With hindsight it is now clear that two of the greatest mistakes Pandit Nehru commited in the initial years after Independence and for which the country is still paying are ,..firstly his decision to halt theKashmir operations in 1948 when the momentum was with the Indian Army and the Pakistanis were in retreat.He should have allowed the Army to carry ahead and liberate the whole of Kashmir, reintegrate the state as a equal member of the Indian union without any SPECIAL STATUS .But he halted a victorious army, confounded the whole issue by talking of Plebiscite and even reffering it to the UN General Assembly when that was the last thing Pakistan wanted.Today’s India is reaping the bitter harvest of a man who was hell bent in projecting himself as a world statesman ,even to the extent of sacrificing the legitimate interests of India. Secondly ,his failure to stand up to Chinese invasion of Tibet which commenced in 1950.India had treaty obligations with Tibet from the British days ,a military presence in Shigatse to protect trade route to Tibet.Yet when Chinese forces entered Tibet in Oct 1950 we turned a completely blind eye.Nehru even went to the extent of justifying the Chinese assault as saying that China was jut enforcing its suzerainty over Tibet.He urged Tibetan leaders to engage China in dialogue to retain some autonomy .In 1954 Pandit Nehru walked out of all treaty obligations with Tibet saying that they were a hangover from colonial times,thereby effectively sacrificing Tibetan independence forever. Here I would like to point out how China went to war with USA in the Korean peninsula when it felt its interests hurt .Could we have gone to war with China in 1950 over Tibet?Suffice it to say ,then we had a robust Army which had proved itself in WWII and the Kashmir Ops and I dare say a bold move to deploy Indian troops in Tibet could have halted the Chinese short of Lhasa,internationalsed the situation,inviting UN /US/European intervention and maybe lead to division of Tibet into North And South.Our Northern borders would have been safe…….but a timid political leadership completely capitulated ,leading subsequently to the humiliation of 1962 and the present sorry state of insecure borders with regular incursions.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 17:29:46 +0000
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