by J J Singh
As I have mentioned earlier, India possessed the capabilities of aerial photography using the Canberra aircraft, and one or two sorties would have given us the status of road construction by the Chinese in the open wilderness of Aksai Chin. It is difficult to imagine why this was not done. Alternatively, we could have sought the help of any other friendly power. Waiting till 1958—when the Chinese had completed construction of the motorable road and announced it to the world—to ascertain whether it traversed Indian territory by physical patrolling the Aksai Chin area was too late, and displayed a total lack of ingenuity on the part of the Indians.
Or was it that the unpalatable truth was being deliberately pushed under the carpet? I believe this to be the case! Even today, the route over the Kunlun range has not been developed into a road by China because of the very high altitudes here (between 6,500 metres and 7,000 metres) and extremely difficult terrain.
What followed thereafter was a clumsy and pussilanimous act by our foreign office—in that we lodged a protest with China for having constructed a road through our territory without seeking our permission or even informing us! As we considered it as our territory, how could the question of our permitting the Chinese to construct a road across it arise in the first place? The Chinese must have had a hearty laugh at our foolishness. The note verbale sent on 18 October 1958 by the foreign secretary read:
It is a matter of surprise and regret that the Chinese Government should have constructed a road through indisputably Indian Territory without first obtaining the permission of the Government of India and without even informing the Government of India.25
Adding to this absurdity, the note also complained that Chinese personnel working on the road, as also travellers using the road, had not applied for visas from the Government of India! How much more ridiculous could our handling of such serious matters be? First, we displayed our ignorance of such a massive road project traversing approximately 160 kilometres through Indian territory, and which had commenced in 1951 and was inaugurated with much fanfare in October 1957, and next we sought Chinese help to secure information on the whereabouts of our missing patrol in our own territory! In fact, taking advantage of the fait accompli and our ignorance, the Chinese had the gall to invite the Indian ambassador and defence attache for the event, thereby rubbing salt into our wounds. The embarassment was all the more heightened by the ignorance of these developments on the part of Parliament, and, of course, the people of the country.
The true face of the Chinese was on display towards the close of the decade of the 1950s. Accoding to the account of Jagat Mehta,
The Chinese insensitivity to and disregard of Indian territorial integrity, as publicly notified, came only in September 1959. Nehru’s chief concern was still not to get deflected from non-alignment, but due to being generally misled, or even deliberately deceived, he was put on the defensive in the Parliament. Without prior consultations, he committed himself to the release of all correspondence and notes exchanged with China since 1954 in ‘White’ papers.26
It appears that by 1959 Nehru was torn between two strands of thought as far as the Aksai Chin frontier was concerned. On the one hand, he believed that the northern boundary, as shown on our maps since 1954, was historically and traditionally a part of Jammu and Kashmir and that Aksai Chin was therefore undoubtedly Indian. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, he introduced an element of ambiguity when he made a vague statement relating to Aksai Chin in the Parliament on 12 September 1959 stating that ‘the matter has been challeneged for a hundred years. There has never been delimitation there.’27
He could have boldly told the nation that since China was asserting her claim to Aksai Chin the two nations could examine records, carry out a joint survey and delimit this frontier. There might have been at least a slim chance of finding an acceptable solution if the nation had been taken into confidence earlier. Unfortunately, that not being the case, our ‘misinformed polity’ had by then taken an extremely hard stance and Nehru was helplessly stuck. Vulnerable to a vitriolic opposition, he had no option but to let this opportunity pass.
A very interesting and almost incredible story has been recounted by Jagat Mehta, the chargé d’affaires in the Indian embassy at Peking from 1964 to 1966:
On the file I found a letter, written some months before [the border war in 1962], with a specific warning that the Chinese were planning an attack on the Indian frontier. I felt this was explosive and so I removed it from the file and took it with me when I went home for consultation in 1964 and showed it to Foreign Secretary Gundevia. He recognized that it could be dynamite in its implications, as it should have been transmitted to Delhi instantaneously. Without much ado, he promptly tore it into shreds!28
Obviously, Nehru and his policymakers were not looking at the strategic or tactical implications of the Sinkiang road and its vital importance from China’s point of view, otherwise they would have called for a detailed appreciation of the threat such a development held, besides, of course, understanding the improbability of China ever vacating the Aksai Chin and adjacent areas to the west of this strategic artery so as to provide tactical depth to it.
The Chinese, in contrast, had a well-considered strategy to ensure the security of this road, which was why they drew their 1956 claim line to the west of and more or less parallel to the road alignment, thus keeping the Indians at bay. Besides, as borne out by their 1960 claim line, it kept creeping westwards to create an effective buffer zone between the road and the boundary (a distance of 35–45 kilometres, so as to deny possible firm bases to launch offensive action against the Aksai Chin road and effectively keep it out of the long-range artillery of the Indian Army of that time, and also out of reach of ground-based observation and surveillance). To meet this requirement, the line was drawn arbitrarily, and did not follow any well-defined geographical features of the region. Surprisingly, this aspect has seldom been commented on before. This reasoning may not have occurred to a civilian, but it definitely should have made sense to a military strategist. Perhaps the two seldom sat together to carry out in-depth analyses of such developments. And to top it all, the policymakers kept many issues under wraps or as closely guarded secrets.
As if all this was not bad enough, Nehru apparently misinformed the Parliament when he made this statement there in November 1959:
… at no time since our Independence, and of course before it, were our defence forces in better condition, in finer fettle … I am quite confident that our defence forces are well capable of looking after our security.29
This was after operational contol of the border had been handed over to the army in November 1959, consequent to the severe mauling of one of our patrols in the Kongka Pass and the earlier detention of another under Lieutenant Iyengar, when it was reconnoitring the northern areas of Aksai Chin. This patrol was released at the Karakoram Pass in October 1958 after a month in Chinese custody.
In April 1961, Krishna Menon, the defence minister, went one step ahead of Nehru, assuring Parliament that the morale of the defence services had ‘never been higher’. He went on to say that the armed forces had ‘vastly improved their logistics capacity … there had been a great improvement in training, provisioning and manufacture of arms … Our equipment are of a better character: our troops are in advanced positions.’30 Major General D.K. Palit, director of military operations at the time, remarked that even though there were political compulsions for such statements to be made, it was ‘difficult to reconcile these pronouncements in Parliament with what Army HQ had been telling the government during the past year. Kaul had personally apprised the PM of the shortages in our order of battle, in arms and equipment and in our logistical potential. There could have been no room for a misunderstanding.’31
The sound advice to Army HQ in mid-August 1962 from Lieutenant General Daulet Singh, the general officer commanding-in-chief, Western Command, responsible for the Ladakh frontier, recommending suspension of the forward policy till such time as hi
s force levels were adequately built up, went unheeded. He anticipated that the Chinese would retaliate with force if their strategic Aksai Chin artery was even remotely threatened. The General Staff at Army HQ did not take his frank professional advice as seriously as it should have. Lt General Daulet Singh concluded his advice with great sagacity:
It is imperative that political direction is based on military means. If the two are not coordinated there is a danger of creating a situation where we may lose both in the material and moral sense much more than we already have. Thus, there is no short cut to military preparedness to enable us to pursue objectively our present policy aimed at refuting the illegal Chinese claim over our territory.32
The lieutenant general conveyed to the establishment in no uncertain terms that he was not prepared to take on the Chinese unless he was given the additional force of a division with all the supporting elements. Presumably, this was not relayed by Army HQ to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). It cannot be denied that there couldn’t have been more honest and profound professional advice the government could get than this.
However, at an MoD conference as late as 22 September, the army chief, General P.N. Thapar, did express his opinion—in the context of the government’s directive to evict the intruding Chinese across the Thagla Ridge along the McMahon Line—that the Chinese would ‘retaliate against the Indian forward posts in the western sector, perhaps overrunning all of them east of the Chinese claim line’. This military assessment, conveying a starkly dismal prognosis, was emphatically ruled out by the civilian policymakers with the stock phrase that ‘China would not launch any general attack’.33 Although General Thapar acquiesced in their request, he insisted that the order be given to the army in writing. The directions of the government, signed by H.C. Sarin, a joint secretary in the MoD, and cleared by Defence Minister Menon, who was attending the General Assembly session of the United Nations in New York, read:
The decision throughout has been as discussed in previous meetings, that the Army should prepare and throw out the Chinese as soon as possible. The Chief of Army Staff was accordingly directed to take action for the eviction of the Chinese in the Kameng Frontier Division of NEFA as soon as he is ready.
This highly confidential order was reported by the Times, London, on 23 September and also carried by the Times of India four days later: ‘The Government of India took the political decision ten days ago to use force if necessary to throw the Chinese intruders out.’34 This gave the Chinese advance notice of our operational plans at the national level. These events speak volumes of our security consciousness during that period.
As mentioned in the account written by Lieutenant General B.M. Kaul, when Nehru was conveyed the same misgivings earlier by General Thapar, he brushed them aside. Kaul writes, ‘He (Nehru) had good reasons to believe that the Chinese would not take any strong action against us.’35 In his narrative of the border war in the Indian north-east frontier, Brigadier John Dalvi, commander of the ill-fated 7 Infantry Brigade, recounts the words of Lieutenant General B. M. Kaul on 10 October 1962, when the first major skirmish between the Chinese and the Indian Army took place: ‘Unbelievable but amazing was the fact that the Corps Commander had come to the Namka Chu area to exhort and pep-up his frontline divisional, brigade and battalion commanders, and to witness the launch of “Operation Leghorn” to evict the Chinese from the Thagla Ridge.’
Pushed into battle for political expediency, a hastily assembled, ill-equipped and inadequately supported force of company strength was ordered to occupy a position on the Thagla Ridge to challenge the vastly superior Chinese force. On 10 October, the Chinese attacked the hapless and unsupported Indian Company of 9 Punjab at Tseng Jong and forced them to fall back. The attack by an overwhelming enemy force supported by artillery and mortar fire shattered the make-believe world of Lieutenant General Kaul, who was watching the event unfold as from a grandstand akin to a peacetime manoeuvre. Dalvi records that Kaul’s ‘first reaction was one of disbelief, shock and disillusionment. “Oh my God,” he cried, “You are right, they mean business.” This disastrously ended his moment of challenging grandeur.’36
Leaving Dalvi to handle the battle thrust on him by the cabal of reckless leadership comprising politicians, military brass, diplomats and bureaucrats as best he could, Kaul made an ungraceful exit and rushed to Delhi to apprise the prime minister of the stark reality of the operational situation. He bypassed the Command and Army HQs while doing so. This is not the normal practice but Kaul could have his say because of his proximity to Nehru and weakness of his superior, Lieutenant General L.P. Sen, the army commander, and the army chief, General P.N. Thapar. He cursorily kept the Command and Army HQs in the loop while doing so. Furthermore, a few days after his return to Tezpur, a sickly Kaul had to be flown back to Delhi because of severe chest pain. Surprisingly, he continued to command his corps from his sick bed even as the Chinese launched their major offensives on 20 October 1962, not only in NEFA but also in Ladakh. It was perhaps the first time in our history that a corps was being commanded in war by remote control by a recuperating commander located 1,500 kilometres away from his sick bed. This shameful episode exposed the manner in which decisions on national war strategy were being taken during that period.
If military modernization and border infrastructure development had commenced in a planned manner in India from the mid-1950s, the narrative of the Sino-Indian border discord would have been different. While the Chinese were fully engaged in building roads from mainland China into Tibet from all directions, the Indian leadership was focusing primarily on development, the economy and enhancement of its image among the developing and non-aligned countries. Upgradation of our defence capabilities had been given a back seat, on the assumption that there was no threat from the northern border.
To cite an example, the renowned 4 Infantry Division, also called the Fighting Fourth of the Second World War fame, was employed in constructing the housing project ‘Amar’ at Ambala during that period, and was in 1959 abruptly moved to NEFA to face the Chinese threat. This formation was expected to fight in the high Himalayas with weapons of Second World War vintage, and in clothing and equipment designed for the hot and dusty plains of north India on man-pack basis, as there were hardly any roads. Moreover, the political and military leadership failed to provide higher direction during the war. It was hardly surprising that the war was an unequal fight between India and China.
The interplay of international power politics of the time—the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat from Taiwan, the Sino-Soviet ideological and boundary disputes, India’s grant of asylum to the Dalai Lama, the establishment of his government-in-exile in India, coupled with internal compulsions within China—had a major bearing on Mao’s decision to launch a limited war in Ladakh and the north-eastern frontier regions of India during 1962. His aim was to teach India a lesson, lower its image and cut Nehru to size. October–November 1962 was assessed to be the most suitable period for the campaign. The Chinese offensives were strategically timed, exploiting the three-month window available between the end of the monsoon and the snowy winter in the high-Himalayan region—a fact not adequately appreciated by most researchers. The decision and consequent preparations for such a contingency was perhaps taken during 1959–60, as it would give the Chinese army adequate time to build the roads and stock the required levels of munitions and supplies. The Indian Army’s forward push into disputed pockets played into Chinese hands, offering the Chinese an ideal pretext to launch their sudden onslaughts.
However, the world, including the Soviet Union, was not fooled, and condemned China as the aggressor. When it came to fighting a war, China’s strategic thought process and its planning at the national, operational and tactical level outclassed the personality-oriented, uncoordinated and knee-jerk reactions of the Indians. The Indian actions did not flow from a mature national security strategy, and often appeared to consist of amateurish steps based on gut feeling or wishful thinking. Pragmatism
and the logic of realpolitik were absent.
Unfortunately, Indian policymakers were deluded by the outward air of bonhomie between the two sides from 1954 to 1958 and tended to downplay if not ignore the threat perception, particularly from the northern borders. On the contrary, the Chinese were following a clear-headed strategy to ensure that their hold over Tibet was strengthened and that the Sinkiang–Tibet highway remained securely in their possession. To this end they deployed military posts with the required infrastructure to the west of this road, creating a buffer zone of ‘Chinese-occupied’ territory to ward off any threats from India at that time or in the future. The western limit of this zone, now known as the ‘Line of Actual Control’ (LAC), follows no geographical or topographical features and cuts across the grain of the country.
The unilaterally drawn LAC does follow one unstated principle—that of providing tactical depth to the Aksai Chin road besides strategically connecting the western perimeter of China. This particular road follows the alignment of an ancient trade route through Aksai Chin, linking Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan with Kashmir and Tibet, and has been historically referred to as the ‘graveyard of caravans’. The strategic relevance of this communication artery gets magnified manifold as there is no feasible alternative route to its east because of the impassability of the Gobi Desert, the Kunlun range and the uninhabited, trackless and waterless Changthang region of Tibet, whose average altitude is 4,500 metres.