Its 1914 and the British are making a royal mess, that has continued to trouble several generations in India, Tibet and China !
Henry McMahon had just drawn a line stretching from near Bhutan to the forests near Burma and was supposed to mark the border between India and China. This McMahon line was to be ratified in a tripartite agreement between British India, China and the ruling classes of Tibet. The underhandedness of the British was in that China, which never agreed to the demarcataion at that time was left out, the agreement was reached with just Tibetan rulers and thereafter propagated as the border. Tibet was a signatory but never followed the line in practice as it involved a partition on the Tawang tract - a wedge shaped land that was a passage from Assam to Tibet and never really considered part of India but very much a part of Tibet. The British wanted a buffer zone between the India and China and therefore chose to put large parts of Tawang tract inside the Indian borders. For similar reasons, British wanted a buffer area further north in Ladakh and avoid sharing a direct border with Russia and thereafter laying the seeds of an Indian claim to Aksai Chin. Earlier, in 1899, the British had concluded agreements with Russia without involving China in the fate of Aksai Chin and simply included it inside Indian borders. China considered entire Tibet, including Tawang and Aksai Chin as its own province and had sent conquering armies to Tibet in 1909. This unfortunate backdrop forms the historical perspective in Neville Maxwell's book "India's China War".
Neville Maxwell worked as a journalist for 'The Times' in New Delhi, in the years preceding the 1962 war. Most of the events in the book describe the details of what happened in India, the statements from Indian government, opposition leaders and the people. On the other hand, very little has been written about how the Chinese government came to decide and act in the way it did. There are merely the official chinese government statements tell us anything about the thinking on the chinese side and only in cases such as when the chinese premier, Chou en Lai visited New Delhi in 1959, to discuss the border issue, that we get more insight into how the chinese side worked. Overall, the book is very India centric, and because in this case, the Indian leadership happened to show maximum possible incompetence and naivette, the Indian side of the dispute is seen in poor light, while the chinese aggression and war crimes are covered up in fleeting mentions. It is indeed quite damning of the Indian political as well as military leadership just prior to and during the 1962 border debacle with China. The title of the book itself suggests that it was plainly the Indian side that indulged in a fantastic overestimation of their own military capabilities, failed to even agree to negotiate with the Chinese and then triggerred a war on long unresolved border issues with a dim-witted "forward policy".
Post independence from the British, the British commission office in Lhasa was simply taken over by an Indian commissioner and only visible change was in the flag that flew over. The government of India simply chose to maintain the ambiguity around the northern boundaries with China, presumably considering that such boundary negotiations are best done from a position of strength which India clearly wasn't in, at the time. China, too, played very passively and never raised the border fixation formally right through the years from 1949 to 1959. On official Indian maps, the Indian border was a rough demarcation indicating an indeterminate situation, but it still included Aksai Chin. It also included a highway that China had build from Xinjiang to Tibet, that passed through Aksai Chin and China considered that road as a vital connection to Tibet. The first prime minister of independent India - Jawaharlal Nehru, indicated to the parliament that India intended to hold and defend all the land marked south of the McMahon line as its own but also included Aksai Chin that the Chinese held. Nehru seemed to be in two minds even on a question of whether the border issue should be discussed and negotiated with China and got nowhere to making a mutually acceptable negotiation. So incredible was the level of indecision that Chou Enlai spent a week in New Delhi meeting the higher ups in Indian government trying to negotiate a border agreement but all he got was pleasantries, promises and zero commitments. Right when Chou Enlai boarded a plane back to China, the Indian side went back to making claims on land in chinese control, something that the chinese never agreed even if at that point the Chinese did accept that the land south of McMahon line was India's.
The height of the tomfoolery was India's forward policy, that is to have the army slowly and steadily establish posts and patrolling in areas such that they expand the Indian borders. The top politicians - Nehru and the defence minister V.K.Menon had total disregard to the objections of Gen. Thimayya when he stated that in case the chinese retailiated, the Indian Army was in no position to hold the forward areas due to lack of equipment, personnel and over-stretched logistics in the remote, hilly and forested land. The general resigned and was replaced by a political lackey, along with another curious character, B.M Kaul, who got a fast promotion to the Chief of General Staff and who was a favourite of Nehru.
The actual trigger to the war was the attempt to cross over a bridge near Thag La. Thag La itself is a remote, high altitude, thickly forested area, reachable only by a minimum two day march on foot from the Indian side but which was reachable in a few hours from the Chinese side courtesy of a proper road inside the Chinese border. The Indian defence minister with bright ideas was pushing for a forward take on Thag La brushing aside the advice of the commanders on the ground, such as Brig. Dalvi, whose book "Himalayan Blunder" also traces this period in accurate detail. At Thag La, the Indian army was neither as equipped as the Chinese but also short of personnel. CGS Kaul availed the luxury of a horse side instead of a two day trek to Thag La and then immediately returned to Tezpur citing altitude sickness. As the misadventure at Thag La became evident when the Chinese finally retaliated with overwhelming force, the CGS was quick to fly away to Delhi citing more serious health problems though he had no formal relieve. The Indian forward posts were quickly and easily wiped out, and in the next few weeks, the chinese army took over Tawang, Walong and even the 13000 feet high Se La pass, where the Indian army was looking to hold fort. There was panic setting in to an extent that even Tezpur in today's Assam was at the point of desertion and capituation. The situation in the western sector (Ladakh) was better than NEFA, where the soldiers of fallen Indian posts were scattered and frantically retreating towards home but still in a loss. The Indian army faced a comprehensive rout with 2000 to 3000 dead and missing, and the chinese seemed to have achieved all of their objectives by November 1962. Nehru seemed still dithering on reaching out to USA and Russia for military help because he could not get off the tall horse of non-alignment. When he did reach out to President Kennedy, it was late enough because China had announced a unilateral ceasefire shortly afterwards.
The Chinese ceasefire announcement was unexpected but the real rub was that they also announced their intention to withdraw completely from conquered lands and go back to positions that were held in 1959! That was exactly the Chinese view of the Indo-China border on the negotiation table at that time. It implied that the only reason for China to start the war was to teach a lesson and establish once and for all the right Indo-China border. Any further negotiations with India would be from a position of strength for the Chinese.
Were there proper lessons learnt from the disaster in India ? The high political leadership that was debating about how to beat back the enemy in the blink of an eye went into a shock. Nehru got a resignation from Krishna Menon and both Nehru and Krishna Menon were reluctant about it. Nehru himself was on the wane since then until his death in 1964. There was a shuffle in the army leadership and the succeeding prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri made it a point to listen better to the army generals in the 1965 war with Pakistan. But the detailed findings and investigations into the 1962 loss remain unimplemented, and misunderstood even today as the Indian polity prefers to bury the dirty linen instead of cleaning and letting it dry in open air. You won't find a chapter in the regular history books about 1962 and will read about it only in books like Neville Maxwells's.
I liked this book but it tells a dark tale and a stark warning for people who are unprepared, who prefer to remain out of touch with reality and yet bear pride on their sleeves.
