Part-I At 5 on the morning of 20th October 1962 massed Chinese artillery opened up a heavy concentration on the weak Indian garrison, in a narrow sector of the Namka Chu Valley, of Kameng Frontier Division, in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). Massive infantry assaults followed and within three hours the unequal contest was over. The route to the plains of Assam lay wide open. The Chinese exploited their initial success and advanced 160 miles into the Indian Territory down the southern slopes of the Himalayas, reaching the Brahmaputra Valley by 20th November. They swept aside the so called impregnable defences at Sela Pass; Bomdilla was literally overrun; the Monastery town of Towang fell without a fight. India’s panicky reaction included the scrambling of ill-equipped, ill-trained for mountainous warfare and unacclimatised Military formation from the Punjab-over 1600 miles away. They were merely funnelled into the Chinese bag, as there were no pre-planned and prepared defended zones in depth. The Chinese were amazed at this grave Military blunder, as they had assembled a huge army opposite NEFA (estimates vary between 30,000 and 50,000) without alerting the Indian Government, much less provoking the Indian Army into undertaking the minimum necessary strategic counter-measures. The Chinese had lit the fuse on 8th September 1962 by intruding into the Thagla Ridge area; but this was not treated as a prelude to a full-scale invasion; it was dismissed as yet another minor border incident which could be “localised and dealt with firmly”. The NEFA Reverse, as this short war has since been named, rocked the Political and Military foundations of India and bred a defeatist mentality. The people lost faith in the Nehru’s highest leadership. Prior to the Chinese invasion the prevalent political and military thinking was that there would be no war with China. The Chinese were our friends, and the only combustible issue was the undemarcated Indo-Tibetan Border. We accepted the possibility of some misunderstanding about the actual alignment of these remote areas, and were prepared for incursions and border clashes; but rejected the possibility of a major full fledge military conflict. India was therefore taken by complete surprise politically; diplomatically and strategically. There was no overall political objective; no National Policy; no grand strategy and total unreadiness for military operations in the awesome Himalayan Mountains, against a first-class land power. The Government had not prepared the nation for war. The initial reaction to the Chinese invasion and our reverses was of shock, disbelief and indignation. India’s distinguished President, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan summed up the feeling of the nation succinctly when he exclaimed “We have been negligent and credulous”, from the highest constitutional authority in the country, this was unqualified censure against our political and military hierarchies. The Prime Minister of India, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru expressed the view that the Chinese had treacherously stabbed India in the back. He was shocked and dismayed by the sudden unforeseen developments. In a radio broadcast at that time, he said “I am grieved at the setbacks to our troops that have occurred on the frontier and reverses we had. They were overwhelmed by vast numbers and big artillery mountain guns and heavy mortars which the Chinese have brought with them”. This was a courageous but sad admission of failure by the executive head of the Government. The Indian Defence Minister, Mr. V. Krishna Menon said “The Chinese have very considerable superiority in numbers and fire-power. We have been heavily out-numbered and out-weapon”. This was another admission of culpability by the Minister directly responsible for the Defence of India. It was clear that country and Army found themselves in this predicament largely because of Government’s failure to anticipate the possibility of war with China. India lay prostrate, her foreign policy in disarray; her developing economy halted and her political and military leadership discredited. A wave of bewilderment and anger swept the country. Over the years, half-truths and rash promises had been made to reassure the Indian people that the country was prepared for a military showdown with China. Even at the height of the crisis, in September-October 1962, important personalities were issuing confident and bellicose statements and talking glibly of “evicting” the Chinese in one short, sharp engagement. When detailed news of the disasters percolated to the people, indignation mounted. The decisiveness and completeness of our defeat made it painfully clear that we were caught napping and had tried to bluff our way out of a crisis that was partly of our own making. Despite the relatively heavy military expenditure of the preceding years our men were ill-equipped, we had built no worthwhile road communications and had not reorganised and trained the Army for a war with China. The army came in for a good deal of uniformed criticism and even ridicule. The magnificent traditional heroism of the Indian Jawan was overlooked amidst the debris of mutual recrimination that followed our battlefield defeat. National indignation was accompanied by national despondency. There were reports of confusion and even chaos in the border state of Assam, which was threatened by the Chinese advance. Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri our beloved Home Minister, who had visited Assam in those dark days, disclosed that there was utter confusion and demoralisation at Tezpur and a wild exodus. There were plans to blow up the installations at Tezpur airfield and the famous Digboi oilfields of Assam. He reported complaints by the civil population against Government officials who allegedly bungled the evacuation at Tezpur. He heard that suddenly one evening at about 8 am announcement was made over loudspeakers that the Government was no longer responsible for citizens lives and properties. The Deputy Commissioner was reported to have fled after releasing the prisoners from the local jail, burning files and destroying the currency notes from the local Treasury. One shudders to think of what would have happened if the Chinese had entered Assam Plains. Clearly the people were not prepared for the war & its horrors. In the wake of our defeats many heads had fallen. Mr. Menon, the most controversial Defence Minister resigned on 7th November as a result of strong and implacable Parliamentary and the people wraths with his stewardship of Defence portfolio, during the critical years of 1957 to 1962. His Mentor Nehru tried desperately to retain him in the Government by designating him as Minister for Defence Production, but this was unacceptable to the People & the Opposition Parties & the disgusted both the houses of Parliament. Nehru had to bow down to the wishes of the people for the first time in his tenure as the Prime Minister, a development that was to have far reaching effects on the Indian people had been eroded by the errors and omissions of his China Policy. With a sure touch for survival at all costs, he sacrificed Menon. The Chief of the Army Staff, General Pran Nath Thapar resigned on “Ground of health” the hackneyed euphemism for the British call “the bowler hat”. He was rewarded with Ambassadorship to Afghanistan. Lt-General B.M.Kaul the commander of the ill-conceived & ill-fated IV Corps, was compelled to seek premature retirement a bitter pill for Nehru to swallow as Kaul was widely believed to have been Nehru’s protégé and not only Military confidant but was also Nehru’s own Cousin. There were many errant civil servants and Military officers who had not achieved enough publicity to get involved in the post-mortems, and who went on higher ranks. Time and superannuation have taken care of the others. The Chinese announced their intention to withdraw from the areas which they had occupied in thirty lightning days, and this India a chance to take stock of the political and economic damage. It was soon evident that the Chinese had dealt near-mortal blows to India’s international standing and had altered the national political scene. There were major inroads into our development plans and economic progress. India’s achievements over the past decade were to be nullified as a result of one short, sharp military campaign. THE ANNEXATION OF TIBET AND INDIA’S CHINA POLICY. It is axiomatic that all international disputes which end in war have a historical background and the Sino-Indian-Tibetan problem was no exception. It was the function of Government and of the appropriate desk in the Ministry of External Affairs to constantly review the points of dispute with neighbouring countries, seeking to resolve them amicably if suitable opportunities present themselves, or can be created. Failing this the nation must be alerted for the possibility of war. Inaction or wishful thinking are inexcusable. The Sino-Indian border dispute, which resulted in the clash of 1962, had its genesis in 1950, when china and India faced each other across a common frontier, for the first time in many centuries. On 7th October 1950 the Chinese Liberation Army entered Tibet, although China was preparing to take an active part in the Korean War. The Chinese move apparently took India by surprise. Tibet appealed for help but we refused, and advised the Tibetans to negotiate a peaceful settlement. India was in a quandary. The entry of Chinese troops into Tibet had potentially, ominous long-term consequences. Tibet had been a buffer zone, and had been vital to British India’s strategic defence. The abrupt removal of this buffer zone would alter the geo-political balance, and henceforth India would a live northern border to reckon with. There was a definite possibility that Tibet could be used as a springboard for aggression against India, whenever this suited the Communist regime in China. Professor N.G.Rnaga asked in 1950, “Whether the Prime Minister Nehru could be indifferent to the gathering clouds of threats to our safety”. Mr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee had a premonition that India would one day have to fight China in Tibet. Many others expressed similar views and misgivings. Late Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, popularly called India’s Lion & strong man, wanted a showdown and tough line with China, but he did not live long enough to convert his remarkable vision into positive action due to Nehru’s wrong policies on China. The only plausible excuse for direct intervention would have been to defend the rights which we had inherited from the British. Many years later, in 1954, Nehru revealed his mind when he said “what rights does India have to keep a part of its Army in Tibet, whether Tibet is independent or part of China?” Sardar K.M.Panikar India’s first Ambassador to China is reported to have advised Nehru not to oppose the annexation of Tibet. There was considerable confused thinking and hair-splitting about china’s suzerainty and sovereignty over Tibet. It appeared that we were trying to find some face-saving device for the policy that we had decided to adopt, viz, to allow the Chinese to make Tibet a province of China. We exchanged a few diplomatic notes with China and expressed our concern surprise and regret at the Chinese move and ended with the pious hope that China would respect Tibet’s autonomy and settle this problem peacefully. The Chinese promised to be good boys and we let the matter rest at that. At that time, except for a few farsighted men, the rest of India failed to connect the happenings with their own future & destiny. In fact the average Indian, busking in his newly won freedom, could not pin-point Tibet on the world map. The officials of the Ministry of External Affairs were preoccupied with establishment of diplomatic relations with the rest of the world; dealing with diplomatic problem of steering our Kashmir case in the United Nations; and preparing briefs for Nehru’s increasing participation in world affairs. Nehru was gradually consolidating his position as the elder statement of the world, and was being looked upon as the leading Afro-Asian spokesman against colonialism. He was busy with Indonesia, and some African countries. The country’s legislators were busy working the constitution which had been adopted on 26th January 1950. It was obvious that little thought had been spared for china and any possible hostile mover by her. It seemed inconceivable that a nation that had suffered grievously at the hands of foreign powers should start trouble for a neighbouring ex-colonial nation. Cold war considerations inevitably intruded into this problem. The Chinese justified their action by raising the bogey of western plots to turn Tibet into an American base. On 25th October 1950 the New China news Agency announced that “The Chinese Army had been ordered to advance into Tibet to liberate the people of Tibet; to complete the unification of China; to prevent Imperialism from invading an inch of the territory of the Fatherland, and to safeguard and built up the frontier regions of the country. One school of Indian thought was that a clash over Tibet might trigger off a large conflagration, as the Korean war was on and India could not be responsible for starting a third world war and therefore had to act with circumspection. Domestic politics also helped to confuse such government thinking as there was. The Communists tended to whitewashed China’s action, while the Rightists demanded a showdown. Nehru was placed in a most embarrassing position, as he was not prepared for an international issue so soon after gaining independence. He had not anticipated any drastic Chinese move despite her oft-repeated claims to Tibet. The Chinese communist party had not concealed its intentions and aspirations with regard to Tibet, for, as early as 1922 the party had announced that it would liberate Tibet and unify her with the Motherland. On 4th August 1950, General Lio Po-Chang said, “The Army must launch an attack on Tibet ....to enable the Tibetan people to return to the great family of the Chinese Peoples Republic, while consolidating the defence of South-West China”. A word about Sino-Tibetan relations in the 20th century would be useful to clarify the background to our doubts and hesitancy in dealing with Chinese annexation of Tibet. In 1904, the British Indian Government of Lord Curzon organised a military expedition, under Colonel Younghusband, against Tibet, with the aim of “forestalling any likely collusion between the Dalai lama and the Russian agents”. It will be recalled that Czarist Russia was the bogey-man of the early part of the 20th century. Younghusband successfully reached Lhasa, and Dalai Lama was forced to agree to terms. The resultant Anglo-Tibetan treaty of 1904 secured Britain certain trading rights, and a guarantee against concessions to foreign powers. The British thereafter had a direct influence over the foreign policy of Tibet. This was a thinly disguised arrangement to create and maintain a buffer-zone to protect the northern borders of British India. The treaty was confirmed by the Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1906. Lord Curzon urged the British Government to secure de-jure international recognition of Tibet as a sovereign state, but he was overruled by the Home Government as the rather vague concept of Chinese suzerainty was considered to be a harmless fiction. Britain was then at its zenith of her world power and China was weak and dominated by various European Powers. There was little point in making an issue of a trifling matter with a harmless neighbour. Chinese suzerainty over Tibet was always nebulous and normal. Tibet had been independent for long periods up to the 18th century. In 1720 Chinese forces entered Tibet “to forestall a suspected Tibetan Mongol alliance against China”. They occupied Lhasa and two Chinese Ambans, or Residents, were introduced. In 1792, Emperor Chien Lung exacted a formal recognition of Chinese suzerainty and the administration of Tibet was brought more under control of the Ambans. During the latter half of the 19th century Chinese control weakened. The Tibetans chose a Dalai Lama, without informing China, as they were required to do so. The Chinese had little option but to condone the irregularity, as they were too weak to enforce their agreement by force of arms. The Chinese Imperial Government of the Manchus tried to exercise greater control over Tibet and in 1910 they invaded Tibet forcing the Dalai Lama to flee to India. He was deposed by an Imperial decree, after the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty by the Chinese Revolution of 1911, the authority of China as the suzerain power was speedily challenged & overthrown. The Dalai Lama was restored to power, returned to Lhasa in 1912, and drove out the Chinese garrisons. The Chinese government tried to recapture Tibet but were prevented from doing so by the British Government. This time the British Government claimed that any attempt to capture Tibet would be a violation of the Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1906. While the Chinese suzerainty was not disputed “The British Government could not consent to the forcible assertion of full sovereignty over a state which had established independent treaty relations with the British Government”. In 1913, the Tibetans proclaimed their independence. In the same year, the British Government held a Tripartite Conference of Tibet, China and Britain, in Simla. The Conference concluded its deliberation by April 1914. Briefly, the main provisions which concern our study, were that Tibet was divided into two regions, i.e. Inner & outer Tibet. China agreed to abstain from all intervention in the administration of Outer Tibet, which was to be fully autonomous. A Chinese Resident was to be re-established. China agreed not to convert Tibet into a Chinese Province or send troops to Outer Tibet. Agreement was also reached on the boundary between India and Tibet, from Bhutan eastwards to Burma, which was then under the British Indian Government. This boundary later became known as McMahon Line, which has figured so largely in the recent Sino-Indian dispute. The question of Chinese “suzerainty” was settled bilaterally between the Governments of Tibet and British India. Mr. Hugh Richardson CIE, OBE, former Officer-in-charge of the Indian Mission in Lhasa has made this authoritative statement in a letter entitled “suzerainty”. We hear that somehow or other Tibet has always been under the suzerainty of china and that various governments our own and the Indian government have recognised that. The facts are quite the opposite. In 1914 by the Simla Convention, the British government signed a declaration directly with Tibet and fixing a frontier. The quid pro quo was never given and consequently to this day, or rather till we handed over our responsibility in 1947 to the Indian Government, the British Government did not recognise the suzerainty of China over Tibet. The nation is well aware that certain Ministers of the crown have made statements that might give you all another impression. But whatever a Minister may say in the Parliament cannot affect the terms of a mutually signed declaration with another Government. China did not ratify the Simla Agreement on the grounds that they could not accept the proposed boundaries between inner & outer Tibet. The British and the Tibetans went ahead and signed a convention almost identical to that agreed at Simla. Now the Chinese claim that they never accepted the McMahon Line because they were not signatories to the Simla Convention. After the Simla convention Tibet remained in effect independent. In 1921 the British Government informed China that they did not feel justified in with holding any longer recognition of the status of Tibet as an autonomous state, under the suzerainty of China, and intended to deal on this basis with Tibet in future. China was too weak to challenge this position. During the world war II Tibet opened its own Foreign Affairs Bureau. She did not join china which was directly involved in the war. Tibet claimed neutrality and resisted Chinese pressure for opening up communications through Tibet. If Tibet had been under China, she could not have been neutral or denied facilities to the Central authority. In 1947 a Tibetan trade mission travelled abroad on Tibetan and not on Chinese passports. Tibet was thus never a full-fledged Chinese province. Chinese suzerainty was nominal and was challenged by the Tibetans whenever they were strong or the central Chinese Government was weak. China never had any direct control over Tibet except by conquest. Except for two short periods of direct Chinese rule, Tibet had been independent for years. British officials who ought to know had proclaimed Tibet’s independence. The last British officer in Lhasa, Mr. H. Richardson has said, “There was not a trace of Chinese authority in Tibet after 1912”. Mr. Jayprakash Narayan, the revered revolutionary leader of 1942 freedom movement, citied the historical record in 1959. He said “china has not exercised suzerainty or any other form of control over Tibet at any time from 1912 to 1950 when Chinese communist Forces invaded the country and compelled the Dalai Lama to accept the so-called seventeen-Point Agreement. After Peking broke its pledge to respect Tibet’s autonomy, the Dalai Lama’s \government repudiated this Agreement on 11th March 1959, thereby provoking the full-scale Chinese assault”. He then called Mr. Nehru, “the worldly-wise who by their lack of courage & faith, block the progress of the human race not towards the moon but towards humanity itself. These persons have a myopic view and forget that nothing stands, or can stand still in history - not even the “Chinese Empire”. We even went so far as to oppose discussion of Tibet’s appeal to the United Nations. When the Tibetan appeal came up for discussion in the UN General Assembly on 23rd November 1950, the Indian Delegate opposed the inclusion of the question on the agenda saying that “in the latest note received by my Government the Peking Government was certain that the Tibet question could still be settled by peaceful means, and that such settlement could safeguard the autonomy which Tibet has enjoyed for several decades while maintaining its historical association with China”. The matter was dropped. If India was satisfied bo other country was prepared to stick its neck out. That was the biggest Himalayan Blunder. By the end of 1950 the Tibetan question was “solved by India”. Our action was typical of a weak nation faced by a superior power. We could not, or did not, want to face china alone. We were non-aligned and peaceful so we could not enlist the help of allies. We believed in china’s professions of eternal friendship. China began patrolling Ladakh in 1951, at the time when she was involved in Korea and weak. She might have then accepted a compromise on the border. Nehru did nothing and did not even bother to inform Parliament. He later admitted in Parliament that, “I saw no reason to discuss the frontier with the Chinese Government because, foolishly if you like, i thought there was nothing to discuss”. After the death of Sardar Patel in 1950 in December, soon after this, in early 1951 a very senior official of the External Affairs Ministry gave talks on the history of Sino-Tibetan relations over the centuries. He naturally held a brief for Government to justify the policy of allowing China to subjugate Tibet. He harped on the influence of Buddhism and told us fairy tales of beautiful princess who won the hearts of sundry rulers and introduced Buddhism into Tibet-blah, blah blah. His final summing up was that china might be behaving crudely but legally she was exercising her traditional rights and jurisdiction. Sardar Patel died in December 1950 and there was no one to question Nehru on the China policy adopted by India. He wrote a prophetic letter just before his death to Nehru on 7th November 1950, just one month before his death. Patel’s predictions have proved to be remarkably percipient. We have not only been subjected to a Chinese invasion but have been saddled with a restive north-eastern border population. The Sardar Patel’s letter deserves a place in every analysis of Sino-Indian relations between 1950 and 1962. THE DALAI LAMA AND THE TIBET QUESTION. It was a smoggy morning day in November 2012, after the Kargil war, when I met the fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, the spiritual leader of Tibet and head of the yellow Hat Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, in New Delhi while on his way to Buddhist conference in Tokyo Japan. Alert & fit as always the 77 years old leader has not changed his outlook towards china since the time he landed in India during the Sino Tibet uprisings in 1959. But his perspective towards India, whom he fondly refers to as his Guru, given the famous Nalanda past of Tibetan Buddhism has changed for the better and was an indicator of Time to come. According to him India was no longer ‘over-cautious’ in dealing with China over Tibet, and the Vajpayee led NDA Government was firmer as compared to the past Congress Governments in its bilateral engagement with Beijing. “Earlier I used to say that the Government of India was over-cautious with China over Tibet, but now I have changed my opinion and I see India is standing more firm in dealing with China. I saw this swift when I was allowed by the Indian Government to go Tawang in the first week of November despite reservations from Beijing. Another example of this was that a day after visiting the Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie claimed that there are no PLA troopers in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, the Indian Army chief contradicted the statement and claimed the presence of 4,000 Chinese personnel in the occupied area.’ My meeting came a day after Beijing had accused Dalai Lama for instigating self-immolations in Tibet with more than 100 persons burning themselves to death since march 2011 and no less than 11 self-immolations being reported on the eve of the crucial eighteenth National People’s Congress to elect China’s new leaders in 2012. The Dalai Lama countered Beijing’s accusations by saying it was Chinese repression in Tibet and ethnic discrimination of Tibetans which was forcing young men & women to end their lives. ‘The unbearable situation in Tibet is the cause for these unfortunate events. I am very, very sad about the turn of events. These are symptoms of fear, hard line suppressive policy practised by china in Tibet. The time has come for china to think more realistically, he said, the Dalai Lama welcomed the Chinese government to send any delegations to India to examine his conversations with visitors in Dharamsala to dispel any notions that he was instigating the self-immolations. I am a free spokesman for the Tibet issue; I take orders from my fellow Tibetans and do not direct them to any actions the self-exiled leader said. However he was very guarded about the then on-going leadership transition in china and said that he would rather wait than jump to any conclusions on Xi Jinping’s Tibet policy. It is difficult to say whether china will adopt a moderate line on Tibet under the leadership of Xi Jinping, as even Hu Jintao when he took over from Jiang Zemin a decade ago talked about harmonious and stable china. At that time I welcomed Hu’s statement but the past 10 years have been very difficult for Tibet. Let Xi take over china and maybe I can give a call after watching his policies on Tibet unfold over the coming months. The leader said while acknowledging that he knew Xi’s father Xi Zhongxun, who was once ex-premier of china. Little progress has been made on the frozen dialogue between the Tibetan government in exile and the Chinese despite two attempts one at the behest of Deng Xiaoping between, 1979-1993 and other during the 2002-2010. They call me a demon and a splittist, actually
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:24:11 +0000
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