of power.

Would China, then, intervene in an India-Pakistan war? Almost certainly not, unless it seemed that India were about to decisively subordinate Pakistan. Short of that point, Beijing would probably render Pakistan various sorts of material and political support, while pressuring Washington, Paris, London, Moscow, Tokyo and other capitals to pressure New Delhi to cease operations against Pakistan and restore the status quo ante.

What if those measures didn't work? What if India pushed ahead with a determination to settle its Pakistan problem once and for all? What if India persisted, perhaps in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange, in a drive to decisively resolve India's Pakistan problem?

Beijing would probably then undertake measures moving up the escalation ladder threatening intervention --- making increasingly ominous declarations, undertaking various troop movements and manoeuvres, taking punitive measures to downgrade Sino-Indian diplomatic relations, creating incidents along the Sino-Indian border in an area distant from Pakistan, and so on.

But what if India still did not cease and desist? Would China then actually enter the war in the hopes of preventing Pakistan's decisive subordination, thereby rescuing the existing South Asian balance of power?

Throughout history nations have often gone to war to prevent the overturning of a particular balance of power favourable to them. That observation aside, it is probably safe to say that China's leaders themselves could not now answer this question.

China's response would probably depend very much on the circumstances at the time. Like, what the battlefield balance between India and Pakistan is and how effective Chinese intervention would be. And what the military balance between the People's Liberation Army and the Indian armed forces is at that point.

One extremely important factor would be the attitude of the United States and its allies. If Washington could be persuaded to adopt an understanding attitude towards Chinese intervention, or to agree to remain neutral, Beijing would be much more likely to intervene.

On the other hand, US and Western disapproval of Chinese intervention would greatly raise the costs for Beijing of Chinese intervention. Chinese diplomacy would probably go all out to secure Western understanding. A great deal would depend on the skill of Indian diplomacy.

Turning to Tibet, Beijing rules there over a people ethnically quite distinct from the Han (the Chinese-speaking, Chinese-culture people constituting 90 per cent of China's population). Moreover, a very large number of Tibetans are dismayed by what they view as a Chinese takeover of their homeland.

Since the breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia along ethnic lines, Beijing has lifted earlier restrictions on Han migration into Tibet. The result has been a flood of Chinese into Tibet. Already, perhaps close to half the population of Tibet is Han (this is the estimate of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in India) and that proportion will almost certainly continue to grow as new roads and rail-lines are built into Tibet.

In several decades Tibetans will probably constitute a small minority of the inhabitants of their ancestral homeland. This process of demographic inundation creates a strong sense among Tibetans that time is running out for Tibet. The possibility of Tibetan resistance movements against Chinese rule --- perhaps armed, but more likely using non-violent Gandhian tactics --- is significant.

Beijing's usual response is draconian repression. But this approach ultimately didn't work in the USSR. It can be safely assumed that Beijing will blame on foreign powers any organized, large-scale Tibetan resistance to its rule. What is at work here is a tendency to project on to hostile foreign forces responsibility for domestic opposition that arises, in fact out of disapproval of the policies of the Chinese Communist Party.

Thus opposition to the CCP's efforts to clamp Leninist controls on China in the early 1950s was blamed on "US imperialism", Tibetan opposition to Beijing's policies of the late 1950s was blamed on India, and demonstrations by students in Beijing in 1989 was blamed on US schemes of "peaceful evolution".

This tendency to project on to foreign powers responsibility for domestic opposition is an extremely deep-rooted cultural construction. It has two taproots: one, the belief that China has been victimized by foreign powers for a century past; the other, a belief in the absolute moral superiority and wisdom of the CCP.

In any case, it is almost certain that organized, large-scale Tibetan resistance to Beijing's rule will be blamed on foreign powers. The only question is whether the power assigned responsibility by Beijing will be India or the United States.

India's first inclination will probably be to dissociate itself from Tibetan resistance. The parameters of Indian domestic politics may make it impossible, however, for India to satisfy Beijing's demands. It might be hard for Indian opinion to stomach Indian co-operation with the suppression of a non-violent Tibetan resistance movement employing the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi and appealing to the example of Indian federalism and democracy.

Domestic Indian revulsion at Chinese repression would make it impossible for New Delhi to take more than half-measures placating Beijing, while Beijing would find such half-measures mere camouflage for more sinister Indian purposes.

This, in a nutshell, is what happened in 1959.

Beijing's nightmare is US intervention in Tibet in support of widespread Tibetan resistance, perhaps with the co-operation of India. Unlikely as such a scenario seems it is possible to identify circumstances in which it might occur. Perhaps the most likely would be in the context of a severe deterioration of US-PRC relations, perhaps as a result of a war over Taiwan that became protracted.

Confronted with the difficulty of forcing peace terms on a China defeated in air and naval battles around Taiwan, but still belligerent and ensconced on the continent, Washington might turn to Tibet. Would the moves of the Indian government to dissociate itself from a US effort in Tibet then be adequate to satisfy Beijing? Might there be a government in New Delhi that concluded it would serve Indian interests to co-operate with the US in an effort to restore a measure of genuine Tibetan autonomy, say, as existed prior to 1959?

Beijing might be willing to pay New Delhi a high price for Indian dissociation from the United States at such a juncture. On the other hand, some Indian strategists might conclude that it is unwise to take Beijing's smaller concessions rather than trying to guarantee the continued existence of an ethnically Tibetan Tibet.

It is impossible to predict how these factors might evolve. But it does seem that events might possibly come together in such a way as to produce a second Sino-Indian war.

Regarding the border, Chinese publications and government statements since the late 1950s have convinced Chinese opinion that the southern slope of the eastern Himalayas, roughly corresponding to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, is rightfully Chinese territory.

Indian possession of this piece of land constitutes aggression against China. It behoves Chinese diplomacy not to belabour this point publicly, but the underlying belief remains intact. The possibility of China undertaking a war to recover this lost territory is extremely small.

On the other hand, the intensity of nationalism in post-1989 China combined with the increasing role of nationalism in legitimizing the CCP's domination of the State makes it very difficult for any Chinese leader to "relinquish" large tracts of land that are "rightfully China's".

India too maintains its claim to Aksai Chin. Although the road across that desolate plateau is no longer as important to PLA control of Tibet as it was in the 1950s, abandoning it would diminish PLA capabilities in western Tibet. This would probably be acceptable only if China received major compensation in the eastern sector.

But Indian concessions in the vicinity of Tawang, where the historical evidence of traditional Tibetan administration is strongest, would sandwich Bhutan between Chinese salients in Chumbi and Tawang, greatly complicating the ability of Indian forces to defend the Himalayan kingdom should that need arise.

All this means that the border issue will probably remain unresolved for some time.

Miscalculations by border forces of both sides have become less likely since the implementation of confidence-building measures after 1996. Even if border incidents (due, perhaps, to patrols misreading maps or losing their way) do occur, they are unlikely to lead to war. The governments of the two sides will probably pull back as they did in 1987 over Sumdurong Chu.

But the unresolved territorial dispute involving very substantial blocks of land does add a significant element of suspicion and unpredictability to the New Delhi-Beijing relation. For New Delhi, it means that any prospect of war with China immediately raises the possibility of losing India's geographic defensive shield in the eastern Himalayas, thereby rendering the entire Northeast virtually indefensible.

For Beijing, an unresolved territorial dispute with India provides an effective way of putting pressure on India. If Beijing wishes to demonstrate solidarity with Pakistan, or express anger over Indian policies towards Tibet, PLA moves threatening Arunachal Pradesh could be very effective.

In effect, the unresolved nature of the territorial dispute --- China's standing claim to the area of Arunachal Pradesh --- multiplies the effect of China's coercive threats.

Just as the existence of a strong, anti-Indian Pakistan siphons Indian forces from India's frontiers with China, so the existence of the unresolved dispute over the eastern Himalayas siphons Indian forces away from India's frontiers with Pakistan.

There could well be a meeting of Chinese and Pakistani minds in this regard.

(Dr John W Garver, author of Protracted Contest; Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century and other books, is a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.)

 

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"I remember many a time when our senior generals came to us, and wrote to the defence ministry saying that they wanted certain things... If we had had foresight, known exactly what would happen, we would have done something else... what India has learnt from the Chinese invasion is that in the world of today there is no place for weak nations... We have been living in an unreal world of our own creation."
Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajya Sabha, 1963

Instead of "I", Nehru used the collective "we", a clear indication of his reluctance to own up his own mistakes as a man.

"The fact of the matter is that Nehru felt a gnawing of conscience throughout this episode. He knew that the blame for the disaster was more his than that of his loyal friend [defence minister V K Krishna Menon]," says journalist and historian Durga Das.

 

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The next article is also a must read gives a 100 reasons to hate Nehru

 

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The Rediff Special/Wing Commander (retd) R V Parasnis

"The decision-making system during 1959-62 was starkly ad hoc and designed primarily to suit the personality of the Prime Minister -- who preferred to deal with these matters personally -- even Krishna Menon seldom took a stand on any point or even made a contribution when the Prime Minister was in the chair... in the Army Headquarters, it was General Kaul who had caught the Prime Minister's eye... It was not Krishna Menon who was primarily culpable for the practice of General Officers establishing direct access to politicians... It was Nehru who, many years previously, first established this irregularity," says the then director general of military operations, Brigadier (later Major General) D K Palit, in his book War in High Himalayas.

After the 1962 war, Nehru wrote to General B M Kaul ('Untold Story by Kaul) lamenting about Kaul having been blamed and having had to resign from the army for no fault of his.

This indicates Nehru's poor sense of judgement even after the event. Practically all military experts agree that Kaul was responsible for the debacle in NEFA in many ways. He showed utter lack of the knowledge of the higher-level conduct of war. More often than not, he was found away from his HQ flying in a helicopter personally doing things best left to his staff, while crucial battles were in progress on the borders. Though he displayed personal courage and dash of very high degree, he fully justified the doubts about his efficiency then expressed by many senior officers on account of his lack of operational experience.

The roots of politicisation of the army are to be found in Nehru's hatred for the man in uniform. Soon after Independence the first commander-in-chief of the Indian armed forces, General Sir Robert Lockhart, presented a paper outlining a plan for the growth of the Indian Army to Prime Minister Nehru.

Nehru's reply: "We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. You can scrap the army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs."

He didn't waste much time. On September 16, 1947, he directed that the army's then strength of 280,000 be brought down to 150,000. Even in fiscal 1950-51, when the Chinese threat had begun to loom large on the horizon, 50,000 army personnel were sent home as per his original plan to disband the armed forces.

After Independence, he once noticed a few men in uniform in a small office the army had in North Block, and angrily had them evicted.

It was only after the 1947-48 war in Jammu and Kashmir that he realised that the armed forces are an essential ingredient of any independent, sovereign nation. But he still wanted a compact army rather than great volume, whatever that meant. Defence requirements worked out after a careful assessment of threats carried no weight with him.

For some reason, he disliked Field Marshal K M Cariappa despite his excellent leadership during the 1947-48 war that saved Kashmir. But his attempts to supersede him and make General Rajendrasinhji the first commander-in-chief of India failed when Gen Rajendrasinhji declined.

Soon after Independence he separated the army, navy, and air force from a unified command and abolished the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, thus bringing down the status of the seniormost military chief.

He continued to demote the status of the three service chiefs at irregular intervals in the order of precedence in the official government protocol, a practice loyally continued by successive governments to the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats.

During the 1947-48 war with Pakistan in Kashmir, Nehru interfered with purely military decisions at will, which delayed the war and changed the ultimate outcome in Pakistan's favour. He developed a precedent to violate channels and levels of communications at that time. His penchant for verbal orders to the various army commanders, of which he kept no records, violated the chain of command.

The army thereafter reversed this trend as there was no direct interference from any of the defence ministers in the army's job and Nehru was totally engrossed in his statecraft.

That is until V K Krishna Menon arrived on the scene.

Menon, along with Nehru, caused havoc in the army's working, disregarding professional opinion and advice, violating all channels and levels of communication and encouraging the same within the army hierarchy, which ended with disastrous results in the Sino-Indian conflict. Like his boss, Menon believed in giving verbal orders and disliked records.

When the prime minister and the defence minister give an ear to a junior general over the heads of other generals, including the army chief, and the junior boasts about this, the morale and effectiveness of the senior officers is bound to suffer, even as the army hierarchy begins to disintegrate.

This is just what happened progressively in 1961-62. The cancer eventually entered the mainstream services and though there are strong tendencies to counter such evils ingrained within the armed forces culture, it is slowly but surely spreading, thanks to the generally weak Indian character.

After the infamous 'Jeep scandal' (purchase of Jeeps for the use of the army, which the army rejected on account of their poor condition, but was forced to accept since the Jeeps were already paid for), it became necessary to remove Krishna Menon, who had fixed that deal, from the post of high commissioner to the United Kingdom because of political and media pressure.

But Prime Minister Nehru rewarded him by making him Minister for Defence with Cabinet rank. This tradition has been faithfully carried forward to date by the followers of Nehru and by politicians who vehemently opposed him and the policies of the Congress party, with equal vigour. In power and out of power, political compulsions seem to demand different ethics.

It is not out of place to mention here that the government dropped the case slapped on the nondescript company that had supplied the Jeeps soon after Krishna Menon took over as defence minister.

Krishna Menon was an extremely strong-willed, intelligent man with a caustic tongue. The credit for making the first efforts to make India self-sufficient in defence production goes to him. According to B K Nehru, he alone among the politicians, other than Jawaharlal Nehru, had any understanding of foreign affairs in those early years after Independence. (Among the bureaucrats the only knowledgeable person was Girija Shankar Bajpai.)

It stands to reason, therefore, that they depended only on each other for advice and everyone else, mainly the bureaucracy (as politicians hardly understood or took an interest in anything about foreign affairs, which were indeed very foreign to them), looked up to the Nehru-Menon combine for all foreign policy directives. Without any official position in the external affairs ministry, Menon was treated like royalty by sycophantic officials, mainly because Nehru looked on him with favour.

Menon thus wielded a lot more power than what his official position in the Cabinet permitted because of Nehru, and received far more importance than he deserved. Senior defence services officers, who should have been part of the government's foreign policy-making body, especially as regards the border problems, were never even consulted. In fact, those days apart from the ICS, they were the only ones with international exposure and possibly the only service that had had some training in international relations.

Keeping the defence services out resulted in a lame Indian foreign policy, without the backing of the required military muscle. Defence services officers are brought up to be straightforward and forthright. But having exercised their right to differ and express dissent, they will carry out the orders received to the best of their ability.

It must be said to Nehru's credit that he was at least open to differing points of view. Nevertheless, he would discard them easily after giving them a hearing. Menon, on the other hand, had no such generosity. He would mercilessly stamp down hard on any kind of dissent. Military men suffered severe insults from Menon and heavy snubs from Nehru, which virtually cut communications between the military high command and their civilian bosses.

Krishna Menon didn't possess an independent power base and drew his power from his proximity to Nehru. In fact the entire inner circle of Nehru, of which Krishna Menon was de facto whip, had no independent power base and drew its power from its proximity to Nehru. Naturally, its members guarded access to Nehru very carefully. Though politics was a lot more democratic and open those days and Nehru a lot more accessible and democratic than his daughter (who perfected the coterie politics) and those who followed her, the seeds of coterie politics were firmly sown under his stewardship, and in his days Menon was feared due to his sharp, swift and abrasive tongue as his chief whip.

Krishna Menon probably would have done better as foreign minister, but he proved to be a bad boss for defence. He disliked the set army procedures and tried to short-circuit them at every stage in every matter. He had a bad habit of treating his subordinates as if they were children. He took an immense pleasure in throwing files at the faces of senior officers. He often liked to summon his subordinates at odd times of the night to his residence for no work of importance. Insulting people came easily to him.

But the proud defence services officers refused to be cowed down. There were instances of the files getting thrown out of the office or back on the table. Some abruptly walked out on Menon without taking his permission.

So, to assert the civilian superiority over the military, Menon began to play favourites, tried to supersede capable commanders with pliant, weak-willed officers, and create protégés with, in all probability, Nehru's tacit approval. These officers naturally proved to be short on self-respect also and failed to stand up for their convictions when occasion demanded.

Major General Palit writes in Menon's defence: "In spite of his methods such as barbed tongue, biting criticism and blatant cajolery to subvert opposition, if any army officer stood his ground, he wouldn't overrule him. The trouble was that most of his [Menon's] directions to the army were ill-conceived, ill-informed and foolhardy."

But in a democracy, a majority of the government's directions, right or wrong, must prevail. Besides, Gen Palit is the only person to have defended Menon. Probably he saw his boss Kaul standing his ground before Menon, but then Kaul being Nehru's protégé could afford to do it.

Also, Gen Palit, though working in fairly close proximity to the defence ministry and minister, appears to have been surprisingly unaware of Menon's habit of threatening officers who dared to raise genuine questions with a court-martial. Lieutenant General S L Menezes recounts this habit of Menon in his book, Fidelity and Honour.

Generals Thapar, Sen and Kaul were literally forced by the Nehru-Menon combine to undertake actions that the military found unsound. But eventually trusting the judgement of intelligence chief B N Mullick and foreign affairs experts Nehru and Menon (in any case the highest decision-making body) that the Chinese were not serious about war and would not fight, these generals not only carried out their orders meekly but often with active co-operation.

Kaul, who got taken in by Mullick's philosophy after initially differing with it, probably was also responsible for giving some wrong ideas to Nehru and Menon and/or strengthening some of their wrong ideas. Gen Sen, sadly, displayed no mind of his own and vacillated greatly between two extremes right to the end of the war.

Finally, there came a time when these generals realised that 'an armed conflict with China was inevitable'. They also knew that our army was unprepared, ill-clothed and ill-armed and that the supply lines just didn't exist in that inaccessible terrain. If war broke out, our defeat was guaranteed. It must have also become clear to them that war meant sacrificing the officers and men under their command on their direct orders. They must have also clearly understood then that the battles they were getting forced into would bring disgrace to the nation and dishonour to the army.

Yet they did not have the courage of their convictions to offer their resignations, preferring to be tools in the hands of their political bosses and carrying out a suicidal act. A mass resignation of the senior generals would have forced the government to back down and seek a diplomatic solution to the border problem while simultaneously strengthening the armed forces to take on China in high-altitude terrain.

The government would have certainly gone out of its way to keep the whole matter secret, and thus there was no chance of any other risk emerging out of the episode. There was not a ghost of a chance of the acceptance of their resignations by the government, which just couldn't have risked the facts about the border conditions, poor diplomacy, and hasty demarcation of the borders without ratification by China becoming public.

But these generals, indulging first in self-ambition and later in survival, forgetting that the men under their command, whom they were soon to order to their deaths, had no public voice and depended entirely on their superiors' good judgement and strong backbone for protection.

General K S Thimayya was an officer with a brilliant military career. The British had always avoided giving higher command to Indian officers as a matter of policy. In such circumstances Thimayya was the only Indian officer to be made a brigadier and given command of an operational brigade during the Second World War.

Later, during the 1947-48 war with Pakistan, Major General Thimayya gave an excellent account of himself. He was, without doubt, the most popular general, loved by one and all in the army. In due time he became chief of army staff. To his bad luck, that time happened to coincide with Krishna Menon's entry into the ministry of defence.

Krishna Menon was a master in the art of one-upmanship, with many tricks up his sleeve. The writer Khushwant Singh has narrated many a humorous anecdote about this habit of Menon's. To get one up on General Thimayya and the military top brass, Menon employed a unique trick. On ceremonial occasions, he would often go and sit in the front seat of the car next to the driver, putting the accompanying army chief in a dilemma. How could he sit at the back while his boss, the defence minister/chief guest, was sitting in the humble front seat?

General Thimayya found a diplomatic answer to this. He would ask the driver to sit behind and take the wheel of the car himself, and engage the defence minister in casual chat. Engrossed in his self-importance, Krishna Menon never grasped the essence of this tactic. Perhaps he felt elated that he was making the general drive him around, as he made a habit of it and extended this practice to all times, everywhere.

The differences between Menon, the defence minister, and General Thimayya, chief of army staff, grew over the former's interference in military matters and promotions and postings of officers, as Thimayya refused to be browbeaten. There came a time when he resigned in protest (possibly on the matter of promoting Gen Kaul out of turn). Nehru worked his charm and managed to get Thimayya to withdraw his resignation, but eventually spoke in Parliament criticising the general, contrary to what he had promised.

Thimayya, the soldier, who had no public voice, was greatly pained at having been let down in this manner. The episode also showed that Nehru was capable of doublespeak and could go back on his word. There were pro and contrary views on the resignation episode. Thimayya was a recipient of considerable criticism for his resignation as well as its retraction. In the bargain, the nation was the loser.

When the time came for Thimayya to retire, it was expected that the brilliant commander of proven ability, Gen S P P Thorat, would be made chief superseding Gen Thapar. But the government opted for the meek and submissive Thapar, much to the disappointment of almost the entire officer cadre in the army.

This animosity between the army and the civilians led to loss of interaction between the two. And in the long term, the armed forces began to get increasingly politicised, a process that continues.

Civilian interference in defence matters, particularly promotions and postings, came to be accepted. There entered a most un-soldierly tradition into the services (some, not all) -- a tendency to be subservient to the bosses like junior civil officials. A tendency to toe the official line rather than display independent thinking/courage of conviction became the rule rather than the exception. Senior officers approached politicians for postings/appointments and courts for redressing their grievances. The Admiral Nadkarni-Koppikar-Bhagwat episode and the Admiral Bhagwat-Sushil Kumar-Harinder Singh episode are all offshoots of this same malaise.

In the short term, pliant officers got promoted. The depressing effect of this on the previously highly promoted officer-like qualities, such as fearless expression of opinion and initiative and dash, was incalculable. The era of mediocrity was hastened in the defence services on account of the politicisation, which, to our good fortune, the services did make an honest effort to resist then and have continued resisting till date. With mixed results.

 

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The Rediff Special/Wing Commander (retd) R V Parasnis

By and large Indians have always lacked an understanding of the concept of sovereignty. Therein lie the roots of our slavery by foreign rulers for over 1,000 years. These foreigners all came for plunder or trade, but stayed on to rule and earned the right to call themselves Indians. All the while the local kingdoms squabbled between themselves and myopically called for foreign help to overcome their adversaries.

The concept of sovereignty calls for a thorough understanding of national interests and goals; developing means (especially economic strength) and infrastructure to achieve them; fair and just rule of law; and military muscle along with a willingness to use it when necessary. Care also has to be taken to ensure that pragmatism and practicality prevail in all national policies, or else sovereignty can never be sustained.

The great Shivaji understood the concept of sovereignty perfectly well and was therefore able to create an empire out of nothing, surrounded by enemies on all sides. The British creation of 'protectorates' and 'buffer states' for the defence of India too developed because of this concept, and the lack of resources, especially manpower, with Great Britain to conquer, control, and administer every small or big state bordering India. Economically and administratively, it was not viable to expand the borders of the empire thoughtlessly over unproductive terrain.

The India-China-Tibet treaties of the British days were thus created according to the British defence concept to guard and expand their empire, and deliberately kept vague. The British had the military muscle to remain flexible in philosophy and enforce whatever they thought was best in their interests at any given time.

But after Independence, in spite of the British understanding with Tibet and the willingness of the Tibetan authorities to expand that understanding to let India help them keep their country safe from external aggression (they only had China to fear), we did nothing.

On the other hand, a year after the People's Republic of China was declared in 1949, the People's Liberation Army entered Tibet and made it a province of their country.

That is foresight and quick action. They acted when the time was ripe and before anyone else could react. They knew exactly what their country's goal was and secured it. Sadly, Tibet has become an abandoned land since, and its well-developed, proud culture is on the wane in full sight of the world due to deliberate design and effort, often accompanied with brutal repression.

Sardar Patel was constrained to state in writing to Nehru that the Tibetans had reposed their trust in and looked up to us to protect them, but we had let them down. India could have entered into a treaty with Tibet and taken over the defence - and, perhaps, foreign affairs -- of Tibet in return for expenses while the Communists under Mao Zedong were busy fighting the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, whose defeat appeared imminent. The US of those days would have given any amount of military aid to contain the Russia-China Communist axis, so obsessive with pathological hatred for Communism were they at the time.

That would certainly have created conditions for a serious confrontation with the Chinese in future, but with American help we could have prepared for that eventuality.

As for our leaders then, only Sardar Patel had some understanding of the concept of sovereignty. Nehru always displayed an abject lack of it. Examples are galore, right from the time of Partition.

1. His refusal to accept the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir on September 19, 1947, when it was originally offered by Maharaja Hari Singh, a good five weeks before the invasion of his state by Pakistan. Had the accession been accepted then, the entire state would have been ours. The Pakistan of those days would never have dared attack India, so superior was our military strength on account of the division of the armed forces on religious lines.
2. Later, Nehru practically surrendered our sovereignty when he invited Lord Louis Mountbatten, the governor general, to preside over and chair the meetings of his own Cabinet and the Cabinet Committee on Defence on matters regarding the accession and the military action after Pakistan invaded Jammu and Kashmir. Mountbatten, basically a servant of the British Crown, did his best to delay the decisions.
3. Worse, as India started winning the war and liberating parts of north Kashmir, Nehru inexplicably (most likely under the strong influence of Mountbatten and his wife, who shaped much of his thinking in those days) declared a 'ceasefire' and stopped our victorious army dead in its tracks before it could liberate the entire state. He declared the ceasefire arbitrarily, without consulting his full Cabinet, the Constituent Assembly (as Parliament was then known), his military commanders, or the maharaja/prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
4. Nehru was the architect of Article 370, with which he burdened India to placate a hurt Sheikh Abdullah.
5. The Chinese occupation of Tibet should have forced a reassessment of the threat to India. After they enforced their suzerainty on Tibet in 1951, the threat deserved greater attention. But when General K M Cariappa met Nehru to discuss the defence of the North East Frontier Agency, he was bluntly told to mind only Kashmir and Pakistan as his concerns for defence and leave China to the politicians and the diplomats.

As Lieutenant General S P P Thorat recounts in his autobiography 'From Reveille to Retreat', "When [in 1959] I, as GoC-in-C Eastern Command, met Menon in Delhi, I opened the subject [of defence against the Chinese] with him. In his usually sarcastic style he said that there would be no war between India and China and [if there was] he was quite capable of fighting it himself at the diplomatic level."
6. Nehru learnt no lessons from the war in Kashmir. Practicality always took a back seat in his mind, which was dominated by idealism. He went on emotionally in his rhetoric of 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai', all the while considering himself a superior international statesman and India an elder brother of China.

He was proudly going around as the unchallenged leader of the Third World. He failed to realise that the Chinese leaders had begun to resent his approach and his manner of dealing with them, that as per them China was the natural leader of the Third World, that the initial bond of personal friendship he had formed with the Chinese leaders was not strong enough to withstand this strain, and that personal relations can never score over vital national interests in any case. Countries fight wars when their vital interests are threatened. Nehru and Krishna Menon failed to understand this.
7. Nehru's rigidity on the border issue, his insistence on Chinese withdrawal before border talks could begin, his grant of political asylum to the Dalai Lama and permission to him to establish a Tibetan government-in-exile (an act that created conditions for a future invasion of Tibet by India or outside powers through India to restore the Dalai Lama's rule, if desired), the hostile Indian press on the question of the occupation of Tibet, and Nehru's increasingly aggressive statements on the border made the Chinese believe he had become a tool in the hands of the Anglo-American imperialists.

Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was maintaining a friendly posture, but he had practically begun to hate Nehru, as is clear from the text of his conversations with US President Richard Nixon in 1972, now made public. There were possibly some outward signs of this and some hints were dropped, but Nehru was blind to them. The Chinese, basically secretive in nature, were also not very open about their ill feelings.

The Chinese also knew that India was unprepared for a high-altitude war, and there was no imperial power behind her with any ready plan to enter Tibet. Since the Indian threat was unreal, punishing Nehru must have been the only, or a major, motive for their attacks.
8. Nehru continued with his blind love for socialism and an oppressed sister nation. Zhou and his generals were invited for many military functions like the passing out parade of the National Defence Academy, firepower demonstration/exercises by the army, and even visits to the various military establishments like the Defence Services Staff College and the College of Combat, Mhow. Zhou embraced the young cadets passing out then with affection, but had no qualms in butchering them when they were guarding our borders in 1962 as young officers.

The Chinese premier and his generals went all round India visiting our industrial and military establishments, observing, learning and preparing for an eventuality (or planning for a showdown?), while we enjoyed our reverie. The example of one firepower demonstration in 1956 arranged by none other than General B M Kaul stands out.

"The firepower demonstration went off admirably well. It had to; we had practised it for months. A Chinese general who was sitting next to General B M Kaul found it a bit too difficult to swallow and asked General Kaul whether it would be possible to achieve in actual battle conditions, the kind of concentration of fire then observed during the demonstration.

"Instead of answering that question directly, General Kaul went into the mechanics of strategy and tactics vis-à-vis firepower concentration. The Chinese military delegation on their return journey said to the Burmese in Rangoon that the senior officers of the Indian Army were 'chair-borne' soldiers," says Captain C L Datta, who was ADC to Presidents Rajendra Prasad and S Radhakrishnan, in his book With Two Presidents.

When Gen Kaul evacuated his forces from NEFA in 1962, the opposing Chinese general was the same one who had sat next to him during the demonstration and asked him that question!

Nehru took it upon himself to prop up China and take up their cause at every possible international forum, at times without even any specific request from them. But that earned him little or no gratitude.

9. If China was a friendly country and its claim on Tibet was acceptable to us, where was the question of granting the Dalai Lama and his entourage asylum in India to establish and run a parallel government? We even posted a foreign ministry officer to Dharamsala to represent India in the durbar of the Dalai Lama. If we believed in the justness of the Chinese claim over Tibet, then the maximum we should have done was granted asylum to the Dalai Lama with a small entourage (not thousands of followers) on humanitarian grounds, but permitted no political activities.

Alternatively, we could have objected to the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, albeit in soft, diplomatic language, insisted on retaining our mission in Lhasa as per the 1906 convention with Tibet and agreed to and ratified by China; protested when they forced Tibet to surrender its sovereignty and permitted it to maintain only regional self-governance in 1951, and in 1956 when they began to deny them self-governance, eventually forcing the Dalai Lama to flee. Granting political asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 would then have been justified. As a result, the Chinese would have certainly remained hostile to us on this point, but respected us for what we are.

Instead, in 1955, while relinquishing the rights and privileges India had enjoyed in Tibet from the times of Colonel Younghusband's expedition in 1904, Nehru declared: "Free India has no wish to continue with any imperialistic rights or privileges."

India as a nation itself was an imperialistic creation. India's borders, including the addition of the state of Greater Assam to the Union, were a British creation. If we rejected our rights in Tibet as an imperialistic creation, what rightful claim had we on the borders fixed in accordance with British expansionism? But without the military might to back it up, Nehru did exactly that.

India, under Nehru, was an antithesis of most of the theories he applied in governance. Taking advantage of the British imperial legacy when it suited us while otherwise denouncing it roundly, we managed to lose all the respect China had for us, to be replaced by contempt. Which made it easier for them to ambush and capture or kill our patrols and take punitive action against us in 1962.

In retrospect, it can be said that Nehru's greatness and his many sterling qualities eventually came to naught on account of his lack of understanding of the concept of sovereignty in general and national interest in particular. He failed to fix the national goal. His hatred of imperialism and love for democracy mixed with socialist leanings and the prime ministerial responsibility that demanded pragmatism and cold national interest left him confused and irresolute.

Nehru, therefore, knew not where our borders should be fixed, or why. Yet, after Independence, he went on to fix India's northern and northeastern borders, left undemarcated by the British, on his own, without consulting China, leave alone getting them to agree.

The principle he followed was arbitrary, perhaps not always unjustified or unfair, but possibly wrong in places, and certainly disputable in many places. That often led to vague and irrational diplomatic arguments during talks with China or postponement of negotiations. His vacillating mind didn't stand him well against energetic and radical leaders like Mao and Zhou, both of whom were very clear about the concept of sovereignty.

 

[navtrek]

Many of the Chinese members feel solely India was the aggressor but a study and understanding of the then situation makes us think otherwise It was not entirely India's fault.

It was truly a cold and calculated plan by Chinese leaders who waited for the rite time and stuck where it would pain the most.

Though the Chinese theory is inherently flawed but doesn't get a proper response from Indians on the forum due to lack of understanding of the Himalayan Pearl harbor.

 

[Marxist]

The next article is also a must read gives a 100 reasons to hate Nehru

Nehru's policies are the major reasons for the problems we are facing,all the regional disputes caused due to his policies,his policy of NAM was also a failure(can anybody tell whats the NAM STAND ON India-China war).but the one and only good thing he done to India is gived us a good prime minister Indira Gandhi.

 

[Justin Joseph]

Nehru's policies are the major reasons for the problems we are facing,all the regional disputes caused due to his policies,his policy of NAM was also a failure(can anybody tell whats the NAM STAND ON India-China war).but the one and only good thing he done to India is gived us a good prime minister Indira Gandhi.

I don't agree with you.

It was Nehru's work we are reaping the fruits.

Nobody is perfect, there are mistake on few occasions.

But look at other side.

All the Navratnas like BHEL, SAIL
Doordarshan, AIIMS,
IITs, IIMs,
ISRO, HAL, DRDO
Bhakra Nangal Dam reason for Punja/Haryana's prosperity & green revolutions.
ONGC, Nuclear power corp.
Bombay high
As of 2004, it supplied 14% of India's oil requirement and accounted for about 38% of all domestic production.

Nehru was one of the greatest leaders born on this planet till date.

We was not a war monger but the legend and visionary.

Who has invested in India's future.

 

[manish123]

Belated news report:

Huge explosion in one of the silos of an IRBM base in Central-North( exact location avoided)

Atleast 8 people dead due to the explosion which triggered dude to electric short circuit.Awaiting more details.Hope chinese take care of what little they have insread of boasting around.