In 1962, Brigadier J P Dalvi of the Indian Army, in a prisoner-of-war camp heard from a Chinese Major that the Sino-Indian war was over as China had decided to withdraw from all areas which they had overrun. The Major added that the Chinese had counter-attacked in self-defense. Now that they had liberated all their territories in NEFA (North-East Frontier Agency) and Ladakh, they had decided to go back as they did not want to settle the border issue by force. This was, of course, a brazen lie which Dalvi found revolting ~ a crude reminder of the humiliation in the war of 1962. He had to live with it. How did we reach such a pass?

The Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 took place over two Indian territories viz. Aksai Chin and a region on the south of the McMahon line, formerly known as NEFA and now called Arunachal Pradesh. Aksai Chin, a part of Ladakh, was claimed by the Chinese to be a part of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region and Tibet. China considered Tibet one of its provinces. The McMahon line was agreed to be the boundary between Tibet and British India in the Simla Convention of 1914.

The Indian part of the line serves as the de facto boundary between China and India. But China refused to accept its legal validity on the ground that Tibet was not a sovereign nation to enter into any agreement with another nation. In 1962, war broke out in both Aksai Chin and NEFA. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru publicly maintained a strong posture against Chinese threats to defy the McMahon Line and exhibited willingness to strike back if China would intrude into Indian Territory. But steps taken by his government on the ground show that he had great faith in Chinese benevolence. He should have done a reality check when China invaded Tibet.

Chinese troops entered Tibet on 7 October 1950. Tibet sought help, but India refused. India’s first Ambassador to China, K M Panikkar, advised Nehru not to oppose the annexation of Tibet and our government advised the Tibetans to negotiate a peaceful settlement with China. Four years later, in June 1954, barely a month after the Panchsheel Agreement (Five-point Agreement) was signed between India and China, the Chinese forces intruded into Bara-Hoti, a place on the Uttar Pradesh-Tibet border (now located in the state of Uttarakhand, Chamoli distict) claiming that it was their territory.

As Brigadier Dalvi says, Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai at Bandung denied having ‘fixed’ borders with certain countries. Nehru failed to read the writing on the wall. He ignored Zhou’s comment. Till the debacle of 1962, neither the government nor the Indian army thought that there could ever be a full-scale war with China. Nehru seemed to be oblivious to the fact that if Tibet was incorporated in China, our northern border would be dangerously exposed to Chinese advances. In the past, apprehending infiltration into Indian soil, the British India government tried to guard against Russian influence in Tibet.

Lord Curzon, in 1904, sent Colonel Younghusband on a military mission to Tibet. Eventually, Britain promised that it would not annex Tibet. A number of treaties were signed to ensure that no foreign state would interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet. Finally, in 1907, Britain entered into an agreement with Russia concerning non-interference in Tibet. Prime Minister Nehru was hardly worried about the protection of our borders that depended on Tibet’s independence. He did not want to intervene in the internal affairs of another country because he accepted Tibet as part of China. His attitude was exposed in his meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1956.

The Dalai Lama’s escape to India in 1959 and his asylum are usually highlighted. Rarely does the Dalai Lama’s first meeting with Nehru come into the public domain. Towards the end of November 1956, the Dalai Lama left Lhasa for India. When he met Nehru, he explained the consequences of the Chinese invasion. After listening to him, Nehru bluntly said, “But you must realise that India cannot support you.’’

The Dalai Lama also told Nehru that he wanted exile in India. The Indian Prime Minister said, “you must go back to your country and try to work with the Chinese on the basis of the Seventeen Point Agreement.’’ (These facts are recorded in the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, “Freedom in Exile’’.) The ‘Seventeen Point Programme’ which Tibetans had to sign immediately after the invasion of 1950 took away their religious and cultural autonomy in the name of reform. Nevertheless, India’s stand remained pro-Chinese. After voting against the North Korean invasion of South Korea in the United Nations, India announced that the only real solution was to admit Communist China to the United Nations.

French expert on Tibet and China, Claude Arpi, in his latest book (‘’Will Tibet ever find her soul again’’) has made a shocking revelation that Nehru’s India supplied rice for invading Chinese troops in Tibet. Then why did he grant asylum to Dalai Lama in 1959? It is still a mystery. Nehru did not realise that China’s next move would be advance towards Indian borders. When it really happened and war broke out, he said that he was stabbed in the back. Defense Minister V K Krishna Menon resigned, but the government showed no sign of remorse for policy failures. The defeat was explained away by pointing at the superior weapons and massive number of the enemy forces. The Prime Minister refused to introspect on the militarily unsound decisions of his government such as the ‘Forward Policy’. There is also a pro-Chinese narrative on the domestic front that made and still makes the entire scenario of Sino-Indian relations murky. All these and a lot more need to be looked into.

(The writer is former head of the department of Political Science, Presidency College, Kolkata)