Inder Malhotra's series on 1962 war

[ramana]

One thing is clear to make the intel agencies more effective, policy makers need to tell the intel folks what they plan to do with the data. So far its like tell me whats going on and I will tell you if you have failed!

[Pratyush]

Reading the thread and the articles posted on it. It becomes clear that wish full thinking cannot substitute real policy and the hard choices which go with it.

[Christopher Sidor]

I have a question:

I hear so many sages tell us that economic integration is the way to avoid conflict when it comes Pakistan. They tell us deep integration with Pakistan will create paki equivalent of INFYs and Wipros who run to TSPA (ironically it would be some corps commandus running to other corps commandus as Pakistan is a Military Ink) and stop any preparations for nuke (haaa i am scared) exchanges.

My question is why this logic not applied when it comes to China. Our trade with PRC is many many times more than our trade with Pakis and there is much potential for further economic integration. Imagine our trade with PRC reaches ~$250B. Wouldn't it automatically make Sinopec, ICBC, China Mobile etc run to CPC in the event of Chino-Indian hostilities?

In what way an ideology-centric Pakistan can be more amenable to trade dependencies than a materialistic China?

TIA

Oh the myth of economic integration/trade. Well let me again clarify this crap.

Before 1965, Pakistanis biggest trading partner was India. More than 60% of its output went to India. There are Indians, still living in Punjab/Haryana and Delhi who will tell you stories of their going to Pakistan to take care of their factories there. India also traded significantly with Pakistan. In Bengal it was even more. Little did this economic intermingling stop the carnage of 1965.
Let us go back even more. The year is 1939 and guess which country was the biggest trading partner of the 3rd Reich, i.e. the Nazi Germany? It was not Britain. It was not Poland and it was definitely not the Soviet Union. It was France. But within a period of few months, guess what happened.
Let us revert back to Asia in the same period. Before Pearl Harbour happened, which country was the biggest trading partner of Japan? Not China. Not Soviet Union. Not UK. Not Australia or India or any common wealth country. It was USA. Did trade stop the crazy racist nipponese from carrying out the half baked plan to attack USA? Nah.

It is said that those who do not learn from history are meant to repeat it. Economic Integration or Trade does nothing to stop a war. All of these people who say that if we trade more with Pakistan, or even China, then somehow our problems will disappear, are well smoking some very potent stuff.

[ramana]

......

It was the PRC aggression against India in 1962 that has led to this ring of opposition to it almost 50 years later to the date. All India had to do was stay together for the world to come around to its point of view.

By staying out of the NPT, which legitimised the PRC nuke status, India has shown the hollowness of that regime as PRC proliferated to TSP with the NPT powers doing nothing about it and deluding themselves it was to further their geo-political interests, and TSP further proliferated to the other rogue states.


Something started by 1962 aggression is now getting completed.

X-post...

Newsinsight.net NVS writes

LINK:
http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebat ... recno=2220

Down the slippery slope
China is on its way to losing the second cold war, says N.V.Subramanian.

18 November 2011: Can China take on the democratic world led by the United States and win? And if it cannot, why isn't it giving up and saving itself?

China is not the first great power to have appeared on the wrong side of history. In the last century, there were two, and both bit the dust. But in comparing the three totalitarian powers, there is more to be gained by paralleling Soviet Russia and China than dragging Nazi Germany (and imperial Japan) into the analysis.

At least up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism was the reigning ideology in both the USSR and China. During Nikita Khrushchev's time, China felt itself more communist than Soviet Russia, and their differences and rivalries started from there.

Those differences played up in another form when Mikhail Gorbachev messed up Soviet Russia's transition to Russia. The Chinese flat out criticized Russia's accent on glasnost (political openness) than on perestroika (economic reforms) and blamed Gorbachev for being politically feeble-minded.

China's greatest dictator after Mao, Deng Xiaoping, learnt some lessons from the Soviet collapse. He implemented it in the social contract signed with the sullen survivors of the Tiananmen Square massacre. They would make no demands for political freedom. On the other hand, the Chinese communist party (CPC) would determinedly make China an economic powerhouse.

The dark side of this Faustian bargain was known to all, and especially to Deng and his successors. If China failed to become an economic powerhouse, the CPC would not be able to contain democratic unrests. It would lose its authority to rule China.

And for China to become an economic powerhouse, Deng was willing to bend ideologies to unrecognizable form. Thus he justified the so-called economic reforms as "socialism with Chinese characteristics". And he most infamously interrogated, "What matters the colour of the cat so long it catches mice?"

But to become an economic powerhouse, China needed a peaceful environment near home and good equations with the world at large. Deng mandated, therefore, that China's rise ought to be quiet and peaceful, and that there was no room for aggression in foreign and military policies.

In time, great power China would become its own compelling deterrent force.

As theories go, this had merit. China did not want a second cold war to accompany its rise. Seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union, it understood it could not win the second cold war. If it lost that war, China having not the equivalent of satellite states would feel the most brunt on its central control of troublesome provinces. Tibet and Xinjiang would certainly spin out of control. The one-China policy would collapse. Hong Kong would go.

Worst of all, one-party rule would end.

Without provoking a second cold war, China had other means of expansion. For example, Pakistan was a client state that would do anything to torment and contain India. China made Pakistan a nuclear-power state. Similarly, it propped up North Korea against South Korea and Japan. It cultivated the military regime of Burma. It did deals with the worst dictators in Africa and South America. Resource extraction became its obsession.

But somewhere along the line, China felt confident to abandon Deng Xiaoping's cautious ways. The PLA became more aggressive, conducting an anti-satellite test, flying its first stealth aircraft when the US defence secretary was in Beijing, going gung ho over anti-US anti-ship weapons, speeding to become a carrier-based navy, and so on. Rivalries with India were accelerated over the contentious Sino-Indian border, and the South China Sea became a major flashpoint between China and its Asia-Pacific neighbours.

Why did China abandon Deng's stealthy-rise strategy and pick up fights with its Asian neighbours? One way to look at it is that the PLA is getting more aggressive, or that the political leadership thinks the time is right for China to show aggression. America is in decline and, therefore, why not close the gap in one giant leap?

The problem with this is that China stands on weak economic foundations at least insofar as aggressive posturing goes. China can't threaten those very countries which are amongst the biggest markets for Chinese goods. A solely exports' based economy carries risks in a situation of worldwide financial downturn. And if domestic demand is suppressed to cushion the ill-effects of growth, then it worsens the economic situation, as it has for China.

Indeed, China stares at the fearsome prospect of being unable to honour its compact with the Tiananmen Square massacre generation.

Which takes you back to Deng Xiaoping. China's real problem is that it does not have anyone the equal of Deng to control and calibrate events in the country. Next year, a grossly inexperienced and worldly unwise leadership perhaps as mediocre as the present one assumes power. It will not be able to contain the new nationalistic Chinese aggression and it will have no skills to convince the world that China wants peace.

The US decision to return to Asia is perhaps the single-most important development strategy-wise after the end of the Cold War. President Barack Obama made no bones about it, calling the US a Pacific power over and over again. This may well be the beginning of a second cold war that Deng Xiaoping was so keen to avoid.

China certainly won't be able to win this cold war. But China will have no one to blame but itself. The consequences of losing that war will be disastrous for China. But the way Chinese polity is built (opaque and uninfluenceable from outside), these are consequences that cannot be averted, reversed or minimized.

So again ~30 years after FSU collapsed in 1992, the time for PRC to reform is coming near.

A tumultous fifty years for India since 1962.

[abhishek_sharma]

Our battle, their wars: Inder Malhotra

The melancholy narrative of the border war with China in 1962 cannot be complete without a brief mention of nearly half a dozen factors that significantly impacted the month-long clash of arms, and its aftermath. Arguably, one of these important factors was Mao Zedong’s personal and deep hostility to both India and Jawaharlal Nehru. He was angry because both this country and its prime minister at that time were receiving enormous international attention, and occasional appreciation, which he believed should rightly have been directed towards the Middle Kingdom and its emperor.

This malevolence of China’s chairman was greatly aggravated by Tibet, on the one hand, and the Sino-Soviet split leading to close Indo-Soviet relations, on the other. China’s paranoia about Tibet, which persists to this day, and India’s welcome to the Dalai Lama, combined with some help that Indian Intelligence Bureau had started giving the CIA for its activities in Tibet after 1960, had fuelled Mao’s fury. It is no secret that the two viciously vituperative papers on ‘Nehru and his philosophy on Tibet’ were edited by Mao himself, though his trusted aide, Chen Bota, had drafted them.

Nor is it a secret any longer that the split between China and the Soviet Union had started soon after Stalin’s death in 1953. Mao had then begun to believe that he was the tallest leader, not only of Asia, but also of the communist world. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, who was to denigrate the dead Russian leader in 1956, ridiculed this. By 1960, when the last-ditch Nehru-Zhou Enlai talks in New Delhi to settle the border question had collapsed, the Sino-Soviet split had reached a crescendo. Moscow had reneged on its promise to transfer the technology for manufacturing nuclear weapons to China, and had withdrawn Soviet advisers not only from the nuclear sector, but across the board. A year later, in August, the Soviet Union signed an agreement to give India MiG-21 fighter aircraft as well as permission to produce it under licence. The Chinese were livid.

Purely by coincidence, on the day the MiG-21 agreement was signed, Fidel Castro arrived in the Soviet capital to a rapturous welcome. Unknown to the world, this was the beginning of what was to eventually develop into the Cuban missile crisis, which was to have a profound influence on the course of the war in the high Himalayas.

While other countries, including the United States, knew nothing about the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Chinese, with their “superior contacts in Havana”, had got wind of it. (Source: Harvard Sinologist Roderick Macfarquhar in the chapter ‘Mao’s India War’ in his third volume of The Origins of Cultural Revolution.) We, of course, were totally in the dark. The Chinese put their knowledge to deft use, and not merely in deciding the timing of their invasion of India, which was dictated also by the weather. Far more adroitly, they used it to arm-twist Khrushchev into abandoning all ideas of siding with India in the war that was in the offing, because of what they called “constant Indian incursions into Chinese territory.”

What the Chinese thus achieved is already in the public domain. Not wanting to confront both the US and China at the same time, Khrushchev did everything possible to propitiate the Chinese. For this purpose, he chose the occasion of his farewell dinner to the Chinese ambassador, Liu Xiao, who was returning home after serving in Moscow for eight years. Kremlin watchers were startled by the exceptional cordiality shown to Liu at both his two-hour farewell call on Khrushchev and the dinner in his honour at which the entire presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was present.

In no uncertain terms, the Soviet leader told Liu and other guests that on the question of the Sino-Indian border, the Soviet Union was “on China’s side, and this was the unanimous view of the entire presidium”. If, unhappily, there was an attack on China, “we (will) stand together with China”. If the Chinese so wanted, Khrushchev added, “the Soviet Union would proclaim this; it had not done so previously to avoid driving the Indians into the arms of the Americans who were trying to sell them armaments”.

Since the Chinese had strongly protested the supply of MiG-21s to India, Khrushchev expressed his “personal view” that the Soviet Union should “postpone selling these aircraft until after the border dispute was settled, not because a few aircraft would make India stronger than China, but to prevent ‘our enemies’ from sowing discord”. Frol Kozlov and other members of the CPSU presidium were seen nodding assent.

How sincere Khrushchev was in making these remarks, which would have been music to Chinese ears, is a moot point. For only two years earlier, his conversations with Mao in Beijing had degenerated into virtual abuse. (Incidentally, transcripts of the Mao-Khrushchev exchanges have been declassified by the Chinese, along with a plethora of other secret documents about the 1962 war. Alas, our record in this respect remains appalling 50 years later.)

Much worse was to follow after the Chinese launched their offensive just a few days before President John F. Kennedy was shown the aerial photographs of the Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. On October 25, when the first phase of the Chinese advance ended, Pravda published the famous editorial that talked about “our Chinese brothers and Indian friends”, and advised this country to stop fighting and start negotiating a settlement on the basis of the Chinese proposals. Khrushchev said the same thing in a personal letter to Nehru to which the latter sent a persuasive reply explaining why the Chinese terms were unacceptable. Aggression and negotiations could not take place at the same time, he added. First the Chinese must withdraw to the pre-September 8 positions.

Only after the Cuban missile crisis had been resolved did Khrushchev revert to a position of neutrality between India and China, which the Chinese interpreted as a “betrayal” and unabashed support for India. Indeed, Mao delivered a public rebuke to Khrushchev for “cowardice in the Caribbean and perfidy in the Himalayas”.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

[ramana]

Thanks.

Two refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_lea ... Indian_War

and the above Mao article on Nehru's Philosophy on Tibet:

http://www.claudearpi.net/index.php?nav ... d=5&lang=1

More articles on 1962 debacle:

http://www.claudearpi.net/index.php?nav ... =38&lang=1

Read the first article.

[Christopher Sidor]

Thanks.

Two refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_lea ... Indian_War

and the above Mao article on Nehru's Philosophy on Tibet:

http://www.claudearpi.net/index.php?nav ... d=5&lang=1

More articles on 1962 debacle:

http://www.claudearpi.net/index.php?nav ... =38&lang=1

Read the first article.

Thanks for these articles. It is always fascinating to come across divergent view points, especially when they enrich ones knowledge. 1962 remains the pivotal moment in Indian history comparable to 1947, 1977, 1991.

Ramana please keep them coming.

[ramana]

Thanks.

Book review on US covert war in Tibet. What is relvant is the last para about what was happening behind the screens

CIA's War in Tibet

Also note first para applies to TSP's covert war on India!

If you read along you realize that the British idea was taken up with US finesse on it and applied by TSP.
Crux of the J&K covert war. And shows why it wont work without US help.

[abhishek_sharma]

Fishing in Troubled Waters: Inder Malhotra

[ramana]

Fishing in Troubled Waters: Inder Malhotra

Fishing in troubled waters
Inder Malhotra
s
More than a year before the 1962 war began, Pakistan, which had until then watched the growing India-China crisis with ill-concealed glee, decided to exploit it to its own ends. At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London in March 1961, President Ayub declared that Kashmir was “a burden” on the armies of both Pakistan and India, and if that were settled, relations between the two countries would be “very friendly”. Nehru made no comment except to say that he was always “anxious to settle problems”.

Thereafter, Ayub’s stance became more strident, indeed aggressive. At a private meeting with them, he told Pakistani editors that Pakistan would “take advantage” of India’s difficulties with China and that, in any dispute between India and China, Pakistan would be on “China’s side”. Those in the highest echelons of this country’s power structure who saw the relevant intelligence reports were somewhat intrigued.{Only intrigued? } For wasn’t Pakistan a member of SEATO directed specifically against China?

Unfortunately, what was unknown then, and is now an established fact, is that an amicable understanding had been reached between China and Pakistan as early as 1955 on the sidelines of the Bandung Conference. Zhou Enlai had told Mohammed Ali Bogra, then Pakistan’s prime minister, that China had no problem with Pakistan’s membership of SEATO and knew why it had joined the US-led military pact.

{Here Indian diplomats had not understood the inimical nature of TSP and should have nazar rakna mode. I was never postulaed that TSP would seek out others who have inimical interests against India.}

In 1961, as Goa was becoming a live issue, and eventually had come to a head, Pakistan advertised its “friendly feelings” for Portugal. During his tour abroad, especially in the United States, Ayub went out of his way to use bitter language against India even on formal occasions. When the Indian action in Goa began, Pakistan staged a huge military exercise close to the Indian border.

{Lots of anti India Goans live in Karachi. Tony Mascarenhas the reporter who broke the Bangla Desh atrocities in 1971 was one of those.}

And yet the irony is that two years earlier, during a brief stopover in Delhi, Ayub had offered India joint defence of the subcontinent, combining it with the proposal to station in Kashmir both Indian and Pakistani troops, but didn’t or couldn’t answer the question, “defence against whom”?

How sincere Ayub’s offer was is best shown by Pakistan’s secret communication to Beijing in November 1959 that its boundary with China “be delimited”. The author of this initiative was Z. A. Bhutto who had led the Pakistani delegation to the UN, where he had learnt that China and Burma, now Myanmar, had all but clinched their boundary agreement, and that the Chinese were willing to settle the border with whichever neighbour was willing to negotiate with it. No one heard anything about this move for nearly two years because the Chinese were clearly wary of responding to the Pakistani request.

Only in 1961 was it made public that China and Pakistan had agreed to start “border negotiations”. India protested vigorously. The territory that adjoined China was part and parcel of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that Pakistan had occupied illegally. Pakistan had therefore no right to discuss this “boundary”. China, however, had evidently done its homework and persuaded Pakistan to go along with it. In May 1962 Beijing and Rawalpindi announced simultaneously: “To ensure peace and tranquility on the border and develop good-neighbourly relations”, the two countries had decided to delimit their boundary. But they took care to describe the boundary as being “between Singkiang and the contiguous areas, the defence of which was under the control of Pakistan”. And, for good measure, the China-Pakistan announcement added: “The agreement reached would be provisional, to be renegotiated if necessary, after India and Pakistan settled the Kashmir dispute”.

Despite all this sophistry, India’s anger was red-hot, if only because of its firm and consistent stand that the entire former princely state of Jammu & Kashmir belongs to this country. In a protest note to China, India declared: “There is no common border between Pakistan and China”, and charged that the proposal to delimit “a non-existent border” was “a step in furtherance of the aggressive aims that China has been pursuing towards India in recent years”. The note went on to say that India would “repudiate any Sino-Pakistani boundary agreement”. China’s equally irate reply inquired, whether “after creating the Sino-Indian boundary dispute, India wished to see a similar dispute arise between India and Pakistan”?

{Ulta chor kotwal to daante!}

As if this was not enough, things were made worse by the inextricable interlink between Pakistan’s bitter hostility to India, especially over Kashmir, and the Western powers’, especially America’s and Britain’s policy on South Asia. John F. Kennedy, who became president in January 1961, was friendly to this country and saw to it that economic aid to India was raised substantially. At the same time, the Kennedy administration considered Ayub a very useful ally. India’s decision to buy the MiG aircraft from the Soviet Union in August 1961 angered the US, the Capitol Hill more than the White House, and Indian criticism of the subsequent cut in the US aid raised the ante.


{ The F-104s were offered at very high price to India while they were given for free to TSP. So where is the question of getting angry?}

Consequently, at a time when Nehru was assuring his countrymen that while he was keen to settle the Kashmir issue, he would never “give Kashmir away”, Kennedy stepped up the pressure for a solution of the “Kashmir dispute”. At first Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith suggested that rather than seek a formalisation of the boundary between the state and the part of it under Pakistan’s occupation, the two countries should consider converting the ceasefire line into a “soft” boundary by “granting” Pakistan such rights in Kashmir as “easier entry” and a share in trade and commerce. Nehru brushed this aside on the ground that such concessions could only follow Pakistan’s acceptance of Kashmir as a part of India.

{Recall the MMS borders are irrelevant stance and the interlocutors non message peddled even now? Its the same old vinegar in new bottles. JLN has made the message very clear. Only after TSP accepts Kashmir is part of India. MMS wants to soft peddle this. Thanks to IMji for revealing JLN's conditions.}

Then, in identical letters to Nehru and Ayub in January 1962, Kennedy suggested mediation and for this purpose offered the services of Eugene Black, the World Bank president who had helped in the conclusion of the Indus Water Treaty. Nehru rejected “informal mediation” on principle. After the start of the war, Kennedy rushed some military equipment to India. Ayub hit the ceiling and spurned the US president’s assurance that the weapons given to India were usable only against China. What followed, as we will see, was even more troublesome, and had predictable consequences.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

[RamaY]

Thanks Christopher Sidor ji. Thanks for saying the truth.

How do these so-called gurus fail to learn such a simple lesson from history?

[ramana]

US promised India help if China attacked during 1971 Indo-Pak war

Despite its intense animosity towards India during the 1971 war, the US promised New Delhi "all out" support in case China carried out any unprovoked attack on India, recently declassified documents reveal 40 years after the historic war that created Bangladesh.

What does USA lose for such promises?
Notice how USA also supported India with post-war in 62 aid but bluffed through the war.
per The strange case of the air force in wartime

Even this pales, however, compared with the crowning irony that, all the while the Americans were advising us not to use air power, the CIA knew that the Chinese were in no position to launch any air operations from their bases in Tibet. No air base had a runway long enough, and the Chinese were woefully short of aviation fuel and other essential supplies. Moreover, the Chinese fighter aircraft were concentrated on their eastern coast. They had received a categorical assurance from the US that it “would not unleash Taiwan against them” (Henry Kissinger’s words) yet they wanted to take no chances.

If China had lost in '62, USA could have made the most of Taiwan.

Perhaps watching who wins, at the same time being in good books of both.

[ramana]

Its not clear form Josy Joseph article from where were these new cables released? Is it from US or from India? If the latter why now and only these? Is this another Hindi-Chini bai, bai effort?

[ramana]

There is a story in these articles that begs to be told.


First we need to gather relevant facts.

[rohitvats]

^^^ramana, if I remember correctly, isn't there a story of Kissinger saying somethings to Chinese envoy on the lines of, " If China attacks/threatens India, US will not act/comment"?

There is book by Ravi Rikhye where he has analyzed the documents pertaining to 71 war de-classified by US SD. The documents clearly show the level of hostility and contempt Nixon-Kissinger had for India and IG.

[Christopher Sidor]

^^^^
What vishvak had said was correct. It is wait and see how the wind blows. America has done this since ages. It was the last belligerent to declare war on the Nazi and Nippon scum, and that too in fag end of Dec-1941, in WWII. i.e. by that time all the other belligerents had taken side and decided on what they wanted.

Even today we should not assume that we have US on our side or that US will come to our aid, in event of war with China. That is what we can take away from all of this.

[brihaspati]

I have a question:

I hear so many sages tell us that economic integration is the way to avoid conflict when it comes Pakistan. They tell us deep integration with Pakistan will create paki equivalent of INFYs and Wipros who run to TSPA (ironically it would be some corps commandus running to other corps commandus as Pakistan is a Military Ink) and stop any preparations for nuke (haaa i am scared) exchanges.

My question is why this logic not applied when it comes to China. Our trade with PRC is many many times more than our trade with Pakis and there is much potential for further economic integration. Imagine our trade with PRC reaches ~$250B. Wouldn't it automatically make Sinopec, ICBC, China Mobile etc run to CPC in the event of Chino-Indian hostilities?

In what way an ideology-centric Pakistan can be more amenable to trade dependencies than a materialistic China?

TIA

RamaY ji,
we had a long debate about the issue of causality and elasticity/co-movement with lord of the moon, on this issue. Dont remember where they are now. The data was initially put up to claim that trade and conflict had a negative "causality" : increasing one will push the other down. But what actually was shown was a mere co-movement, and that too based on insufficient data. The people who claim this do not understand the difference between causality and co-movement, as well as the uncertain nature of results based on insufficient data.

I think I quoted subsequent studies which showed up positive correlations in some case - and one case was indeed Pak-India.

ramana ji,
JLN's funny actions about riling China and then not taking adequate steps was coming from two possible sources :
(1) personality : he had always been one who blusters and works himself into a dramatic public show but then who quickly slinks back once the reality fails to be impressed with that stage-show. This happened consistently within the turns of the congrez movements pre-Independence, and we can exactly highlight the details of such dramatic performances and subsequent slinking back [mostly back to MKG's ideological lap] - if people really want to try and blindly whitewash their beloved idol's image. I would have no problems to bring up actual facts to counter, as I have done so far, for each of the mythical claims
(a) JLN was the sole final cleaner of imperialism/colonialsim "off" from Asia, at Bandung.
(b) JLN was absolutely non-hesitant, non-indecisive about the action that liberated Hyderabad.
(c) JLN did not discriminate between Muslim and non-Muslim lives over buildup to the Partition.
(d) JLN was the one person who kept us clear of super-power thralldom through NAM, and especially the myth connected to his role in this angle about 1962.

So it is perfectly consistent with JLN's character profile to bluster up about China and then slink back without taking adequate measures on the ground. You see one possible reason is that, the personal histrionics would connect him personally to grand desicions/sucesses in the public eye - something he would have to share credit for with a multitude of capable others who would be needed to actually ensure organizationally the nitty-gritty of the real task on ground.

(2) A hypothesis that Indian intel, as well as that of Pak largely remained in the controlling threads of Brits and Americans. The controllers managed to activate information producing/constructing agents/groups within the subcontinental systems that would interface natively with respective political power centres to precipitate crises or situations or moves that would be in the larger geo-political interest of the Brits and the Americans.

From thsi approach, the emplacement of JLN in supreme post would be perfect. The character profile outlined above would be perfect for manipulation of personal ego, while ensuring that in real crises an equally panicked flighty reaction would come and which then could be utilized by the remote handlers.

JLN's panicked reaction in the final stages, his dashed off letters to JFK, his initial bluster, and most importantly the reliance of Indian political leaders on Brit-US intel [why was it so difficult to maintain Tibetan underground info collection about the air-strips or fuel supply?] - all fit into this hypothesis.

[ramana]

Maybe he thought independent India was a continuation of the Raj with Congrez in charge?

Nevertheless the 1962 bruising enabled the PRC to claim to be sole Asian military power and the non-exercising the nuke option even then further relegated India to a lesser status. This brought the PRC on to the West's side in their Cold War (Nixon's China Gambit). Its almost like India accepting body blows for the West's benefit and getting the short end of the stick with Task Force 74 sailing into Bay of Bengal.

[brihaspati]

Someone should start putting up the source influences about NAM in JLN. That would make what happened pretty obvious. The Brits understand ideological manipulations.

[ramana]

Atlee, Laski and the gang. The idea is to make India not tilt to the Soviet side if they don't want to tilt to Anglo Saxon side. India is the balancer even now.

[RamaY]

A flickering thought...

If we were to assume that Unkil played both sides in 1962 and Jawahar was close to Unkil dispensation (his flirting with Jaqueline etc) I think Unkil and Aunty wanted to keep these newly reborn Asian gaints against one another. It would fit into their geopolitical strategy of playing to regional rivalry.

They might have thought that the maoist china and BIA remnants will neutralize each other. I think they didn't expect Jawahar to be such a lousy national leader.

When india lost to china, that might have made them realize the revitalized china's strength. The victor has been cajoled to and given access to western tech so he can fight the next level of geopolitical competition, this time with Russia.

That brings us to 1971. I have a feeling that Pakis (or their masters) didn't expect india to get into another nations affairs given their 1962 experience. Perhaps this assessment appeared to be accurate with the way IG approached western capitals to solve this problem. None of the players expected india to be any successful in their proxy endeavor (after all they never saw India playing this game).

The Pakis must have sold their 1 mujahideen == 10 kafirs jam jam kola to their bosses leading to any local support to Pakis except the very high level geopolitical maneuvers in Bay of Bengal.

IG couldnot repeat the mistakes if his father (that is half-hearted military approach) as that would have killed her family as well as indian legacy. iG was pushed to a wall and this time the cat won.

IG knew that she was mere cat in comparison to her adversaries so went ahead with growing nuclear claws to avoid any future mis-adventures.

[ramana]

No. Think some more.

[ramana]

vijayvani

Why was Krishna Menon the foul guy of '62?
Atul Bhardwaj
22 Dec 2011

Why was Krishna Menon the foul guy of '62?
Lots of insights here.

....
The early Indian strategic thought and security considerations were embedded in the international political economy than the classical geopolitics that considers geography to be the main determinant of the inter-state conflict. The main plank on which the foundation of future India-China conflict was erected was the fear generated by the arrival of communism in Asia and the prospects of ensuing red revolution in India. Many of the Indian political elite and also the British-bred Indian military leaders were determined to build fences to prevent the communist onslaught from halting India’s capitalist growth path. The problem was that both Pandit Nehru and Krishna Menon did not want to fall prey to the anti-communist paranoia gripping the elite in the 1950s.


Driven by the realities of leading an infant state, Nehru felt that the best bulwark against communism was cooperation and not confrontation with China. The overarching presence of Nehru on India’s foreign policy till of course, 1957 ensured that the Indian elite kept their China related fears to themselves. An article in the Time on the 1962 war says, “Even the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1951 had rung no alarm bells in New Delhi—and therein lie the real beginnings of the present war.”


To the West disappearance of fear from the Indian minds and the growing Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai chants did not portend well. The two most populous countries could not be allowed to form a third pole on the global stage. The prospects of the two most progressive nations combining was equally unpalatable to the Soviet Union that could not see its position of pre-eminence among the left oriented nations coming under any stress. While the Soviet Union betrayed their communist friends in China, the Americans played a similar game in India to ensure that the two Asian nations remain distant from each other.


America sacrificed India to gain China’s friendship. The Soviets too allowed China to flow into the US fold because they knew that ideological constraints would naturally limit the scope of Sino-US relations. Therefore, despite Nehru’s non-alignment - much like rest of the world - Asia too was divided between the two competing blocks. This tacit understanding between the two super powers may have been reached primarily because the Russians were confident of the ideological purity of the Chinese leadership and the Americans too were confident about the Indian leadership barring of course, Krishna Menon to keep communism at bay.

...
Along with Morarji Desai another name connected to the CIA conspiracy is Y.B. Chavan, who became the defence minister replacing Krishna Menon in 1962. Much like Desai, Chavan too had been the Chief Minister of Bombay, the business capital of India, and as the Time 1962 article put it, “Though a socialist and a one time disciple of Nehru, Chavan is cast in a different mold.”


While Morarji’s dubious role as a mole has become folklore, but what has largely gone unnoticed is his performance as the finance minster from 1958 leading up to the 1962 war with China – ignoring the crucial role that finance ministry played in delaying the proposals for defence modernization put forth by the ministry of defence then under the leadership of Krishna Menon. Before the arrival of Morarji in the finance ministry, Menon had ensured that “the allocations to defense rose from Rs. 2,130 million in 1956-1957 (1.8% of the GNP) to Rs. 2,800 million in 1957-1958 (2.4% of the GNP)” (IDSA Journal 1972). The defence allocations began plumetting after 1957 is something that needs to be studied in greater detail.


Morarji’s closeness to Washington and the related events during that period also throw light on the role that America played in fomenting the 1962 conflict. The gross neglect of these linkages in the study of 1962 war has led to history being subverted and blame for the 1962 defeat laid squarely on the shoulders of one the most intelligent strategist of independent India- VK Krishna Menon. Menon and Morarji were both a part of the Nehru’s cabinet that was announced on 17 April 1957. While Krishna Menon had bagged the Defence portfolio, Morarji Desai had got Commerce and Industry ministry – and T.T. Krishnamachari was the Finance minister.

...
However, America’s problem was Menon who as the defence minister, was attempting to carve a people’s army from the ‘Raj’ military handed over to him. He started Sainik schools to make the officer cadre more inclusive. He could not stand the likes of Field Marshal Cariappa and General K.S. Thimayya whom he saw representing a particular class and interest group rather than the nation. It is perhaps these ideological differences that were at the root of Thimayya’s resignation in 1959 rather than any disagreement over promotion of senior army officers. As Srinath Raghavan posits, “the archival evidence now available shows that the reasons for the resignation ran deeper. Just a few weeks before the affair, Indian and Chinese forces had clashed along the eastern frontiers. To counter the growing threat from China, Thimayya wanted the political leadership to consider seriously the proposal mooted by President Ayub Khan for joint defence arrangements between India and Pakistan.” This was an idea that came straight from Washington and was designed to use both India and Pakistan to launch a war on China. Field Marshal Cariappa’s sympathies became obvious when he joined the Swatantra Party and came out on the streets urging India to go out and take on China.


1957 was also the year when India’s second five year plan was jeopardized by paucity of funds. According to the now released CIA reports from that period, Nehru was the weakest at this juncture and was more inclined toward the US because he was desperate for US aid. However, Krishna Menon was least affected by the money crunch in the country and continued to follow his anti-American agenda. Washington was palpably worried, as Menon’s political boat began gathering wind, the Americans knew, it was time to pull back. By now, it appears that Nehru too was beginning to understand the game. The process of purging began with easing of CD Deshmukh and replacing him with T.T. Krishnamachari (TTK). Krishnamachari ensured that Benegal Rama Rau too was removed from the RBI.


But perhaps, both Nehru and Menon were unaware of the powers that the American central bank and its cohorts were capable of exerting. Soon after Rama Rao’s exit a Calcutta-based Marwari businessman named Haridas Mundhra’s dubious share transactions with the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) amounting to Rs. 1.25 crores were revealed by the media. Feorze Gandhi, Nehru’s son-in-law added fuel to the fire by disclosing the confidential correspondence between the then Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari and his principal finance secretary, and raised a question in Parliament on the sale of ‘fraudulent’ shares to LIC.


The second big corruption scandal of independent India that was christened ‘Mundhra scandal’ ended with the scalp of TT Krishnamachari, who was replaced as finance minister by Moraji Desai. If Seymour Hersh’s disclosures about Morarji’s CIA connections are to be believed and if one is to assume that Morarji had been inclined towards his American mentors since as early as 1950s, then one can safely infer that America had been successful in ensuring that they continued to mentor the Indian economy by removing one of the close confidants of Nehru in the Cabinet in 1957.

The Time article that derided India’s “Dhoti Democracy”, “played up India’s appeasement on China issue.” Menon’s victory sounded the death knell for right wing politics in New Delhi. Exactly eight months after the election, India -China war broke out and as Norman D Palmer an American journalist who covered the 1962 North Bombay elections says, “What his critics in India and United States had failed to accomplish, his Chinese “friends” brought about with amazing suddeness.” And the rest, as they say is history.

The writer:
The author is a retd. Naval officer; he edits the quarterly magazine Purple Beret
http://purpleberets.blogspot.com/2011/1 ... of-62.html

[Christopher Sidor]

^^^^
Maybe Moraji Desai was responsible for starving India's defense of funds as the above article says. But Menon has to be faulted for two things
1) Not choosing competent officers for the armed forces.
2) Not preparing sufficiently.

Menon basically allowed his personal views to cloud his judgement.
There have been cases recorded where our troops went to fight above 10000 feet in trench coats and without proper winter clothing. There have also been cases where food and other essential items did not reach them. I recall reading about one case in Arunachal Pradesh, then NEFA, about an artillery barrage ordered by army general, stopping, because they ran out of ammunition.

For all of these it is Menon and ultimately JLN which have to answer.

[abhishek_sharma]

Friends in need: Inder Malhotra

[svinayak]

^^^^
Maybe Moraji Desai was responsible for starving India's defense of funds as the above article says. But Menon has to be faulted for two things
1) Not choosing competent officers for the armed forces.
2) Not preparing sufficiently.

Menon basically allowed his personal views to cloud his judgement.
There have been cases recorded where our troops went to fight above 10000 feet in trench coats and without proper winter clothing. There have also been cases where food and other essential items did not reach them. I recall reading about one case in Arunachal Pradesh, then NEFA, about an artillery barrage ordered by army general, stopping, because they ran out of ammunition.

For all of these it is Menon and ultimately JLN which have to answer.

Dont look for faults. Fundamentally India was weak financially and poor country in those times with less than 15 years after independence which started an empty state treasury.

India was manipulated in the international system and Indian leaders were influenced by the British and US leadership due to colonial connection. This is the fundamental fact.

Geo political games without an well armed military is not possible and JLN was playing based on moral politics.

Only in 1961 was it made public that China and Pakistan had agreed to start “border negotiations”. India protested vigorously. The territory that adjoined China was part and parcel of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that Pakistan had occupied illegally. Pakistan had therefore no right to discuss this “boundary”. China, however, had evidently done its homework and persuaded Pakistan to go along with it. In May 1962 Beijing and Rawalpindi announced simultaneously: “To ensure peace and tranquility on the border and develop good-neighbourly relations”, the two countries had decided to delimit their boundary. But they took care to describe the boundary as being “between Singkiang and the contiguous areas, the defence of which was under the control of Pakistan”. And, for good measure, the China-Pakistan announcement added: “The agreement reached would be provisional, to be renegotiated if necessary, after India and Pakistan settled the Kashmir dispute”.

Despite all this sophistry, India’s anger was red-hot, if only because of its firm and consistent stand that the entire former princely state of Jammu & Kashmir belongs to this country. In a protest note to China, India declared: “There is no common border between Pakistan and China”, and charged that the proposal to delimit “a non-existent border” was “a step in furtherance of the aggressive aims that China has been pursuing towards India in recent years”. The note went on to say that India would “repudiate any Sino-Pakistani boundary agreement”. China’s equally irate reply inquired, whether “after creating the Sino-Indian boundary dispute, India wished to see a similar dispute arise between India and Pakistan”?

India was being treated as stateless with its borders under question and others making a claim on its territory soon after independence. No country/nation faces this and that too at the time of independence. This was not the case with China which at the time of independence was claiming region beyond its traditional borders.

India faced major attacks at its border within 15 years of its independence and had to fund its military and the economy at the same time. There was no peace dividend for the first 30 years after independence. This is the price of a 'peaceful' struggle for independence.

[rohitvats]

From the link ramana posted:

However, America’s problem was Menon who as the defence minister, was attempting to carve a people’s army from the ‘Raj’ military handed over to him. He started Sainik schools to make the officer cadre more inclusive. He could not stand the likes of Field Marshal Cariappa and General K.S. Thimayya whom he saw representing a particular class and interest group rather than the nation. It is perhaps these ideological differences that were at the root of Thimayya’s resignation in 1959 rather than any disagreement over promotion of senior army officers. As Srinath Raghavan posits, “the archival evidence now available shows that the reasons for the resignation ran deeper. Just a few weeks before the affair, Indian and Chinese forces had clashed along the eastern frontiers. To counter the growing threat from China, Thimayya wanted the political leadership to consider seriously the proposal mooted by President Ayub Khan for joint defence arrangements between India and Pakistan.” This was an idea that came straight from Washington and was designed to use both India and Pakistan to launch a war on China. Field Marshal Cariappa’s sympathies became obvious when he joined the Swatantra Party and came out on the streets urging India to go out and take on China.

Yup, everyone except Menon was responsible for the 62' debacle.BS.

[ramana]

We should read the memoirs of ACM PC Lal and Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh to get an idea of what was really going on in 1962.

[abhishek_sharma]

Unwelcome Interventions: Inder Malhotra

[ramana]

Unwelcome Interventions: Inder Malhotra

Unwelcome interventions
Inder Malhotra Posted online: Mon Jan 09 2012, 00:43 hrs
In two earlier articles in this series (‘Dialogue of the deaf’, IE, January 22, 2010) and ‘Immoveable objects”, IE, February 5, 2010), I have given as many dreary details as possible of the failed Swaran Singh-Bhutto “talkathon” that began in Rawalpindi on December 26, 1962 and collapsed in New Delhi on May 16, 1963. There is no need to repeat them here, except to underscore that but for the unflappable Sardar, the talks would have broken down even before they had begun. This was so because of the effrontery of Pakistan and China. These two countries announced, just after the arrival of the Indian delegation on Pakistani soil, that they had reached a boundary agreement “in principle”, and it would be signed soon.

However, it is necessary to describe here what has not even yet been mentioned: Even while the two neighbours were talking to each other, Britain and the United States went on ratcheting up their pressure on this country to “make concessions to Pakistan” over Kashmir. To begin with, the US ambassador, John Kenneth Galbraith, and the British high commissioner, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, only wanted that they be kept in “close touch” with how the talks were going so that they could “help” when necessary. But when absolutely nothing could be achieved at the first two rounds at Rawalpindi and New Delhi, the two Western powers became both alarmed and overactive.

The third round of the talks was due to begin in Karachi on February 8, 1963. Nearly a week earlier, Philip Talbot, then US assistant secretary of state, suddenly arrived in Delhi, and Galbraith took him on a round of South Block, from the prime minister downwards. Walter McConaughy, the American ambassador to Pakistan, was with Talbot. They stated at length that the US Congress was being “difficult” about aid to India and only an agreement between India and Pakistan could ease the situation. They understood that Pakistan’s demand for a “plebiscite in Kashmir within a year” was unacceptable, but without larger concessions by India no settlement was possible. To this McConaughy added that it was in India’s interest to “strengthen” Ayub’s hands because “any other Pakistani leader would be more difficult”. The Western line of thinking and action was thus clear.

Anyone who has closely analysed the six rounds of India-Pakistan talks knows that logically these should have ended at Karachi. For it was there that India offered to change the cease fire line in Pakistan’s favour, giving it an additional 1,500 square miles in the Valley. But, riding a high horse, Bhutto would have nothing of this. He was prepared to give India the small, southern district of Kathua and demanded the rest of the Valley. This had driven Commonwealth Secretary Y.D. Gundevia to tell him that the Indian delegation wouldn’t go home taking with it only a “kachhua” (tortoise). Even so, since Pakistan seemed anxious to prolong the negotiations, three more sterile rounds were held. The next one in Calcutta (now Kolkata) was scheduled for March 12.

A fortnight before that date it was announced that Bhutto would visit Beijing before arriving in Calcutta. The Americans grew anxious. Their worry was that, faced with the second “provocation”, India might “write off” the Calcutta talks. Galbraith found it necessary to “warn” Indian officials that American reaction to the cancellation of the talks would be “very strong”. Reportedly, the US remonstrated with Pakistan also about the Bhutto visit to Beijing to which the latter’s response was: “You give arms to India, we make friends with China”.

After the failure of the Calcutta round, the two sides were to meet in Karachi five weeks later. The US and Britain used this interval to try and persuade India to give Pakistan a larger part of the Kashmir valley, arguing that the Pakistanis “would not be content until they had some say in the Chenab basin”. Gundevia explained to them rather impatiently that the Indian side had explained to all Western interlocutors, including US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, that this was not possible, and why it was not possible.

Two days before the Indian delegation was to leave for Karachi, the Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, G. Parathasarathi, came to Delhi for consultations and startled all concerned by showing them a paper entitled ‘KASHMIR: Elements of a Settlement’. He reported that the American embassy in Pakistan had given him this document, and had told him that it was a “joint Anglo-American demarche” that had been officially presented to Bhutto.

GP, as he was generally called, was himself stunned when told that no one had handed this paper to New Delhi. The core of the paper was: “Neither India nor Pakistan can entirely give up its claims on the Valley. Each must have a substantial position in the Vale”. And then the US-British paper had proceeded to give Pakistan almost everything it wanted. The control of the Chenab headwork was a “must”. (Incidentally, this is something Pakistan harped on also during the back-channel talks between the nominees of then prime ministers of India and Pakistan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif respectively, in the late 1990s.)

After Nehru and his advisers had discussed the ‘Elements’, the prime minister asked Swaran Singh whether he still wanted to go Karachi. After a brief discussion it was decided that the Karachi talks should go on, but before that, letters should be sent to Kennedy and Macmillan tersely rejecting the Anglo-American suggestions. The letters were dispatched almost immediately after the anger in the initial draft was “softened somewhat”. The letters made no difference at all to the busybodies from the two major powers.

As is well known, all through 1961 and until shortly before the Chinese invasion in 1962, JFK had been advocating “informal, friendly mediation” over Kashmir and had indeed offered the services of Eugene Black, president of the World Bank (who had earlier helped India and Pakistan negotiate the Indus Water Treaty) for this purpose. Nehru had courteously and categorically declined the offer.

There was much surprise in South Block, therefore, when in reply to Nehru’s letter on the Anglo-American ‘Elements’, Kennedy revived the mediation idea. It was to be the American and British theme song for quite a while.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

Thanks to Inder Malhotraji for we wouldn't ever know all these shenanigans by US and UK even after the 1962 PRC perfidy.

One wonders how much more it was in 1947!

[rohitvats]

ramana garu, what is surprising is that such shenanighans continue even today when they have zilch chance of success. Truly, over last 60+years, the country has weathered very many storms.

[ramana]

Well they continue because Dilli doesnt tell them to buzz of. The elephant has been convinced its a goat.

[tejas]

India is an elephant. Unfortunately the majority of its voters and nearly all its politicians are monkeys.

[ramana]

goat = bakra

Leaders keep offering it.

its an elephant like the one in Gajendra Mokhsham!!!
Have you heard the link that Narayana Rao garu put in the Epics thread....

[abhishek_sharma]

The mirage of mediation: Inder Malhotra

After John F. Kennedy revived the mediation idea (‘Unwelcome interventions’, IE, January 9) both the United States and Britain pursued it with astonishing vigour. They were in panic because by then, it was crystal-clear that the sixth round of talks between Swaran Singh and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, scheduled to begin in Delhi on May 15, 1963 was going to be the last. So both Washington and London mobilised their big guns and sent them to the Indian capital on May 2. It seemed a repeat of November 1962.
This time around the US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, came personally, accompanied by three senior advisers, a day ahead of the British delegation consisting of the Old Hands, the ineluctable Duncan Sandys and the suave Lord Mountbatten. Jawaharlal Nehru heard the “monologues of Rusk and Sandys” with patience, but he was evidently furious. For he later told Foreign Secretary M. J. Desai and Commonwealth Secretary Y.D. Gundevia: “One more word on ‘mediation’, and I will throw the lot out of the room.” Apparently, the message got through to the visiting interlocutors too.

Consequently, Rusk decided to return early on the morning of May 4, after attending the dinner Nehru had scheduled in his honour on the night of May 3. There was no alcohol at the prime minister’s dinner and it ended early. The distinguished guests decided to repair to the residence of the British high commissioner for a powwow and a “nightcap”, obviously to supplant the taste of fruit juices served at Teen Murti House. There, Sandys announced that he wasn’t going home in a hurry. Instead, he would fly to Rawalpindi the next day to explore whether he could sell the mediation proposal to Ayub and then come back to Delhi. US Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith told him that this was not a good idea, and therefore, he would have “nothing to do with it”. But Sandys was adamant.

The next morning he arrived at South Block soon after Desai and Gundevia had returned from Palam after seeing off Rusk. Once again, he produced a piece of paper. Nehru and his advisers again dismissed his draft, asking him to remove all references to “Kashmir and related matters”. The anodyne substitute they suggested merely stated that India and Pakistan should seek the good offices of a “mutually acceptable personality” to “help resolve their differences and generally to assist in bringing about friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.” Nehru was confident that Ayub Khan would reject this formulation out of hand. When Galbraith learnt of Sandys’s exploits, his reaction was much stronger than that of the Indian hosts.

He decided to have a “showdown” with Sandys and the British high commission. As he wrote later, “Not for years have I had such a bruising clash and I enjoyed it.” He toned down some of his earlier remarks about the British secretary of state for Commonwealth relations but prevailed upon Sandys to abandon his misguided mission to Rawalpindi. The British high commissioner, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, also heaved a sigh of relief. Years later, he admitted that he was “apprehensive” about Sandys’ venture because Rusk had left Delhi and without consulting him no initiative could be taken.

However, such discretion did not last long. Two days before Bhutto’s arrival in Delhi, Sir Paul was again at the Foreign Office. Galbraith, he said, was not in town, and therefore he was speaking for both the US and Britain. Shouldn’t India itself broach the subject of mediation during the impending ministerial talks between India and Pakistan? Indian officials bluntly told him that they would do nothing of the sort and asked him instead what had happened to the Anglo-American efforts to promote the mediation proposal in Pakistan. The envoy replied that there were difficulties but he could not go into details.

Soon thereafter, Britain and the US put their verbal suggestion into writing, and went on mounting pressure as May turned into June. Meanwhile, Bhutto had declared on returning home after the collapse of the talks that all “peaceful methods of resolving India-Pakistan disputes had ended”. A “Hate India” campaign had begun in Pakistan almost immediately. It was so virulent that the Canadian high commissioner and West German ambassador in Delhi asked the external affairs ministry whether India was expecting trouble on the Kashmir border. They were told: “We are prepared for it”.

The irony of it all is that in the end, it was Ayub who put paid to the mediation idea. As Galbraith recorded in his Journal, Pakistan accepted the mediation proposal subject to conditions, “which can never be mediated”. The field-marshal was insistent on a “complete freeze” on all long-term military aid to India for the duration of mediation that he wanted not to exceed three months. He also demanded that the mediator must “assume” the validity of the UN resolution on a plebiscite in Kashmir, and he firmly demanded that mediation should be confined to Kashmir and Kashmir alone. He did not press his next point but his preference was for a “panel” rather than a single mediator.

Through most of June, Nehru was travelling within the country. So India’s final and clinching rejection of mediation was formally conveyed to the US embassy and the British high commission on June 25.

It was at this stage that Kennedy finally grasped the futility of pursuing the mirage of mediation over Kashmir. This happened only a few months before those terrible shots in Dallas, Texas.

In his Journal, Galbraith has claimed some credit for persuading JFK to change his Kashmir policy, and justifiably so. Denis Kux, a professional diplomat who was at one time in charge of the India desk at the state department, has written a comprehensive account of India-America relations over the years, eloquently titled Estranged Democracies. The heading of his chapter on the Kennedy years is: “Neither Kashmir, nor India”.

At his house in Boston in October 1988, in the course of an interview on the subject, Galbraith asked me: “Do you know what the president was doing during our discussion on Kashmir and mediation?” I certainly didn’t. “Well”, continued JKG, “he was in the bathtub, twirling the faucets with his toes”.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

[Varoon Shekhar]

I hope some Indian spokesman back then politely, firmly and succinctly told those American and British interlocutors, that India could not afford to make 'concessions' on Kashmir, because doing so would strengthen the hand of the Islamists and Pakistani military, strengthen the Pakistani ideology, and significantly weaken Indian pluralism and secularism. And hence be a regressive, not a progressive move. It would also demean and diminish the huge sacrifices made by the Indian armed forces to secure Kashmir in 1947-1948.

That's all that needed to be said.

[ramana]

Bji, 1959 is the turning point. However the forces were weakened from early 1950.

The 1962 India-China Conflict
The Rediff Special/Maj Gen (retd) K K Tewari, PVSM, AVSM

As a result of the Chinese threat on our northern borders, some time in 1959 the headquarters of the Eastern Command at Lucknow was given the operational responsibility for the defence of the borders in Sikkim and NEFA.
I was at that time on the staff at HQ Eastern Command. The 4th (Red Eagle) Infantry Division was located at Ambala. Soon after it was ordered to move to Tezpur in Assam towards the end of 1959, I was posted as its Commander, Signals.

This division, trained and equipped for fighting in the plains, had suddenly been deployed to guard the borders in this high mountainous region. While a normal division is expected to defend a 30-40km front in the plains, we were assigned a front spanning more than 1800km of mountainous terrain.

Worse was to come. Even before the division could take over its operational responsibilities to defend the border with Tibet, orders for the execution of Operation Amar 2, for construction of accommodation for ourselves, were received from Army HQ.
This was the brainchild of Lt Gen B M Kaul, then Quartermaster General at Army HQ. We were supposed to build temporary basha accommodation......

[ramana]

There is something deeply worng about what happened to India in 1962. I am unable to get to grips with all these accounts from different viewpoints.

Its like a n-dimensional body which we are asked to percieve from only the projection on two planes at a time and we dont even know how many planes are there!

[abhishek_sharma]

How to make foes and alienate people: Inder Malhotra

Krishna Menon was as unpopular in India as he was with the West — but Nehru believed in him.

No narrative of the 1962 border war with China can be complete without an adequate mention of the role of the then defence minister, V.K. Krishna Menon, especially of his share of responsibility for what went wrong with the Indian army during his watch that resulted in the debacle in the high Himalayas.

He was a brilliant (if also waspish) man, who delighted in offending people and making more enemies than friends. But Jawaharlal Nehru’s appreciation of his intelligence and total trust in him gave Menon ironclad protection. Nehru’s official biographer S. Gopal has cited ample evidence to show that Menon was not beyond using “emotional blackmail” on his mentor.

After he had served as independent India’s first high commissioner in London for nearly five years, Nehru wanted to include Menon in his cabinet. But his senior colleagues, especially Maulana Azad, dissuaded him because of Menon’s alleged involvement in what had come to be known as the “Jeep scandal”. So Nehru made Menon leader of the Indian delegation to the United Nations.

Nothing could have suited him more. At the world stage he displayed his oratorical skill. What made him both famous and highly controversial, however, was his unfailing habit of attacking the United States and Britain bitingly whenever they were opposed to Indian policies, which was often the case. The Western powers constantly complained to Nehru, but to no avail, while Menon’s fiery speeches, particularly a nine-hour one on Kashmir, won him kudos at home.

In 1955 Menon joined the Nehru cabinet as a minister without portfolio, but he was not happy. He wanted to preside over a major ministry. This came to pass after the 1957 general election in which he had won a seat in the Lok Sabha. Nehru entrusted him with the defence portfolio. In Gopal’s words, this proved to be “one of Nehru’s less fortunate decisions”.

Although eventually he had to leave the government in ignominy, Menon must not be denied credit for the good work that he did as defence minister. He gave a big boost to self-reliance in defence production and brought about some economies in defence expenditure. No less commendably, he started a network of Sainik Schools that continue to provide high quality education to the children of Other Ranks.

On the other hand, his devious ways of working, his propensity to create coteries, his arrogance and his disregard for other people’s dignity did unforgivable damage to the cohesion and morale of the three armed forces. He made it a point to slight the service chiefs, usually in the presence of their juniors.

Most infamously he had a big bust up with General K.S. Thimayya, arguably the most respected army chief so far, who resigned, but was persuaded by Nehru to withdraw the resignation (‘Khaki vs Khadi’, IE, October 17, 2008). In Parliament, opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of General Thimayya and against Menon. But Nehru, invoking civilian supremacy over the military, backed Menon.

Since Nehru firmly believed that the Chinese would do “nothing big” apart from border skirmishes and patrol-level clashes, there would have been no reason to blame Menon if he had only repeated the prime minister’s view. But he carried his special pleading for the Chinese to ridiculous lengths. As late as November 1961, he told air force commanders that he wasn’t aware of “any aggression, incursion, encroachment or intrusion by the Chinese into any part of Indian territory”. Even Nehru had to rebuke him once when, in a telegram from New York, Menon had pontificated that the China problem was “political rather than military”. In 1958, while instructing G. Parthasarthi on what to do in Beijing as Indian ambassador, Nehru specifically told GP “not to mention” their conversation “to Krishna”.

Constantly playing down the Chinese menace, Menon vastly exaggerated the threat from Pakistan. On September 30, 1962 — three weeks after the Chinese had crossed the Thagla Ridge and three weeks before the massive Chinese invasion began — Menon raised a “patently false scare” about “heavy military movements by Pakistan” in the Murree area, as both Commonwealth Secretary Y.D. Gundevia and the then high commissioner to Pakistan, Rajeshwar Dayal, have recorded in their memoirs. Sadly, the then intelligence czar, B.N. Mullik, was Menon’s accomplice.

The then director of military operations, Brigadier (later Major-General) D.K. Palit, has marshalled incontrovertible evidence to prove that Menon had prevented Lieutenant-General S.P.P. Thorat’s report on “China’s threat and how to meet it” from being forwarded to the prime minister. Nehru read it after the war was over.

To cap it all, it was Menon’s penchant to play favourites that was responsible for the disaster of Lt.-General B.M. Kaul, with hardly any experience of combat, being appointed the commander in the battlefield and retaining that position even when he was lying ill in Delhi.

No wonder Menon had become the main figure in the demonology of Indian politics long before the Chinese troops came rolling down the Himalayan slopes. So much so that in April 1960, during his last talks with Zhou Enlai in Delhi, Nehru thought it imprudent to exclude Menon from his delegation. However, he remained resolutely opposed to any demand for Menon’s exit.

Thus it was that even after the full-blooded Chinese invasion, Nehru ignored the countrywide outcry for Menon’s ouster. But the pressure of public opinion was too strong. Nehru took 11 days to divest his protégé of the defence portfolio which he took over himself but retained Menon as minister of defence production. This arrangement could not have been sustained in any case but Menon made this impossible. True to type, he thumbed his nose at his critics and declared: “Nothing has changed. I am sitting in the same room and doing the same work”.

This led to a virtual revolt within the Congress party. Mahavir Tyagi, Nehru’s “comrade” since the freedom struggle, told him at an acrimonious conclave that if he did not sack Menon he might himself have to go. On November 7, Nehru announced that he had accepted Menon’s resignation. Over this there was as much glee in the United States as in India.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator.

[ramana]

Krishna Menon is an odd one.
He spends all his time in London and not in India.
He is trusted beyond beleif by JLN
He comes up with new institutions to seed the Officer Corps via Sainik Schools.
He bats for PRC.
He does his best to demoralize the Indian armed forces
He comes up with bogus TSP moves right before the PRC invasion.
,As Defence Minster, he could hardly be aware that PRC crossed the ThagLa in September, 1962.
He is supported by BN Mullick, the most un intelligent Intelligence Chief of India


Was KM an agent under influence?