Read this well. It is
a lesson History has taught us rather brutally.
We ignore the lessons
at our own peril.
The ghosts of 1962
have still to be laid to rest.
We need to put the
ghost of 1962 to rest and celebrate the spirit, fortitude and
valour of our soldiers. The last of the three-part series on
the Indo-China War. On a sunny July day in 2010,
when workers of the 110 Company, Border Road Task Force,
were trying to dislodge a huge boulder to widen a road to Walong
in Arunachal Pradesh, they came across an identity disc.
It read: No
3950976 Sepoy Karam Chand, 4 Dogra. Found alongside were the
soldier’s mortal remains, a rundown pay book, a fountain
pen and a silver ring. The young soldier had died fighting the
Chinese on a cold October evening in 1962.
He still lay in his summer uniform in the
isolated bowl of Walong, which runs parallel to the Lohit
and climbs onward to Kibithu, the last Indian frontier before the
border with China. The hills of Arunachal Pradesh are silent
witness to many such sacrifices of Indian soldiers
that remain unsung and unknown.
History
tells us that, by the early 1960s, the
much-publicised ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai’ was on the wane. China
was increasingly flexing its muscles in Indian territory to
demonstrate that it did not believe in the British
demarcation of the McMahon Line. Having forced the Dalai Lama to
seek asylum in India in 1959, they were the new masters of Tibet.
By April 1961, to counter this aggressive neighbour, Nehru — still
hoping for a peaceful solution — ordered the ‘Forward Policy’ of
inducting Indian troops into the Indo-Tibetan
border areas. In the words of the Government it was to be “Limited
defence measures to contain the Chinese incursion into
Indian territory.” As a result, numerous remote outposts
sprang up, each manned by 40-odd men, with near-obsolete
equipment inherited from the time of Independence, no
suitable clothing to survive the winters in altitudes of 10,000
feet and above, outdated training, little ammunition, and
completely dependent on air supply and no other back-up. The
army, which had taken part in the Burma Campaign in World War II and
the Kashmir operations immediately after Independence, was now
tasked with a new role of defending the Himalayan mountains.
But in an India that was just into its Third Five Year Plan, the
meagre funds made available were the leftovers. Very little was
done to reorganise and re-equip the army. As late as 1960, the
Border Roads Organisation came into existence, hastily put
together to cater to the crying need for tracks and bridges to ensure mobility of troops to forward areas. Living
conditions and medical facilities were primitive.
Himalayan blunder
In November 1962,
Brigadier Thompson, military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, wrote in his column, “The Chinese have better
land access as they have been building frontier roads and airfields
since they annexed Tibet.
In the vicinity of the Tibetan Frontier of NEFA, there are passes up
to 16,000 feet. On the Indian side, the precipitation is great.
The mountains are covered with dense forest and thick snow in
winter. Land communications with the area from India are exceptionally
difficult. On the Tibetan side, the high plateau, over which the
Chinese have built approach roads and airfields, is extremely
cold but snowfall is light. The military problem is not the
relative size of the Indian or Chinese armies but how many
troops each side can maintain in the frontier areas. India cannot
match China’s ability by means of air transport and dropping of
supplies by parachutes. Even so, in establishing a favourable air situation for the use of her
air transport she may find herself at a disadvantage.” Brigadier
Thompson’s observation was on the dot. Some of the worst fighting
in the Indo-Chinese war took place in Arunachal’s Kameng sector. In1962,
there were just two routes from the plains of Misamari to Tawang. One was a mule track
from Udalguri-Kalaktang-Morshing-Phudung-Mandala to Dirang, ahead
of Bomdila. The other route used was from Misamari, onwards
to Foothills, Chaku to Tenga and then to Bomdila.
From Bomdila it took
the soldiers two days of force march to reach Sela. It was from
this formidable height of 12,000 feet, in 1962, that
troops walked for five days to reach the operational areas,
in the present day Tawang district. The two important sub-
sectors where the 1962 war took place were Zimithang (Namka Chu
valley) and Bumla (north of Tawang) while Tawang was the most important
religious and political town. By early September 1962, China had warned that
if India played “with fire, they would be consumed by fire.”
On September 8,800 Chinese soldiers descended from the Thagla
Heights (an important pass that is part of the McMahon
Line opposite the Namka Chu valley) and surrounded the Indian post of Dhola. Neither side
opened fire for 12 days but, by their sheer numbers, the
Chinese clearly displayed their strength and intent to act. On
September 18, the Indian spokesperson announced the government’s
intention of driving the Chinese forces from Dhola. It was the
last straw. By October 20, the war started, changing the
equations forever.
In his book The
Himalayan Blunder, Brigadier J.P. Dalvi, Brigade Commander
of 7 Infantry Brigade, wrote movingly of the men of 9 Punjab
who were part of the infamous battle of Namka Chu, which formed a
de-facto military boundary between the Indian and
Chinese forces. “At Bridge II on the Namka Chu, I met
the Company Second-in-Command, Subedar Pratap Singh. I was taken
aback at seeing him at the front, as I had attended his farewell
party in Tawang and had also met him in Misamari awaiting a berth on
the train bound for Meerut, his Regimental Centre. He was to go on
pension after 28 years of gallant service, mostly in the field in
WWII, and thereafter guarding India’s extensive borders. When
I asked him why he had not left for Meerut, he gave me an answer,
‘Sahib, is this the time to go on pension when the battalion
is likely to be involved in action?’ He had voluntarily rejoined
the unit and had walked many miles to Namka Chu.
He was later killed in
action.” Like the unsung Subedar Pratap Singh, there are many
fallen soldiers whose heroism is known only to their battalion and the
comrades who fought alongside them. Soldiers like Pratap Singh died
as they lived; in the line of duty, in harness, selfless,
determined to keep the enemy from capturing any part of their
country. A heroic tale In the course of the battle, the
Chinese infiltrated behind Indian lines by launching
a multi-directional attack. After overrunning some of India’s
defences along the IB they met with stiff resistance from a
platoon of 1 Sikh under Subedar Joginder Singh. The platoon fought
fiercely, losing more than half their men. Subedar Joginder
Singh, despite a bullet injury in his thigh, refused to be evacuated
and fought on bravely to stem the Chinese advance. The Chinese
attacked in waves and finally regrouped in larger numbers to attack
the post. Using the lone light machine gun, Subedar Joginder
Singh killed many advancing Chinese. When the situation became
desperate, he and his men, with their bayonets unsheathed, emerged
from their trenches with their war cry, “Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa
wahe guruji ki fateh.” Subedar Joginder Singh was captured by
the Chinese, but refused treatment and died a prisoner of war. He
was awarded the Param Vir Chakra for his gallantry. There is a memorial to him
on the road to Bumla.
On the other flank,
the Chinese attacked Nuranang valley, which is between
Tawang and Sela. The 4 Garhwal Rifles beat back three
consecutive waves of Chinese attack. During a lull in the attacks, three
brave soldiers — Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat, Rifleman Gopal Singh
Gusain and Lance Naik Trilok Singh Negi — equipped with
most basic arms, slithered to the Chinese positions and lobbed
grenades into their bunkers. Charging into the bunker, Rawat found
that their attack had killed two Chinese soldiers, while
the third one lay dying holding on to the machine gun. He snatched the
machine gun from the Chinese soldier but just, as he was crawling
into his own trench, was hit by a Chinese bullet. He died on the
spot holding on to the captured machine gun. The raw courage
displayed by the soldiers of 4 Garhwal made them the only
battalion in 1962, in Kameng sector, to be awarded a Battle
Honour for the Battle of Nuranang. A memorial, aptly
named Jaswantgarh, has been built at an altitude of 10,700 feet.
All those passing along the road to Sela pay their respects to the
young men who died. There are many other soldiers, whose saga
of courage remains unheard and unsung, who only make up the
statistics of those that died in the 1962 war. Wikipedia
estimates that, in the 1962 war, 1,383 Indian soldiers died,
while 1,047 were wounded and 3,968 became prisoners of war. Of
all the memorials, the one at Nyukmadong on the Sela-Bomdila axis near
Dirang is the most picturesque. Designed in the Buddhist
Chorten style, the flat land of the memorial was where the
Chinese laid out the Indian soldiers they had killed in an
ambush. Lobsang, a gaon bura and an office bearer at Dirang
headquarters, recalls seeing hundreds of bodies in
Nyukmadong. “It was a terrible sight. After the Chinese left,
following the unilateral ceasefire, the villagers got together
and cremated them.”
The plaque on the black granite memorial at the Tezpur
Circuit House declares that the ashes of unknown soldiers from
the 1962 war were immersed in the Brahmaputra a year later, on
November 18, 1963, in Tezpur. The winding road from the plains of
Assam that makes its way from Tezpur to the forest-rich
Bhalukpong — past the swift brown waters of the Jaibharoli and climbs
to Tenga, Bomdila and onwards to Sela pass and Tawang — is dotted
with reminders of the 1962 war. The memorials are halt points
for the men who continue to guard the frontiers.
On January 26, 1963, poet Pradeep’s song — “Aye mere vatan ke
logon, jara aankh main bhar lo pani”, sung by Lata Mangeshkar — became the requiem for the soldiers of
1962. For all Indians this conflict will always remain an
emotional war — unequal, unprepared, as it sent its men to fight
without the requisite arms, ammunition or support. It was a
political rout that let India’s fierce fighting army
down. Five decades later we need to put the ghost of 1962 to rest
and celebrate the spirit, fortitude and valour of the
soldier. Successive wars —1965, 1971, 1999 — have all proved that our
army is combative, prepared and will not allow any intrusion into
its territory. Perhaps no other song resonates their
courage as the one adopted from the Indian National Army as an
anthem for war:
‘Kadam kadam badhaye
ja,
khushi ke geet gaye
jaa,
yeh zindagi hai kaum
ki
tu kaum pe
lutaya ja’.
It symbolises the
army’s valour, raw courage and fortitude to fight and die for the debt
of salt, sans flourish, sans fanfare.
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