There is much that is not commonly known about the shocking aspects of the 1962 India-China War, so shocking indeed that S Gopal, Nehru's official biographer, was constrained to comment: “Things went so wrong that had they not happened it would have been difficult to believe them.” The Henderson-Brooks report covered only the limited aspects their authors were tasked with. The book “Foundations of Misery” by Rajnikant Puranik in its chapter “Himalayan Misadventure” details all the aspects of that avoidable war. We are serialising that chapter.
In “How to make foes and alienate people” in The Indian Express of 6 February 2012, Inder Malhotra writes: “Thus it was that even after the full-blooded Chinese invasion, Nehru ignored the countrywide outcry for Menon’s ouster. But the pressure of public opinion was too strong. Nehru took 11 days to divest his protégé of the defence portfolio which he took over himself but retained Menon as minister of defence production. This arrangement could not have been sustained in any case but Menon made this impossible. True to type, he thumbed his nose at his critics and declared: ‘Nothing has changed. I am sitting in the same room and doing the same work.’…This led to a virtual revolt within the Congress party. Mahavir Tyagi, Nehru’s ‘comrade’ since the freedom struggle, told him at an acrimonious conclave that if he did not sack Menon he might himself have to go. On November 7, Nehru announced that he had accepted Menon’s resignation. Over this there was as much glee in the United States as in India.”
Actually, Krishna Menon was no more than Nehru's minion. He had no standing of his own. He was a nobody in the Congress Party. On his own, he didn’t count for anything in the country at large. Yet, most people blamed only Krishna Menon for the debacle—without accepting that the real architect of the nation's tragedy was Nehru himself.
The Current Status
There has been no border settlement yet, although there have been a number of Sino-Indian Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) and Agreements to maintain the border calm. Both countries are supposed to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as on 7 November 1959, as was proposed by China when it declared unilateral ceasefire on 21 November 1962.
LAC is supposed to be the McMahon Line in the east and the “traditional borders” in other areas—in the Ladakh region it is approximately the same as the Macartney-MacDonald Line. As none of them are well-demarcated, there are differing interpretations by each side on the location of LAC in several sub-segments, leading to periodic “incidents” or “incursions” or “confrontations”—mostly minor—and consequent protests. An uneasy calm prevails.
The current changed scenario on account of substantial economic cooperation between the two countries—China is now India’s biggest trading partner—ought to lead to resolution of this old border issue. However, intransigence on both sides remains a factor in finding a solution. The other major factor coming in the way is the dramatic enhancement of China’s status as an economic and military power. As it grows stronger, China seems to think it can afford to assert itself to get a better bargain. Also, unlike in the past, it is in no hurry to settle the dispute.
What China was agreeable for in the fifties and the sixties, it is no longer agreeable anymore. Now that Tibet is firmly merged within it, it is claiming all those rights and areas that Tibet had been claiming, including those to the south of the McMahon Line. For example, China has laid claim to Tawang on the grounds that it is the birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama and is thus central to Tibetan Buddhism, as if China cares much either about Tibet or about Buddhism! On such flimsy grounds, China can claim Mongolia too—the 4th Dalai Lama was born in Mongolia!!
There is time for everything, and we missed the bus in the fifties and the sixties. China was then willing for a package East-West give-and-take swap on the McMahon Line and Aksai Chin. It was good for both. India should have agreed.
It would now be reasonable for both the countries to make legal what is already, by and large, in the possession of the two countries by agreeing on a package deal whereby (a)the Tibet-Ladakh Macartney-MacDonald Line of 1899 in the west, which would leave Aksai Chin to China, (b)the Tibet-Arunachal Pradesh McMahon Line of 1914 in the east, which would firm up Indian rights over the whole of Arunachal Pradesh, and (c)the LAC or the traditional boundary in the middle sector are accepted, with suitable adjustments, in a spirit of give and take. The revised borders should be given new Indian/Chinese names.
(www.rkpbooks.com, www.facebook.com/fom.p1, rajnikantp.blogspot.in, twitter.com/Rajnikant_rkp, rkpuranik@gmail.com)
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