by Kuldip Nayar
The screening committee for these awards is a relatively recent phenomenon. There was a public interest litigation to challenge the awards on the ground that they were banned. The Supreme Court, however, did not regard civil awards as titles. It did, nonetheless, suggest the constitution of a screening committee, and here the ruling party has really muddied the waters. The committee is presided over by the prime minister’s secretary and its members are government nominees. That is why some awardees are unknown people without any distinction whatsoever because at some stage someone slipped in their name.
The Janata party government abolished these titles on the ground that they were a relic of British rule. So long as the Janata party remained in power no awards were given. After the Janata party rule, awards have resurfaced with a vengeance and so have the fawning flatterers and sycophants. Once again the award has begun to appear on the letterheads and visiting cards of the recipients despite instructions to the contrary.
There have however been many persons who have refused to accept awards. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was sounded out for the Bharat Ratna. He declined the award, reportedly telling Nehru that it was altogether improper for those deciding on the awards to pin the medal on themselves.
Despite Azad’s objection, the government went ahead and gave awards to other Congressmen. Many years later the Bharat Ratna was awarded to Azad posthumously. This had not been provided in the original Act.
The selection of awardees by different governments, when analyzed, shows a clear tilt towards the people who suited them. Critics or opponents never figured anywhere. For instance, Ram Manohar Lohia, the socialist leader, or the Marxist E.M.S. Namboodripad were not even considered for any award. The BJP-led government saffronized the list of recipients and gave awards even to RSS pracharaks. Some have refused to accept awards like the late Nikhil Chakravarty, a journalist; Rajinder Sachar, a retired chief justice; and the Gandhian Siddharaj Dhadda.
After so many decades I still cannot figure out how Rabindranath Tagore accepted the title of ‘Sir’ during the British period. True, he returned it after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, but why did he accept it in the first place? Freedom fighters were dismayed by it and to that extent, Tagore’s stature fell several notches.
It was in the home ministry that I first heard about the Chinese incursion into our territory. I was sitting with Fateh Singh, deputy secretary in charge of foreigners, when his aide came with a sheaf of papers relating to China and wanted to know what he should do with them. They related to the illegal construction of a road in Ladakh. Without even looking at him, Fateh Singh said: ‘Put them in the “border file”’.
It was an odd description for reports. Fateh Singh explained that telegrams, messages, and reports dealing with China’s incursions were stacked in files, without any action being taken. Prime Minister Nehru saw them and marked them to the home minister after initialling them. They eventually landed up in the section dealing with foreigners. In fact, there was a joke in the home ministry that if some official did not wish to take any action on a particular complaint he would say ‘Put it in the border file’. I heard this euphemistic description of inactivity very frequently even at the joint secretary level.
Fateh Singh told me how China was nibbling away our territory in Ladakh and the guilt he felt that the nation had not been informed. China had built a road in the Indian territory of Aksai Chin. Police official Lakshman Singh was the first person in 1954 to inform New Delhi about the road. As our trade representative, he used to visit Tibet every year. His contacts were wide and he had learnt about the road from some labourers who had built it. (An Indian air force plane accidentally flying over the area at that time confirmed the road on the basis of a photograph.)
New Delhi doubted Lakshman Singh’s version. There was a division of opinion between Pant and Nehru. Pant wanted air reconnaissance to be undertaken to verify the report. Nehru claimed that this would serve no purpose. He did not want to even lodge a protest about the alignment of the road without being certain about its existence. After many discussions, Nehru agreed to send Indian maps to China which depicted Aksai Chin as part of the Indian territory, and even this he asked the foreign secretary to do informally. He was reluctant to annoy China.
However, when there was no response from the other side, Pant persuaded Nehru to send a patrol which found that the road had indeed been constructed in Aksai Chin and was being patrolled by Chinese soldiers. Sighting the Indian patrol, they captured it and tied its members to the tails of horses and dragged them along the road. New Delhi lodged a protest which was rejected with contempt.
It was apparent that Nehru did not wish to irritate China, particularly when he had himself introduced Prime Minister Chou En-lai at the conference of non-aligned nations at Bandung in Indonesia in 1955. What, however, riled Nehru was that Chou En-lai now treated him with far less respect than he had done at their earlier meetings. The latter had not even responded regarding Nehru’s proposed visit to Tibet. The Dalai Lama had invited Nehru and wanted to take Chou En-lai along with him on the visit. Nehru had also noted the abusive language that China used in criticizing Yugoslavia. If Beijing could go to that extent in the case of a communist country, Nehru was not surprised that China had treated India’s protest with disdain.
Nehru nonetheless rationalized that China’s posture was like that of a young communist country which had cast off the past and was impatient to pursue the future. He assured the angry Indian parliament, which learnt from the press about the road built by China in Aksai Chin, that it was Indian territory and there was no dispute about it. To mollify critics, he told them that China would never wage a war against India, and if it ever did, there would be a world war. How wrong Nehru proved to be, his wishful thinking costing the nation dearly.
Never before had I heard such vehement criticism of Nehru in parliament which for years I regularly covered. While replying on the China question, Nehru would sound like a person who had been betrayed, but this did not return Aksai Chin to India. The nation was indebted to him for his leadership since Independence. Institutions like parliament, the judiciary, and the executive he had built made the people proud of their country and their leader. They never forgave him for his soft attitude towards China. He was the hero who had failed them.
I dug out from Nehru’s letters one that Patel had written to him before his death. I was then planning to write my first book, Between the Lines and reproduced the letter as an annexure to it. Patel had warned Nehru to look ahead because ‘the Chinese government had sought to delude us by professions of peaceful intentions’. Patel had a dig on the Indian communists he loathed, categorizing them as a security risk and alleging that they ‘can safely depend on communist arsenals in China’.
China’s aggressive posture became clear when it denounced the old border maps and refused to accept the traditional alignments depicted on them. To India’s dismay our maps showed some of our territory as part of China. The home ministry wrote to the states asking them to burn the maps or at least smudge the border with China on the Assam side because they did not accurately delineate the Indian border.
The Chinese exploited our confusion and used our maps to question our claim. Nehru was still in favour of accommodating China on the question of the Aksai Chin road. Pant proposed a long-term lease, but China responded by occupying Khurnak Fort in Ladakh. China Pictorial, Beijing’s official publication, once again published a small-scale map showing a large part of north-eastern Ladakh within the borders of China. Nehru wrote to Chou En-lai to express his surprise at the Chinese attitude ‘which was contrary to what he had been led to believe since 1949’.
It was a bitter personal blow to Nehru. Despite the warnings from Congress leaders that China was deceitful, he relied on his judgement that China would not betray his confidence and would agree to the traditional border with a few minor adjustments. He had recommended a Security Council seat for China even when the West wanted India to occupy it. A communi
st country, he imagined, would never be hostile to a third world one, and particularly one wedded to socialist ideals.
China too was keen that the two countries should not come to the point of war. Chou En-lai flew to New Delhi in 1960 for talks to improve relations. Nehru told him that public opinion was very hostile and his own colleagues in the cabinet felt that his policies had led China ‘to occupy territory that belonged to India’.
In the meanwhile, Nehru ordered that police check-posts be established to register India’s presence in the Ladakh area. As many as 64 posts were built, but they were not tenable. Home Secretary Jha told me that it was the ‘bright idea’ of B.N. Malik, the director of intelligence, to set up police posts ‘wherever we could’, even behind the Chinese lines, in order to ‘sustain our claim’ on the territory. This was Nehru’s ‘Forward policy’, but then, Jha said, ‘Malik does not realize that these isolated posts with no support from the rear would fall like ninepins if there was a push from the Chinese side. We have unnecessarily exposed the policemen to death.’ He went on to say: ‘Frankly, this is the job of the army, but as it has refused to man the posts until full logistical support is provided, New Delhi has pushed the police.’
Indeed, all the posts did fall like ninepins when China attacked India on 21 October 1962. Finding not a semblance of common ground with China, Nehru ordered the army to eject the Chinese forces from India.
I recall that before hostilities broke out, a ‘solution’ of the border issue was suggested by Krishna Menon, but he was overruled by Pant. Menon had met Chen Yi, China’s foreign minister at Geneva, and told him that India might accept Peking’s suzerainty over the area in Aksai Chin as well as a buffer of 10 miles to the road. In exchange, China must officially accept the McMahon Line in the East and India’s rights to the rest of Ladakh.
China had reportedly accepted the idea but Pant stood in the way. He got the government to formally withdraw the offer through a resolution in the cabinet. Even leasing out the Aksai Chin area was not acceptable. The fact was that Pant, like Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister, did not trust Menon and considered him an inveterate communist.
Pant’s meeting with Prime Minister Chou En-lai was the best presentation of India’s case on China. I recall how, before the meeting, Pant donned his long coat and had the sitting room rearranged for the meeting. I heard Krishna Menon saying after the meeting that Pant was rude to Chou En-lai, but this was not true. Pant rejected Chou En-lai’s plea outlining how important the Aksai Chin road was for China to link Sinkiang with Tibet. Pant said that India would allow the passage of civil traffic but not part with its territory. Chou En-lai remained silent but did hint at consequences fraught with danger. It was clear that the two sides stood far apart on the issue.
Starting from the Ladakh side, Pant tried to establish the watershed theory that the point from which water flowed to either side was the dividing line. This line could not be straight, he argued, and would naturally swerve from one side to the other depending upon the flow of water. Chou En-lai said very little, with the help of an interpreter. Until then my impression was that the dispute was over the Aksai Chin road but Chou En-lai twice or thrice even questioned the validity of the McMahon Line. Pant began with the presumption that the McMahon Line was a settled fact, but Chou En-lai did not accept this, making it very clear that it was open to interpretation. China’s subsequent claim to Arunachal Pradesh confirmed that.
At that very meeting, it was agreed that some scrutiny of the different claims would be necessary. Eventually, an official team was appointed with S. Gopal and Jagat Mehta as members from the Indian side. Gopal travelled to London to obtain material to support India’s case. He was happy to have found relevant documents but there was additional material the British government would not part with but made photostat copies available. The Chinese tried their best to sabotage this project but the Mountbattens were a great help. The story that the Chinese attempted to snatch some material from Gopal on his return flight was incorrect, and he contradicted this when I subsequently asked him for confirmation.
Gopal and Mehta carried a load of material to Peking. A set of copies of the entire data was prepared and left in Delhi lest ‘theft’ or some other untoward occurrence’ might destroy the valuable evidence. They had prepared a convincing report but the Chinese rejected it.
I got a hint of how little was expected from the meeting from the Polish ambassador, whom I had met at diplomatic parties, even before the official team left India. I was only the home ministry’s information officer and had no official locus standi, but it was obvious that the Polish ambassador was on a mission. He invited me for a chat at his chancery and expected me to convey what he had said to Pant. At the beginning of the conversation he said that the proposal he would make had the support of all Communist countries, and specifically mentioning the Soviet Union.
His proposal was that India should accept a package political deal, getting recognition for the McMahon Line in exchange for handing over control of some areas in Ladakh to China. He said that the areas demanded had never been charted, and nobody could say to whom they belonged. What was being claimed to be India’s was what had been forcibly occupied by the UK. No power could honour ‘the imperialist line’, nor should India insist upon it. Whatever the odds, China would never part with control of the road it had built. That was the lifeline between Sinkiang and other parts of China, he argued. I conveyed the proposal to Pant who gave me no reaction, his or that of the government.
As the Sino–Indian relationship began unravelling, India was inclined to seek friendship elsewhere. General Mohammad Ayub Khan, who had taken over Pakistan, also feared the ‘inexorable push of the north’. Soon after assuming power he proposed a defence pact between India and Pakistan to defend the subcontinent.
To this Nehru asked, ‘Defence against whom?’ This no doubt angered Ayub Khan but Nehru was reminding Pakistan of its membership of the CENTO and NATO defence arrangements which were directed against the Soviet Union, India’s friend. Also, how could India, with its policy of non-alignment, join any defensive arrangement?
Ayub Khan later explained to me in Islamabad that what he meant by joint defence was that the two armies should not be in a position to stab each other in the back; instead of looking inwards, they should be looking outwards. ‘I never suggested any formal defence arrangements. How could I have when big problems like Kashmir and the canal waters remained unresolved?’
Even so, my feeling was that Ayub Khan was doing all this because he needed time to reorganize and re-equip his army. Therefore, at the suggestion of his foreign minister, Manzur Qadir, former chief justice of West Pakistan who was a great admirer of Nehru and who had many Indian friends, Ayub Khan agreed to meet Nehru. New Delhi’s high commissioner to Pakistan at that time was Rajeshwar Dayal who too, bred in the composite culture of UP, was a dove on Indo–Pakistan matters. He also considered Ayub a friend: they had served together in a UP town long before Partition. Dayal and Qadir arranged a stopover for Ayub at Delhi airport on his way to Dhaka. Nehru readily agreed to meet him there. By this time Nehru had realized that Ayub was firmly in the saddle and that it would be worthwhile to know his mind.
They met on 1 September 1960. This meeting, Qadir told me later in an interview at Lahore, proved to be a ‘disaster’ though newspaper reports had described it as a success. According to Qadir, both sides had agreed to strike ‘a favourable note’ in public and, therefore, the truth was never revealed at the time. Nehru, according to Qadir, listed four outstanding problems: (i) evacuee property; (ii) border disputes; (iii) distribution of river waters; and (iv) Kashmir. To Ayub’s disappointment, Kashmir came last.
Nehru’s elucidation of the first three points, Qadir said, was ‘fair and comprehensive’, but Kashmir was only mentioned, not elaborated upon. Ayub raised the question and said that a ‘satisfactory’ solution of the Kashmir problem was vital. When he did not get any response, Ayub was visibly annoyed and ‘huff
ed and puffed like military chaps,’ as Qadir put it. Ayub’s version, as I got it from him, was that Nehru did not ‘disagree with his ideas’ on Kashmir and favoured only the creation of goodwill and understanding to eliminate border incidents.
Even though the meeting was not much of a success, Ayub accepted Nehru’s proposal to make the boundaries firm. India and Pakistan constituted a ministerial committee to demarcate the border and take other steps that would put an end to border disputes and therefore localized incidents.
Ayub appointed K.M. Sheikh and Nehru, Swaran Singh, to discuss the differences between the two countries. Nehru had wanted Pant to be India’s representative but the latter expressed his inability. Pant’s reluctance was due to his conviction that the ministerial committee would fail. Little did he know that Ayub had instructed Sheikh Abdullah to go more than halfway to seek an agreement. By the time Dayal informed Pant about it, Nehru had already announced that Swaran Singh would be India’s representative.
The Swaran Singh–Sheikh meetings, held in the wake of the Nehru–Ayub talks, were a success. Even if they had not been, the very fact that a dialogue was held was an achievement. India and Pakistan agreed that ‘all border disputes between the two countries, if not settled by negotiation, would be referred to an impartial tribunal for settlement and implementation’.
This was indeed one of the good phases in Indo–Pak relations. So relaxed was the atmosphere that when Ayub spoke about Kashmir to Nehru during the Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference in London, he thought he could afford to be personal. Ayub told Nehru that there was a general belief that the latter’s attitude towards Kashmir was ‘governed by certain emotional considerations’. Nehru laughed and said that if that were so ‘the valley could have been turned into a kind of Switzerland for him to visit as often as he chose’.