Book review: India's China War by Neville Maxwell
The first time I had come across something real from the India-China War of 1962 was around 1997 when I spent a considerable amount of time in Arunachal Pradesh. I heard stories from people around, how terrible the war had been for India, how bravely the soldiers had fought for India but lost their lives and so on. Even till the 90s, there were times people would find bunkers with skeletons of soldiers with guns still in their hands. And I also knew we had lost the war badly and it had been an utter defeat.
I had also heard anecdotally that India had kept poking unilaterally at China with small border skirmishes and China had attacked India just to teach her a lesson. And so after the war, they had retreated unilaterally, giving back all the land they had taken during the war. But I never believed it. India has always been a peace-loving nation, we could have done nothing wrong?! Of course it was China which was the aggressor and bully. And so I thought (or preferred to think!). But I was still curious to read about it further and understand what had actually happened.
I finally read a book about it, written by a British historian - India's China War. And I was shocked. Nothing had prepared me for what I was going to find. The whole truth is so depressing - how it was a big strategic failure for India and her foreign policy (in the book Nehru is blamed for some of his personal shortcomings leading to this situation). But what affected me the most was that it was not one step, but steps after steps taken and decisions after decisions made by politicians and even the senior Army personnel which created this disaster. In the end not just creating a political embarrassment for a peace-loving nation like India, but killing 1000s of innocent men and women from the Army, for their own stupidity.
No one has ever been brought to justice for all the lives lost, and no one will ever be. The big guys lost nothing. All who lost anything were those families who lost their loved ones, and all for nothing. It is a very depressing read though eye-opening as you rarely read stuff which highlight your own country's follies and mistakes. Reading this book has given me a different perspective that India may have been more to blame than China for the disaster (of course assuming the author's view wasn't a biased one).
The book is written like a documentary movie, with tons of footnotes and references. It is a long and tedious read, also because the author keeps on repeating the same facts at least a 100 times (!). But still, the events unfold clearly and I got a perspective on history which for me was a completely new one. Below, I am writing about some of the sections which shook me, but it is by no way a comprehensive summary of the book.
History and context: Apparently a major part of the confusion on the Indo-Chinese boundary is linked to the fact that the British never clearly agreed on the boundary with the Chinese and this question was just left as it is for the Indians to resolve after Independence. The British did sign some sort of deal with Tibet which China was not a part of, hence it was never ratified or agreed. And when they left, India just took what they had on their maps as the truth, without really attempting to agree it once and for all with the Chinese.
Also apparently the Chinese were ok with ceding Arunachal to India but not Akshai Chin, even though they have maintained some kind of claim on both these areas. This was because Akshai Chin was strategically important for them to link China to Tibet and honestly it is just a wasteland which can't even be properly accessed by India! So it could have been an easy solution. And apparently, they conveyed the same to Indian authorities many times, unofficially of course. But Nehru was adamant on not making any changes to the boundary at all, or even negotiating to come to an agreement. This was further strengthened by public opinion and a lot of political jingoism which further made it tough for him to change his stand, once made.
According to the book, it was Nehru’s obstinacy (driven by public, political and opposition pressures) rather than Chinese aggression which precipitated the war in the end. The Chinese leader Chou En-lai tried his best to negotiate multiple times and sort out the border question but India did not budge or agree to talk. Also Nehru always assumed that it would be India who would go to war and attack China. But China would never ever attack India, irrespective of what we did! So we kept doing what we were doing.
What could have driven this attitude could have been our non-alignment movement being at a high, India being respected on the international stage much more than before, the nationalist feelings being high with a view of 'hum apni zameen nahi denge', or our takeover of Goa. Or a mix of all, but we thought that we could easily take on China, and do the same with them in Akshai Chin as we did with the Portuguese in Goa. But of course, it did not work out like that in the end...
Events on the ground before the war: Being sure of the fact that the Chinese would never attack India, the Indian government followed a forward policy where little by little the Indian Army was asked to push forward and build posts in the disputed territory where we didn't have posts before. It meant going into Akshai Chin as well as pushing beyond the McMahon line in Arunachal which was even beyond the land we had in our maps.
The army kept disagreeing on moving ahead in Akshai Chin, as they had less people, limited equipment, no road access and many other such limitations. But their protests were completely disregarded, and they were asked to move forward to these remote locations, where it was clear they will not even be able to protect these forward posts in case of war, leave alone fight and win.
In the Akshai Chin area, the Army was relatively better equipped. But the situation in the Eastern sector was even more dismal, given the majority view in the country that China would never attack. There were no roads up to the border, no adequate supplies of guns, bullets, food, artillery, warm clothes, and everything else that's required to fight a war. The Army locations were much much behind the actual border, and just getting soldiers there was a challenge, leave alone fighting a war so far away from all supply lines. And the Chinese had no such challenges or limitations.
Some officers of the Army kept delaying the forward move till a more feasible plan could be created. But their protests were always overruled by the politicians in Delhi. A lot of the rational voices of dissent was quickly suppressed and removed, with more and more yes-men put into all the major combat roles. In fact, a new corps was setup immediately with a yes-man on top to run the war effort as the usual corp commanders were refusing to move ahead. (This is all so depressing to read, really! How completely wrong steps after wrong steps were taken regularly, risking the life of thousands of people).
General Kaul was made the Chief of General Staff, responsible for the war planning and action without being from the fighting arms of the Army and without any real war experience. (He belonged to the supply arms of the army, responsible for supplying food to various Army bases!). Of course that was because he was very close to Nehru. Similarly Menon was the Defence Minister, again because of his proximity to Nehru. And both of them made sure, the rational Army voices were never heard back in Delhi. The whole country believed that India was strong enough to throw out the Chinese, while the truth on the ground was very different.
And even before the war, there had been a few skirmishes which had occurred on the border, supposedly started by the Chinese, while the book maintains were provoked by the Indians. So the situation on the border was definitely not friendly before the final war started.
I am just highlighting some of the things I read about which made me go - how can anyone let this happen? What would the people who had been asked to fight like this have felt when they were asked to literally risk their lives without anyone giving any thought to what they were doing? I don't think any of us can ever imagine this.
There was one army battalion which reached the border in the Himalayas after 3 days of march (that's walking 10-12 hours a day), unacclimatised to a high altitude (of more than 9,000 feet) with limited oxygen, with no winter clothing, with only as much ammunition as they could carry in their pouches, with no supply route to drop them food and without any artillery support. They were outnumbered 10 to 1 by the Chinese, and were asked to fight them when they had basically nothing to fight with!
The top Army brass/politicians (there is always a debate on who is to be blamed) actually sent 1000s of men to their death. And therein lies the bravery (or you can call it stupidity) of being an Army man. You are trained to do what your seniors tell you to do even if you know you will die if you do that! And I always wonder how those men would have felt when they could see what a hopeless position they would have been sent into. And there are multiple such individual cases described in the book, all of which made my blood boil. All of it ended in disaster. The battalions were asked to withdraw after initial fighting, many continued fighting and perished, while some made it back somehow through the mountains.
The war had two phases but still it wasn't well managed. Even after the initial setback, the next stand was also not made at the right place. The commanders of the brigades and corps kept changing, the political interference kept increasing and it was an even bigger mess now. Soldiers kept fighting till the end, and sometimes because they did not get the message to withdraw in time!! No military rules and plans were followed, with battalions constantly moved around and left to their own with no clear commands. It kills me inside to read this, how so many were sent to their deaths because of others' wilful mistakes.
And then the Chinese reached all the way to Assam. By that time, we had almost given up. And the Indian government was almost ready to give up on Assam too. Apparently, there was a speech given by Nehru at that time which felt like he was saying goodbye to Assam and the Assamese people, assuming the Chinese will rule it. We were almost ready to destroy Tezpur (the second major city in Assam) ourselves - blow up the oilfields, banks and power station et al - following a scorched earth policy. That didn't happen because we did not have enough engineers (thankfully!), and by that time, China declared a unilateral ceasefire, moving back to the original positions themselves. And that's how its been till today...
As I said, I had a tough time reading the book. But I am glad I did. I had never thought I would ever say that, but China does come out looking like the bigger person among the two, more mature, more controlled, but then also willing to take a stand when needed. And that's a very tough thing for someone like me (I think of myself as a nationalist) to say...
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