THE TRUTH ABOUT 1962 Indo-China War

A.G. NOORANI It is 50 years since the border conflict with China, and the nation must be told the truth in its own interests so that it is prepared for a settlement. The truth about how a boundary problem was, in the first place, allowed to assume the proportions of a dispute and, in the next, how an unnecessary dispute was allowed to trigger an unnecessary war. THE HINDU ARCHIVES August 1963, Tezpur Hospital in North-East Frontier Agency, or NEFA: A word of comfort from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for a jawan wounded in the 1962 war. “The Ottoman revival is good for the national ego and has captured the psyche of the country at this moment, when Turkey wants to be a great power. But, it terrifies me because too much national ego is not a good thing. Films like Conquest 1453 are engaging in cultural revisionism and glorifying the past without looking at history in a critical way,” Melis Behlil, a film studies professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, said. In 1453, the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmet II conquered the historic city of Constantinople, now Istanbul ( International Herald Tribune; November 1, 2012). India has had a surfeit of such films, especially in the last quarter century; Ramayana, serialised on Doordarshan, for example. But it has no tradition of any introspection worth the name. The outpourings on the 50th anniversary of the China-India war, which erupted on October 20, 1962, should have prodded some reflection in the same spirit as Melis Behlil’s remarks. But hardly anyone took that trouble. Instead, we were treated to familiar themes such as the omission to use air power, tactical and strategic mistakes and the roles of villains of note. Professor Wang Gungwa of the National University of Singapore said in New Delhi on December 24, 2010, apropos that war: “Most in China don’t even think about it. Still others don’t know about 1962 and what happened. Most people in China think it was misunderstanding between the leaders.” This is a bit facile. The Chinese recall to this day the war with Japan which took place much earlier. India’s recall of the war is understandable. It suffered a humiliating defeat and lost territory and prestige; witnessed in its aftermath the Sino-Pak entente of great consequence; felt frustrated at the decline in the relations with China and the deadlock on the boundary dispute; and is baffled as to how all this has happened. Farthest from the minds of most is any thought of mistakes on India’s part. What was most pronounced was a feeling of self-righteousness. The outpourings produced hardly an ideas of worth. They revealed the mindset of the Indian elite. Patrick Tyler of The New York Times has just produced a fascinating study of the military elite that runs Israel and why it cannot make peace. It is aptly entitled Fortress America. The Indian elite shares this militaristic outlook with two other countries it dearly loves, the United States and Israel. Not surprisingly, the military aspect dominated the discourse on the war of October 1962. The diplomatic background was ignored. A mass of material has appeared on decision-making in China before October 1962. It is ignored. There is not the faintest suggestion of Indian lapses. Such an outlook bodes ill for the future. But it has been prevalent since Independence as part of nationalistic fervour. In 1968, shortly after the Rann of Kutch Award, this writer was driving down from Delhi to Faridabad for a Quaker seminar, in the stimulating company of Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau. A remark he made sums up the national mood: “Yours is the only country in the world which wins 90 per cent of its case before an international tribunal and calls it defeat.” India broke two international agreements on the cession of Beru Bari; the Nehru-Noon Agreement of September 10, 1958, and the Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Mujibur Rehman Agreement of May 16, 1974. The matter was finalised in a messy deal after prolonged litigation. Beru Bari is about the size of a football field. KAMAL SINGH/PTI At Amar Jawan Jyoti on October 20, when the defence forces for the first time officially honoured its 1962 heroes. The border dispute and some questions At the root of the rift between India and China was the boundary question. It is high time we asked ourselves some soul-searching questions now. Had China any legitimate interests as well besides our own, and were they not reconcilable with India’s interests? What were China’s motivation and objectives in launching the military offensive on October 20, 1962? What were India’s objectives in launching “the Forward Policy” in 1961 and to what extent, if any, was it responsible for China’s moves in 1962? Was the war avoidable? Can we settle the boundary dispute without making any concessions to China? If so, what could these be? Lastly, can any Indian government settle the dispute and push it through Parliament? On present form the Indian state is simply dysfunctional in dealing with matters of this kind, whether the boundary dispute or the far more emotive one, Kashmir; not even the modest 4-Point formula. Well before it had Parliament paralysed, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had assumed a wrecker’s stance. It would oppose any settlement by any other party in power. While in power, the BJP did not have a single constructive idea to offer. But the Congress is none too prepared, either. The record of Jawaharlal Nehru, as Prime Minister and the main, if not, indeed, the sole architect of India’s foreign policy, must be held to account. It is, however, only fair to emphasise that on China the entire opposition adopted a rancorous and chauvinistic role—the Socialists, the Swatantra Party and the Jana Sangh. So did the press. The Communist Party of India (CPI), then united, was the solitary exception; but it was suspect because China was a Communist state. For the rest, these men vied with one another in advocating mindlessly a hard line on the boundary question—R.M. Lohia, Ashok Mehta, Nath Pai, J.B. Kripalani, M.R. Masani, N.G. Ranga and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Their culpability is lessened a little by the fact that Nehru controlled the flow of information. Until 1963, no scholar went to the National Archives of India to seek the historical truth. It is a besetting flaw in Indian thinking not to recognise the legitimacy of any interest other than its own. Reconciliation of conflicting interests, the prime object of diplomacy, becomes difficult if not impossible. Of a piece with this is the fostering of myth and the spread of what can only be called disinformation, at times downright lies. The more sensitive the issue, the more assiduous the effort. The myths of Nehru’s “idealism” and “romanticism” and China’s “betrayal” of this devoted friend fall in this category. The stark truth is that India became independent in 1947 with the legacy of a boundary problem, and Nehru and his principal advisers were fully aware of that. The boundary dispute did not arise all of a sudden in 1958-59 to hit them in their faces, as was made out later. The boundary awareness was confined to the eastern sector, the McMahon Line, where India has a strong case. It did not extend to the western sector, the Aksai Chin in the Ladakh province of Jammu and Kashmir, through which China built the Xinjiang-Tibet highway. India’s stand on this sector as also on the part west of the Karakoram Pass has not a leg to stand on. Perfectly reconcilable interests It is a bitter irony that the boundary dispute is one of the rare disputes in which the rival, non-negotiable, vital interests of each side are perfectly reconcilable. India has the McMahon Line; China has the road. A heavy responsibility rests on those who allowed a boundary problem to assume the proportions of a dispute in the first place and, in the next, allowed an unnecessary dispute to trigger an unnecessary war. Unless there is a thorough retrospect, we shall continue to drift mindlessly as before. No retrospect can be more instructive than one which is painful. We owe a debt to Ananth Krishnan for his excellent reportage in The Hindu (October 22, 25 and 26, 2012) on the recently published records in China. One hopes we get a fuller record before long. His reportage goes beyond the past. It is of current relevance— Jiefang Daily or Liberation Daily, which has close ties to the Communist Party in Shanghai, published on October 25 an important article by Wu Yongnian, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of International Affairs, which said that China would not accept the Line of Actual Control (LOAC) as settlement of the boundary dispute. Nor would India. The talks have reached an impasse. One hates to say that, but as far back as 2000, in the heyday of the BJP regime, this writer told a high official concerned with the talks that China would not even demarcate the LOAC, let alone accept it as an agreed boundary. He was taken aback because the BJP government had invested a lot in this project. The writer’s assessment was based on documents plus a few soundings. It is not that government alone which had a tin ear on Chinese hints and a Nelson’s eye on ominous signals. What all have shared is suppression of doubt. 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