Bharat Rakshak

ramana wrote:Bji Was JLN trying to draw the PRC into India in Korean war situation?

His request for so many squadrons of US planes with US pilots would have made India a war torn country. From Non-Alignment to reversal of Independence.

What was he thinking? Looks like PRC declared ceasefire and prevented any US follow-up. US also said no, not when Indian planes were themselves not engaged.

I guess that leads us to a few years down the road to Vietnam.

You do not invite a crisis that you cannot solve
Gautam Mukherjee

Mao needed a pretext ‘to teach India a lesson'. Some senior officers of the Indian Army and the country’s politicians offered it to him, which is why 1962 happened

One of the reasons why the Sino-Indian conflict has remained a deep scar in the nation’s psyche is that very few people know what exactly happened on the slopes of the Thagla ridge in October 1962, though one does not need to be Inspector Jacques Clouseau to discover why the famous Henderson-Brooks report has been kept out of the eyes of the Indian public for 50 years. The reason is simple: In 1962, the bosses in New Delhi were unable to tell the local commanders where the border in the Tawang/ Ziminthang sector was.

A few months after the debacle, the Union Government requested Lt Gen Henderson-Brooks and Brigadier Prem Bhagat (HBB) to prepare a report of the events which led to the fiasco. Many have since asked: “What on earth has stopped the Government to open the HBB report to the public?”

Between 1962 and 1965, RD Pradhan was then Defence Minister YB Chavan’s Private Secretary. In his memoirs, he provides some insights on the issue: “Chavan was apprehensive that the committee may cast aspersions on the role of the Prime Minister or the Defence Minister.” Mr Pradhan adds: “(Chavan’s) main worry was to find ways to defend the government and at the same time to ensure that the morale of the armed forces was not further adversely affected.” Mr Pradhan concluded: “Chavan earned the gratitude of the Prime Minister.” Was it by classifying the HBB report forever?

In 2008, answering a question on the HBB Report, Defence Minister AK Antony told the Indian Parliament that the report could not be made public because an internal study by the Army had established that its contents “are not only extremely sensitive, but are of current operational value.” Nobody will believe that a 49 year-old report is still of ‘operational value’.

In 2005, veteran journalist and former MP Kuldip Nayar requested, under the RTI, the Ministry of Defence for a copy of the report.

During the hearings of the Commission in March 2009, the Defence Ministry articulated the official stand: “Disclosure of this information will amount to disclosure of the army’s operational strategy in the North-East and the discussion on deployments has a direct bearing on the question of the demarcation of the Line of Actual Control between India and China, a live issue under examination between the two countries at present.”

On March 19, 2010, in a ‘decision notice’, the Central Information Commission states: “The disclosure of information of which the Henderson Brooks report carries considerable detail on what precipitated the war of 1962 between India and China will seriously compromise both security and the relationship between India & China.” As a result: “no part of the report might at this stage be disclosed.”

Inspector Clouseau would say: “I know that”.Let us return 50 years ago. In early October 1962, the Chinese military intelligence had gathered that Indian forces were planning to ‘attack China’ on the Thagla ridge on October 10 (Operation Leghorn). A few days earlier, Mao had told his Party’s colleagues: “It seems like armed coexistence won’t work. It’s just as we expected. Nehru really wants to use force. This isn’t strange. He has always wanted to seize Aksai Chin and Thagla ridge. He thinks he can get everything he desires.”

Though there was no question of the Indian Army ‘attacking China’ with no food, no warm clothes, no armament or ammunition supply, the Chinese seemed to have perceived the situation differently.

Was Mao looking for a pretext?

The answer is to be found in the accounts of senior Indian Army officers, the unwilling actors in the ‘Himalayan blunder’. Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad, the GOC of 4 Infantry Division in his book The Fall of Towang describes the setting: “The McMahon Line from just north of Khinzemane, as drawn by Sir Henry McMahon in 1914 with a thick blue [in fact, red] pencil on an unsurveyed map, was not an accurate projection of the Himalayan watershed line. …In this process the position of Thagla ridge was, to say the least, left ambiguous.”

The survey had been completed in 1913 by Capts Bailey and Morshead, but it is true that it was rather sketchy (one inch to eight miles). If one follows the watershed principle, the Thagla ridge was the logical border, but the fact remains that the old map which was the reference for India’s position on the location of the McMahon Line, showed the Thagla ridge and the Namkha Chu, north of the Red Line. Further surveys were unfortunately not conducted after India’s independence.

In 1960, the Government of India had mooted a new policy to establish posts right on the border; it was the famous ‘Forward Policy’. The siting of these posts and their exact location was, however, decided mainly by the Intelligence Bureau and not the Army.

The local Commanders (Corps, Division and Brigade) were not happy and they made it known, but nothing could stop the folly of the ‘authorities’ in Delhi.

Brig Dalvi recalled: “Many generals, including General Umrao Singh [33 Corps Commander], opposed the indiscriminate opening up of more posts. …The setting up of posts in disputed territory is a different matter. It is an act of rashness, whoever decreed it and with whatever authority, unless we had the means to settle the resultant dispute on the battlefield.”

As Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad noted, the local commanders had no choice, though they could certainly have resigned, but in an almost war situation, it was not an easy decision to take.

The Intelligence Bureau and its Director, BN Mullick had no clue about the exact position of the border and the Chinese preparations.

On 14 August, 1962, Brigadier DK Palit, Director of Military Operations visited the Corps Headquarters in Tezpur. He was told about the issue about the Line.

In his memoirs, War in the High Himalayas, Palit recalled the encounter: “On my return to Delhi I referred the Thagla dilemma to the Director of Military Survey. The latter commented that as the existing maps of the area were ‘sketchy and inaccurate, having been compiled from unreliable sources’… He confirmed that the recognised border was the watershed, but qualified this statement by adding ‘the exact alignment of [the border] will depend on accurate survey…it would take two to three years to complete’.”

When Palit enquired with S Gopal, the Director of the Historical Section, Gopal explained that since the boundary talks with the Chinese in 1960, the Government of India had been aware that the actual terrain in the area of the tri-junction was different from that depicted on the Simla map. But Palit adds: “What Gopal had not told me — and I found out only later — was that the Chinese had not accepted our arguments and had counter-claimed Thagla ridge, as Chinese territory.” By then, it was already too late to go back, at least for the egos of the main actors in Delhi.

Mao needed a pretext ‘to teach India a lesson’. Some senior Indian Army officers and politicians offered it to him. However, the fact that the Chinese attack occurred simultaneously in all sectors (Tawang, Walong in NEFA and Ladakh) is certainly proof that the operations had been prepared well in advance by the communist regime in Beijing, which didn’t really need a pretext.

(The accompanying visual is of Indian troops moving towards the border to confront Chinese troops in 1962. Courtesy: Life)

ramana wrote:Op-ed in Pioneer,
10/3/2012

You do not invite a crisis that you cannot solve

You do not invite a crisis that you cannot solve
Gautam Mukherjee

Mao needed a pretext ‘to teach India a lesson'. Some senior officers of the Indian Army and the country’s politicians offered it to him, which is why 1962 happened

<SNIP>

Continuing the three-part series on the 50th anniversary of the Indo-China war, here are stories from the first town in Assam that felt the impact of the invasion.

At 70, Meenakshi Bhuyan is tall, slim, with short grey hair that enhances her gamine features. A born storyteller, there is not a single street, paddy field or ancient ruin of her home town — Tezpur in Assam — whose story is not embedded in her repertoire.

A history buff, she says that the 1962 India-China war changed her small town forever. “It looked the same, but I felt the spirit got affected.”

It is exactly 50 years since Meenakshi and her family heard Prime Minister Nehru’s address to the nation in 1962: “Huge Chinese armies are marching into North East India... my heart goes out to the people of Assam.” Meenakshi recalls, “My mother said ‘what is he saying? Has he abandoned us?’ We all looked at each other and each of us felt the same.” They knew Tezpur was the first town in Assam the Chinese could take if they reached the plains….

Meenakshi recalls, “Things started unravelling three years before the war when the whole town woke up to welcome the Dalai Lama’s entourage in 1959. A huge crowd gathered at the Darrang College ground to see him. As the head of the Municipal Corporation, my father was the one who welcomed him with a khada (a scarf given to honour visitors).”

The Tibetans were housed in a refugee camp at Misamari, some 45 minutes drive from Tezpur. Used to living in the high mountains, they were not prepared for the heat. Bundles of cotton cloth were sent to the Tezpur Mahila Samiti to make clothes for them. Meenakshi’s mother, who was the secretary of the Mahila Samiti, and her friends stitched bakhus (the traditional dress of Tibetan women) for the refugees. The children worked as volunteers to put together food packets. Meenakshi was then 20. Years later she was to step into her mother’s shoes and become the secretary of the same Samiti.

Born in April 1942, Meenakshi was only three days old when Jawharlal Nehru came as a guest to their ancestral home, Poki. This house, with wide rounded arches and grey stone floors, is today the museum and office of Assam’s cultural department. The Agarwala family lived as one big joint family. Meenakshi’s great-grandfather came to Assam as a pioneering businessman from Churu, Rajasthan, when the British set up tea gardens in Assam. He bought two gardens — one in Bholaguri and the other in Tamulbari. He never returned to Churu, choosing instead to marry an Assamese woman from Gohpur, raise a family and imbibe the local culture.

Meenakshi grew up in a family steeped in Gandhian ways and involved in the freedom struggle. Her uncle, Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, was already feted as the Rajkunwor (Prince) of Assamese literature and, in 1935, had made the first Assamese film Joymati. Her father, Kamla Prasad, was a lawyer and held public office as Member of the Legislative Assembly and then as Member of Parliament. Her mother, Meena, was a social worker.

Training for the worst

After her matriculation, Meenakshi went to Darjeeling for her intermediate and then to the Benaras Hindu University for her BA. Each time she came back during her holidays, she heard disheartening news. There was a series of border skirmishes between India and China in early 1960-61 after the Dalai Lama got asylum in India. That was to have far-reaching effects on Tezpur.

“There was a whole lot of talk of security. Then mother and her friends enrolled to be trained by the Home Guard for civil defence duties. They were trained to march and handle guns by a lady named Mrs. Manekji, who had been especially sent by Nehru. My frail mother looked hilarious carrying a gun.”

Soon thereafter, people in Tezpur began noticing the growing presence of the army and the air force. “There were men in uniform everywhere. By October 20, the war started and we did not know what was really happening on the border. Our house became the centre of frenetic activities. Mother and her friends were told to knit woollen socks, gloves and sweaters as there was a shortage of warm clothing for the soldiers. They worked day and night. Lots of blankets began pouring in. I enrolled as a volunteer to care for the wounded. Most of the men flown in to the Saloni (now Tezpur) airport were frostbite cases.”

Meenakshi regrets that all this is now history; in a few more years the generation who witnessed the 1962 war will be no more. Some of her friends from that era also remember those turbulent times. People like Akashi Das Baruah and Prasan Kumar Saikia vividly bring the past alive with their memories. They recall how, as the war progressed, fresh rumours swept through Tezpur every day.

People talked animatedly at street corners. They heard Bomdila had fallen. Tezpur was given evacuation orders. There was panic everywhere. Those days there was no Kaliabomla bridge linking the north and south banks of the Brahmaputra, nor had the Saraighat bridge been built. To reach Guwahati one had to travel by steamer on the Brahmaputra.

As the 1962 war took place in winter, it was bitterly cold on the open ghats where people leaving Tezpur gathered to be transported. At night, waiting families set up hundreds of camp fires on the river banks.

Among these fleeing families was that of Akashi Barua Das. On November 18, 1962, her heavily pregnant mother, Kamala Kiran (just 20) along with her three children and a single steel trunk, boarded a ferry from Panpur to Silghat. She had left behind her husband, an employee of Bargang tea garden. Kamala Kiran sat on the trunk, hugging her children, afraid of what the future held for them as the ferry sailed without any lights down the ink black river.

The ferry left them at Silghat, in the early hours of the morning. No one had eaten, so a few women decided to make lalchai. They were gathering sticks when suddenly there were shouts of alarm and the thud of hooves. A resting rhino, disturbed by the women, had taken off in fright. “Everyone felt, if the Chinese won’t get us the rhino will,” says Akashi quoting her mother. The next day a tea garden truck took Kamala Kiran to Jakhalabanda hospital where Akashi was born. To this day her mother calls Akashi, her “Chinese daughter”.

A ghost town

If Kamala Kiran’s husband sent her away with the children and stayed back at work, so did Prasan Kumar Saikia (84) after leaving his family at Naugaon. In 1962, Saikia was 33 and working as Assistant Manager at the District Commissioner’s office in Tezpur. He was told to requisition vehicles for the army to carry them to border areas.

“Jeeps and jongas would come daily from Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Shillong, Guwahati, Goalpara, even Darjeeling. Every day we would commandeer 25 vehicles and send them to the Army. I had to ensure they had enough petrol to reach Misamari where the troops were stationed.”

Saikia recalls how, after Nehru’s speech, the tea planters — mostly Scottish and some British — all left Assam. “The planters drove down to the airport where there was a special Dakota service to take them to Kolkata. They just abandoned their homes and left their cars at the airport, with keys left in the ignition. The DC, P.K. Das, went to leave his family at the airport but was forced by his wife to accompany them to Kolkata. By early November 1962, Tezpur was a ghost town.”

The Additional Deputy Commissioner asked Saikia to take all government files and store them safely in the District Court. He was also witness to Bhatnagar, Manager of the State Bank, burning paper currency notes in all denominations, along with stamp papers in a big bonfire. “Huge sacks full of coins were emptied into Padam Pokhri (a local pond). That evening I saw some people diving and recovering these.”

"Thankfully, a ceasefire was declared on November 21, 1962 and people began returning. Saikia then had to requisition jeeps for film stars who travelled around Tezpur entertaining wounded soldiers. Bhupen Hazarika was one of the first artistes to reach. Moved by what he saw, he returned to compose a poignant song that began ‘Kato jawan mrithu hoi’ (How many young men have laid down their lives….).”

Perhaps the fieriest of Meenakshi’s friends was Promilla Barua, known in Tezpur as Promilla Baido (elder sister). At 85, painful sciatica forces her to walk with a limp, her once stout heart troubles her from time to time, she has lost most of her teeth, but her eyes still smoulder. She was just six, a student in the primary school in Dekhargaon, when she heard from her headmistress Chandrabala Barua that Gandhi had come to Poki and that people were burning “bilaiti bastra” (foreign clothes) on the Polo ground. “I went to see the burning. That was also the first time I understood Indians were slaves and Gandhi would be the one who would get us freedom”.

Promilla left school at 14 and became involved in the independence movement. Born among the landed gentry, she became influenced by Marxism. She remembers supporting Gandhi’s Quit India movement in 1942. “The streets of Tezpur were full of soldiers who would march shouting, ‘Up Up Union Jack’. My friends and I would shout them down with our slogans of ‘Down Down Union Jack, Up Up National Flag’.”

The call to ‘Do or Die’ inspired her. In 1942 she became the lone woman from Tezpur to join the Mrityu Bahini started by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala. Her personal album has photos of Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru and other freedom fighters who inspired her. While her family wanted her to marry, she told them her life belonged to the country.

To her comrade Himango Biswas who professed his feelings for her, she said, “First I love Assam, then I love my country and then I love the world.” She is silent for a while, then she adds that he went on to marry a girl from Kolkata. Promilla became Secretary of the Mazgaon Mahila Samiti and, along with Communist leaders Purnanarain Singha and Biswadev Sarma, formed the ‘China Pratirudh Samiti in 1962.

“We vowed to fight Chinese occupation of Assam. It was because of this vow that I stayed back in Tezpur as the town emptied out. I wore my brother’s clothes and a trench coat. I had a gun. I was determined, come what may, Tezpur would never fall into Chinese hands,” she laughs.

She stayed alone for the next month. “One day there was a lot of noise, I saw some half dressed and a few naked people yelling and running around the streets. They were inmates from the mental hospital set free, like the prisoners from Tezpur jail. I remember going to town and stopping some men from setting fire to the electric supply board. There was a bomb wired on to the supply board in case the Chinese came to Tezpur.”

In her lifetime Promilla Baido has said goodbye to many friends and comrades. “What I learnt from Gandhi I will take with me,” she says, sitting in her small cottage full of books, plaques and numerous japis (traditional bamboo hat) that validate her work as a freedom fighter. This staunch nationalist is pained by the rift and the violence she sees in her state and around the country today.

“People have stopped valuing each other. That, for me, is the worst thing that can ever happen, as it divides us. We should all stay together, it’s the only then we can beat all foreign forces. I just pray that God keeps my country together.”

D Roy wrote:A slew of articles written by Chachaji apologists are being released to the media.

Pratyush wrote:India needs to revisit 1962 humiliation for catharsis

unarayanadas wrote:October 20 marks the beginning of the humiliating India - China war of 1962:

From October 20 when the Chinese launched attacks in the west (Aksai Chin) and east (Northeast Frontier Agency, or NEFA, today's Arunachal Pradesh) till November 19 when Premier Zhou En-lai announced a unilateral ceasefire, the war lasted less than a month, yet ended an era.

1962 India-China war: Why India needed that jolt

The Sino-Indian War of 1962 is not a happy memory. It is remembered for the humiliation of India's total defeat, the betrayal of Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai and the devastating personal blow it dealt Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It left us minus large chunks of territory and an inability to admit this that has resulted in the ridiculous policy of having to stamp every book and magazine that does admit this with the assertion that they are incorrect.

{The guy does not believe in India. The books/magazines are stamped for PRC has occupied by force Indian land. UN convention outlwas aggression which if the dear wrtier had looked up means occuyp by force. So by stamping the literature, India is asserting its claims. Might be obtuse for the modern mind but thats the legal way. If India allows such maps it legitimizes the PRC occupation by force.}

From October 20 when the Chinese launched attacks in the west (Aksai Chin) and east (Northeast Frontier Agency, or Nefa, today's Arunachal Pradesh) till November 19 when Premier Zhou En-lai announced a unilateral ceasefire, the war lasted less than a month, yet ended an era.

The taint of 1962 has coloured all its retellings, which have tended to be dominated by vested interests: army generals seeking to exculpate themselves, anti-Nehruvians revelling in his discomfiture, leftists trying to square their dilemma by justifying the Chinese action. Yet 50 years later it is time to look at it again and see if, in fact, its effects were as calamitous as they seemed at that time.

Fractured Country

Early 1962 saw India's third general election, which the Congress won easily. Yet the election was unsettlingly divisive, with old Congress stalwarts like JB Kripalani and C Rajagopalachari turning against the party. Kripalani's battle, in North Bombay, was particularly bruising, since it pitted him against VK Krishna Menon, the defence minister, whose arrogance, apparently impregnable closeness to Nehru and violent anti-Americanism had made him much disliked and distrusted both abroad and in India, including by many Congress colleagues. But Nehru threw his weight behind Menon's campaign and he won a sweeping victory.

The election also brought to parliament the Akali Dal and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), new parties with troubling agendas. The Akalis wanted a Sikh majority state while the DMK wanted an even more ambitious Dravida Nadu to unite the southern states in some semblance of independence. Coming soon after the agitations that lead to linguistic states in 1956, and the division of Bombay into Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960, and along with deep unrest in Nagaland, this raised the spectre of regional disintegration of India. The Congress response was to push the 16th Amendment which made it obligatory for public officials to swear allegiance to the Republic of India.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) came second in the elections, with 29 seats to the Congress' 361. This made them the lead Opposition party, but also bought their internal divisions to the fore. Under the moderate and nationalist SA Dange the CPI had occasionally supported Nehru, but this policy was now strongly challenged by a hard-left faction lead by younger leaders like Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet (ironically, both advocates of left moderation in later life). According to declassified CIA files on the CPI, another divisive issue was, prophetically, the Indo-China border, where the hard left voted to support the Chinese position.

Debates, and More Debates

This was at a meeting in 1961, which shows how one part of the mythology that has grown around the 1962 war, which is that it was a total surprise, is incorrect. In fact, the border dispute and the ongoing skirmishes linked to it had been the subject of much debate in the Indian parliament and media. Parties like the Jana Sangh, still in disrepute due to alleged links with the Hindu extremists who killed Gandhi, seized the nationalist card as a way to raise their profile — one ardent anti-China advocate was a young Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The media too, already charged by the Indian takeover of Goa in late 1961, was also inclined to be unyielding on the border.

Ramachandra Guha, in his history of independent India, quotes Steve Hoffman's work which suggests that the Indian government's policy of dealing with an issue by producing white papers for debate was a constraint: "Had the border dispute remained private the prime minister could have used the quieter back-channels of diplomatic compromise." With parliament and media in full cry Nehru would have found it hard to do this, though this wasn't something the Chinese were inclined to appreciate. But even when private talks between Nehru and Chou took place in 1960 there was a basic difference in attitude which may have prevented a solution.

{So all these eminent chatterati think Nehru should have sold out to the Chinese on pragmatic basis! Their charge is the democracy prevented Nehru from mkaing those compromises. Look at the littany of woes this man lists. Have they considered that Nehru didn't want to give up that land having already agreed to the partition and the J&K fiasco? Having made cuts in the Army after Independence (under British labor advisors), Nehru had to rely on police measures to protect the borders. His misclaculation was that PRC would resort to military aggression agaisnt India. Wrong premise but that was it.}

The Chinese position all along was pragmatic: they wanted a route to Tibet through Aksai Chin and were not interested in whether the facts of history, in a region where this had always been unclear, supported them. Guha refers to secret records of the talks which show Chou stating, fairly clearly, that China would give up claims to Nefa in exchange for Aksai Chin. But Nehru insisted on defending the details of history, like the McMahon Line and historical texts that referred to the area. This may have been from consideration for public sentiment, or for the Dalai Lama who had taken refuge in India (another flashpoint for the Chinese), but it also possibly stemmed from his image of being a principled international statesman.

{What if he was tired of giving up more and more Indian lands? He did act forcefully to evict the Portuguese out of Goa just that year. Should he have resorted to statemanship and let them fester in India?}

Verbal Volleys

Almost every account of modern international diplomacy admits to one feeling about Indian leaders: exasperation at how much they lectured the rest of the world. Nehru's high reputation meant that he was always listened to with real respect, but this was wearing thin, and his peremptory action in Goa raised charges of hypocrisy that were hard to duck. Even more, Menon's diatribes had annoyed people like the Americans beyond endurance.

JK Galbraith, the American economist and ambassador to India during the crisis, put the matter neatly in his entertaining Ambassador's Journal: "Indians are the world's safest object of animosity." This was the downside of non-alignment: you had no effective supporters, since other non-aligned nations could or would only wring their hands and look away.

{The same Galbraith proudly writes of how he advised Nehru not to use the IAF which was fit and ready against the PRC. IOW India was advised not to use its best resoruces against an invading force. And thus magnified the effects of the surprise.}

And while its true that Nehru's non-alignment may have allowed for hopes of help from those friendly Russians, this is where the 1962 war falls into a historical coincidence often overlooked in India: it took place at exactly the same time as the Cuban missile crisis. Galbraith describes his confusion at having to deal with "a considerable war on my hands without a single telegram, letter, telephone call or other communication of guidance".

{Who cares about the travails of Galbraith! ET should think of India for that is where they make their money hopefully?}

At the Crossroads

The Russians, who were at the losing end in Cuba, must have been even more at a loss, and were also constrained by the demands of international communist co-operation. It must have been a terrible shock to Menon when the Russian response finally came as just a general appeal to both sides to make piece, and no firm support of India. The Times of India headline "India Dismayed at Soviet Backing to Chinese" came on October 26, the day after one of the worst days of the war, when Tawang was captured.

This was Galbraith's opportunity. He saw it as a way to subtly shift opinion in favour of the Americans, by providing aid in discreet, face-saving ways for Nehru. If there was one big gain from 1962 it was this — the acknowledgement of our common interests with the Americans. It helped that it went hand in hand with the discomfiture of the CPI. Caught between the Chinese sympathies of the hard left, and the fear of being labelled as Chinese agents, the CPI politburo simply came to a standstill, issuing no statement for days after the attack.
{This analysis ignores the role that IB with the US had in supporting Tibetian Khampa rebels against the PRC. So India was covertly stuck in the morass with the US busy with the Cuban crisis. THis aspect is not considered in any analysis of the 1962 war.}

But as Dange's side had foreseen, this was still disastrous. Because once the attacks began, public opinion burst out in support of the state. State-level CPI units, closer to ground realities, realised the danger and started condemning the invasion, not waiting for directions. This still didn't stop many communists from being arrested after a state of emergency was declared on October 26 — the first time the Indian government ever used this power, and the only time other than Indira Gandhi's emergency in 1975.

The DMK was less equivocal. "When the country is in danger, for us to advocate separatism would be to give way to the foreigner," said its head CN Annadurai at a speech on Madras' Marina Beach, and the Dravida Nadu demand was permanently dropped, with the party focussing instead on resisting the imposition of Hindi. MG Ramachandran, the film star who was also the party's rising star, donated `75,000 to the National Defence Fund (NDF).

{Am proud of C Annadurai for this great affirmation of the idea of India. The Commies still havent done this.}

The public feeling was overwhelming. Army recruitment centres were flooded with volunteers, and women took lessons in rifle practice. Bollywood was not far behind MGR: Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Meena Kumari gave 50,000 each. Women donated jewellery — led by Indira Gandhi, whose contribution, the Economic Times reported on November 2 weighed 336 grams. The All India Hotel and Halwai Federation announced donations of packets of sweets for the jawans, and race courses chipped in as well, with the Times reporting that a percentage of the tote would go to the NDF.

ET was barely a year old then, but already firmly committed to opening up the economy. An edit on October 21 noted that the war was showing up the "grave deficiencies" of the Plan which had lead to a plateauing of industrial production just when the war was increasing demand all around, but, "there have already been indications that the private sector would be only too willing to play an effective role in the defence of the country".

The stock market crashed, with the ET Ordinary Share Index falling from 121.6 points at the beginning of September to 108.1 on November 6, a day when stock exchanges suspended trading. But the ET Commodity Index stayed strong at around 116 points through that period, proving the dismal truth that, occasionally, wars can be good for the economy.

Once it got over its humiliation, the army also benefited from the 1962 war. It was never entirely true that it was unprepared, but its resources were wrongly deployed, nearly all focussed on the Pakistani borders. Guha points out, in fact, that the Chinese border was technically not the army's responsibility, but that of the Intelligence Bureau, with armed support from paramilitary detachments like the Assam Rifles in the east and Central Reserve Police Force in the west.

Chinese Chequers

BK Nehru, India's ambassador in Washington, DC, discovered one consequence of this when the conflict broke out and he needed maps to help him figure out where the fighting was happening. But his military attaches told him Intelligence had classified the maps as confidential and they did not have clearance to see them: "I told them to go to National Geographic to buy the maps they wanted — which they did!"

It was this sort of absurdity that 1962 ended. The Indian Army redeployed, reinvested in learning how to fight at high altitudes, and how to make best advantage of terrain.

The army was perhaps driven by the knowledge that, bad as 1962 had been, it could have been far worse. For one, China-Pakistan relationships were still very nascent, and Ayub Khan, Pakistan's president, influenced by the British and Americans, resisted the temptation to join the attack, which would have meant war on all our borders.

The second was the simple fact that, having got Aksai Chin, which was always their main interest, the Chinese almost scornfully handed Nefa back, retreating behind the McMahon Line (which they continued to describe as illegal). Brigadier JP Dalvi, the most senior officer taken prisoner, who would write the one blisteringly honest account in his Himalayan Blunder, recalled "the most humiliating moment of my 7-month captivity" when the Chinese major in charge of him informed him: "Now we have decided to go back as we do not want to settle the border problem by force. We have proved you are no match for mighty China."

Whether we are or are not a match for China, we are certainly better prepared — and with less illusions — than we were then. Defeats can never be pleasant, but in 1962 at least, India suffered one from which, just possibly, the country might have become the long-term winner.

(With inputs from Times Archives)

KOCHI: The India-China war of 1962 could have been averted if the two Asian giants had sat down across the negotiation table and explored ways to revive the Panchsheel pact, which was to lapse that year.

{It takes two hands to clap.}

But, difficult as it may sound, it was India which took an aggressive stand and turned down the Chinese proposal to resume talks on Panchsheel, claims a book.

{Has the author and the writer considered why Nehru turned down the propossal? It involved India giving up her land and the claims while PRC continues in Tibet! IOW it was a one sided proposal.
Panchsheel was for cooperation not for surrender.}


The book, to be released here to on Wednesday, to coincide with the 50 years of the 1962 war - 'Dividing Lines', published by Platinum Press - exposes these and many other 'facts' which may run contrary to the popular perception in India that the 1962war was an act of treachery by China on a peace-loving and gullible India.

An equally interesting dimension is that the book, replete with similar views that contradict many official positions, has been authored by a senior serving government official K N Raghavan.

Raghavan, a post-graduate in physical medicine and rehabilitation, had joined the Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Central Excise) in 1989 and is presently the Commissioner of Customs in Kochi, his hometown.

"The Sino-Indian boundary was never delineated, and India erred in unilaterally fixing her borders in 1954. But the dispute was not over just boundaries, as most Indians believe," says Raghavan. The book details the failure of Indian diplomacy, and the actions of the army and paramilitary forces, which the Chinese interpreted as unfriendly.

"It was the failure of Indian diplomacy that had led to the war. Talks would have acted as a venting valve for many of the distrusts that had developed between these two countries which had never fought each other till the fateful autumn of 1962," Raghavan says.

India had published a map in 1954 showing Aksai Chin - an alternative route from China to Tibet - as its part. This, along with India's decision to give asylum to the Dalai Lama, is some of the factors that made China suspicious of India, says Raghavan.

{We really don't know what and who was feeding the PRC delusions. So the jury is still not out. Less than ten years after the 1962 the US and PRC became best friends. Maybe Mao had to see that India was down before he would rapproach with US.}

On what prompted him to write a book on the Indo-China conflict, he says: "Foreign policy was a strong point of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was my childhood hero. I was keen to find out where Nehru would have erred in going to war with China. This was probably the only blot in his career.''

"I could get some time to read on the conflict during my posting in Singapore from 2007 to 2011. I had jotted down the points then and those notes took the shape of the book," he clarifies.

On former defence minister late V K Krishna Menon's role in the war, Raghavan says, "Krishna Menon would have definitely known that it was one war which India could never have won considering the huge and alert war machine that China had then possessed. He did commit some diplomatic errors, like forming a core group in the Indian Army and asking them to take position in the frontline in 10 days. However, Krishna Menon had received enough brickbats for the setback in the war and he paid for it with his position."

Raghavan, who is passionate about cricket, is an accredited umpire. He has umpired one-day international matches, and authored World Cup Chronicle.

Dr K N Raghavan's 'Dividing Lines' run contrary to the popular perception in India that the war in 1962 was an act of treachery by China on a peace-loving and gullible India

The 50th anniversary of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war should be an occasion to look to the future rather than commiserate about the past. It seems odd that the 50th anniversary appears to be generating more commentary and reminiscences than the earlier decadal anniversaries, despite the longer passage in time. Since time is said to be a great healer, why do the wounds of the past continue to fester?

The wounds fester because we don't know the root causes. They are covered up to protect fragile reputations. Its the uncertainity that festers the wound}

All history is viewed through the prism of our present. The 1962 war is no different. It has acquired a contemporary salience precisely because rising China looms larger on our radar screen than ever before. As the respective economic and military capabilities of India and China continue to expand outwards, beyond their frontiers, it is inevitable that they will bump against each other, particularly in Asia. This may sharpen the sense of rivalry between them. The 1962 border war becomes a metaphor for this competition and possible conflict.

While this may be understandable, it is necessary to break out of this tendency to look at India-China relations narrowly through the military prism. This reduces the competitive dynamics to a numbers game, counting military capabilities and limits the possibilities for significant and substantive opportunities for collaboration, both in bilateral as well as multi-lateral context.

A lesson of the 1962 war is that India must never let down its guard. It must deploy sufficient military and logistics capabilities to deter any 1962-style surprise attack. We are better prepared than ever before, but this is not a static. We need to have the ability to respond effectively as China upgrades its own capabilities and logistics in Tibet. We need to maintain our current edge in the maritime domain. Our recent Agni-V test and the development of submarine-based nuclear forces have imparted greater symmetry between Indian and Chinese nuclear deterrence capabilities. But it is important to locate these efforts in a broader strategy for managing India-China relations in all its dimensions.

{Surprise is a magnifier of consequences. The essential issue is there is competetion between PRC and India. This was ignored while taking measures that China resented. India has to take this into account and not be a Polyanna as the left-liberal elite want it to be. It is this attitude of benign neglect of PRC's intents and capabilities that caused the surprise and made the 1962 border war so visceral.}

What are the elements of such a strategy? We must acknowledge that adversarial elements currently dominate in India-China relations. China will continue to constrain India through proxy powers such as Pakistan and through exploiting apprehensions our immediate neighbours have of Indian dominance. Our counter to this must be a better management of our own periphery, extending assurance where possible, giving our neighbours a stake in our own prosperity and leveraging the considerable cultural affinity we share with them. It is pointless bemoaning Chinese inroads in our neighbourhood, if we leave wide open spaces for them. After all, do we not try and leverage similar opportunities in China's neighbourhood — as we must?

Beyond this, we should seek to expand possible convergences with China so that adversarial instincts on either side are contained and, in time, diminished in their intensity. Bilateral trade between the two sides has been growing rapidly, soon to cross the $75-billion mark. True, the trade balance remains heavily in China's favour, but that would matter less in a broader economic relationship that encouraged trade in services, in which India has strengths, and investment, where India could prove an attractive destination for Chinese capital. Over the past couple of decades, China's frenetic investment in infrastructure has left it, today, with a huge excess capacity in this sector. This coincides with our own requirements for infrastructure investment of a trillion US dollars over the next decade or so. Is a long-term strategic partnership with China in India's infrastructure development possible? There will be security concerns, particularly in certain strategic sectors such as high-end telecommunications or port development close to our naval bases. However, if India were to clearly define such sensitive areas, where foreign investment would be restricted, without being China-specific, there could be a vast area where Chinese capital and affordable equipment and technology could help realize India's own dream for building world-class infrastructure.

{Above formulation is nice but so long as the mercantile dilli-billis dominate the elite it wont happen. They will keep the decisons pending in order to make the situation so worse that their sellout is termed in national interests}

On the political side, both India and China are emerging powers, with convergent interest in the reform of global governance and international institutions, so that their growing footprint and influence are acknowledged and they can participate more fully in decision-making in those institutions. The two countries have a long-standing record of working together effectively in WTO and climate change negotiations. In the G-20, there is now regular consultation and coordinated diplomacy in evidence on issues such as financial and banking reform and a restructuring of the Bretton Woods institutions. BRICS has emerged as another emerging countries' platform, where India and China can work together in pursuing collaborative projects such as the proposed BRICS Development Bank. These actions have remained ad hoc, without an overall framework of strategic cooperation. Fashioning such a framework together would strengthen each others' hand in shaking loose the entrenched practices of the Western-dominated economic order. It would also help in shaping the architecture of a new order that is more responsive to our interests.

{Role of US in prying PRC from the Communist alliance and the major support it gave them is not being noted. The US-PRC is a duopoly. PRC by itself is a non-entity which will collapse on its own contradictions. After Cold War Us shifted the mdfg base to PRC and in turn PRC invested in US T-bills,. WTO etc were all subverted to bring in the pRc without reforms to suit US interests.}

Any credible prospect for India-China relations to transcend their current adversarial character demands the mutually satisfactory resolution of the boundary issue between the two nations. The events of 1962 do hold lessons for India. An important factor which triggered the open hostilities was the revolt in Tibet in 1959, the escape of the Dalai Lama to India and the heightened Chinese concern over its threatened control over the newly-occupied territory. A border dispute which had hitherto spawned only small scale skirmishes became part of a larger threat to China's newly-defined territorial integrity. India failed to take measure of this change in Chinese threat perceptions. By the same token, it is likely that any prospect for a border settlement may well be linked to what happens in Tibet, which remains a region of ethnic tensions and potential large-scale violence. An Indian strategy for seeking an early resolution of the border may need to include some understanding with China over managing the issue of Tibet. There are signs that China is beginning to acknowledge that its twin policy of material inducement and political repression have failed to diminish Tibet's cultural and ethnic identity. There is growing restiveness among Tibetan youth both on the Chinese and the Indian side. India could play a role in encouraging a more accommodating Chinese polity towards Tibet and conveying what is obvious to any objective observer that His Holiness the Dalai Lama may offer the best and perhaps the only prospect for reconciliation of Chinese sovereignty with the Tibetan people's deep rooted attachment to their unique culture and religious values. This was tried before in the early 1980s, inspired by a more far-sighted Chinese leader, Hu Yaobang. It achieved positive results, including the commencement of a dialogue between HHDL's personal representatives and the Chinese government. The senior most Chinese leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping, reportedly expressed his willingness to consider all issues other than Tibetan independence in these talks. This phase was short-lived and after Hu Yaobang's departure, the old repressive polices came back with renewed rigour. With a major leadership transition underway in China, it may be worthwhile for India to explore whether the time is ripe to engage in a discreet dialogue over Tibet and thereby set the stage for a border settlement. The psychic charge that the 1962 war continues to generate to this day in India may then finally begin to lose its intensity in our collective consciousness.


{The Indian threat to PRC control over newly occupied Tibet was the fear of India being a Western foil via the Tibetian refugees, some of whom were being armed by the US. Its time to call a spade, a spade and not a digging tool. What 1962 did was to show that Nehru's India was not anybody's foil (nobody came to the rescue) and was incapable of fomenting a Tibetian snatch and grab (retreat of the forces and bigger collapse of political will in Delhi). This led to Chinese self-confidence to get out of the Communist net and join the US in its Cold War with FSU. Once Cold War ended, they proliferated missiles to TSP to enhance the nuke warheads they gave during Cold War. This was to box India into a regional power situation.

The new Chinese leadership has to settle down and may move to support Tibet will be seen as an affirmation of the hostile image of India.}

(Shyam Saran is a former Foreign Secretary. He is currently Chairman, RIS and Senior Fellow, CPR.)

ramana wrote:India also needs to think critically in its interests. Others interests are not her interests. And the best way forward is to be clear about what are her interests?

ShyamSaran writes:

The 50th anniversary of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war should be an occasion to look to the future rather than commiserate about the past. It seems odd that the 50th anniversary appears to be generating more commentary and reminiscences than the earlier decadal anniversaries, despite the longer passage in time. Since time is said to be a great healer, why do the wounds of the past continue to fester?

[it]The wounds fester because we dont know the root causes. They are covered up to protect fragile reputations. Its the uncertainity that festers the wound}[/i]

Pratyush wrote:Lesson from 1962: India must never lower its guard

Shyam Saran

I fully agree with Shri Saran Ji.

ramana wrote:Rohit, Its an example of "Stockholm Syndrome' where the victims blame themsleves for the attack and justify the attacker.
In India such victims and their followers are in powerful places and can contiune coverup like the H-B report was for the last 50 years. And utter platitudes to fool the trusting public.
How many of that generation invovled in the disater padi a price?

Krishna Menon got fired and sent to the doldrums among the politicians. That satisfied the fools who were angry with him for other reasons.
Kaul got disgraced.
Thapar resigned.
What about the civil services?
Looks like IB went from strength to strength until split by Mrs Gandhi.

ramana wrote:<SNIP>It struck me that what happened in 1962 in Indian mind was a rerun of the Great Game but played in the Himalayas. The Indian side thought it was a just spies and police actions. Only the Chinese side was playing with real armies to back their covert road building over the years.

ramana wrote:I was watching a rerun of the 1954 hollywood movies Kim and saw the antics of Russian and British spies in the Great Game.

It struck me that what happened in 1962 in Indian mind was a rerun of the Great Game but played in the Himalayas. The Indian side thought it was a just spies and police actions. Only the Chinese side was playing with real armies to back their covert road building over the years.

abhishek_sharma wrote:Poor military leadership, not equipment, led to 1962 debacle: Report under wraps

"There is no reason why the Indian Army cannot rise again and give a much better account of itself. I hope when the day comes, it happens under my escutcheon."

This was what Gen J N Chaudhuri wrote in a 40-page covering note while forwarding the Henderson Brooks-PS Bhagat report on the 1962 military debacle to the Defence Ministry.

Fifty years after the Sino-Indian war, the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report remains under wraps but The Sunday Express has learnt that around four pages of this covering note focus on wartime Defence Minister V K Krishna Menon’s interference in military matters, particularly on the shuffling of senior generals in the run-up to the month-long war.

The covering note, according to sources aware of the contents of the report, is the only place where there is a comment on the political leadership of the Defence Ministry. There is no direct comment on then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru anywhere in the letter or in the report, which confines itself to the conduct of military operations.

The important revelatory aspect of the Brooks-Bhagat report is its conclusion that shortages in ammunition and equipment were not among the primary reasons for the defeat.

{If it had concluded so, it would ahve been released for that was a simple cause. The cause is much more deep and hence the reluctance to release it.}

In fact, the report, sources said, makes it clear that much has been stated about the “poor quality” of equipment and weapons making the Army unfit for battle. The authors have put on record that in their considered view “the levels of stores and equipment didn’t constitute a significant handicap”. Instead, they have identified poor military leadership as the main reason for the Army not having fought better than it did.

{This cause of poor leadership can directly be traced to the Nehru-Menon duo, policy of remaking the Indian Army officer cadre by selecting yes men to the top due to their fear of coups. In essence they did what Stalin did before the Nazi invasion of FSU by removing able generals from command. This in my mind is one root cause that is being hidden.}

The report is in four volumes, but its main operative content is less than 150 pages, typed single space in foolscap paper with corrections made by hand in ink. The rest of the report comprises essentially annexures, minutes of meetings, operational maps and key pieces of communication.

The report was commissioned by Gen Chaudhuri, who took over as Army Chief after the war, as an internal Army report to look into just the conduct of military operations since hostilities began in early October 1962 till November 20 when China announced a unilateral ceasefire.

For the job, he picked Lt Gen Henderson Brooks who was GOC 11 Corps in Jalandhar and had not participated in the operations. The report was submitted in April 1963 and sent to the Defence Ministry with Chaudhuri’s detailed covering note.

The language of the report reflects the strong emotional fervour of the moment, especially the anger and frustration. Coming down heavily on the military leadership, the report is particularly critical of the then Chief of General Staff Lt Gen B M Kaul, who was made GOC of the newly created 4 Corps just before the war. He was based out of Tezpur, but was evacuated to Delhi on account of illness just as hostilities broke out in what was then called NEFA.

The report records him “dashing in and out” of his York Road (now Motilal Nehru Marg ) residence, issuing orders from his bed, and the top brass letting him do so instead of finding a successor. These have all been cited as examples of poor generalship.

Similarly, a copy Kaul’s letter to Nehru at the height of the conflict, urging him to approach the Americans for assistance, has been mentioned and included in the annexures to underscore the loss of nerves among senior officers.


Significant space, sources said, has been given to the retreat of 4 Infantry Division which had been quickly reconstructed after the Namka Chu defeat and posted to defend the fallback line along the Se La-Senge-Dhirang axis in Arunachal Pradesh. This was after Tawang had been overrun by advancing Chinese forces. It was decided that this axis is where the Army would fight a dogged and prolonged defensive battle for which resources and logistics had been built up. The idea was that longer the campaign stretched, the more difficult it would get for the Chinese to sustain operations.’

But 4 Div withdrew without fighting, a fact that is officially confirmed and documented in the report. This entire episode of the “collapse and rout of the 4 Infantry Division” has been described in the report as “a shameful incident” of a “renowned division collapsing and retreating without putting up a fight”.

The GOC of the Division, Maj Gen Anant Singh Pathania, has been severely criticised and shown up as another example of poor generalship. The loss of nerves among key military commanders is again emphasised by citing an inland letter that Pathania wrote to Harish Sarin, Joint Secretary in Defence Ministry. He asked Sarin to give him another chance, volunteering to be even deployed as a “sepoy” at the front.

Pathania’s appointment itself has been commented upon as an example of poor decision-making by the military hierarchy. He was pulled out as Director General, National Cadet Corps and foisted on the 4 Infantry Division as the GOC, which the Brooks-Bhagat report criticised given that he had not been involved with combat troops for a considerable length of time. The report, sources said, is also critical of his predecessor Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad under whom the Division lost at Namka Chu.


{A note on 4th Indian Division. This is the famous Red Eagle Division that fought against Rommel in Africa and got a lot of praise even from Rommel. Its rout is sad. However from above description the 4th Division was not the fighting fit division that was known earlier. It already lost at Namka Chu under Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad (who let his jeep with personal papers be captured in 1965 at Lahore) and then was reconstituted under Maj Gen Pathania who was director of NCC. So its not fair to throw into combat such a formation and expect it to perform. I am sorry for Maj Gen Pathania who was thrown into the fray without preparation and a unit that had just faced severe reverses. I didn't know this. It looks like the 4th Div was scapegoated.}

The report highlights indecision at Army Headquarters and how field formations would faced problems getting clear orders or clarifications from the top brass in Delhi. In this context, Western Army Commander Lt Gen Daulet Singh, who was responsible for the campaign in Ladakh, has come in for praise. In fact, the report firmly concludes that the campaign in the western sector of the boundary was conducted far better than the eastern theatre.

The specific instance about Lt Gen Singh relates to his decision to move two battalions deployed on the Indo-Pak western front to the site of battle in the north. The report, sources said, recounts how Singh kept writing to Army Headquarters to seek approval to move troops from the Pakistan border but received no response.

Finally, he took the initiative and moved the battalions on his own to Chushul. This has been highlighted by Brooks-Bhagat as a rare example of better military leadership.


{I know of a retired medical officer who fought at the battle of Chusul.}

BRM article on Chusul by LNS

To an extent, the report also clarifies the famously known orders from the government asking the Army to “throw out the Chinese” by also putting on record the second line “at a time and place of Army’s choosing” . The report, however, does not get into the events of previous months leading up to the conflict, especially aspects like the much criticised ‘forward policy’ that led to creation of several frontline posts without the logistics to sustain them — an act deemed provocative by the Chinese.

Besides these details, the report reflects the pain over the loss of thousands of soldiers; and ends on a very sombre note, quoting a few lines from a poem by First World War soldier-poet Wilfred Owen — lines which no one is able to recall.

{Was it "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ?"
It means 'it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country"}


‘Ops in North were better than East’

The operative portion of the report is less than 150 pages. It concludes with lines from World War I English soldier-poet Wilfred Owen.

The report says levels of stores and equipment did not constitute a significant handicap. Poor military leadership was the main cause for the debacle.

The campaign in the north under Western Command was better conducted than operations in the east.

4 Infantry Division retreated “without putting up a fight”. Maj Gen A S Pathania wanted a second chance to fight as a sepoy after withdrawing his division in panic.

4 Corps Commander Lt Gen B M Kaul criticised for his poor command.

Western Army Commander Lt Gen Daulet Singh praised for showing better initiative.

We need to put the ghost of 1962 to rest and celebrate the spirit, fortitude and valour of our soldiers. The last of ther 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. In 1962, 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.