The people of India (esp. the people of
Arunachal Pradesh in North East) will never forget & perhaps never
forgive those responsible for the China - India War of 1962, for, the
war was a complete disaster for India and its defeat is mourned to this
day by the nationalists.
For most of us who grew up studying
really boring history composed of awful repetitive chapters of
Nehru-Gandhi role in freedom struggle or European wars and imperialism,
we now tend to be put off by the very mention of social sciences &
this is, in fact, a deliberate attempt by the successive Congress
governments in India to turn off masses from questioning the history of
the country and thereby distort and change history and its chapters as
they please!
Immense damage has been done to India's
history not only by Islamists & British but also by dubious free
thinkers, pseudo-liberals and Communist’s by glorifying tyrant invaders
like Arabs, Afghans, and Turks to deleting dharmic history or falsely
presenting events or worse not disclosing them at all.
The China - India War of 1962 is one of
the many important events that is not yet a part of the education
curriculum and is barely discussed or debated in the national press
& media!
The War of 1962 destroyed the chance of
Tibet’s Independence, made enemies out of Asia’s two oldest
civilizations China & India, brought China closer to the rogue
Islamic State of Pakistan, and sealed the fate of the Communist Party
and Prime minister Nehru in India!
Though we Indians are quick to blame
China for imposing the 1962 War on us, many fail to question how did
China get into a War mode with India in the first place?
How did we end up ditching the country of Tibet that like Bhutan was the buffer state between India & China?
Why did we lose to the Chinese despite a valiant fight put up by our soldiers?
What was the Government of Prime Minister Nehru doing to retaliate and push back the invading Chinese hordes?
What was Nehru’s role as Indian Prime Minister during the 1962 War? Who were his advisers?
Why did India end up becoming a joke and compared with a third rate country like Pakistan?
The article below exposes the blunders
committed by Nehru & the bag of half-baked people surrounding him
that lead to the disaster of 1962. Hope the article answers questions
related the war & opens up our mind for further research &
probing.
In the year 1950, two momentous events
shook Asia and the world. One was the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and the
other, the Chinese intervention in the Korean War.
The first was near, on India’s borders,
the other, far away in the Korean Peninsula where India had little at
stake. By all canons of logic, India should have devoted utmost
attention to the immediate situation in Tibet, and let interested
parties like China and the U.S. sort it out in Korea.
But Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Prime
Minister did exactly the opposite. He treated the Tibetan crisis in a
haphazard fashion while getting heavily involved in Korea. India today
is paying for this folly by being the only country of its size in the
world without an official boundary with its giant neighbour.
Tibet soon disappeared from the map. As
in Kashmir, Nehru sacrificed national interest at home in pursuit of
international glory abroad.
India at the time maintained missions in
Lhasa and Gyantse. Due to the close relations that existed between
India and Tibet going back centuries and also because of the unsettled
conditions in China, Tibet’s transactions with the outside world were
conducted mainly through India. Well into 1950, the Indian Government
regarded Tibet as a free country.
The Chinese announced their invasion of
Tibet on 25 October 1950. According to them, it was to ‘free Tibet from
imperialist forces’, and consolidate its border with India. Nehru
announced that he and the Indian Government were ‘extremely perplexed
and disappointed with the Chinese Government’s action...’ Nehru also
complained that he had been ‘led to believe by the Chinese Foreign
Office that the Chinese would settle the future of Tibet in a peaceful
manner by direct negotiation with the representatives of Tibet…’
This was not true, for in September
1949, more than a year before the Chinese invasion, Nehru himself had
written: “Chinese communists are likely to invade Tibet.” The point to
note is that Nehru, by sending mixed signals, showing more interest in
Korea than in Tibet, had encouraged the Chinese invasion; the Chinese
had made no secret of their desire to invade Tibet. In spite of this,
Nehru’s main interest was to sponsor China as a member of the UN
Security Council instead of safeguarding Indian interests in Tibet.
Because of this, when the Chinese were
moving troops into Tibet, there was little concern in Indian official
circles. Panikkar, the Indian Ambassador in Beijing, went so far as to
pretend that there was ‘lack of confirmation’ of the presence of Chinese
troops in Tibet and that to protest the Chinese invasion of Tibet would
be an “interference to India’s efforts on behalf of China in the UN”.
So Panikkar was more interested in
protecting Chinese interests in the UN than India’s own interests on the
Tibetan border! Nehru agreed with his Ambassador. He wrote, “Our
primary consideration is the maintenance of world peace… Recent
developments in Korea have not strengthened China’s position, which will
be further weakened by any aggressive action [by India] in Tibet.” So
Nehru was ready to sacrifice India’s national security interests in
Tibet so as not to weaken China’s case in the UN!
It is nothing short of a tragedy that
the two greatest influences on Nehru at this crucial juncture in history
were Krishna Menon and K. M. Panikkar, both communists. Panikkar, while
nominally serving as Indian ambassador in China, became practically a
spokesman for Chinese interests in Tibet. Sardar Patel remarked that
Panikkar “has been at great pains to find an explanation or
justification for Chinese policy and actions.”
India eventually gave up its right to
have a diplomatic mission in Lhasa on the ground that it was an
‘imperialist legacy’. This led to Nehru’s discredited ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai
Bhai’. Mao had no reciprocal affection for India and never spoke of
‘Chini-Hindi Bhai Bhai’— or its Chinese equivalent.
Far from it, he had only contempt for
India and its leaders. Mao respected only the strong who would oppose
him, and not the weak who bent over backwards to please him.
Sardar Patel warned Nehru: “Even though
we regard ourselves as friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as
friends.” He wrote a famous letter in which he expressed deep concern
over developments in Tibet, raising several important points. In
particular, he noted that a free and friendly Tibet was vital for
India’s security, and everything including military measures should be
considered to ensure it.’
On November 9, 1950, two days after he
wrote the letter to Nehru, he announced in Delhi: ‘In Kali Yuga, we
shall return ahimsa for ahimsa. If anybody resorts to force against us,
we shall meet it with force.’ But Nehru ignored Patel’s letter. The
truth is that India was in a strong position to defend its interests in
Tibet, but gave up the opportunity for the sake of pleasing China. It is
not widely known in India that in 1950, China could have been prevented
from taking over Tibet.
Patel, on the other hand, recognized
that in 1950, China was in a vulnerable position, fully committed in
Korea and by no means secure in its hold over the mainland. For months
General MacArthur had been urging President Truman to “unleash Chiang
Kai Shek” lying in wait in Formosa (Taiwan) with full American support.
China had not yet acquired the atom bomb, which was more than ten years
in the future. India had little to lose and everything to gain by a
determined show of force when China was struggling to consolidate its
hold.
In addition, India had international
support, with world opinion strongly against Chinese aggression in
Tibet. The world, in fact, was looking to India to take the lead. The
highly influential English journal The Economist echoed the
Western viewpoint when it wrote: ‘Having maintained complete
independence of China since 1912, Tibet has a strong claim to be
regarded as an independent state. But it is for India to take a lead in
this matter. If India decides to support independence of Tibet as a
buffer state between itself and China, Britain and U.S.A. will do well
to extend formal diplomatic recognition to it.’
So China could have been stopped. But
this was not to be. Nehru ignored Patel’s letter as well as
international opinion and gave up this golden opportunity to turn Tibet
into a friendly buffer state. With such a principled stand, India would
also have acquired the status of a great power while Pakistan would have
disappeared from the radar screen of world attention.
Much has been made of Nehru’s blunder in
Kashmir, but it pales in comparison with his folly in Tibet. As a
result of this monumental failure of vision—and nerve—India soon came to
be treated as a third rate power, acquiring ‘parity’ with Pakistan. Two
months later Patel was dead.
Even after the loss of Tibet, Nehru gave
up opportunities to settle the border with China. To understand this,
it is necessary to appreciate the fact that what China desired most was a
stable border with India. With this in view, the Chinese Premier
Zhou-en-Lai visited India several times to fix the boundary between the
two countries.
In short, the Chinese proposal amounted
to the following: they were prepared to accept the McMahon Line as the
boundary in the east—with possibly some minor adjustments and a new
name—and then negotiate the unmarked boundary in the west between Ladakh
and Tibet. In effect, what Zhou-en-Lai proposed was a phased
settlement, beginning with the eastern boundary. Nehru, however, wanted
the whole thing settled at once. The practical-minded Zhou-en-Lai found
this politically impossible.
And on each visit, the Chinese Premier in search of a boundary settlement heard more about the principles of Pancha Sheela than India’s stand on the boundary. He interpreted this as intransigence on India’s part.
China, in fact, went on to settle its
boundary with Myanmar (Burma) roughly along the McMahon Line following
similar principles. Contrary to what the Indian public was told, the
border between Ladakh (in the Princely State of Kashmir) and Tibet was
never clearly demarcated.
As late as 1960, the Indian Government
had to send survey teams to Ladakh to locate the boundary and prepare
maps. But the Government kept telling the people that there was a
clearly defined boundary, which the Chinese were refusing to accept.
What the situation demanded was a
creative approach, especially from the Indian side. There were several
practical issues on which negotiations could have been
conducted—especially in the 1950s when India was in a strong position.
China needed Aksai Chin because it had
plans to construct an access road from Tibet to Xinjiang province
(Sinkiang) in the west. Aksai Chin was of far greater strategic
significance to China than to India. (It may be a strategic liability
for India—being expensive to maintain and hard to supply, even more than
the Siachen Glacier.)
Had Nehru recognized this he might have
proposed a creative solution like asking for access to Mount Kailash and
Manasarovar in return for Chinese access to Aksai Chin. The issue is
not whether such an agreement was possible, but no solutions were
proposed. The upshot of all this was that China ignored India—including
Pancha Sheel—and went ahead with its plan to build the road through
Aksai Chin.
This is still not the full story.
On the heels of this twin
blunder—abandonment of Tibet and sponsorship of China with nothing to
show in return—Nehru deceived the Indian public in his pursuit of
international glory through Pancha Sheel.
Pancha Sheel, which was the principal
‘policy’ of Nehru towards China from the betrayal of Tibet to the
expulsion of Dalai Lama in 1959, is generally regarded as a
demonstration of good faith by Nehru that was exploited by the Chinese
who ‘stabbed him in the back’. This is not quite correct, for Nehru (and
Krishna Menon) knew about the Chinese incursions in Ladakh and Aksai
Chin but kept it secret for years to keep the illusion of PanchaSheel
alive.
General Thimayya had brought the Chinese
activities in Aksai Chin to the notice of Nehru and Krishna Menon
several years before that. An English mountaineer by name Sydney Wignall
was deputed by Thimayya to verify reports that the Chinese were
building a road through Aksai Chin. He was captured by the Chinese but
released and made his way back to India after incredible difficulties,
surviving several snowstorms. Now Thimayya had proof of Chinese
incursion. When the Army presented this to the Government, Menon blew
up. In Nehru’s presence, he told the senior officer making the
presentation that he was “lapping up CIA propaganda.”
Wignall was not Thimayya’s only source.
Shortly after the Chinese attack in 1962, I heard from General Thimayya
that he had deputed a young officer of the Madras Sappers (MEG) to Aksai
Chin to investigate reports of Chinese intrusion who brought back
reports of the Chinese incursion. But the public was not told of it
simply to cover up Nehru’s blunders. (I heard this not once but twice:
first at a lecture in Bangalore and the next day when I visited him
personally.)
He was still trying to sell his PanchaSheel and Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai to the Indian public.
Even today, Nehru’s family members
exercise dictatorial control over the documents pertaining to this
crucial period. Even documents in the National Archives are not
available to scholars without permission from the Nehru-Gandhi family
heirs. This is to protect his reputation from being damaged by the truth
(But many of the same documents are available in the British Museum and
Library in England).
The sorry catalogue of blunders
continued after Nehru’s death. In the Bangladesh war, India achieved one
of the most decisive victories in modern history. More than 90,000
Pakistani soldiers were in Indian custody. The newly independent
Bangladesh wanted to try these men as war criminals for their atrocities
against the people of East Bengal. The Indian Government could have
used this as a bargaining chip with Pakistan and settled the Kashmir
problem once and for all. Instead, Indira Gandhi threw away this golden
opportunity in exchange for a scrap of paper called the Shimla
Agreement.
Thanks to this folly, Pakistan is more active than ever in Kashmir.
Courtesy - Notes of Dr.N.S.Rajaram
Dr. N.S. Rajaram is an Indian
mathematician, notable for his publications on the Aryan Invasion
debate, Indian history, and Christianity. Among his numerous books, the
“The Dead Sea scrolls and the crisis of Christianity” are widely
acclaimed.
Additional Information :
On Nehru's orders Indian soldiers fled
Arunachal Pradesh then known as NEFA leaving behind the Monpas to defend
their country. The Tribes resisted the Chinese, as much as they could
and tales of resistance are untold about all those who died resisting
the Chinese onslaught. In many places, peace deals were struck over rice
beer!
By Kameng Dorjee
(Kameng Dorjee is is a blogger / freelancer who love’s to write and discuss on History, Travel, Buddhism, and Politics)
Courtesy: NewsBharati
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