News and Views on Tibet

Army’s failure added to Nehru’s blunder

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By MANOJ JOSHI

Almost all accounts of Sino-Indian history place great blame for the Sino-Indian war on Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Despite great experience in foreign affairs, he failed to adequately read the new Communist leadership of China. But all accounts say that the key change occurred in 1954 when India formally accepted Chinese suzerainty over Tibet in exchange for vague professions of friendship.

Once the Chinese had this in the bag, they began to push at the Himalayan borders. In the late 1950s, the Indian foreign policy establishment was not able to discern the Sino-Soviet split, an event of great significance that impacted on the Sino-Indian stand-off.

The official history is most critical of the Army high command. It says that with the retirement of Gen Thimayya and Lt. Gens S D Verma and S P P Thorat, “the Army setup came to be dominated by officers who either shared the government assessment of the Chinese intentions or were to weak to stand up to the aggressive Krishna Menon always backed by Nehru.”

Nehru’s Tibet blunder was now compounded by his belief that the Chinese would not react militarily to Indian Army posts that were established under the so-called forward policy. War eventually came when Brigadier John Dalvi was asked to use his 7 Brigade to evict Chinese forces from their militarily dominant positions on Thagla ridge.

The official account acknowledges that the Indian troops facing the Chinese had obsolete weapons and did not have adequate winter clothing. There were no roads to service them and their positions were maintained by air-dropped supplies. But the official history is critical of Dalvi for not having deployed his brigade to facilitate its withdrawal when required.

It is critical of the 4 divisional commander Maj Gen A S Pathania for being “too sensitive” to being outflanked and thus undermining the defence of Se La and Bomdi La.

But concludes the official history, the Sino-Indian clash was “not a world shaking event” since just 2 1/2 Indian and 4 or 5 Chinese divisions were involved. Actually the attention of the world was elsewhere – on Cuba. This is where the Russians had placed medium range ballistic missiles. The Americans blockaded Cuba and demanded the withdrawal of the missiles and in the tense days that followed the world was came close to an all-out nuclear war.

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