Looking back to the circumstances leading to the Sino-Indian war, one would find a series of blunders based on flawed understanding of defense-related issues.
One such blunder was the ‘Forward Policy’. It was a proactive stance of the Indian Army following a directive of the Government of India. In broad outline, the directive was meant for establishing “Forward” posts (advance posts) to reclaim territory claimed by China. It is argued that this policy was one of the principal factors responsible for the border war of 1962. The view is contested by many.
The Swedish journalist and strategic affairs analyst Bertil Linter says that the Khampa uprising [Khampas are original residents of Kham province of Tibet] and Dalai Lama’s escape to India in 1959 led to the war. Both the narratives have substantial elements of the truth. Linter refers to the statements of Zhou En Lai, Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong and says that Tibet’s rebellion and Dalai Lama’s asylum in India made China furious.
Beijing alleged that India had incited the Khampa uprising in connivance with Britain and the United States. Zhou En Lai told the Politburo on 17 March 1959 that New Delhi was connected with the Tibetan uprising acting hand in glove with two Western Powers. Deng Xiaoping on 25 March declared, “When the time comes, we certainly will settle accounts with them [India]’’.
Mao expressed similar views. He said that though India was doing bad things, it should not be condemned openly for the time being. Instead, it should be given sufficient rope to hang itself. This is not surprising. China had always been expansionist. In 1910, the Chinese government under the Qing dynasty deployed its troops to Tibet to establish direct Manchu-Chinese rule there. In 1912, after the Qing government of China was dislodged, troops were withdrawn.
The Republic of China did not make any attempt to re-occupy Tibet but claimed that Tibet was a part of China. One year later, in 1913, Tibet and Mongolia signed a treaty proclaiming their independence from China. Till Communist China’s invasion of 1950, Tibet was a de facto independent entity although it did not receive legal recognition internationally. The world today recognizes Tibet as part of China.
If India had vociferously campaigned for Tibet’s independent status or had ever tried to assert it in our interactions with China, our borders would have been less open to Chinese aggression. Tibet’s capture by China would facilitate the Chinese advance into Indian territory through those areas because those areas then would be under Chinese control. Our leaders at the helm of affairs discounted the British plan of protecting Tibet from foreign interference.
It is unlikely that they were not aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions. As early as 1922, the Communist Party announced that it would liberate Tibet and unify her with China. Their advance to Indian territories was just a matter of time. We did not choose our options keeping this in view. When Chinese incursions happened, India adopted a forward policy to block potential lines of further Chinese advance into Indian territory. The government believed that it would not lead to China’s ‘physical interference with our forward posts’.
The policy projected as ‘defensive’ was expected to initiate joint withdrawal of forces. It was a pious wish that the Chinese would not physically retaliate no matter how many posts had been set up in the Chinese-claimed and Chinese-occupied territories. China did resort to military intervention and joint withdrawal remained a mirage. Even if blaming the Forward policy is viewed as the Chinese version of the border war, one cannot discount the fact that patrolling of Chinese occupied areas by a completely un-prepared and ill-equipped army was a wrong step.
The most intriguing, however, is the desperation with which the government suppressed the findings of an enquiry into the defeat in the Sino-Indian war. The Government itself asked the Indian Army to inquire into ‘the reverses in NEFA.’ An Inquiry was conducted under Major General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P S Bhagat which squarely made the Forward Policy responsible for triggering the border war of 1962. This is revealed from a leaked portion of the report brought to light by Neville Maxwell, the author of ‘India’s China war’.
The entire report is still classified. Although the inquiring officers were not allowed to examine the exchanges between the civilian leadership and Army HQ, they traced the impact of such exchanges on lower formations. The report was withheld. It is not rocket science to deduce that the report must have been damaging to the Nehru government. Predictably, there was a furor in Parliament for immediate disclosure of the report. But it has never seen the light of day, not even under the present government.
Meanwhile, a dangerous anti-national game was being played at that time by a so-called radical faction of the Communist Party of India. This faction justified Chinese actions both in Tibet and on the Indian border. Referring to the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the Communist Party of India, in a statement on 31 March 1959, pointed out that the Chinese rescued Tibetans from ‘medieval darkness’.
It added that the rebellion against Chinese forces in Tibet was instigated by Indian reactionaries and Western imperialists. CPI leader E M S Namboodiripad wrote, “… it was the class policy of the ruling classes of our country that made them allies of the Tibetan counter-revolutionaries thus initiating the process of deterioration in the IndiaChina relations’’.
The nation witnessed a government’s hesitation to antagonize the Chinese and a political party’s ideological obsession with the Chinese brand of Marxism. Such a scenario must have overjoyed the aggressors. Is there now a major shift from the past? Let us find out.
(The writer is former head of the department of Political Science, Presidency
College, Kolkata)