India is a nation fixed on trivialities.
If anybody finds out India’s obsession with a war which took place 57 years ago in remote mountains, a war which did not change our national borders even by an inch, they might laugh.
China never claimed victory nor even acknowledges any war ever taking place! Yet all I see is Indians who can’t get over a kind of national depression and repeatedly insist on feeling defeated and humiliated.
All the supposed experts on the subject either gloss over or completely ignore the fact that China retreated to a pre-war position by November 1962, vacating every inch of North East Frontier Agency (NEFA – now the state of Arunachal Pradesh) that they had occupied.
Let us remember that China still claims this territory to be its own, as South Tibet, and protests when an Indian Prime Minister even visits Arunachal Pradesh! When an enemy retreats, any other nation would claim victory. Our military men, whom we consider experts in warfare, claiming this retreat by China as further humiliation for India is amusing at best. To me, these supposed experts don’t seem understand warfare even with 57 years of hindsight! Would India retreat from Kashmir to humiliate Pakistan?
What Do Our Historians Say?
Books and articles written on the subject can fill up many libraries, but each of them will leave us disappointed. British-Australian journalist Neville Maxwell called the ’62 conflict with China the most documented conflict in the entire history of mankind. Yet, our so-called historians can’t even get the story straight!
There are two completely conflicting theories in circulation.
One theory goes that then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was a weakling, he was naïve, because he believed in securing peace at any cost. Nehru, apparently, trusted that China would not attack us because he said “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai”. The camp of people who maintain this theory believe that China betrayed and attacked India as Nehru immaturely pursued his Panchsheel. Nehru is, thus, blamed for not listening to the omniscient Sardar Patel while Patel’s own foreign policy expertise cannot really be measured.
To put this theory in perspective, Nehru and then Defense Minister V. K. Krishna Menon indeed spoke of China’s betrayal and of being an unscrupulous enemy. That however was war rhetoric. Construing that to be repentance or enlightenment arises from ignorance of the art of psychological warfare. Just imagine Nehru instead telling the Parliament, hence the country and the world, that at that moment China was only defending its interests and that Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was undoubtedly mightier than Indian Army!
At the time of war, the enemy is characterised as the aggressor and of being sneaky, immoral, and backstabbing. This narrative was heard from American Presidents during Grenada, Panama, and Iraq expeditions. An enemy’s achievements are downplayed, while one’s own failures are explained away as aberrations. Those who do not understand warfare cannot understand this concept.
It would be pathetic if Nehru openly spoke the truth at that time (when China was still in the NEFA) that India committed a blunder by adopting the Forward Policy and then went on to wash dirty laundry in the open to blame the opposition, media, and civil groups for compelling his government adopt that Forward Policy!
Proponents of this theory also believe Nehru should have sent the army to Tibet before 1949 to stop the invasion by China. If we could not stop China in 1962 at Aksai Chin, what would our fate be 13 years earlier, hundreds of miles deeper in the Himalayas? If our army was not ready in 1962, how could it be ready in 1949? Amazingly, such fundamental questions have never been asked.
The second theory goes in the exact opposite direction. It puts forth that Nehru was abrasive, recklessly pushed our territorial claims, arrogantly underestimated China’s strength, and foolhardily abandoned dialogue. Mao Zedong then supposedly came down to teach Nehru a lesson. Cheering the deaths of hundreds of Indian Soldiers as “Nehru being taught a lesson” is immoral even for an enemy, let alone our own generals and marshals.
Nehru, Krishna Menon, as well as the then Chief of Army Staff General K. S. Timmayya, had understood China’s strength. They all were instrumental in bringing peace in Korea where China inflicted half a million deaths on General Douglas MacArthur’s army (the mightiest known to humankind) while suffering the same numbers on their own side. Unlike their conflict with India, Korea was not even China’s war. Yet China sacrificed so much for a cause. Neither Nehru nor Krishna Menon had any misunderstandings about the military might of China nor its willingness to fight.
The purpose of both theories is to insult Nehru and laugh at his supposed misfortune. To this day, historians have neither recognised the existence of these two conflicting and mutually exclusive theories nor have they made any attempt to reconcile them! Most of them usually make both claims in the same article without even understanding the difference, thus present incoherent and irrational arguments.
Was Nehru naïve or was he abrasive? Was Nehru a weakling or a reckless foolhardy gambler? The truth is in the middle! More than all these characterisations, Nehru was a democrat, a visionary nationalist, and a tall world leader.
Despite the failure of the Indian Army, Nehru stood his ground, mobilised the world, pushed the Chinese back to their pre-war position and recovered every inch lost by the army. When China offered ceasefire asking Nehru to accept their possession of Arunachal Pradesh with a threat to invade Assam otherwise, Nehru rejected the offer and vowed to fight. With Nehru calling their bluff, China backed down and retreated.
When an enemy retreats, any other nation would claim victory! So many Indians uniquely insist on it as a debacle because this is their opportunity to drag Nehru through mud.
Nehru And Democracy
False claims are made on behalf of Neville Maxwell and Henderson Brooks (coauthor of the Indian Army’s internal review document) by the proponents of both theories, which are perceived as wisdom by unsuspecting readers.
Regardless which theory is subscribed to, Nehru is painted as a whimsical incompetent dictator who was misguided by his coterie. Some blame Krishna Menon, others blame B. N. Mullick or K. M. Panikkar or Sarvepalli Gopal and B. M. Kaul. Such claims are made not just by the politically motivated but by popular historians like Ramachandra Guha and self-proclaimed Nehruvians like Inder Malhota.
Ironically, the likes of Guha and Malhotra also swear by Nehru’s democratic credentials. It makes me wonder if they even understand the term “democracy”! If Nehru was really such a great a democrat, why would he act on the whims or advice of a coterie? Wouldn’t a democrat act according to the will of the people, the entire cabinet of ministries, and of the Parliament? What is wrong in trusting the Defense Minister on matters of national defense? Why should he listen to Sardar Patel regarding matters that do not pertain to Patel’s ministry? It seems to me that such questions probably never occur to our historians.
Neville Maxwell
In 2014, Neville Maxwell posted the first half of the Henderson Brooks Report on the internet. Claims were made by others that Brooks named all the guilty men which conveniently did not include any military men who sent recruits to mountains in cotton pants and socks nor those who abandoned posts and fled. How did a British-Australian Neville Maxwell get a hold of this report which no Indian can have access to? Clearly, someone inside the army handed him this top-secret document, either for money or just to impress him! Where is the investigation into this activity that breached national security?
If anybody read Neville Maxwell’s book, which was based on that report, they would know that Maxwell does not at any point consider the Indian Army to be a serious fighting force against the mighty Chinese PLA. Maxwell would laugh at the suggestion that India could have defeated China if Krishna Menon bought a few more guns or positioned another battalion in their path, let alone kept meeting minutes. Neville Maxwell called Krishna Menon the only honest and upright Indian!
Maxwell’s only complaint was Nehru’s deep commitment to democracy. Maxwell was a fan of the Sino-Burmese model where dictators Mao/Zhou and U Nu resolved the border dispute peacefully without any involvement of their respective countrymen. Maxwell’s thesis was that Nehru too should have kept the Parliament, press, and civil society out. Without any internal pressures on them, Nehru and Krishna Menon probably could have accepted legalising the status-quo which was supposedly proposed by Zhou Enlai in 1960. But, if Nehru really took those short cuts, India would not have been the democracy it is today!
Henderson Brooks, The Boogie Man
Henderson Brooks submitted his report in a hurry and, hence, that report can neither be comprehensive nor claim the ultimate truth. Henderson Brooks and P. S. Bhagat were appointed by the army to investigate its failures. They had no authority to investigate any political decisions. Krishna Menon, in his interview with Michael Brecher, confirmed that they (Henderson and Bhagat) never interviewed him. So, the claims of the Brooks Report naming either Nehru or Krishna Menon as guilty men is wishful thinking.
Arun Jaitley argued in favour of releasing the report when in opposition, but changed his mind after becoming the Defense Minister. Obviously, he found no filth in that report on Nehru! Maxwell who had access to that report wrote that the Air Force dropped India’s food and supplies into Chinese positions in the valleys and ravines. Until the beginning of the war, the Chinese were apparently too kind to bring them over to our troops. Maxwell also wrote that the army had abandoned posts and ran away at Se La and Bomdi La. The ex-servicemen who want the report made public and display anguish that it is not already out in the world should be careful what they wish for!