Reflections on Nehru and Sino-Indian War

AFTER FIFTY YEARS

Even fifty years after the India-China war of 1962, balanced and dispassionate analysis of the event is hard to come across. While the Chinese side of the story is available in plenty there is a strange and inexplicable diffidence from the side of the Government of India in placing in proper perspective what had really happened at that time. There have been two casualties of this sheepish approach. First is the reputation and credibility of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who has been subjected to sometimes just, but mostly unjust, criticisms from various quarters. The second is equally alarming. The defeat of 1962 has dealt such a severe psychological blow that the Indian foreign and defence policies have developed a fear psychosis about China. So far as its China policy is concerned, New Delhi now often hesitates to stand up and be counted.

Even in the discourse of an extremely knowledgeable man like B.G. Verghese one does not find the presentation in the right perspective. In an otherwise admirable article in the South Asia Monitor (September 25, 2012) Verghese details everything—the historical perspective of the border problem, Nehru’s growing distrust about China, the coterie Krishna Menon had formed in the Defence as well as Foreign Ministries, India’s unpreparedness to face the situation and Lieutenant General B.M. Kaul’s violation of the chain of command leaving a hint in the process that Kaul could go on with impunity because of his alleged connection with Krishna Menon and Nehru. But Verghese misses the most impor-tant thing—China’s motive behind the war. Nor does he delve deep into the metamorphosis of the Chinese response to the boundary tangle. This would have brought out the fact that the Chinese attack was not merely a response to India’s alleged ‘forward policy’ but a pre-planned offensive with much more sinister designs including dismemberment of India with the help of uprisings by like-minded political parties.

If one has to apportion responsibility for the 1962 debacle then Nehru’s name comes first. But at the same time it has to be admitted that the late Prime Minister of India has been misjudged terribly by certain mediapersons who were driven more by a dislike for Jawaharlal Nehru’s type of idealism and his government’s policies than any objective judgment. Verghese, an assis-tant editor and war correspondent of The Times of India in 1962, proffers the name of his then editor, N.J. Nanporia, who had till the end stuck to his belief that China did not desire war and wanted negotiations instead. The denouement resulted in unilateral Chinese ceasefire and with-drawal but whether it justifies Nanporia’s belief remains doubtful.
More plausible seems to be China’s urge to make a dent in Nehru’s stature as an interna-tional leader, particularly his image as a leader of the non-aligned countries, and so the reason behind Peking’s decision to go to war with India was political rather than military. There was another compulsion for the Chinese leadership. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, had given Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai a severe dressing-down after the battle of Longju. Both the Chinese leaders had tried to make a case that India was the aggressor which made Khrushchev more angry. Both Mao and Chou En-lai realised that India was more important to the Soviet Union than China. So it was necessary for them to prove that in South Asia China mattered more than India.

But there were certainly tactical blunders on the part of India. In 1950 China occupied Tibet. It was a forceful acquisition and the autonomy declared by China for Tibet was nothing but a sham. India should have opposed China in vari-ous international fora. Instead it chose to look the other way primarily because Nehru had a soft corner for China’s communist revolution. When in the United Nations a member-country had tried to raise the issue of human rights violations in Tibet by China, Krishna Menon blocked the move by asserting that no resolution can be discussed against a non-member country.

How can one really describe India’s foreign policy vis-à-vis China in the 1950s? By the middle of the decade Nehru had already developed enough dislike and distrust of the Chinese leadership mainly because of the fact that they were consistently trying to dodge his attempts to come to a negotiated settlement of the boundary issue. Moreover right from 1953 the Chinese Army had started transgressing the international border. New Delhi had brought this matter to Peking’s notice without much result. Intrusions continued and China repeated the argument that this was due to the undemarcated nature of the border, an alibi it is continuing to advance even today.

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NEVILLE MAXWELL, a journalist and a known China apologist, has tried to establish that India, and not China, was the aggressor. In an article in Mainstream (July 2, 2011), which is full of self-contradictions, Maxwell tried to project China and its top leaders as nothing short of angels without realising that skirmishes and then a full-scale war can never be a one-way traffic. All through this article Maxwell has portrayed the Indian Army as the intruder into the Chinese territory violating the international boundary. But he never mentions the fact that the Chinese forces had also made deep inroads into Indian territories, particularly in the Ladakh sector, and that quite significant stretches of Indian areas had passed into Chinese hands during the time of two clashes in 1959, first in Longju and then in the Kongka Pass. Quoting Mao Tse-tung Maxwell himself mentions that the Indian Army’s ‘penetration’ in Longju was not known to Nehru and that he had immedi-ately ordered its withdrawal as soon as he came to know of it.

Although in his article Neville Maxwell has tried to project Mao Tse-tung as the one who had tried to avoid confrontation and war, it was indeed the Indian side which tried its utmost to obviate the possibility of armed clashes. The Panchsheel Pact was signed in 1954. India surrendered the extraordinary rights it had inherited from the British, recognised China’s suzerainty over Tibet and agreed to have no Indian military escort in Yatung and Gyantse. All these Indian gestures were forthcoming despite the fact that Chinese intrusions had been taking place since 1953.

Today there are scholars and mediapersons who hold India’s ‘forward policy’ responsible for the souring of the relationship between the two Asian neighbours. But they choose to forget that the ‘forward policy’ was only a response to what China had been doing since the begin-ning of the 1950s. By 1956 Peking had prepared its own maps that had shown parts of Ladakh as China’s territory. These areas were already under Chinese occupation but it had acquired these areas by its own ‘forward policy’ during the first half of the 1950s. Interestingly in 1954 Jawaharlal Nehru, by exhibiting India’s own maps, had requested for a dialogue with the Chinese leadership for settling the border pro-blem. But at that time Chou En-lai had dodged past the issue. Why did China procrastinate at that time? Was it for the reason that it would claim areas in Ladakh two years later and then try to legitimise its possession by offering to recognise the McMahon Line in return? This was exactly what China did.

That China’s belligerence was actually politi-cal in nature became amply clear after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet and got asylum in India. China’s response also changed dramatically. Chou En-lai now claimed 50,000 sq. miles of Indian terri-tory and informed New Delhi that his country no more recognises the McMahon Line. After that there was a hardening of attitudes by both sides. Lots of heat and dust were generated over the question of exact locations of the Longju and Dhola Posts where India had Army pockets.

It is useless to criticise Nehru for his bombas-tic assertion: “throw them (the Chinese army men) out”. It was perhaps meant for domestic consumption. The then Prime Minister of India must be condemned for the terrible unprepared-ness of his Army, but one must keep in mind the country’s internal atmosphere and the pre-ssure brought to bear on the Government of India by the Opposition parties in 1962 while judging some of the public postures of Nehru. There were no less provocative comments from the Chinese side. Consider the tongue-in-cheek comments of Mao Tse-tung when he had said that it would be unfriendly not to reciprocate when Nehru wanted a war (in Mao’s opinion).

So far as India is concerned, the 1962 war with China was a tragic chapter not only in the annals of the country but in the life of the coun-try’s idealist Prime Minister also who always viewed China’s communist revolution of 1949 as an important landmark in civilisation’s march towards progress. Perhaps even in his wildest dream Nehru never foresaw that one day he would have to fight a war with China. That he lost badly is too natural. For who is really prepared to fight a war with someone he considers too dear to his heart?