India lost and learnt
On the night of October 19-20, 1962, ill-equipped and ill-clad Indian troops on the NEFA front were subjected to intense Chinese attacks that wiped out many frontline positions. Shockingly, the GOC of 4 Corps, Lt Gen BM Kaul, regarded as Nehru’s man, was entrusted to ‘throw the Chinese’ out despite being unsuited for the job. Instead, Kaul rushed to Delhi to report to his political masters about the tactical mess in NEFA, and never returned, as the Chinese hordes attacked Indian positions right across the McMahon Line. In Delhi, where the deployment of troops and battle plans were being handled, there was shock and confusion. Nehru and his lackeys would argue thereafter that China had stabbed India in the back. But there were enough warnings from the late 1950s of what Mao and the communist leadership were planning to do.
There were enough warnings from the late 1950s of what Mao and the communist leadership were planning to do.
First, despite Nehru’s effort to appease China with the Panchsheel Agreement of 1954, which led India to abandon initiatives to support the independence of Tibet, as the agreement recognised ‘Tibet as a region of China’, Chinese claims beyond the traditional southern boundaries of Tibet had not ceased, whether at Aksai Chin or beyond the McMahon Line of Tawang. Skirmishes like the Longju incident in 1959 were ignored. Second, China’s steady military buildup on the Tibetan Plateau with ground and air forces with Soviet assistance following a deal between Mao and Khrushchev didn’t alarm Delhi, nor did IAF’s air photographs of China’s military and nuclear facilities in Tibet, which defence minister Krishna Menon chose to ignore. Third, China was angry at the escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet — with US assistance — into India in 1959, and then he and his followers getting refuge in India — though they were originally expected to go to the US — offended China. Peking (now Beijing) saw the Tibetan issue as its internal matter following China’s occupation of Tibet in 1952.
What offended China even more was India’s increasing engagement with the US. The Americans used India as a launch pad to infiltrate CIA-trained and armed Tibetan rebels groups back into the Tibetan Plateau. They were supplied arms and weapon systems even by India. And finally, an increasingly aggressive Nehru, who under pressure at home, announced that the boundaries with China were settled ‘map or no map’, and that he’d asked the Indian Army ‘to throw out the Chinese’ from Indian territories, never mind Chinese premier Chou en-Lai’s 1960 visit to India, and his proposal to settle the boundary dispute with China keeping the Aksai Chin area and India the area south of the McMahon Line. And when South Block pushed in ill-equipped small teams of military men well beyond the disputed boundary on the Himalayas, as a lookout post under its forward policy, communist China attacked India, as the world was engrossed with the Cuban missile crisis.
What followed was the rout of the Indian Army on the NEFA front. In eastern Ladakh, our Army put up a much better show, holding on to most of their frontline positions. There were many exceptional acts of gallantry by our soldiers, even though our Generals failed their men, with the exception of Lt Gen(s) Daulet Singh and Bikram Singh in Ladakh and Umrao Singh in 33 Corps. The dismal roles of General Thapar, COAS; Lt Gen LP Sen, GOC Eastern Command — who chose to stand aside as the civilians in Delhi made a mess of things — and, of course, Lt General Kaul, can never be condoned. Nor can the decision of Nehru not to use the IAF, at the advice of his intelligence chief BN Malik, on the assumption that it would upset the Chinese further. It remains one of the major strategic errors of the conflict. A post war study, ordered by General Thapar’s successor, Gen JN Chaudhuri, on the debacle in NEFA, known as the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report, apparently puts the blame on the Generals and not so much on the civilians, as it wasn’t in their mandate, say those who’ve seen it.
So, the question today is: Have we learnt our lessons from the 1962 War? It will be fair to say that we have. There are several examples to support this view. For one, as early as 1967, when the Chinese began muscle-flexing in Nathu La and Cho La, the GOC there, Maj Gen Sagat Singh, warned his superiors that he wouldn’t accept any intrusions beyond his fenced boundary. And when they did, he let his troops mow down the Chinese, giving them 340 casualties and a message that India wouldn’t hold its fire. The Chinese went quiet for 20 years till 1987, when they again intruded around Somdorong Chu. The then Army Chief, General Sundarji, had, in a swift response, airlifted troops and surrounded them, leaving Rajiv Gandhi in a flux. It soon led to a quiet Chinese withdrawal, and in 1988, a much-publicised visit of Rajiv Gandhi to Beijing, followed by a series of bilateral diplomatic initiative. India’s swift response to Chinese intrusions in 2020 have shown that New Delhi would be willing to trade blows — as our troops did in the Galwan valley — if push came to shove. And the use of air power wasn’t ruled out, this time.
Where we still have to learn from the past is to understand the Chinese intentions better. No amount of diplomatic dialogue will get Beijing to give up control over Aksai Chin. It is strategically important to China, being a source of the key rivers in that region, of uranium and from where the all-important highway G 219 passes, linking the capitals of two of China’s most vulnerable regions, Xinjiang and Tibet. What then is the way forward? One option is to accept the swap proposal of 1959-60 that will let China keep Aksai Chin and allow India to keep Arunachal Pradesh (earlier NEFA) by accepting the boundary lines on an ‘as-is-where-is’ basis. As there are strong leaders in both China and India now, they could settle the boundary and survive politically. But will they?