50
Years After 1962
A Personal Memoir -B.G. Verghese
(Then Assistant Editor and War Correspondent, The
Times of India)
The 1962
Sino-Indian conflict is half a century old, but to understand what happened one
needs to go further back to Indian independence and the PRC's establishment and
absorption of Tibet. Perhaps one should go back even earlier to the tripartite
Simla Convention of 1914 at which the Government of India, Tibet and China were
party and drew the McMahon Line. The Chinese representative initialled the
Agreement but did not sign it on account of differences over the definitions of
Inner and Outer Tibet.
In 1951 China
moved into Tibet. A 17-Point Agreement granted it autonomy under Chinese
sovereignty. This converted what until then was a quiet Indo-Tibet boundary
into a problematic Sino-Indian frontier, with Chia adopting all prior Tibetan
claims.
Even prior to
that Sardar Patel had expressed himself on new security concerns in the
Northeast. In a letter to Nehru he warned that the Himalaya could no longer be
regarded as an impenetrable barrier and that the Tibeto-Mongoloid character of
the population on "our northern and northeastern approaches… and the penetration
of communist ideologies into some of these areas, posed a new threat". He
accordingly urged a review of border policy and security , including internal
security, improvement of rail, road, air and wireless communications, policing
and intelligence on the frontier, and territorial claims on India (Durga Das,
1973). The Sardar passed away soon thereafter. Nothing changed. The historic
Sino-Indian Treaty on Relations between India and the Tibet Region of China was
signed in 1954. India gave up its rights in Tibet without seeking a quid pro
quo. The Panch Shila was enunciated, which Nehru presumed presupposed inviolate
boundaries in an era of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai.
The young Dalai
Lama came to India in 1956 to participate in the 2500th anniversary celebrations
commemorating the Enlightenment of the Buddha but was reluctant to return home
as he felt China had reneged from its promise of Tibetan autonomy. Chou En-lai
visited India later that year and sought Nehru's good offices to persuade the
Dalai Lama to return to Lhasa on the assurance of implementation of the 17
Point Agreement by China in good faith.
Visiting China
in 1954, Nehru drew Chou En-lai's attention to the new political map of India
which defined the McMahon Line and the J&K Johnson Line as firm borders
(and not in dotted lines or vague colour wash as previously depicted) and
expressed concern over corresponding Chinese maps that he found erroneous. Chou
En-lai replied that the Chinese had not yet found time to correct its old maps
but that this would be done "when the time is ripe". Nehru assumed
this implied tacit Chinese acceptance of India's map alignments but referred to
the same matter once again during Chou's 1956 visit to India. .
The matter was,
however, not pressed. Nehru had in a statement about that time referred to the
words of a wise Swedish diplomat to the effect that though a revolutionary
power, China would take 20-30 years to fight poverty and acquire the muscle to
assert its hegemony. Therefore it should meanwhile be cultivated and not be
isolated and made to feel under siege as the Bolsheviks were in 1917. This
postulate was, however, reversed in 1960-62 when Nehru interpreted the same
wise Swedish diplomat to mean it was the first 20-30 years after its revolution
that were China's dangerous decades; thereafter the PRC would mature and
mellow. This suggests a somewhat fickle understanding of China on Nehru's part.
The Aksaichin
road had been constructed by China by 1956-57 but only came to notice in 1958
when somebody saw it depicted on a small map in a Chinese magazine. India
protested. The very first note in the Sino-Indian White Papers, published
later, declared Aksaichin to be "indisputably" Indian territory
" and, thereafter, incredibly lamented the fact that Chinese personnel had
wilfully trespassed into that area "without proper visas". The best
construction that can put on this language is that Nehru was even at that time
prepared to be flexible and negotiate a peaceful settlement or an appropriate
adjustment. Parliament and the public were, however, kept in the dark.
Though
outwardly nothing had changed, Nehru had begun to reassess his position.
According to his son Ashok Parthasarathi, his father, the late G. Parthasarathi
met Nehru on the evening of March 18, 1958, after all concerned had briefed him
prior to his departure for Peking as the new Indian Ambassador to China. GP
recorded what Nehru said in these terms:
"So G.P.
what has the Foreign Office told you? Hindi-Chini bhai bhai? Don't you believe
it! I don't trust the Chinese one bit. They are a deceitful opinionated,
arrogant and hegemonistic lot. Eternal vigilance should be your watch word. You
shd send all your Telegrams only to me - not to the Foreign Office. Also, do
not mention a word of this instruction of mine to Krishna. He, you and I all
share a common world view and ideological approach. However, Krishna believes -
erroneously - that no Communist country can have bad relations with any
Non-Aligned country like ours".
This is an
extraordinary account and is difficult to interpret other than, once again, as
symbolising Nehru's fickle views on China which GP had no reason to misquote.
Chinese
incursions and incidents at Longju and Khizemane in Arunachal and the Kongka
Pass, Galwan and Chip Chap Valleys in Ladakh followed through 1959. The Times
of India broke many of these early stories. There was a national uproar. It was
while on a conducted tour of border road construction in Ladakh in 1958 with
the Army PRO, Ram Mohan Rao that I first heard vague whispers of "some
trouble" further east. We however went to Chushul, where the air strip was
still open, and beyond to the Pangong Lake unimpeded.
The Khampa
rebellion in Tibet had erupted and the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 via
Tawang where he received an emotional welcome. The Government of India granted
him asylum along with his entourage and over100,000 refugees that followed and
he took up residence with his government-in-exile in Dharamsala. These events
greatly disturbed the Chinese and marked a turning point in Sino-Indian
relations. Their suspicions about India's intentions were not improved by
Delhi's connivance in facilitating American-trained Tibetan refugee guerrillas
to operate in Tibet and further permitting an American listening facility to be
planted on the heights of Nanda Devi to monitor Chinese signals in Tibet.
China had by
now commenced its westward cartographic-cum-military creep in Ladakh and
southward creep in Arunachal.
The highly
regarded Chief of Army Staff, Gen.K.S. Thimayya began to envisage a new defence
posture vis-à-vis China in terms of plans, training, logistics and equipment.
However, Krishna Menon, aided by B.N. Mullick, the IB Chief and intelligence
czar, who also was close to Nehru, disagreed with this threat perception and
insisted that attention should remain focussed on Pakistan and the
"anti-Imperialist forces". Growing interference by Krishna Menon, now
Defence Minister, in Army postings and promotions and strategic perspectives so
frustrated Thimayya that he tendered his resignation to Nehru in 1959. Fearing
a major crisis, the PM persuaded Thimayya to withdraw his resignation, which he
unfortunately did at the cost of his authority. Nothing changed. Mullick and
Menon sowed in Nehru's mind the notion that a powerful Chief might stage a coup
(as Ayub had done). This myth was for long a factor in Government's aversion to
the idea of appointing a Chief of Defence Staff.
President Ayub
of Pakistan had on a brief stopover meeting with Nehru in Delhi en route to
Dhaka in 1959 had proposed "joint defence". Joint defence against
whom, was Nehru's scornful and unthinking retort? Yet Nehru was not unconscious
of a potential threat from the north as he had from the early 1950s repeatedly
told Parliament that the Himalayan rampart was India's defence and defence
line. He had somewhat grandiloquently and tactlessly proclaimed that though
Nepal was indeed a sovereign nation, when it came to India's security, India's
defence lay along the Kingdom's northern border, Nepal's independence
notwithstanding! Yet he had been remarkably lax in preparing to defend that
not-quite-so- impenetrable a rampart (as I had argued in an article in the
Times of India in 1950) or even countenance his own military from doing so.
However, almost
a decade later, Himalayan border road construction commenced under the Border
Roads Organisation and forward positions were established. This Forward Policy,
though opposed by Lt Gen. Daulat Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command, was pushed by
Krishna Menon, de facto Foreign Minister, and equally by B.N Mullick, who
played a determining role in these events, being present in all inner councils.
Many of the 43 new posts established in Ladakh were penny packets with little
capability and support or military significance. The objective appeared more
political, in fulfilment of an utterly fatuous slogan Nehru kept uttering in
Parliament and elsewhere, that "not an inch of territory" would be
left undefended though he had earlier played down the Aksaichin incursion as
located in a cold, unpopulated, elevated desert "where not a blade of
grass grows". In August Nehru announced that Indian forces had regained
2500 square miles of the 12,000 square miles occupied by the Chinese in Ladakh.
A series of
Sino-Indian White Papers continued to roll out. The Times of India commented on
August 15, 1962: Anyone reading the latest White Paper on Sino-Indian relations
together with some of the speeches by the Prime Minister and Defence Minister
on the subject may be forgiven for feeling that the Government's China policy,
like chopsuey, contains a bit of everything – firmness and conciliation,
bravado and caution, sweet reasonableness and defiance…We have been variously
informed …that the situation on the border is both serious and not so serious;
that we have got the better of the Chinese and they have got the better of us;
that the Chinese are retreating and that they are advancing…".
Backseat
driving of defence policy continued to the end of Thimayya's tenure when
General P.N.Thapar was appointed COAS in preference to Thimayya's choice of Lt.
Gen S.P.P Thorat, Eastern Army Commander. Thorat had produced a paper in the
prevailing circumstances advocating that while the Himalayan heights might be
prepared as a trip-wire defence, NEFA should essentially be defended lower down
at its waist which, among other things, would ease the Indian Army's logistical
and acclimatisation problems and correspondingly aggravate those of the
Chinese. The Thorat plan, "The China Threat and How to Meet It", got
short shrift.
The Goa
operation at the end of 1960 witnessed two strange events. The new Chief of
General Staff (CGS), Lt. Gen. B.M Kaul marched alongside one of the columns of
the 17th Division under Gen Candeth that was tasked to enter Goa. Thereafter he
and, separately, the Defence Minister, Krishna Menon, declared "war"
or the commencement of operations at two different times: one at midnight and
the other at first light the next morning. In any other situation such
flamboyant showmanship could have been disastrous. However, Goa was a cake walk
and evoked the mistaken impression among gifted amateurs in high places that an
unprepared Indian Army could take on China.
Kaul's
promotion to the rank of Lt. Gen and then to key post of CGS had stirred controversy.
He was politically well connected and had held staff and PR appointments but
was without command experience. The top brass was divided and the air thick
with intrigue and suspicion. Kaul had inquiries made into the conduct of senior
colleagues like Thorat, S.D Verma and then Maj.Gen. Sam Manekshaw, Commandant
of the Staff College in Wellington !
Even as the
exchange of Sino-Indian notes continued, Nehru on Oct 12, 1962 said he had
ordered the Indian Army "to throw the Chinese out", something casually
revealed to the media at Palam airport before departing on a visit to
Colombo! A new 4 Corps was created on
October 8, 1962 with headquarters at Tezpur to reinforce the defence of the
Northeast. Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh was named GOC but was soon moved to take over
33 Corps at Siliguri and then moved again to the Western Command. Kaul took
charge of 4 Corps but appeared to have assumed a superior jurisdiction because
of his direct political line to Delhi. Command controversies were further
compounded as at times it seemed that both everybody and nobody was in charge.
Thapar himself and Gen L.P. Sen, now at Eastern Command, also went to recce and
reorder defence plans along the Bomdila-Se La sector. At the political level
and at the External Affairs Ministry the adage was "Panditji knows
best".
Kaul was here,
there and everywhere, exposing himself in high altitudes without
acclimatisation. No surprise that he fell ill and was evacuated to Delhi on
October 18 only to return five days later.
Following Nehru's
"throw them out" order, and against saner military advice and an
assessment of ground realities, a Brigade under John Dalvi was positioned on
the Namka Chu River below the Thagla Ridge that the Chinese claimed lay even
beyond the McMohan Line. It was a self -made trap. It was but to do or die. The
Brigade retreated in disorder after a gallant action, while the Chinese rolled
down to Tawang which they reached on October 25.
The London
Economist parodied Kipling. A text of a pithy editorial titled "Plain
Tales from the Hills" read, "When the fog cleared, The Chinese were
there"! That said it all.
A new defence
line was hurriedly established at Se La. I was not in the country during the
Namka Chu battle but returned soon thereafter and was asked to go to Tezpur
from Bombay to cover the war. Nehru was by now convinced that the Chinese were
determined to sweep down to the plains. The national mood was one despondency,
anger, foreboding. Only one commentator, the Times of India editor,
N.J.Nanporia, who sadly just passed away a few weeks ago, got it right. In a
closely reasoned edit page article he argued that the Chinese favoured
negotiation and a peaceful settlement, not invasion, and India must talk. At
worst the Chinese would teach India a lesson and go back. Critics scoffed at
Nanporia. I too thought he was being simplistic.
A week or 10
days later, in response to his critics, he reprinted the very same article down
to the last comma and full-stop. Events proved him absolutely right.
On October 24,
Chou En-lai proposed a 20 kilometre withdrawal by either side. Three days later
Nehru sought the enlargement of this buffer to 40-60 km. On November 4, Chou
offered to accept the McMahon Line provided India accepted the Macdonald Line
in Ladakh approximating the Chinese claim line (giving up the more northerly
Johnson Line favoured by Delhi.
I was by now in
Tezpur, lodged in the very pleasant Planter's Club which had become a media
dormitory. The Army arranged for the press to visit the NEFA front. Scores of
Indian and foreign correspondents and cameramen volunteered. Col Pyara Lal, the
chief Army PRO, took charge. On November 15-17 we drove up to Se La (15,000
feet) and down to Dirang Dzong in the valley beyond before the climb to
Bomdila. Jawans in cottons and perhaps a light sweater and canvas shoes were
manhandling ancient 25-pounders into position at various vantage points. We had
seen and heard Bijji Kaul's theatrics and bravado at 4 Corps Headquarters a day
earlier and were shocked to see the reality: ill-equipped, unprepared but
cheerful officers and men digging in to hold back the enemy under the command
of a very gallant officer, Brig Hoshiar Singh.
We had barely
returned to Tezpur on Nov 17 when we learnt that the Chinese had mounted an
attack on Se La and outflanked it as well. Many correspondents rushed back to
Delhi and Calcutta more easily to file their copy and despatch their pictures
and footage. Military censorship delayed transmission. I discovered later that
between the Tezpur PO's inability to handle much copy and censorship, few if
any of my despatches reached the Times of India and those that did had been
severely truncated.
Even as battle
was joined, Kaul, disappeared from Tezpur to be with his men, throwing the
chain of command into disarray. The saving grace was the valiant action fought
by Brigadier Navin Rawley at Walong in the Luhit Valley before making an
orderly retreat, holding back the enemy wherever possible. Much gallantry was
also displayed in Ladakh against heavy odds.
The use of the
air force had been considered. Some thought that the IAF had the edge as its
aircraft would be operating with full loads from low altitude air strips in
Assam unlike the Chinese operating from the Tibetan plateau at base altitudes
of 11,000-12,000 feet. However, the decision was avoid use of offensive air
power to prevent escalation (which Marshal of the Air Force, Arjan Singh, and
the current Air Chief, Air Marshal NAK Browne, have recently criticised).
On November 18,
word came that the Chinese had enveloped Se La, which finally fell without much
of a fight in view of conflicting orders. A day later the enemy had broken
through to Foothills (both a place name and a description) along the Kameng
axis. Confusion reigned supreme.
Kaul or somebody
ordered the 4th Corps to pull back to Gauhati on Nov 19 and, as military
convoys streamed west, somebody else ordered that Tezpur and the North Bank be
evacuated. A "scorched earth" policy was ordered by somebody else
again and the Nunmati refinery was all but blown up. The DM deserted his post.
A former school and college mate of mine, Rana KDN Singh, was directed to take
charge of a tottering administration. He supervised the Joint Steamer
Companies, mostly manned by East Pakistan lascars, as they ferried a frightened
and abandoned civil population to the South Bank. The other modes of exodus
were by bus and truck, car, cart, cycle and on foot. The last ferry crossing
was made at 6 p.m. Those who remained or reached the jetty late, melted into
the tea gardens and forest.
The Indian
Press had ingloriously departed the previous day, preferring safety to real
news coverage, - as happened again in Kashmir in 1990, when at least women
journalists subsequently redeemed the profession. Only two Indians remained in
Tezpur, Prem Prakash of Visnews and Reuters, and I, together with nine American
and British correspondents. Along with us, wandering around like lost souls,
were some 10-15 patients who had been released from the local mental hospital.
That was the most
eerie night I have every spent. Tezpur was a ghost town. We patrolled it by
pale moonlight on the alert for any tell-tale signs or sounds. The State Bank
had burned its currency chest and a few charred notes kept blowing in the wind
as curious mental patients kept prodding the dying embers. Some stray dogs and
alley cats were our only other companions.
Around
midnight, a transistor with one of our colleagues crackled to life as Peking
Radio announced a unilateral ceasefire and pull back to the pre-October
"line of actual control", provided the Indian Army did not move
forward. Relieved and weary we repaired to our billet at the abandoned
Planter's Club whose canned provisions of baked beans, tuna fish and beer ( all
on the house) had sustained us.
Next morning,
all the world carried the news, but AIR still had brave jawans gamely fighting
the enemy as none had had the gumption to awaken Nehru and take his orders as
the news was too big to handle otherwise! Indeed, during the preceding days,
everyone from general to jawan to officials and the media, but everyone, was
tuned into Radio Peking to find out what was going on in our own country.
Satyameve Jyate! But even today we still lack a coherent communications policy.
1962 was a
politically-determined military disaster. President Radhakrishnan said it all
when he indicted the Government for its "credulity and negligence".
Nehru himself confessed, artfully using the plural, "We were getting out
of touch with reality … and living in an artificial world of our own
creation". Yet he was reluctant to get rid of Krishna Menon, (making him,
first, Minister for Defence Production and then Minister without Portfolio, in
which capacity he brazenly carried on much as before). Public anger finally
compelled the PM to drop him altogether or risk losing his own job.
Nehru was
broken and bewildered. His letter to John F Kennedy seeking US military
assistance after the fall of Bomdila was abject and pathetic. He feared that
unless the tide was stemmed the Chinese would overrun the entire Northeast. He
said they were massing troops in the Chumbi Valley and he apprehended another
"invasion" from there. If Chushul was overrun, there was nothing to
stop the Chinese before Leh. The IAF had not been used as India lacked air defence
for its population centres. He therefore requested immediate air support by
twelve squadrons of all-weather supersonic fighters with radar cover, all
operated by US personnel. But US aircraft were not to intrude into Chinese air
space. One does not know what and whose
inputs went into drafting Nehru's letter to Kennedy. Non-alignment was
certainly in tatters.
Tezpur limped
back to life. On November 21, Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Home Minister, paid a
flying visit on a mission of inquiry and reassurance. He was followed the next
day by Indira Gandhi. Nehru had meanwhile broadcast to the nation, and more
particularly to "the people of Assam "to whom his "heart went
out" at this terrible hour of trial. He promised the struggle would continue
and none should doubt its outcome. Hearing the broadcast in Tezpur, however, it
did not sound like a Churchillian trumpet of defiance. Rather, it provided cold
comfort to the Assamese many of whom hold it against the Indian state to this
day that Nehru had bidden them "farewell".
I remained in
Tezpur day after day for a month waiting day after day for the administration
to return to Bomdila. This it did under the Political Officer (DM), Major K.C.
Johorey just before Christmas. I accompanied him. The people of NEFA had stood
solidly with India and Johorey received a warm welcome.
Thapar had been
removed and Gen J.N Chaudhuri appointed COAS. Kaul went into limbo. The Naga
underground took no advantage of India's plight. Pakistan had been urged by
Iran and the US not to use India's predicament to further its own cause and
kept its word. But it developed a new relationship with China thereafter.
The US and the
West had been sympathetic to India and its Ambassador, Galbraith, had a direct
line to Kennedy. However, the US was also preoccupied with growing Sino-Soviet
divide and the major Cuban missile crisis that boiled over in October 1962.
The COAS, Gen
Choudhury ordered an internal inquiry into the debacle by Maj. Gen Henderson
Brooks and Brigadier P.S Bhagat. The Henderson Brooks Report remains a
top-secret classified document though its substance was leaked and published by
Neville Maxwell who served as the London Times correspondent in India in the
1960s, became a Sinophile and wrote a critical book titled "India's China
War". The Report brings out the political and military naiveté, muddle,
contradictions and in-fighting that prevailed and failures of planning and
command. There is no military secret to protect in the Henderson Brooks Report;
only political and military ego and folly to hide. But unless the country
knows, the appropriate lessons will not be learnt.
India did not
learn the lesson that borders are more important than boundaries and continued
to neglect the development of Arunachal and North Assam lest China roll down
the hill again. However, given the prevailing global and regional strategic
environment and India's current military preparedness, the debacle of 1962 will
not be repeated.
Many have since
recorded their versions of what happened in 1962 : Kaul, Dalvi, D.K (Monty)
Palit (who served under Kaul as Director of Military Operations), Neville
Maxwell, S Gopal in Volume III of his Nehru biography, S.S. Khera, Principal
Defence Secretary and Cabinet Secretary, in his "India's Defence Problem",
Y.B Chavan, as retold in his biography by T.V.Kunhi Krishnan, and others. Each
has a tale to tell. But the truth, differently interpreted though widely
suspected, remains the greatest casualty of 1962.
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