by B.G. Verghese
(Then Assistant Editor
and War Correspondent, The Times of India)
A must read Article on Sino-Indian War of 1962 and its aftermath
The 1962 Sino-Indian
conflict is half a century old, but to understand what happened one needs to go
further back to Indian independence and the PRC’s establishment and absorption
of Tibet. Perhaps one should go back even earlier to the tripartite Simla Convention
of 1914 at which the Government of India, Tibet and China were party and drew
the McMahon Line. The Chinese representative initialled the Agreement but did
not sign it on account of differences over the definitions of Inner and Outer
Tibet.
Fast forward to March
1947 when Nehru’s Interim Government hosted an Asian Relations Conference in
Delhi to which Tibet and China (then represented by the KMT) were invited. Both
attended. India recognised the PRC as soon as it was established in 1949 and
adopted a One-China policy thereafter.
In 1951 China moved into
Tibet. A 17-Point Agreement granted it autonomy under Chinese sovereignty. This
converted what until then was a quiet Indo-Tibet boundary into a problematic
Sino-Indian frontier, with China adopting all prior Tibetan claims.
Even prior to that Sardar
Patel had expressed himself on new security concerns in the Northeast. In a
letter to Nehru he warned that the Himalaya could no longer be regarded as an
impenetrable barrier and that the Tibeto-Mongoloid character of the population
on “our northern and northeastern approaches… and the penetration of communist
ideologies into some of these areas, posed a new threat”. He accordingly urged
a review of border policy and security , including internal security,
improvement of rail, road, air and wireless communications, policing and
intelligence on the frontier, and territorial claims on India (Durga Das,
1973). The Sardar passed away soon thereafter. Nothing changed.
The historic Sino-Indian
Treaty on Relations between India and the Tibet Region of China was signed in
1954. India gave up its rights in Tibet without seeking a quid pro quo. The
Panch Shila was enunciated, which Nehru presumed presupposed inviolate
boundaries in an era of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai.
The young Dalai Lama came
to India in 1956 to participate in the 2500th anniversary celebrations
commemorating the Enlightenment of the Buddha but was reluctant to return home
as he felt China had reneged from its promise of Tibetan autonomy. Chou En-lai
visited India later that year and sought Nehru’s good offices to persuade the
Dalai Lama to return to Lhasa on the assurance of implementation of the 17
Point Agreement by China in good faith.
Visiting China in 1954,
Nehru drew Chou En-lai’s attention to the new political map of India which
defined the McMahon Line and the J&K Johnson Line as firm borders (and not
in dotted lines or vague colour wash as previously depicted) and expressed
concern over corresponding Chinese maps that he found erroneous. Chou En-lai
replied that the Chinese had not yet found time to correct its old maps but
that this would be done “when the time is ripe”. Nehru assumed this implied
tacit Chinese acceptance of India’s map alignments but referred to the same
matter once again during Chou’s 1956 visit to India. .
The matter was, however,
not pressed. Nehru had in a statement about that time referred to the words of
a wise Swedish diplomat to the effect that though a revolutionary power, China
would take 20-30 years to fight poverty and acquire the muscle to assert its
hegemony. Therefore it should meanwhile be cultivated and not be isolated and
made to feel under siege as the Bolsheviks were in 1917. This postulate was,
however, reversed in 1960-62 when Nehru interpreted the same wise Swedish
diplomat to mean it was the first 20-30 years after its revolution that were
China’s dangerous decades; thereafter the PRC would mature and mellow. This
suggests a somewhat fickle understanding of China on Nehru’s part.
The Aksaichin road had
been constructed by China by 1956-57 but only came to notice in 1958 when
somebody saw it depicted on a small map in a Chinese magazine. India protested.
The very first note in the Sino-Indian White Papers, published later, declared
Aksaichin to be “indisputably” Indian territory ” and, thereafter, incredibly
lamented the fact that Chinese personnel had wilfully trespassed into that area
“without proper visas”. The best construction that can put on this language is
that Nehru was even at that time prepared to be flexible and negotiate a
peaceful settlement or an appropriate adjustment. Parliament and the public
were, however, kept in the dark.
Though outwardly nothing
had changed, Nehru had begun to reassess his position. According to his son
Ashok Parthasarathi, his father, the late G. Parthasarathi met Nehru on the
evening of March 18, 1958, after all concerned had briefed him prior to his
departure for Peking as the new Indian Ambassador to China. GP recorded what
Nehru said in these terms:
"So G.P. what has the
Foreign Office told you? Hindi-Chini bhai bhai? Don't you
believe it! I don't trust the Chinese one bit. They are a deceitful
opinionated, arrogant and hegemonistic lot. Eternal vigilance should be your
watch word. You shd send all your Telegrams only to me - not to the Foreign
Office. Also, do not mention a word of this instruction of mine to Krishna. He,
you and I all share a common world view and ideological approach. However,
Krishna believes - erroneously - that no Communist country can have bad relations
with any Non-Aligned country like ours".
This is an extraordinary
account and is difficult to interpret other than, once again, as symbolising
Nehru’s fickle views on China which GP had no reason to misquote.
Chinese incursions and
incidents at Longju and Khizemane in Arunachal and the Kongka Pass, Galwan and
Chip Chap Valleys in Ladakh followed through 1959. The Times of India broke
many of these early stories. There was a national uproar. It was while on a
conducted tour of border road construction in Ladakh in 1958 with the Army PRO,
Ram Mohan Rao that I first heard vague whispers of “some trouble” further east.
We however went to Chushul, where the air strip was still open, and beyond to
the Pangong Lake unimpeded.
The Khampa rebellion in
Tibet had erupted and the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 via Tawang where he
received an emotional welcome. The Government of India granted him asylum along
with his entourage and over100,000 refugees that followed and he took up
residence with his government-in-exile in Dharamsala. These events greatly
disturbed the Chinese and marked a turning point in Sino-Indian relations.
Their suspicions about India’s intentions were not improved by Delhi’s
connivance in facilitating American-trained Tibetan refugee guerrillas to
operate in Tibet and further permitting an American listening facility to be
planted on the heights of Nanda Devi to monitor Chinese signals in Tibet.
China had by now
commenced its westward cartographic-cum-military creep in Ladakh and southward
creep in Arunachal.
The highly regarded Chief
of Army Staff, Gen.K.S. Thimayya began to envisage a new defence posture
vis-à-vis China in terms of plans, training, logistics and equipment. However,
Krishna Menon, aided by B.N. Mullick, the IB Chief and intelligence czar, who
also was close to Nehru, disagreed with this threat perception and insisted
that attention should remain focussed on Pakistan and the “anti-Imperialist
forces”. Growing interference by Krishna Menon, now Defence Minister, in Army
postings and promotions and strategic perspectives so frustrated Thimayya that
he tendered his resignation to Nehru in 1959. Fearing a major crisis, the PM
persuaded Thimayya to withdraw his resignation, which he unfortunately did at
the cost of his authority. Nothing changed. Mullick and Menon sowed in Nehru’s
mind the notion that a powerful Chief might stage a coup (as Ayub had done).
This myth was for long a factor in Government’s aversion to the idea of
appointing a Chief of Defence Staff.
President Ayub of Pakistan
had on a brief stopover meeting with Nehru in Delhi en route to Dhaka in 1959
had proposed “joint defence”. Joint defence against whom, was Nehru’s scornful
and unthinking retort? Yet Nehru was not unconscious of a potential threat from
the north as he had from the early 1950s repeatedly told Parliament that the
Himalayan rampart was India’s defence and defence line. He had somewhat
grandiloquently and tactlessly proclaimed that though Nepal was indeed a
sovereign nation, when it came to India’s security, India’s defence lay along
the Kingdom’s northern border, Nepal’s independence notwithstanding! Yet he had
been remarkably lax in preparing to defend that not-quite-so- impenetrable a
rampart (as I had argued in an article in the Times of India in 1950) or even
countenance his own military from doing so.
However, almost a decade
later, Himalayan border road construction commenced under the Border Roads
Organisation and forward positions were established. This Forward Policy,
though opposed by Lt Gen. Daulat Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command, was pushed by
Krishna Menon, de facto Foreign Minister, and equally by B.N Mullick, who
played a determining role in these events, being present in all inner councils.
Many of the 43 new posts established in Ladakh were penny packets with little
capability and support or military significance. The objective appeared more
political, in fulfilment of an utterly fatuous slogan Nehru kept uttering in
Parliament and elsewhere, that “not an inch of territory” would be left undefended
though he had earlier played down the Aksaichin incursion as located in a cold,
unpopulated, elevated desert “where not a blade of grass grows”. In August
Nehru announced that Indian forces had regained 2500 square miles of the 12,000
square miles occupied by the Chinese in Ladakh.
A series of Sino-Indian
White Papers continued to roll out. The Times of India commented on August 15,
1962: Anyone reading the latest White Paper on Sino-Indian relations together
with some of the speeches by the Prime Minister and Defence Minister on the
subject may be forgiven for feeling that the Government’s China policy, like
chopsuey, contains a bit of everything – firmness and conciliation, bravado and
caution, sweet reasonableness and defiance…We have been variously informed
…that the situation on the border is both serious and not so serious; that we
have got the better of the Chinese and they have got the better of us; that the
Chinese are retreating and that they are advancing…”.
Backseat driving of
defence policy continued to the end of Thimayya’s tenure when General
P.N.Thapar was appointed COAS in preference to Thimayya’s choice of Lt. Gen
S.P.P Thorat, Eastern Army Commander. Thorat had produced a paper in the
prevailing circumstances advocating that while the Himalayan heights might be
prepared as a trip-wire defence, NEFA should essentially be defended lower down
at its waist which, among other things, would ease the Indian Army’s logistical
and acclimatisation problems and correspondingly aggravate those of the
Chinese. The Thorat plan, “The China Threat and How to Meet It”, got short
shrift.
The Goa operation at the
end of 1960 witnessed two strange events. The new Chief of General Staff (CGS),
Lt. Gen. B.M Kaul marched alongside one of the columns of the 17th Division
under Gen Candeth that was tasked to enter Goa. Thereafter he and, separately,
the Defence Minister, Krishna Menon, declared “war” or the commencement of
operations at two different times: one at midnight and the other at first light
the next morning. In any other situation such flamboyant showmanship could have
been disastrous. However, Goa was a cake walk and evoked the mistaken
impression among gifted amateurs in high places that an unprepared Indian Army
could take on China.
Kaul’s promotion to the
rank of Lt. Gen and then to key post of CGS had stirred controversy. He was
politically well connected and had held staff and PR appointments but was
without command experience. The top brass was divided and the air thick with
intrigue and suspicion. Kaul had inquiries made into the conduct of senior
colleagues like Thorat, S.D Verma and then Maj.Gen. Sam Manekshaw, Commandant
of the Staff College in Wellington !
Even as the exchange of
Sino-Indian notes continued, Nehru on Oct 12, 1962 said he had ordered the
Indian Army “to throw the Chinese out”, something casually revealed to the
media at Palam airport before departing on a visit to Colombo!
A new 4 Corps was created
on October 8, 1962 with headquarters at Tezpur to reinforce the defence of the Northeast.
Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh was named GOC but was soon moved to take over 33 Corps at
Siliguri and then moved again to the Western Command. Kaul took charge of 4
Corps but appeared to have assumed a superior jurisdiction because of his
direct political line to Delhi. Command controversies were further compounded
as at times it seemed that both everybody and nobody was in charge. Thapar
himself and Gen L.P. Sen, now at Eastern Command, also went to recce and
reorder defence plans along the Bomdila-Se La sector. At the political level
and at the External Affairs Ministry the adage was “Panditji knows best”.
Kaul was here, there and
everywhere, exposing himself in high altitudes without acclimatisation. No
surprise that he fell ill and was evacuated to Delhi on October 18 only to
return five days later.
Following Nehru’s “throw
them out” order, and against saner military advice and an assessment of ground
realities, a Brigade under John Dalvi was positioned on the Namka Chu River
below the Thagla Ridge that the Chinese claimed lay even beyond the McMohan Line.
It was a self -made trap. It was but to do or die. The Brigade retreated in
disorder after a gallant action, while the Chinese rolled down to Tawang which
they reached on October 25.
The London Economist
parodied Kipling. A text of a pithy editorial titled “Plain Tales from the
Hills” read, “When the fog cleared, The Chinese were there”! That said it all. A
new defence line was hurriedly established at Se La.
I was not in the country
during the Namka Chu battle but returned soon thereafter and was asked to go to
Tezpur from Bombay to cover the war.
Nehru was by now
convinced that the Chinese were determined to sweep down to the plains. The
national mood was one despondency, anger, foreboding. Only one commentator, the
Times of India editor, N.J.Nanporia, who sadly just passed away a few weeks
ago, got it right. In a closely reasoned edit page article he argued that the
Chinese favoured negotiation and a peaceful settlement, not invasion, and India
must talk. At worst the Chinese would teach India a lesson and go back. Critics
scoffed at Nanporia. I too thought he was being simplistic. A week or 10 days
later, in response to his critics, he reprinted the very same article down to
the last comma and full-stop. Events proved him absolutely right.
On October 24, Chou
En-lai proposed a 20 kilometre withdrawal by either side. Three days later
Nehru sought the enlargement of this buffer to 40-60 km. On November 4, Chou
offered to accept the McMahon Line provided India accepted the Macdonald Line
in Ladakh approximating the Chinese claim line (giving up the more northerly
Johnson Line favoured by Delhi).
I was by now in Tezpur,
lodged in the very pleasant Planter’s Club which had become a media dormitory.
The Army arranged for the press to visit the NEFA front. Scores of Indian and
foreign correspondents and cameramen volunteered. Col Pyara Lal, the chief Army
PRO, took charge. On November 15-17 we drove up to Se La (15,000 feet) and down
to Dirang Dzong in the valley beyond before the climb to Bomdila. Jawans in cottons
and perhaps a light sweater and canvas shoes were manhandling ancient
25-pounders into position at various vantage points. We had seen and heard
Bijji Kaul’s theatrics and bravado at 4 Corps Headquarters a day earlier and
were shocked to see the reality: ill-equipped, unprepared but cheerful officers
and men digging in to hold back the enemy under the command of a very gallant
officer, Brig Hoshiar Singh.
We had barely returned to
Tezpur on Nov 17 when we learnt that the Chinese had mounted an attack on Se La
and outflanked it as well. Many correspondents rushed back to Delhi and
Calcutta more easily to file their copy and despatch their pictures and
footage. Military censorship delayed transmission. I discovered later that
between the Tezpur PO’s inability to handle much copy and censorship, few if
any of my despatches reached the Times of India and those that did had been
severely truncated.
Even as battle was
joined, Kaul, disappeared from Tezpur to be with his men, throwing the chain of
command into disarray. The saving grace was the valiant action fought by
Brigadier Navin Rawley at Walong in the Luhit Valley before making an orderly
retreat, holding back the enemy wherever possible. Much gallantry was also
displayed in Ladakh against heavy odds.
The use of the air force
had been considered. Some thought that the IAF had the edge as its aircraft
would be operating with full loads from low altitude air strips in Assam unlike
the Chinese operating from the Tibetan plateau at base altitudes of 11,000-12,000
feet. However, the decision was avoid use of offensive air power to prevent
escalation (which Marshal of the Air Force, Arjan Singh, and the current Air
Chief, Air Marshal NAK Browne, have recently criticised).
On November 18, word came
that the Chinese had enveloped Se La, which finally fell without much of a
fight in view of conflicting orders. A day later the enemy had broken through
to Foothills (both a place name and a description) along the Kameng axis.
Confusion reigned supreme.
Kaul or somebody ordered
the 4th Corps to pull back to Gauhati on Nov 19 and, as
military convoys streamed west, somebody else ordered that Tezpur and the North
Bank be evacuated. A “scorched earth” policy was ordered by somebody else again
and the Nunmati refinery was all but blown up. The DM deserted his post. A
former school and college mate of mine, Rana KDN Singh, was directed to take
charge of a tottering administration. He supervised the Joint Steamer
Companies, mostly manned by East Pakistan lascars, as they ferried a frightened
and abandoned civil population to the South Bank. The other modes of exodus
were by bus and truck, car, cart, cycle and on foot. The last ferry crossing
was made at 6 p.m. Those who remained or reached the jetty late, melted into
the tea gardens and forest.
The Indian Press had
ingloriously departed the previous day, preferring safety to real news
coverage, - as happened again in Kashmir in 1990, when at least women
journalists subsequently redeemed the profession. Only two Indians remained in
Tezpur, Prem Prakash of Visnews and Reuters, and I, together with nine American
and British correspondents. Along with us, wandering around like lost souls,
were some 10-15 patients who had been released from the local mental hospital.
That was the most eerie
night I have every spent. Tezpur was a ghost town. We patrolled it by pale
moonlight on the alert for any tell-tale signs or sounds. The State Bank had
burned its currency chest and a few charred notes kept blowing in the wind as
curious mental patients kept prodding the dying embers. Some stray dogs and
alley cats were our only other companions.
Around midnight, a
transistor with one of our colleagues crackled to life as Peking Radio
announced a unilateral ceasefire and pull back to the pre-October “line of
actual control”, provided the Indian Army did not move forward. Relieved and
weary we repaired to our billet at the abandoned Planter’s Club whose canned
provisions of baked beans, tuna fish and beer (all on the house) had sustained
us.
Next morning, all the
world carried the news, but AIR still had brave jawans gamely fighting the
enemy as none had had the gumption to awaken Nehru and take his orders as the
news was too big to handle otherwise! Indeed, during the preceding days,
everyone from general to jawan to officials and the media, but everyone, was
tuned into Radio Peking to find out what was going on in our own country.
Satyameve Jyate! But even today we still lack a coherent communications policy.
1962 was a
politically-determined military disaster. President Radhakrishnan said it all
when he indicted the Government for its “credulity and negligence”. Nehru
himself confessed, artfully using the plural, “We were getting out of touch
with reality … and living in an artificial world of our own creation”. Yet he
was reluctant to get rid of Krishna Menon, (making him, first, Minister for
Defence Production and then Minister without Portfolio, in which capacity he
brazenly carried on much as before). Public anger finally compelled the PM to
drop him altogether or risk losing his own job.
Nehru was broken and
bewildered. His letter to John F Kennedy seeking US military assistance after
the fall of Bomdila was abject and pathetic. He feared that unless the tide was
stemmed the Chinese would overrun the entire Northeast. He said they were
massing troops in the Chumbi Valley and he apprehended another “invasion” from
there. If Chushul was overrun, there was nothing to stop the Chinese before
Leh. The IAF had not been used as India lacked air defence for its population
centres. He therefore requested immediate air support by twelve squadrons of
all-weather supersonic fighters with radar cover, all operated by US personnel.
But US aircraft were not to intrude into Chinese air space.
One does not know what and
whose inputs went into drafting Nehru’s letter to Kennedy. Non-alignment was
certainly in tatters.
Tezpur limped back to
life. On November 21, Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Home Minister, paid a flying
visit on a mission of inquiry and reassurance. He was followed the next day by
Indira Gandhi. Nehru had meanwhile broadcast to the nation, and more
particularly to “the people of Assam “to whom his “heart went out” at this
terrible hour of trial. He promised the struggle would continue and none should
doubt its outcome. Hearing the broadcast in Tezpur, however, it did not sound
like a Churchillian trumpet of defiance. Rather, it provided cold comfort to
the Assamese many of whom hold it against the Indian state to this day that
Nehru had bidden them “farewell”.
I remained in Tezpur day
after day for a month waiting day after day for the administration to return to
Bomdila. This it did under the Political Officer (DM), Major K.C. Johorey just
before Christmas. I accompanied him. The people of NEFA had stood solidly with
India and Johorey received a warm welcome.
Thapar had been removed
and Gen J.N Chaudhuri appointed COAS. Kaul went into limbo. The Naga
underground took no advantage of India’s plight. Pakistan had been urged by
Iran and the US not to use India’s predicament to further its own cause and
kept its word. But it developed a new relationship with China thereafter.
The US and the West had
been sympathetic to India and its Ambassador, Galbraith, had a direct line to
Kennedy. However, the US was also preoccupied with growing Sino-Soviet divide
and the major Cuban missile crisis that boiled over in October 1962.
The COAS, Gen Choudhury
ordered an internal inquiry into the debacle by Maj. Gen Henderson Brooks and
Brigadier P.S Bhagat. The Henderson Brooks Report remains a top-secret
classified document though its substance was leaked and published by Neville
Maxwell who served as the London Times correspondent in India in the 1960s,
became a Sinophile and wrote a critical book titled “India’s China War”. The Report
brings out the political and military naiveté, muddle, contradictions and
in-fighting that prevailed and failures of planning and command. There is no
military secret to protect in the Henderson Brooks Report; only political and
military ego and folly to hide. But unless the country knows, the appropriate
lessons will not be learnt.
India did not learn the
lesson that borders are more important than boundaries and continued to neglect
the development of Arunachal and North Assam lest China roll down the hill
again. However, given the prevailing global and regional strategic environment
and India’s current military preparedness, the debacle of 1962 will not be
repeated.
Many
have since recorded their versions of what happened in 1962 : Kaul, Dalvi, D.K
(Monty) Palit (who served under Kaul as Director of Military Operations),
Neville Maxwell, S Gopal in Volume III of his Nehru biography, S.S. Khera,
Principal Defence Secretary and Cabinet Secretary, in his “India’s Defence
Problem”, Y.B Chavan, as retold in his biography by T.V.Kunhi Krishnan, and
others. Each has a tale to tell. But the truth, differently interpreted though
widely suspected, remains the greatest casualty of 1962.
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