Rough weather in the Middle Kingdon

Former President Jiang Zemin's latest appearance in public

This article in The Epoch Times, a Falun Gong Group publication is fascinating.
The newspaper has not always been accurate in its prediction, but even if 50% of the information contained in the article are correct, it demonstrates the intense power struggle in the Middle Kingdom.
Of course, The Epoch Times had several times announced the death of former President Jiang Zemin though the old man has bounced once again on the political stage.
According to The South China Morning Post:

Former president Jiang Zemin made yet another high-profile foray into the public eye ahead of the Communist Party's key congress next month, as the octogenarian sent congratulations to his former middle school, in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, on its 110th anniversary.
Jiang, 86, wrote a calligraphy couplet on Thursday to mark the anniversary of his alma mater, Yangzhou Middle School, and to highlight contributions that the school has made in the nation's development, by nurturing various talents over the years, according to a report yesterday in the Xinhua Daily, a Nanjing -based newspaper affiliated with the Jiangsu provincial party committee.
The gesture was the fourth high-profile public activity the former top leader has participated in during the past month., 

The presence of Jiang is an important factor on the Chinese internal political scene. The fact is that the transition does not seem to be very smooth.
It is not that the Indian democratic process is smooth, but it has the advantage to 'consult' the common men. It is not the case in China.

Exclusive: Why Bo Xilai Fell and Xi Jinping Disappeared
Epoch Times
Lin Feng
On October 11, 2012
The attempted defection by former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun set in motion a chain of events exposing and inflaming the Communist Party’s internal strife, which has come to a head presently. The once powerful Bo Xilai is facing criminal charges, and the man Bo was to succeed as the powerful domestic security czar, Zhou Yongkang, has been stripped of real power.

A 13-year power struggle at the top of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has come to a head, and the leaders of the CCP have now arrived at a moment of decision.
The sense of expectation is widespread. As the Wang Lijun-Bo Xilai affair has played out, with one revelation after another laid bare before the Chinese people, they have started to awaken and now seek to know the truth that lies behind events.
The Study Times, the publication of the CCP’s Party School—the place leaders of the Party are trained, wrote in an article on July 2 that China is facing “major changes never seen in the past three thousand years.”
At this moment, all eyes are looking to the trial of Bo Xilai to see how he will be punished. The situation is intricate. Relying on sources familiar with discussions at the highest levels of the Party, The Epoch Times reports this developing story.
Bo Xilai was the Party head of the province-level city of Chongqing in central-western China and a leader of the left-wing in the Party. Wang Lijun was Bo’s deputy mayor, police chief, and henchman. When Wang informed Bo of the guilt of Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, in the murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood, Bo demoted Wang and rounded up those close to the police chief, killing a few of them.
Fearing for his life, Wang fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6. His attempted defection exposed to the Chinese people the struggles going on at the top of the CCP’s leadership.
Punishment for Bo soon followed. On March 15 he was removed from his Party posts and then subjected to the abusive Party interrogation called shuanggui. After months of suspense and conflicting signals, on Sept. 28 the state-run media reported Bo would be stripped of his Party membership and tried in a criminal court for “serious discipline violations” relating to corruption and sexual improprieties.
The publicly announced charges are a gambit by a divided leadership still not ready to settle things. The top Party leaders know what Wang revealed after Chengdu: Bo, along with domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang, had planned a coup to grab power from presumptive next head of the Party Xi Jinping. The Party leaders also know that Bo is a key figure behind a mass atrocity: the forced, live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.
The fate of Bo is the crux of the long-running struggle between the current Party chief Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping and their supporters on the one hand and the faction formed by former CCP head Jiang Zemin on the other. That battle now involves all current high-level CCP officials and retired statesman.

Avoiding Accountability
Jiang Zemin’s decision to persecute the spiritual practice of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is the core issue that has led to today’s Party struggle.
Falun Gong was first publicly taught in northeastern China in May 1992. The practice involves doing slow-motion, meditative exercises and living according to teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It became wildly popular. By 1999, state authorities estimated that between 70 and 100 million people had taken up Falun Gong—more than there were members of the CCP.
When Jiang launched the campaign to eradicate Falun Gong in July 1999, he expected it to be over in three months. By the time he was scheduled to retire in 2002, though, Falun Gong showed no signs of being wiped out.

Chinese Regime in Crisis
This posed a problem. Jiang’s campaign had put the CCP at war against approximately one in twelve Chinese. Millions had been sent to labor camps, where they were tortured and brainwashed. Thousands of those had been murdered by the abuse. Thousands more had been killed through forced, live organ harvesting.
If Jiang or those loyal to Jiang were not in power, then the crimes committed in the persecution would be exposed and the members of Jiang’s faction would be held accountable. The struggles behind the scenes surrounding the 16th Party Congress in 2002, the 17th Party Congress in 2007, and the upcoming 18th Party Congress have all turned around the attempt by Jiang’s faction to hold onto power and so avoid being called to account.
In 2003 Hu Jintao became the General Secretary of the CCP, but for a long time he would not hold real power. Jiang Zemin, as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, still called the shots.
In addition, with Jiang’s longtime fixer Zeng Qinghong as vice-chair of the CCP, Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had difficulty getting their writ to extend beyond the walls of the Party compound of Zhongnanhai.
After Jiang completely retired in 2004 and Hu became the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Hu only had authority to promote Major Generals.

Regarding Falun Gong, Hu and Jiang had different views.
To sustain the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners, the CCP has spent huge amounts of money and has brought the Chinese legal system to the point of collapse.
Former deputy director of the Police Bureau Liu Jing said that during one meeting in 2001 Jiang wanted to add a 610 Office (the 610 Office is an extra-constitutional Party organ established by Jiang to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong. It has authority over every level of the Party and the state) at every level of the police system.
Hu said, “adding 610 Offices will add many people and cost a lot.”
Jiang became furious and yelled at Hu in a remark that revealed Jiang’s fear of the peaceful spiritual practice, “Falun Gong is about to usurp your power, and you are talking about personnel and budget?” Hu stayed quiet after that.
After an assassination attempt on Hu in 2006, the balance started to turn in Hu’s favor.
In May 2006, Hu Jintao went to the Yellow Sea to inspect the fleet. During the inspection, machine guns from two warships opened fire on the guided missile destroyer Hu was on, killing five seamen.
The destroyer fled the area at top speed. To avoid further assassination attempts, Hu didn’t return to Beijing, but flew to the southwestern province of Yunnan. He only returned to Beijing a week later.
Afterward, Hu Jintao started to solidify his control over the military, starting from Beijing, then to the Central Military Commission, and then to Chongqing.

Struggle Over Xi
In the high-stakes game being played between Jiang and Hu, the next key moves involved determining the makeup of the Politburo Standing Committee—the body of nine men who run the CCP— and who would be Hu’s successor, both to be announced at the 17th Party Congress in 2007.
Bo’s stalwart Zeng Qinghong was forced to retire from the Standing Committee. Hu Jintao favored bringing on Li Keqiang, then the head of the CCP in Liaoning Province, and Xi Jinping, then the head of the CCP in Zhejiang Province. Hu got both onto the Standing Committee and wanted Li Keqiang named as his successor.
Jiang and Zeng continued to block Hu Jintao and were unwilling to let Li Keqiang step up to power. Jiang did not have anyone on the Standing Committee he could name in Li’s place, and so he reluctantly put forward Xi Jinping.
Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had no problem accepting Xi Jinping, as they shared a common outlook. All three considered themselves students of Hu Yaobang, the Party General Secretary who helped bring economic reform to communist China, and who favored political reform.
Jiang’s nomination of Xi, however, was a ploy. Jiang was playing for time.
Jiang’s real hopes were pinned on Bo Xilai. Bo had developed the “Chongqing Model,” a political program that claimed to improve law and order by cracking down on gangs and to revive the status of the CCP by encouraging Maoist expressions of devotion to the Party.
Jiang’s faction planned to have Bo named at the 18th Party Congress as the successor to domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang on the Politburo Standing Committee and as Zhou’s successor as head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC). The PLAC controls the judiciary, the procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Justice, the People’s Armed Police and other relevant departments and agencies.
Jiang and Zhou had increased the budget and scope of the PLAC, making it a second center of power in the Party. With Bo in charge of the PLAC, he could, when the time was ripe, use the 1.5 million strong People’s Armed Police to depose Xi and seize power. The persecution of Falun Gong could then be maintained.
The groundwork for this plan had been laid, but then Wang Lijun fled to Chengdu.

Targeting Jiang and Zhou
In preparation for the 18th Party Congress, Hu Jintao tested the waters of Jiang Zemin’s viability. He arranged for a Party official to leak to the Hong Kong media the news of Jiang’s death. He wanted to see how the members of Jiang’s faction and the Chinese people would react to the news, and force Jiang to come out into the public, where Hu could get a better idea of Jiang’s health.
The Chinese people set off firecrackers to celebrate the news of Jiang’s death, while the response of Jiang’s faction did not suggest strength.
When the Wang scandal broke, Hu was prepared to seize the opportunity and use the scandal to undo Bo Xilai. Hu Jintao was aiming at Jiang by bringing Bo down.
Meanwhile, Hu and Wen begin putting restraints on Zhou Yongkang and attempted to use the blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng to help weaken Zhou further.
Around April 27, Chen Guangcheng, whose family had been held under a suffocating house arrest by the PLAC in Linyi City in Shandong Province, suddenly entered the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, hundreds of miles away.
In a video, Chen said the PLAC under Zhou was lawless, and Chen listed the abuses he had suffered over several years. Chen directed to Wen Jiabao the question: are the local officials breaking the law on their own or are they directed to do so by central government officials? Chen said, directing his remark to Wen, “I think you should give a clear answer to the people soon.”
Chen’s video put a great deal of pressure on the CCP regarding Zhou.
Chen’s escape from Linyi was not luck or coincidence. Senior Party officials had secretly helped make it happen.
Just as all sides began focusing on Zhou, Hu Jintao encountered resistance.

Push Back
Zhou used the Global Times and other news outlets controlled by him to accuse Hu of inviting “U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs.”
The United States and China had reached an agreement after six days for Chen’s exit from the Embassy, but Zhou disrupted it, and forced Chen to choose exile abroad. At the same time, Zeng Qinghong also started encouraging CCP veteran leaders to pressure Hu and Wen to stop taking down Zhou Yongkang.
Prominent among the Party elders whom Zeng appealed to were the Ye brothers,Ye Xuanping and Ye Xuanning. They are the sons of Field Marshall Ye Jianying, one of the founders of the CCP, and each is powerful in his own right.
Ye Xuanning is regarded as the spiritual leader of the princelings—the children of the founding generation of the Party. Ye Xuanning has controlled China’s military spy system for a long time and has a lot of influence among the military.
The Ye family’s major concern was that if Zhou were taken down, the CCP would collapse.
Hu decided to abandon the idea of arresting Zhou Yongkang and sought to deal with him in another way.
In early May this year, 200 senior CCP officials attended a meeting held at the Jingxi Hotel, which Reuters described as having been called to “shore up unity and advance preparations for the 18th Party Congress.”
According to a source familiar with the meeting, Hu set the following guidelines: Zhou must totally retire. After handing over power, he’ll also lose the power of appointing his successor to the PLAC. Zhou would be allowed to cut ties from Bo’s case, and would be allowed to stay in office until after the 18th Party Congress
Those attending reached the agreement that Zhou could still keep a high-profile in public, creating a harmonious, stable appearance in order to ensure a smooth transition of power.
At the same time, an agreement was reached that included the hardliners, led by propaganda minister Li Changchun and Zhou Yongkang, to agree to Wen Jiabao’s proposals for political reform. Although the agreed reforms were to be very limited, they were to include what were described as “high-level free elections.” Guangdong Province was to take the lead with a pilot program.
These agreements seemed to chart a path forward for the divided Party. They would all soon be changed.

Ten truths about the 1962 War

Here are some truths about the 1962 China's War which are not often mentioned in history books or Reports from the Government.
Of course, this list is not exhaustive.

1- The precise location of the border
In the Army HQ in Delhi as well as locally in the NEFA, nobody was really sure where exactly the border (the famous McMahon Line) was. It is the reason why the famous Henderson-Brooks report has been kept out of the eyes of the Indian public for fifty years. Till the fateful day of October 20, 1962, the Army bosses in Delhi were unable to tell the local commanders where the border in Tawang sector precisely was? I have earlier dealt with the issue.

2- There was no map
Lt. Gen. Niranjan Prasad, GOC 4 Infantry Division wrote in his memoirs (The Fall of Towang):  “It is hard to understand how any purposeful negotiation could have been conducted with Communist China [in 1960] when even such elementary details as accurate maps were not produced; or, if they were in existence, they were certainly not made available to the Army, who had been given the responsibility for ensuring the security of the border.”
The Army had no map.
There is the story of Capt. H.S. Talwar of the elite 17 Parachute Field Regiment who was asked to reinforce Tsangle, an advance post, north of the Namkha chu on October 16. Without map, he and his men roamed around for 2 days in the snow; they finally landed a few kilometers east at a 2 Rajputs camp (and were eventually taken PoWs to Tibet with Brig. John Dalvi on October 21).

3-  Some troops fought extremely well
Take the example of the 2 Rajputs under the command of Lt. Col. Maha Singh Rikh who moved to the banks of the Namka chu river by October 10 as a part of 7 Infantry Brigade. The brigade was stretched out along nearly 20 kilometers front beside the river. It was a five-day march to walk from an end to the other (the confluence with the Namjiang chu). Not a single man from the Rajputs was awarded any gallantry medal, because there was no one left to write the citations; all the officers or JCOs who were not killed or seriously wounded were taken POWs. Out of 513 all ranks on the banks of the river, the 2 Rajput lost 282 men, 81 were wounded and captured, while 90 others were taken prisoners. Only 60 other ranks, mostly from the administrative elements got back.
Major B.K. Pant of 2 Rajput displayed exemplary heroism while wounded in the stomach and legs. Though his Company suffered heavy casualties, he continued to lead and inspire his men, exhorting them to fight till the last man. When the Chinese finally managed to kill him, his last words were "Men of the Rajput Regiment, you were born to die for your country. God has selected this small river for which you must die. Stand up and fight like true Rajputs.” Ditto for 4 Rajputs under Lt. Col. B. Avasthi in the Sela-Bomdila sector
The Indian troops fought pitches battles in the Walong sector of the NEFA and Chushul in Ladakh where the Chinese were inflicted heavy losses.

4-  A complete intelligence failure
A flamboyant new Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul planned Operation Leghorn to ‘evict’ the Chinese by October 10. Kaul took over Corps IV, a Corps especially created ‘to throw the Chinese out’. On his arrival in Tezpur, Kaul addressed the senior officers: “The Prime Minister himself had ordered these posts [near the Thagla ridge] to be set up and he had based his decision on the highest Intelligence advice.” The ‘highest intelligence’ inputs from Mullik turned out to be a sad joke on the 7 Infantry Brigade.
Till the last fateful minute, the arrogant IB Chief, B.N. Mullick said the Chinese would not attack, they don’t have the capacity. Such a blunder!
The Prime Minister himself, at Palam airport on his way to Colombo told the waiting journalists that he had ordered the Indian Army “to throw the Chinese out”. He generously left the time to the discretion of the Army. This was on October 12, 1962, just 8 days before the fateful day. He had received intelligence inputs from Mullik.

5- Chinese spies
Just as today Beijing can hack into any computer system, in Mao’s days, the Chinese intelligence knew everything about Kaul’s and his acolytes’ plans.
The Chinese had infiltrated the area using different methods. In his memoirs, Prasad recalled: “From our own Signals channels I had received reports of a pirate radio operating somewhere in our area, but when we referred this to higher authorities the matter was dismissed: we were curtly told that there was no pirate radio transmitter on our side of the border. Subsequently it was confirmed that the Chinese had indeed sneaked in a pirate transmitter to Chacko (on the road to Bomdila) in the Tibetan labour camp. The aerial of their transmitter was concealed as a tall prayer-flagstaff so common in the Buddhist belt of the Himalayas.”
This is probably how Mao was aware of Operation Op Leghorn.
Some war veterans recall that on the way to Bomdila, there was a dhaba manned by two beautiful ‘local’ girls. All officers and jawans would stop there, have a chai and chat with the girls. It turned out later that they were from the other side.
An informant tells me that when Lt. Gen. Kaul was evacuated from the Namkha chu on October 8, having fallen sick due to the altitude, he was carried pick-a-back by ‘local’ porters. It was later discovered that one of them was a Chinese interpreter in a PoW camp in Tibet. The secrets were out!

6-  Gallantry Awards
The entire operation theater was plunged in deep chaos due to contradictory orders from the Army HQ (Lt. Gen. B.M Kaul, the Corps Commander was directing the Operation from his sick-bed in Delhi). Adhocism was the rule before, during and after the Operations.
To give an example, the GOC, 4 Division was not informed that Subedar Joginder Singh was awarded the Param Vir Chakra for some actions in Bumla (he later died of a gangrenous foot in a PoW camp in Tibet). The awards were decided by Delhi without consulting the local commanders.
An officer who had run away was given the Maha Vir Chakra, the second highest gallantry award. The Government had distributed these lollipops to each regiment to show that everyone fought well.

7- The Role of some Monpas
A senior war veteran, Maj. Gen. Tewari who spent nearly 7 months as a PoW in Tibet wrote: “In Kameng Frontier Division (Tawang) itself, they had many local people on their pay roll. They had detailed maps and knowledge of the area, how otherwise can you explain that they were able to build 30 km of road between Bumla and Tawang in less than 2 weeks?”
According to local Monpas only a few villages sided with  the Chinese under duress (after all they were ‘chinky’ like us, said the Chinese). Tewari recalled: “I was in for a still bigger shock when it was discovered that almost all the secondary batteries had arrived without any acid. I presume that what had happened is that the porters must have found it lighter without liquid and they probably decided to lighten their loads by emptying out the acid from all the batteries.”
It was an indirect collaboration with China, though the majority of the Monpas were rather patriotic.

8- Pensions and Pay
About 500 Indian jawans and officers were taken prisoner in the Tawang sector alone. As Brig. A.J.S. Behl says in his interview: “My family got two telegrams: ‘2nd Lt Behl missing, believed dead’.”
Till the Chinese authorities sent the names of the prisoners to the Indian Red Cross, all those killed and taken prisoners were considered as ‘missing-in-action’ and their salaries were cut.  For no fault of theirs, their wives and families had to manage on their own.

9- Mao’s return to power
In early 1962, Mao was out of power due to the utter failure of his Great Leap Forward. Some 45 million Chinese had died after a 3-year man-made famine. Mao Zedong managed to come back on the political scene in September 1962. If he had not managed to return at that time, the war with India would have probably not taken place. Of course, with ‘if’ many sections of world history could be rewritten, but it is a fact that once Mao’s ideological hard-line prevailed in Beijing, it was difficult to avoid a clash.

10-  The dirty American Role
Averell Harriman, the US Assistant Secretary of State and Duncan Sandys, the British Secretary for Commonwealth Relations visited India on November 22, 1962. This was the day China declared a unilateral ceasefire in the war with India. The visit was supposedly to assess India’s needs to resist Communist China; but both envoys “made clear their governments' willingness to provide military assistance to India but pointed out the related need for negotiations to resolve the Kashmir dispute.”
A clear signal was given to India who had hardly recovered from the blackest month of her history: she had to compromise on Kashmir.
Consequently six rounds of talks between India and Pakistan were held to find a solution for the vexed issue, but to no avail. However, Ayub Khan, the Pakistani President, must have taken the Western intervention as an encouragement for his claim.
The Kennedy and later the Johnson Administrations thought of ‘re-balancing’ the assistance to Pakistan, with the condition that India should accept to ‘settle’ the Kashmir issue.

Historical Documents on 1962 War

According to Ananth Krishnan of The Hindu, new documents on the 1962 Indo-Chinese conflict have been declassified by the Beijing Government. 
It is not that the content of these documents is new, as apart from the Chinese archives, the entire correspondence between Delhi and Beijing has been published in the White Papers on China; it includes some of the threats towards India mentioned by The Hindu.
Some of the White Papers are available on my website.
I have also posted a large number of other documents from different sources.
One example, is this interesting extract of a discussion between Indian Finance Minister Morarji Desai with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in April 1960. Morarji Desai told Zhou:

When nobody supported China [before Beijing admission to the UN] India took your side and put up your case in the United Nations and forged friendship with you. You accepted the principles of Panchasheela. India accepted your sovereignty over Tibet, but you had accepted the condition that Tibet's autonomy would be respected and that you would not interfere with it.
When that understanding was broken and China began to take possession of Tibet and kept its army there, and the Dalai Lama and his followers came to India to save themselves from the oppression of the Chinese army and India gave them refuge, you began to be inimical towards us. You had not raised any disputes about the boundaries before this.

The future Prime Minister was right.

China documents reveal ignored warnings, missed opportunities
October 20, 2012
The Hindu
Ananth Krishnan
Three months before China launched its offensive against India on October 20, 1962, a top Chinese official warned at a meeting with an Indian diplomat that China would take military action if India did not cease its continuing troop advancements in the west — a warning that went unheeded — according to recently declassified Chinese documents.
The documents, which include internal memos sent from Chinese officials in New Delhi to Beijing and notes of negotiations from 1950 to 1962, provide fresh insights into Chinese decision-making in the decade leading up to 1962 and shed light on missed opportunities to resolve the boundary issue — both during the ill-fated visit by Premier Zhou Enlai to New Delhi in 1960 and in the last-ditch talks held just three months before the war started.
The files on 1962 are among documents from the period 1949-65 that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives in Beijing declassified last year, and have not been reported on previously in India.
An internal note dated July 20, 1962, recounted a meeting in Geneva between Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Hanfu and R.K. Nehru, a former Ambassador to China and at the time a senior diplomat.

Issue ‘serious’
Zhang emphasised that “the border issue was serious, and if India did not withdraw troops, it should bear all the results,” the note said.
The failure of meetings in Geneva between Zhang and R.K. Nehru and Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi and Indian Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon was seen by the Chinese as the turning point, the documents suggest.
R.K. Nehru himself later reflected that the July meeting led him to conclude that it would be incorrect to say China “did not give us sufficient warning” of a military attack, questioning the deeply entrenched narrative of the October 20 aggression being a surprise or betrayal.
“[Zhang] said, in their notes they sent to us they had indicated, ‘It is bound to lead to a serious military conflict’,” Nehru said as recounted in an essay by A.G. Noorani. “May be the nature and scale and magnitude of the conflict was not anticipated, but I am not prepared to say that they did not give us sufficient warning that military encounters might follow.”

'I was, I am, and will remain anti-Chinese'

Part II of my interview with Brig. Amar Jit Singh Behl.

'I know by experience that they can put a dagger in our back at any time...'
'It was a state of total chaos. Nobody knew what was happening. The fog of war was so thick that nobody could see anything... It is an experience which marked everybody's life.'
Brigadier Amarjit Singh Behl (retd), then a second lieutenant, and his men fought to the end before being taken prisoners of war by the Chinese in the 1962 Indo-China war.
Then a 21 year old, the soldier looks back at a war fought in extremely difficult circumstances and life as a Chinese PoW in this interview to Rediff.com's Claude Arpi.

Did they capture a lot of arms and ammunitions?

They must have; also trucks and other equipment from south of Tawang till the Assam border. As far as the 7 Brigade is concerned, it was totally and entirely an on-foot battle. A battle of the fit men only!
From Tawang to Bridge III, it was between 5 and 7 days walk. You had to be strong and I was strong, I was only 21 years old.
With my boys, I walked from Ziminthang to Tsangdhar in 16 hours only.
On October 21, we were kept near the helipad and I saw the two officers who had been killed near their chopper. I went to the Chinese officers who had interpreters in English and Hindi (while in the Chinese prisoner of war camp, they also would speak Gorkhali and Punjabi).

Chopper of Sq Lrd Sehgal and Major Ram Singh

I asked this officer, I want to bury these officers; after I insisted, he said 'Alright'. With two of my boys, we dug a 2-feet trench and buried Major Ram Singh and Squadron Leader Sehgal. We saluted them.
The next night (October 21-22) we stayed on there.
On the 22nd morning, we walked till Bridge III on the Namkha chu where we stayed for the night. Then we went to Khenzimane (the Indo-Tibet border) and the next day, we reached Le village on Nyamjiang chu in Tibet.
We stayed for two days in Le and moved to Marmang where we spent two nights before being taken in trucks to the PoW's camp near Tsetang in central Tibet.

Read on...

More on the Henderson-Brooks Report

War Memorial in Tawang

This article of India Today seems say that Henderson-Brooks in his famous report had blamed some officers in the Army for the debacle of 1962. 
Is it correct, or is it propaganda from vested interests?
There is certainly another angle to it. 
I would like to quote from an article that I wrote about the report:

Though portions of it [Henderson-Brooks-Bhagat Report] were read out in the Parliament by the Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan in 1963, the gist seems to be missing.
A book helps us to understand the background of the Henderson-Brooks Report. Between 1962 and 1965, R.D. Pradhan was the Private Secretary of Y.B. Chavan  who took over as Defence Minister from the disgraced V.K. Krishna Menon after the debacle of October 1962.
Pradhan’s memoirs , give great insights on the reasoning of the then Defence Minister who ordered the report: “For Chavan the main challenge in the first years was to establish relationship of trust between himself and the Prime Minister. He succeeded in doing so by his deft-handling of the Henderson-Brooks’ Report of Inquiry into the NEFA  reverses.”
The Private Secretary elaborated on the Defence Minister’s sentiments during the following months: “During the conduct of the enquiry Chavan was apprehensive that the committee may cast aspersions on the role of the Prime Minister or the Defence Minister.” Pradhan adds: “His [Chavan] main worry was to find ways to defend the government  and at the same time to ensure that the morale of the armed forces was not further adversely affected. For that he repeatedly emphasized in the Parliament that that the enquiry was a fact-finding one and to ‘learn lessons’ for the future and it was not a ‘witch-hunt’ to identify and to punish the officers  responsible for the debacle.”
It is clear that the main objective of Chavan was to defend the government, in other words, ‘defend Nehru’ and the political coterie around him who were responsible for the death of nearly 2000 Indian officers and jawans .
Chavan’s Secretary concludes: “It was a tribute to his sagacity and political maturity that he performed his role to the full satisfaction of the Parliament and also earned the gratitude of the Prime Minister.”

Sandeep Unnithan says that Claude Arpi "suggests the real reason the report is not being declassified lies in a mistake made by the Indian army".
In fact, in my recent articles, I squarely put the blame on The Arrogant Men of 1962, never on the officers or the jawans who fought on the Namkha chu.
I wrote in some detail in the Indian Defence Review about what I believe are the reasons why the Henderson-Brooks Report has never been declassified.
It has probably to do with the location of the McMahon Line.

Army holds up declassification of the Henderson-Brooks Bhagat report
India Today
Sandeep Unnithan
New Delhi,
October 18, 2012
The Indian army has held up the declassification of one of India's most classified documents, the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report. The report submitted by Lieutenant General Henderson Brooks and then Brigadier Prem Bhagat to the government in 1963 outlines the reasons for the defeat of the Indian army in the 1962 border war with China.

Senior government officials told India Today that the army has steadfastly maintained releasing the report was 'bad for morale'. Officials who have read it say this is because the report squarely indicts senior army generals for the country's worst-ever military defeat. Over 2000 officers and soldiers died and hundreds taken prisoners when the Chinese simultaneously attacked Indian positions in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh in October 20, 1962.

Indo-China 1962 war
The crux of the report in a 40-page summary by General Chaudhary says the army gave a better account of itself in the Ladakh sector by resisting the Chinese advance, because of better leadership. The three main findings of the report are the failure of the army's higher command, the organization of the army and finally the events leading to the appointment of the glib but militarily unsound corps commander Lt General Brijmohan Kaul and his disastrous handling of the defences of north-eastern India.
The report blames the army's defeat in the north-east in the North East Frontier Agency (present Arunachal Pradesh) on the higher echelons of the Indian army. It explains why an entire division comprising over 15,000 soldiers, the 4th Infantry Division, collapsed in disarray and retreated from its headquarters at Tawang; an infantry Brigade of over 3000 soldiers was overrun by the Chinese and the Brigadier and several officers taken prisoner in NEFA.

General Brooks lays the blame for these debacles in the North East on the frequent changes in command. The responsibility for defending NEFA was taken away from the less-pliant Lt General Umrao Singh who commanded the Siliguri-based 33 Corps.
A new Tezpur-based 4 Corps was created and Lt General Kaul, then Chief of General Staff in army headquarters, appointed to head it. Kaul fell sick just before the conflict started but clung to his command and issued instructions from his official residence 5 York Road (now 5 Motilal Nehru Marg, the house of the Vice Chief of the IAF, in Delhi).
The other officer in the report's line of fire: Brigadier DK Palit, the Director Military Operations, an acolyte of General Kaul who tried to micro-manage the conduct of the war from DGMO, New Delhi.
Only two copies of the report exist : one copy in the office of the defence secretary on the first floor of South Block; the other in a vault within the Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) on the same floor.
Lieutenant General Brooks states in his preface that he has specifically been directed not to look at the political events in the run up to the war. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is not mentioned but his appointee, defence minister V Krishna Menon is implicated in the report. Menon played favorites in the army, he propped one officer up against another.
Officials who have read the report are struck by its lucidity, "Very frank and straight, not double-guessing what the bosses want to hear", says one official. There is anguish over the catastrophic debacle.
The report is a total of 28 volumes. Four volumes contain the actual report, hand-typed in thin fool-scap sheets; the maps and military communications-practically every single order of importance issued during the war-- form another 24 annexures bound with string and stored horizontally in a large maroon envelope.
The paper is now faded and yellowing 'like butterfly wings' says an official who has read it, but the contents are as devastating today as they were when it was submitted to then Indian army chief General JN Chaudhary in 1963. General Chaudhary replaced General VN Thapar who resigned a day after the ceasefire in November 22, 1962.
Brigadier (later Lt General) Prem Bhagat passed away in 1975 and Lt General Brooks in June 1999 in Australia to where he had emigrated after his retirement from the army. All the main protagonists they named in the report are dead.
Over the years, however, the report with its clinical analysis of the conflict, has descended deeper into a well of secrecy. The report is part of a list of secret documents handed over by one defence secretary to the next; in the DGMO, it is held by Director- MO 1, a Colonel who heads the China division. This tradition has continued for nearly five decades. It has never been copied or taken out of South Block.
Army personnel who read it have to seek clearance at the highest levels. A hand-written register maintains the list of all persons who have accessed it. Successive governments have rebuffed numerous attempts made to get the report declassified. In response to India Today's January 1, 2008 application for the report, army headquarters said it could not be revealed because it is 'a Top Secret document vital to the security interest of the State.'
Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar says he insisted the NDA government release the report during his six-year stint as a Rajya Sabha MP. "The refusals (from the government) were firm and consistent," he wrote in 2003 in a newspaper column. Then defence minister George Fernandes said it was "not in the public interest" to reveal the document.
Fernandes first agreed to table the report before parliament, but did not do so.  In response to a question, Defence Minister AK Antony told parliament in 2008 that the contents of the report were part of an 'internal study report' and that it was "not only extremely sensitive but of current operational value."
In 2005, Nayar tried to get the report under under the Right to Information Act. Sometime in 2006, then Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, whose father had served as a General in the army, visited South Block on a quiet Sunday and read one of the two copies of the report. The CIC would decide, after reading the report, whether it could be put out in the public domain. Habibullah later told a friend that he was extremely disturbed by the contents.
It had named several army officers down the chain of command. In March 2010, the government had its way. The CIC ruled that 'no part of the Henderson Brooks report might at this stage be disclosed'. Author and historian Claude Arpi author of 'The McMahon Line Saga' suggests the real reason the report is not being declassified lies in a mistake made by the Indian army.
"The army established posts on the Thagla Ridge and the Namka Chu despite them being in an undemarcated area. Some Indian maps even showed these areas as lying within Chinese-occupied Tibet but the army went ahead and established these posts. The names of the culprits are known but will probably remain a State secret for years to come," he says.
It is not just the Henderson-Brooks report. The MoD has also been sitting on the Himmatsinghji Committee report that was submitted in 1951. The report chaired by Major General MS Himmatsinghji, deputy defence minister, was set up by the union government. It recommended strengthening India's border defences with Tibet following the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Responding to a petition from a research scholar Anit Mukherjee in November 2011, the MoD said the report was 'not available'. Anything to do with the China war, it seems, is beyond scrutiny.

1962: Two wives, pretty spies & a brave soldier

My story of Brigadier Lakshman Singh, Signal Officer of the 7 Infantry Brigade during the battle of Namkha chu (river) in October 1962 is posted on sify.com.

Lakshman Singh, a slim young captain had two wives when, in May 1962, he was told to join the ill-fated 7 Infantry Brigade on the Namkha Chu river of the then North East Frontier Agency (NEFA).
Clouds had been gathering on the Indo-China border.
Many officers and jawans must have been in his position: One wife was the girl he married; The other one was the Indian Army.
Many decades later, after retiring as a Brigadier, Lakshman Singh wrote his memoirs, A Soldier’s Journey Through Life With Two Wives.
The young Captain was in love with Rosy, his life partner, but could not refuse the tough assignment. He was to man the communications of Brig. John Dalvi’s Brigade in the inaccessible terrain of Western NEFA, then known as Kameng FD (Frontier Division), now the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh.
Torn between his two loves, Lakshman decided that the least he could do was to write a daily letter to his other wife Rosy (he calls her ‘Jeet’) who was left alone in Dehra Dun.

Click here to read on...

1962 — lest we forget on CNN-IBN

This report of 1962 war, with my interview will be on air 

on Saturday 8:30 pm and Sunday 12 noon and 9:00 pm. ( October 20 and 21)

The arrogant men of 1962

The 1962 debacle against China is a story of arrogance.
Defence Minister Krishna Menon was undoubtedly the most arrogant man of the subcontinent, but there are many other arrogant personae in the saga of 1962. One was B.N. Mullik, the Intelligence Chief (IB Director) who kept repeating at nauseam: ‘The Chinese will not attack’; then Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul who announced to the world that a new Corps (4 Corps), composed of himself and a couple of staff officers would have no problem to get the Chinese out.
And of course the Prime Minister himself who, at Palam airport on his way to Colombo, told the waiting journalists that he had ordered the Indian Army “to throw the Chinese out”. He generously left the time to the discretion of the Army. It was on October 12, 1962, just 8 days before the fateful day.
But throw the Chinese out from where?
Nobody knew exactly where the border was.
When a young Captain, Mahabir Prasad of the 1 Sikhs established the Dhola Post near the Namkha chu (river) at the end of July, he was told by a local officer that the Thagla ridge, north of the river was the border (incidentally Prasad was killed on October 20). Niranjan Prasad, the GOC of the 4 Infantry Division manning the border wrote in his memoirs: “Since Captain Prasad’s maps showed the McMahon Line as passing to the south of Thagla, he did not act on the information. Instead, on return to base, he referred the matter Divisional HQs. We, in turn reported to Corps, Command and Army HQ (in Delhi).”
One does not need to be Inspector Jacques Clouseau to discover why the famous Henderson-Brooks report has been kept out of the eyes of the Indian public for fifty years. Simple, the bosses in Delhi were unable to tell the local commanders where the border was.
A few months after the debacle, the Indian Government requested Lt. Gen. Henderson-Brooks to prepare a report of the events which led to the fiasco. Although extracts were read out in the Parliament by Y.B. Chavan, the Defence Minister in 1963, the gist of the report remains missing in action.
In 2008, answering a question on the Report, Defence Minister A.K. Antony told the Indian Parliament that the report could not be made public because its contents “are not only extremely sensitive, but are of current operational value.”
Nobody will believe that a 49 year-old report is still of ‘operational value’.
In 2005, veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar had requested, under the RTI, the Ministry of Defence a copy of the Report.
During the hearings of the Commission in March 2009, the Defence Ministry articulated the official stand: “Disclosure of this information …has a direct bearing on the question of the demarcation of the Line of Actual Control between India and China, a live issue under examination between the two countries at present.”
On March 19, 2010, in a ‘decision notice’, the Central Information Commission states: “no part of the report might at this stage be disclosed.”
On October 6, Mao had told his Party’s colleagues: “Nehru really wants to use force. This isn't strange. He has always wanted to seize Aksai Chin and Thagla ridge. He thinks he can get everything he desires.”
Though there was no question of the Indian Army ‘attacking China’ with no food, no warm clothes, no armament or ammunition supply, the Chinese seemed to have perceived the situation differently.
Was Mao looking for a pretext?
In his memoirs, Niranjan Prasad describes the setting: “The McMahon Line as drawn by Sir Henry McMahon in 1914 on an unsurveyed map, was not an accurate projection of the Himalayan watershed line. …In this process the position of Thagla ridge was, to say the least, left ambiguous.”
The survey had been completed in 1913 by Captains Bailey and Morshead, but it was rather sketchy (1 inch to 8 miles).
If one follows the watershed principle, the Thagla ridge was the logical border, but the fact remains that the old map which was the reference for India’s position on the location of the McMahon Line, showed the Thagla ridge and the Namkha Chu, north of the Red Line. Further surveys were unfortunately not conducted after India’s independence.
On 14 August, 1962, Brigadier D.K. Palit, Director of Military Operations was told about the issue; he later recalled that he referred the Thagla dilemma to the Director of Military Survey who “commented that the existing maps of the area were 'sketchy and inaccurate, having been compiled from unreliable sources.”
By then, it was already too late to go back; the arrogant main actors in Delhi had taken over.
The fact that the Chinese attack occurred simultaneously in all sectors (Tawang, Walong in NEFA and Ladakh) is proof that the operations had been prepared well in advance by the Communist regime in Beijing, which did not really need a pretext.

The Concept of Europe is still relevant today

Jean Monnet, the Father of Europe

Yesterday, the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Price for 2012. 
It is a well-deserved award for a concept which one day, one hopes, willl be emulated in South Asia.
A communique from Oslo stated:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is to be awarded to the European Union (EU). The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.

In the inter-war years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee made several awards to persons who were seeking reconciliation between Germany and France. Since 1945, that reconciliation has become a reality. The dreadful suffering in World War II demonstrated the need for a new Europe. Over a seventy-year period, Germany and France had fought three wars. Today war between Germany and France is unthinkable. This shows how, through well-aimed efforts and by building up mutual confidence, historical enemies can become close partners.
In the 1980s, Greece, Spain and Portugal joined the EU. The introduction of democracy was a condition for their membership. The fall of the Berlin Wall made EU membership possible for several Central and Eastern European countries, thereby opening a new era in European history. The division between East and West has to a large extent been brought to an end; democracy has been strengthened; many ethnically-based national conflicts have been settled.
The admission of Croatia as a member next year, the opening of membership negotiations with Montenegro, and the granting of candidate status to Serbia all strengthen the process of reconciliation in the Balkans. In the past decade, the possibility of EU membership for Turkey has also advanced democracy and human rights in that country.
The EU is currently undergoing grave economic difficulties and considerable social unrest. The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to focus on what it sees as the EU's most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights. The stabilizing part played by the EU has helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace.
The work of the EU represents "fraternity between nations", and amounts to a form of the "peace congresses" to which Alfred Nobel refers as criteria for the Peace Prize in his 1895 will.

Five years ago, I wrote this article about Jean Monnet and the relevance of the European Union. It is all the more relevant as the Union is today facing a serious economic crisis.

Is the Europe relevant?
Towards Unity
March 2007
2007 is a year of celebrations; not only for India, but for Asia and Europe as well. In August, India will commemorate the 60th Anniversary of her Independence from the British. This week, while Europe observes the 50 years of the Treaty of Rome, Asia remembers that 60 years ago, the first Asian Relations Conference was organised by the Indian Council of World Affairs in Delhi.
Year 1947 saw a new birth for India, “when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance” as Nehru put it.
Probably because the soul of the Indian nation had suffered so much during two centuries of colonisation, the first Indian Prime Minister thought that India should take the lead to unite Asia. Thus was born the concept of a pan-Asian Conference. In 1946, Nehru had already written to Gandhi: “Almost every country of Asia from the west to the east and south, including the Arab countries, Tibet, Mongolia and the countries of South-East Asia as well as the Asian Republics of the Soviet Union, will be represented by leading men. That is going to be a unique event in history.”
Ten years later, six European States (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) decided to focus their energies on integration and union. Europe was born on 25 March 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed in the Italian capital. The main object of the Treaty was set up a customs union and a common market between the Member States.
Is it possible to make a comparison between these two attempts at greater unity and cooperation between neighbouring States?
The situation in each continent was similar for one thing: both had suffered a great deal, Asia under the colonial powers and Europe for five years of a ghastly war.
At the end of World War II, Europe was going through one of the most traumatic periods of its history; paradoxically this helped create the ‘circumstances’ under which a successful partnership could take shape.
The urge for closer cooperation often arises from the difficult times a nation or a continent has to go through. Unfortunately, the comparison stops here.
For India and Asia, the Asian Relations Conference was a continuation of their freedom struggle. An official document states that one of the purposes of the event was: “How to terminate foreign dominion, direct or indirect, and to achieve freedom to direct their affairs in accordance with the will of the people concerned.”
The motives of those who built Europe were different. Jean Monnet, the father of Europe and his German colleagues believed that to avoid a new conflict, the surest way was to unite on the very same materials which had previously divided the nations. Immediately after the war, Monnet took the initiative: “Coal and steel were at once the key to economic power and the raw materials for forging weapons of war… To pool them across frontiers would reduce their malign prestige and turn them instead into a guarantee of peace.” That was it.
As both Germany and France had to rebuild their industries; the proposal was to create a supranational High Authority which could manage the resources in coal and steel for both nations. This was the birth of the European Coal and Steel Community. A treaty was signed in Paris in 1951 establishing the embryo of the European Community.
A close partnership between the enemies of yesterday was set in motion, though (or because) no ‘ideology’ was involved. Probably due to the fact that the ‘trigger’ was very practical (even if de Gaulle made fun of the ‘mish-mash of steel and coal’), Germany and France were able to collaborate and work together.
But let us come to back to the Asian Relations Conference.
The plenary session of the Conference was held in Purana Qila on March 23, 1947. The leaders of each of the thirty-two delegations were sitting on the dais behind a plate with their name and their flag. Even Tibet, then  independent had its own flag with the snow-covered mountains and the two snow lions representing the dual powers of the Dalai Lama.
In his opening speech, Nehru spoke about peace which “can only come when nations are free and also when human beings everywhere have freedom and security and opportunity.”
After the inaugural session, the participants were divided into small groups to discuss various subjects. The proceedings lasted till April 2 when Gandhi delivered the valedictory address: “I want you to understand if you can, that the message of the East, the message of Asia, is not to be learnt through European spectacles, through the Western spectacles, not by imitating the tinsel of the West, the gun-powder of the West, the atom bomb of the West. If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of Love; it must be a message of 'Truth'.”
Here lies the difference of approach between the two continents. While the Europeans were not bothered about philosophy and ideas, the Indian leaders thought that they could build the future of Asia with beautiful concepts.
Tragically hardly 5 months after this first attempt at uniting Asia, the subcontinent was itself partitioned.
On the momentous day of August 15, 1947, Sri Aurobindo the great nationalist leader and yogi who had initiated the purna swaraj campaign in the first years of the 20th century, wrote: “India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom...”
Today the tragedy of the partition is still ever-present in the subcontinent. Whatever other progress India has made in the fields of economy, development or education, this milestone remains heavy around the subcontinent’s neck.
By the end of 1947, the circulation of people and ideas between South Asian nations and particularly India and Pakistan had stopped while at the same time, former enemies in Europe had no problem to travel from one country to another. Sadly, sixty years later, the situation has not significantly improved in the subcontinent.
Gandhi’s words at the Asian Relations Conference seem far away today, though the SAARC has been a timid attempt at cooperation. But once again, it is based on ideals and principles and not on concrete needs. At that time, as Monnet had prophesied, Europe would be built “through concrete realisations, creating at first a de facto solidarity… it is essential to develop habits of cooperation among nations which had so far only known relationships based on power.’’ These habits do not exist in South Asia.
Another big difference: the European experiment had the full support of its allies, particularly the United States. This is a crucial point as the subcontinent never had this good fortune. At the time of the creation of
the Common Market, the US patronage certainly made the difference for Europe. In the case of South Asia, the role of the Western powers was more ambivalent to say the least.
At a Seminar recently organized in Delhi, a participant said that Europe was a ‘boring’ entity, I even heard that she was not ‘sexy’ anymore; it might be true, but the fact remains that the united approach of 27 nations in certain fields such environment makes the European experiment worthwhile. Whether it is due to wisdom or necessity, the spirit of ‘sharing’ common responsibilities initiated by the founding fathers 50 years ago when six European nations agreed to have a Common Market, is still alive.
In the subcontinent, unless the ‘original sin’ of the partition is, in one way or another, made irrelevant, ‘composite dialogue’ will not lead very far.
The fact that the SAFTA is a non-starter is there to remind us that the journey will be long and arduous.

You do not invite crisis that you cannot tackle

Nehru visiting the troops... after the War

My article You do not invite crisis that you cannot tackle appeared in The Pioneer on November 3.

Mao needed a pretext ‘to teach India a lesson'. Some senior officers of the Indian Army and the country’s politicians offered it to him, which is why 1962 happened.

One of the reasons why the Sino-Indian conflict has remained a deep scar in the nation’s psyche is that very few people know what exactly happened on the slopes of the Thagla ridge in October 1962, though one does not need to be Inspector Jacques Clouseau to discover why the famous Henderson-Brooks report has been kept out of the eyes of the Indian public for 50 years. The reason is simple: In 1962, the bosses in New Delhi were unable to tell the local commanders where the border in the Tawang/ Ziminthang sector was.
A few months after the debacle, the Union Government requested Lt Gen Henderson-Brooks and Brigadier Prem Bhagat (HBB) to prepare a report of the events which led to the fiasco. Many have since asked: “What on earth has stopped the Government to open the HBB report to the public?”
Between 1962 and 1965, RD Pradhan was then Defence Minister YB Chavan’s Private Secretary. In his memoirs, he provides some insights on the issue: “Chavan was apprehensive that the committee may cast aspersions on the role of the Prime Minister or the Defence Minister.” Mr Pradhan adds: “(Chavan’s) main worry was to find ways to defend the government and at the same time to ensure that the morale of the armed forces was not further adversely affected.” Mr Pradhan concluded: “Chavan earned the gratitude of the Prime Minister.” Was it by classifying the HBB report forever?
In 2008, answering a question on the HBB Report, Defence Minister AK Antony told the Indian Parliament that the report could not be made public because an internal study by the Army had established that its contents “are not only extremely sensitive, but are of current operational value.” Nobody will believe that a 49 year-old report is still of ‘operational value’.
In 2005, veteran journalist and former MP Kuldip Nayar requested, under the RTI, the Ministry of Defence for a copy of the report.
During the hearings of the Commission in March 2009, the Defence Ministry articulated the official stand: “Disclosure of this information will amount to disclosure of the army’s operational strategy in the North-East and the discussion on deployments has a direct bearing on the question of the demarcation of the Line of Actual Control between India and China, a live issue under examination between the two countries at present.”
On March 19, 2010, in a ‘decision notice’, the Central Information Commission states: “The disclosure of information of which the Henderson Brooks report carries considerable detail on what precipitated the war of 1962 between India and China will seriously compromise both security and the relationship between India & China.” As a result: “no part of the report might at this stage be disclosed.”
Inspector Clouseau would say: “I know that”.Let us return 50 years ago. In early October 1962, the Chinese military intelligence had gathered that Indian forces were planning to ‘attack China’ on the Thagla ridge on October 10 (Operation Leghorn). A few days earlier, Mao had told his Party’s colleagues: “It seems like armed coexistence won’t work. It’s just as we expected. Nehru really wants to use force. This isn’t strange. He has always wanted to seize Aksai Chin and Thagla ridge. He thinks he can get everything he desires.”
Though there was no question of the Indian Army ‘attacking China’ with no food, no warm clothes, no armament or ammunition supply, the Chinese seemed to have perceived the situation differently.
Was Mao looking for a pretext?
The answer is to be found in the accounts of senior Indian Army officers, the unwilling actors in the ‘Himalayan blunder’. Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad, the GOC of 4 Infantry Division in his book The Fall of Towang describes the setting: “The McMahon Line from just north of Khinzemane, as drawn by Sir Henry McMahon in 1914 with a thick blue [in fact, red] pencil on an unsurveyed map, was not an accurate projection of the Himalayan watershed line. …In this process the position of Thagla ridge was, to say the least, left ambiguous.”
The survey had been completed in 1913 by Capts Bailey and Morshead, but it is true that it was rather sketchy (one inch to eight miles). If one follows the watershed principle, the Thagla ridge was the logical border, but the fact remains that the old map which was the reference for India’s position on the location of the McMahon Line, showed the Thagla ridge and the Namkha Chu, north of the Red Line. Further surveys were unfortunately not conducted after India’s independence.
In 1960, the Government of India had mooted a new policy to establish posts right on the border; it was the famous ‘Forward Policy’. The siting of these posts and their exact location was, however, decided mainly by the Intelligence Bureau and not the Army.
The local Commanders (Corps, Division and Brigade) were not happy and they made it known, but nothing could stop the folly of the ‘authorities’ in Delhi.
Brig Dalvi recalled: “Many generals, including General Umrao Singh [33 Corps Commander], opposed the indiscriminate opening up of more posts. …The setting up of posts in disputed territory is a different matter. It is an act of rashness, whoever decreed it and with whatever authority, unless we had the means to settle the resultant dispute on the battlefield.”
As Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad noted, the local commanders had no choice, though they could certainly have resigned, but in an almost war situation, it was not an easy decision to take.
The Intelligence Bureau and its Director, BN Mullick had no clue about the exact position of the border and the Chinese preparations.
On 14 August, 1962, Brigadier DK Palit, Director of Military Operations visited the Corps Headquarters in Tezpur. He was told about the issue about the Line.
In his memoirs, War in the High Himalayas, Palit recalled the encounter: “On my return to Delhi I referred the Thagla dilemma to the Director of Military Survey. The latter commented that as the existing maps of the area were ‘sketchy and inaccurate, having been compiled from unreliable sources’… He confirmed that the recognised border was the watershed, but qualified this statement by adding ‘the exact alignment of [the border] will depend on accurate survey…it would take two to three years to complete’.”
When Palit enquired with S Gopal, the Director of the Historical Section, Gopal explained that since the boundary talks with the Chinese in 1960, the Government of India had been aware that the actual terrain in the area of the tri-junction was different from that depicted on the Simla map. But Palit adds: “What Gopal had not told me — and I found out only later — was that the Chinese had not accepted our arguments and had counter-claimed Thagla ridge, as Chinese territory.” By then, it was already too late to go back, at least for the egos of the main actors in Delhi.
Mao needed a pretext ‘to teach India a lesson’. Some senior Indian Army officers and politicians offered it to him. However, the fact that the Chinese attack occurred simultaneously in all sectors (Tawang, Walong in NEFA and Ladakh) is certainly proof that the operations had been prepared well in advance by the communist regime in Beijing, which didn’t really need a pretext.
(The accompanying visual is of Indian troops moving towards the border to confront Chinese troops in 1962. Courtesy: Life)

Who attacked whom?

My article Who attacked whom? (Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Sino-Indian War) appeared in The Statesman today.
Click here to read...

1962: The McMahon Line Saga

Here is the Introduction of my forthcoming book, 1962: The McMahon Saga published by Lancer Publishers.

In 2012, we are ‘celebrating’ the 50th anniversary of a tragic event which has remained a deep scar in the Indian psyche: the border war with China.
What perhaps makes the issue yet more painful is the fact that the Government of India (mostly under the Congress leadership since 1962) has continued to hide the report of the debacle prepared by Lt Gen. Henderson-Brooks and Brig. Prem Bhagat in 1963.
Why is the Indian public not authorized to know what happened on the slopes of the Thagla ridge of the then West Kameng division of the NEFA in October 1962?
It is one of the issues that we have tried to analyze from what is known of the famous Report. We have also gone through the probable reasons for the present establishment keeping the report under wraps for nearly 50 years.
Our conclusion is that the local Army commanders (4 Infantry Division and 7 Infantry Brigade) were not told where the border was. A shameful Himalayan blunder indeed.
Several years ago, we acquired a large collection of British archival documents related to the Tibet-India border. For a long time we sat on it, but with the forthcoming 50 year (let us not call it ‘Golden Jubilee’, though it could accurately be termed ‘Black Jubilee’), we thought that we should do something with these rare documents. This is the genesis of these essays.
The thread between this collection of papers is the Tibet-India (today China-India) frontier in the North-East, as well as other musings linked with the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, for example Mao’s motivations for ‘teaching India a lesson’.
The fact that despite of hundreds of books and articles have been written on the 1962 China’s war and the border issue, there is very little in print on the background of the War. Did not China go to war (though they say that it is India which attacked first)?
The more one digs into this question, the more one discovers that it is deeply, intimately linked with the history of modern Tibet, particularly the status of the Roof of the World as a de facto independent nation.
Nobody can deny that many contemporary issues in the domain of national security and defense are the direct outcome of what happened at the beginning of the 20th century on the Roof of the World and the tumultuous trilateral relations between British India, China and Tibet.
As World War II drew to a close, the position of the British government was clear. In August 1943, a note from Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister to Dr. T. V. Soong, the Chinese Ambassador in Great Britain says: “Since the Chinese Revolution of 1911, when Chinese forces were withdrawn from Tibet, Tibet has enjoyed de facto independence. She has ever since regarded herself as in practice completely autonomous and has opposed Chinese attempts to reassert control.”
The dispute with China only started at the end of the 1950’s as a consequence of China’s occupation of Tibet. Relations between India and China today are closely linked to this event and in reading these essays, one will understand that the border dispute with China will not be solved till the Tibetan issue is settled in a satisfactory way.
What also emerges from of this study is that for centuries, if not millennia, there no border in the Westphalian sense of the term; men and goods always travelled freely from one side of the Himalayan range to the other; this abruptly stopped in 1962.
It does not mean that there were no friction between the Tibetan world and the tribal populations living between the plains of Assam and the ‘snow line’, as older British maps put it.
The border situation was undoubtedly hardened after the Chinese occupation of Tibet, especially after the Dalai Lama took refuge in India in March/April 1959. This also triggered a tougher stance by the Indian officials dealing with the border issue; first amongst them Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister (as well as External Affairs Minister). The direct outcome was a war that India has neither forgotten nor really digested.
But before we go into the more contemporary period, it is necessary to have a look the events of the beginning of the 20th century.
We start this series of studies with a young British Colonel, Francis Younghusband entering Lhasa with his troops in 1904.
In the Tibetan capital, Younghusband made a great discovery: the Chinese presence on the Tibetan plateau was a constitutional fiction.
This had long been suspected by British officials. Had not Lord Curzon written a year before Younghusband left for Tibet: “We regard the so-called suzerainty of China over Tibet as a constitutional fiction, a political affectation which has been maintained because of its convenience to both parties”? But after Younghusband’s journey to Tibet, the British had concrete proof of it.
The Simla Conference in 1914 was the direct outcome of this discovery: if the Tibetan issue was to be solved, the Lhasa Government should be a party to any agreement.
During the Simla Conference in Simla, the Tibetan Plenipotentiary sat on equal footing with Sir Henry McMahon, his British counterpart and Ivan Chen, the Chinese one. The Convention signed by India and Tibet (and only initialed by China) did not solve the vexed Tibet-China frontier issue, but the border between India and Tibet was fixed in the form of a thick red line on a double-page map; that was the McMahon Line.
Before going into the intricacies of the Simla Convention, we will follow the steps of two intrepid British ‘explorers’, Capt. Frederick Bailey and Capt. Henry Morshead of the Survey of India who spent the last months of 1913 scouting for the British Empire on, the other side of the ‘snow line’. Their experience and notes would be invaluable for Henry McMahon and his assistant Charles Bell to draw the famous Red Line.
Bailey’s and Morshead’s escapade was followed by a series of ‘Expeditions, Missions and Promenades’ by British officials, mostly Political Officers or Assistant Political Officers posted in the North-East. This provided the Empire with a greater control and better intelligence on the tribal ‘unadministered’ areas, north of the Inner Line, marking the regions ‘administrated’ by the Government of Assam.
Most of these quasi-military expeditions were triggered by law and order incidents like the Abor Expedition which followed the murder Noel Williamson, Assistant Political Officer at Sadiya and Dr. J. D. Gregorson, a doctor in the tea gardens.
The Chinese ‘threat’ was also a good excuse to advance the British Administration in these remote areas.
The Chinese troops of Zhao Erfeng, the warlord of Sichuan had entered Lhasa in 1910 and tried to capture the Dalai Lama who had to temporarily take refuge in India. Two years later, the remaining Chinese soldiers were thrown out of Tibet and the Dalai Lama could return, declaring the Independence of his country in 1912. But the Chinese presence, particularly in the Siang and Lohit Valley continued to greatly worry Delhi and London.
In March 1914, an agreement was reached between the Governments of Tibet and British India to demarcate their common border. Here again the Chinese menace made it compulsory for Delhi and London to have a fixed boundary.
The accord had some special conditions, particularly about a famous pilgrimage around the Dakpa Sheri, the ‘Pure Crystal Mountain’ in Tsari region, which crossed south of the McMahon Line, into Indian territory. We shall consecrate a chapter to this issue.
We shall also travel on the remote tracks of the valleys of the Subansiri, the Siang or the Lohit in the footsteps of adventurous Assistant Political Officers trying their best to convince Shillong (then the capital of Assam) and Delhi that it was in the interest of British India to consolidate its administration, establish regular contact with the tribal populations and set up the defence of these far-away areas. They were not always heard by their bosses in Delhi and London.
During our peregrinations on the Himalayan border, we will go in detail into some relatively little known issues, such as the history of Tawang located in the north-eastern part of today’s Arunachal Pradesh; but also into the British policy towards Tibet and even the possibility for India to militarily defend the Roof of the World. A detailed plan was prepared by the War Office for the purpose; we shall analyze it. Interestingly, the operations were planned with 7 squadrons of the RAF. Unfortunately 15 years later, the Government of India had forgotten that the Air Force could be used in the Himalayan region.
Particularly interesting will be the long-drawn discussions in Lhasa between the British Political Officers in Sikkim (first Sir Basil Gould and then Arthur Hopkinson) on the confirmation of the McMahon Line and the possibility of ‘returning’ to Lhasa government, some areas south of it.
Interestingly British India had a Tibet Policy. Partly in response to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s offer to give Tibet of ‘a very high degree of autonomy’, Sir Olaf Caroe, then Foreign Secretary of the Government of India drafted a clear Tibet Policy. We shall look at it in some detail.
At the end of World War II, a British Memo noted: “There would seem to be nothing irreconcilable between this offer of ‘a very high degree of autonomy’ and the attitude of His Majesty’s Government. It is clear however, from conversations which took place between British and Chinese representatives in Lhasa in 1944 that with regard to Tibet, there is a considerable difference between the British and the Chinese conceptions of the word autonomy.”
The ‘autonomy’ envisaged by the Government of British India was indeed different from the one mentioned by Chiang Kai-shek in his speech in the Chinese Assembly on August 24, 1945 when the Generalissimo elaborated on the nationalist policy concerning Tibet. After declaring China’s desire to allow the ‘frontier racial groups’ to attain independence if capable of doing so, he asserted: “I solemnly declare that if the Tibetans should at this time express a wish for self-government our Government would, in conformity with our sincere traditions, accord it a very high degree of autonomy. If in the future, they fulfill economic requirement of independence, the nation’s Government will, as in the case of Outer Mongolia, help them to attain this status”.
In London, many believed that Chiang was playing to the gallery and was not really sincere in offering to grant independence to Tibet. The trick, according to British officials, was to show that China was in control of Tibet (it was not the case). Only a sovereign in full control can generously offer ‘autonomy’ to his ‘subjects’. But in the Tibetan case, Lhasa was for all purposes already de facto independent, therefore there was no question of ‘offering’ what Tibet already possessed.
A statement would eventually be issued on November 5, 1945 by the British Cabinet in London. It reiterated the points expounded in the 1943 Memorandum from the British Prime Minister Anthony Eden to T. V. Soong.
The Statement stated that ‘in general’, two factors governed the Tibetan question, first “Tibet has in practice regarded herself as autonomous and has maintained her autonomy for over 30 years”; second “our attitude has always been to recognize China’s suzerainty, but on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous by China”.
The purpose of the Memo was to find a solution in case of “domination of Tibet by a potentially hostile major power [which] would constitute a direct threat to the security of India.”
The security of the border areas was always outmost in the minds of the British administrators dealing with the North-East.
India’s objectives were clearly expressed: “The Government of India are therefore, vitally interested in maintaining friendly relations with Tibet and in preserving for Tibet at least that measure of autonomy she now enjoys.”
The outcome of the discussion was unambiguous, London (and Delhi) did not want to have a new neighbour on its borders, particularly not the Soviet Union or China.
This perception of what is ‘autonomy’ remains the bone of contention between Beijing and Dharamsala today.
The Memo thus defines the British perception: “The basis of Tibetan autonomy must rest in strong diplomatic support by HMG [His Majesty Government] and by India so that the Tibetans will not be subjected to pressure by any potential hostile power.”
The British Government did not think only in terms of an armed invasion (by Russia or China), but also about ‘infiltrations’. As recently witnessed in Nepal, where local elements have encouraged a slow take-over of the country by the People’s Republic of China, infiltrations have been a method recurrently used by successive Chinese leaders.
The Government of India continued to follow the policy outlined in the Memo till the end of 1949.
But everything began changing on January 1, 1950 when Communist China announced its intention to ‘liberate’ Tibet.
It was done on October 7, 1950 and a few weeks later, the ‘liberation of Tibet’ was announced to the world (by the Chinese). It was the turning point in the modern history of the Himalayan region.
Surprisingly, Nehru changed his stance; from being a country ‘verging on independence’, Tibet became an ‘occupied country’, but Delhi did not announce any change of policy, mainly because the Government decided to play the card of ‘friendship’ with China.
Taken by surprise, Delhi had no Tibet Policy to cope with the new situation. The well-known letter written on November 7, 1950 by Sardar Patel to the Indian Prime Minister, which we shall analyze, was the first step in the direction of preparing a proper policy for India’s borders.
The two months of November/December 1950 saw an opportunity to work on this policy. All the ingredients were present in Patel’s letter; unfortunately, they would only be partially implemented (through the Himmatsinghji Committee report in particular).
More than 60 years later, the words of Patel still ring true: “Throughout history, we have seldom been worried about our Northern frontier. The Himalayas haven regarded as an impenetrable barrier against any threat from the North. We had a friendly Tibet which gave us no trouble.”
The letter goes on analyzing:
-    a military and intelligence appreciation of the Chinese threat to India both on the frontier and the internal security.
-    An examination of our military position and such redisposition of our forces as might be necessary, particularly with the idea of guarding important routes or area which are likely to be subject to dispute
-    An appraisal of the strength of our forces
-    A long-term consideration of our defence needs
-    The question of Chinese entry into the UNO
-    The future of our mission in Lhasa and trade posts at Gyanste and Yatung
-    The policy in regard to the Mac Mahon Line
That was a Tibet Plicy.
Nehru did not reply to Patel, but drafted his own defeatist policy on November 18, 1950; 62 years later, the imbroglio created by Nehru’s idealist views remains unresolved. Nehru’s Note had concluded: what “we should seek is some kind of understanding of China” and he adds, “China desires this too for obvious reasons.” It was a wrong assumption.
“We cannot save Tibet”, was Nehru final conclusion.
A few days later Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel passed away; he probably was the one Indian politician who could have balanced Nehru; the destiny of India could have taken a different direction; it was not to be. With the demise of Patel, the Tibet Policy was buried for the sake of the newly-found ‘friendship’ with China.
One of the most fascinating characters in pre-1950 Tibet is the scholar from Amdo, Gedun Choepel. He is one of the first Tibetans to travel from the Roof of the World, study Indian languages and literature and reinterpret Tibetan history in a more holistic way. At the end of his too-short life, he was embroiled in the border issue at a time as British India were trying to reconfirm the McMahon Line through an offer to return Tawang to the Tibetan Government. His inner and outer journey will be an occasion to look at the Nationalist China’s policy towards Tibet and the increase in Chinese activities (mainly intelligence) on the Roof of the World at the end of World War II.
One difficulty faced by researchers wanting to study the intricacies of the border issue and the causes of the 1962 conflict is that, after the escape of the Dalai Lama to India in March 1959, the Chinese have confiscated the Tibetan archives. Though they presented some documents during the 1960 borders talks with India, it was only selected documents which could be used to drive their argument, mainly about Tawang area.
One question remains, had India a Tibet Policy before the 1962 conflict? An in-depth study of Nehru’s works will show that Delhi did not have anything which can be called a ‘policy’ to tackle the situation on its borders. In 1957, Nehru even told Apa Pant, the Political Officer in Sikkim: “We live in a world where national boundaries become more and more anachronistic”; Communist China had just opened a road across Indian territory in the Aksai Chin of Ladakh.
Five years later, the ‘anachronistic’ boundary became the object of a war between India and China.
The fact remains that India had interests in Tibet and badly needed a Patel-like strategic vision to protect these interests as well as the country’s security along the Himalayan borders. This was non-existent; it resulted in the disaster of October 1962.
Finally, we shall look at India’s interests in Tibet today and at the need of a proper policy taking into account the border row, the presence of the Dalai Lama in India and the traditional cultural and trade relations between the Roof of the World and the Indian subcontinent.

An anecdote
We would like to recount a telling anecdote to conclude. We once asked the Dalai Lama  if the Tibetan Government had not committed a great blunder, at the time of India’s Independence, when it refused to immediately acknowledge the 1914 border agreement and the Simla Convention.
He answered: “About Mon (Tawang) in NEFA area, I remember that around 1945/45 [it was probably in 1945, during Hopkinson’s visit], at that time I had no responsibility. I heard and noticed that a special Tibetan National Assembly took place and a British [Indian] mission came to see the Kashag [Tibetan Cabinet] in the Potala. I remember some of the people of the Mission who came. (I think Richardson  was one of them). Along with them, there were some people dressed in Sikkimese dress. From my window in Potala, I noticed that and I was told that the Tibetan National Assembly was taking place; the session was going on because the Bristish Army had entered in Tawang area. The Tibetan government wanted to protest. So, therefore it was an indication that at that time because Tawang and these areas had been in possession of the Tibetans [in the past], and the [National Assembly] wanted to hold on to these areas. Although in 1914 at the Simla Convention the border was already demarcated and [the Agreement] was signed [by the Tibetan Government]. But most of the Tibetans did know that (laughing). And on the spot when some Bristish officials came, the Tibetan officials said: “This is our land” (laughing) But they did not know that the Government had already decided in 1914 [about the border between Tibet and India]. So they did not know what had been decided [in 1914]. Such a wonderful Government!”
The Dalai Lama could stop laughing.
Had the Tibetans government acted more decisively in the 1940s, during what they call the Minority (of the Dalai Lama), writing this book would have not been necessary.

Prisoner of War in Tibet

Indian POWs in front of the Potala after their release (April 1963)
Lt. Col. Rattan Singh, Lt. Col. Balwant S. Alhuwalia, Brig. John Dalvi,
Lt. Col. Maha Singh Rikh, Lt. Col. K.K. Tewari

This is the continuation of yesterday's article The Death Trap of the Namkha Chu recounting the story Maj. Gen. K.K. Tewari (Retd.), Commander Signals of the 4 Infantry Division during the 1962 War.

As told by General Tewari:
On the road to Tibet
On October 20, 1962, the Indian prisoners were marched along a narrow track across the Namkha chu (river); later we went up to the Thagla pass (about 15,000 feet). On our way, we passed huge stocks of unfired mortar shells by the sides of our mortar positions, while on the northern side of the ridge, Chinese parties were still bringing up 120 mm mortars on a man pack basis.
After 3 days walk, we reached a place called Marmang in Tibet. From there we were taken in covered vehicles at night. During the journey, the Chinese tried to demoralize us; they would make fun of our army: "You do not even have cutting tools for felling trees. You use shovels to cut down trees." It was true; they had seen our troops preparing their defensive positions near the Namkha chu. There were other remarks such as, "You people have strange tactics. You sit right at the bottom of the valley to defend your territory instead of sitting on a high ground."
We arrived at the PoW camp located at Chongye [in Central Tibet] on 26 October and were accommodated in Lama houses which were all deserted although we could see some activity in the monastery above these houses on the side of a hill. 
We were to spend over five months in this camp, located south west of Tsetang, off the main highway to Lhasa. The prisoners were segregated into four companies: No. 1 Company was all officers, JCOs and NCOs. Majors and Lt Colonels were also separated from the JCOs and men. No. 2 and 3 Companies were jawans of various units. No. 4 Company, consisted only of Gorkhas and was given special privileges, for obvious political reasons. Each company had its own cookhouse where the Indian soldiers selected by the Chinese were made to cook.
In our house, we were four Lt Colonels (Maha Singh Rikh of the 2 Rajputs, Balwant Singh Ahluwalia of the Gorkhas, Rattan Singh of 5 Assam Rifles and myself), while John Dalvi was kept in confinement in Tsetang, a few km away from Chongye.
When we made representations to the Chinese that under the Geneva Convention on PoWs, officers had the right to be with their men, we were told quite bluntly that all these were nothing but imperialist conventions.
I shivered through the first couple of nights but then had a brain wave. I had noticed a pile of husk outside. We asked the Chinese if we could use it. Luckily, they accepted, and we could use the stuff as a mattress as well as a quilt.
For almost a month after our arrival, we were not let out of the room. Each of these lama houses had its own latrine in one corner with an open but very effective system of soil disposal. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, the `disposal squad' of pigs had itself been disposed off by the Chinese.
There was an English speaking Chinese officer, Lt. Tong who was with us almost throughout our stay in the POW camp. He would come daily and talk to us individually or together. The theme of his talk with the POWs was monotonously the same: the Chinese wanted to be friends and it was only the reactionary government of Nehru, who was a lackey of American imperialism that wanted to break this friendship. "Then why did you attack us on 20 October?" They would try to explain that India attacked first and the Chinese attacked only in self-defense.
On 5 December, we were given for the first time some books and magazines to read. This consisted of Mao's Red Book, some literature on the India-China boundary question and a few Red Army journals. But whatever they were, they were most welcome for me at least. There was something to do at last to occupy the mind. I took notes from the Red Book. It is a pity that our government did not read some of the Mao’s thoughts. I noted them down at that time: "Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning" or "The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy halts, we harass, the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue."
Towards the end of December 1962, the Red Cross sent us one parcel each with two packets in it. One packet had warm clothes, a German battle dress, a pair of long johns, warm vest, muffler, cap, jersey, warm shirt, boots and a towel. The second packet contained foodstuff including a bar of Sathe chocolate, tins of milk, jam, butter, fish, packets of sugar, atta (wheat flour), dal (pulses), dried peas, salt, tea, biscuits, condiments, cigarettes and vitamin pills. It certainly was a very well thought-out list of items.
Perhaps to demoralize us, the Chinese would often play Indian music on the public address system in the camp. One of the songs which was played repeatedly was Lata Mangeshkar's "Aa Ja Re-Main to kab se Khari Is par...." [Come, I have been waiting for so long] This would make us feel homesick.
With my habit of writing a diary, I kept notes as a POW also. In the first week or so, the only available paper to write on, were some sheets of toilet paper in my para jacket pocket. The question was how to keep these papers from being discovered by the Chinese. What I had done was to open the stitching on the ‘belt’ part of the trousers and then slide the folded papers inside. This was how my diary notes on toilet paper could be brought out to India.
One other episode of our stay in the camp is worth recording. One day, towards the end of our stay, at our request we were taken to see the palace and the monastery. It was a shock to see the palace with all the beautiful Buddha statues of all sizes and fabulous scrolls (tankhas) lying broken, defiled and torn and trampled on the ground.
On 25 December, we, the seven field officers were taken in one of the captured Indian Nissan trucks to spend the Christmas morning with Brig. John Dalvi at Tsetang. He was kept all alone and was comfortably accommodated. We had breakfast and lunch with him and were shown a movie. Dalvi had suffered a great deal mentally — being all by himself. He was now better.
The first letters we received from home came only in the third week of February 1963. Some of us, including myself, received parcels of sweets too.
On March 26, we were informed that we would soon be released and taken for a conducted tour of the mainland China. Suddenly we became VIPs, though still held as prisoners. We were given various comforts and given new clothes and shoes.
Before leaving the PoW camp, we asked the Chinese to take us to the graves of our soldiers who had died in our camp. There were seven of them including Subedar Joginder Singh, who had been awarded a PVC. We were told by the Chinese that he had refused to have his toes, which were affected by frost-bite, amputated. According to the Chinese, he had told them that his chances of promotion to Subedar Major would be adversely effected if his toes were amputated. We were told that he died of gangrene.
On 28 March, we left the camp, ironically in an Indian captured vehicle and were driven to Tsetang to pick up Brig John Dalvi and three other Lt. Colonels and five Majors. On 29th March, we were all driven in a bus to Lhasa. On 5 April, we were flown in two IL 14 aircrafts to Xining [Qinghai Province]. After a long tour of China, during which we were shown China’s ‘progress’ after the Communist revolution, we were informed on 27 April that we shall be handed over to India at Kunming on 4 May.
At the handing over ceremony, we witnessed a last surprise performance by the Chinese. Throughout our tour of China, an immaculately dressed Chinese had accompanied us. He was not dressed in cotton padded clothes like all the others. He commanded a lot of respect from the other Chinese. We used to refer to him as the ‘General’. He had a chap trailing around behind him always, helping him with things, offering a chair, a cup of tea, etc. We used to refer to that fellow as the orderly to the General. At the handing over ceremony, however, the person who sat down and signed on behalf of China was the ‘orderly’ and the one who stood behind to pass him the pen to sign was the ‘general’! Such are the Chinese ways!
On May 5, we took off at 9.10 a.m. from Kunming and were scheduled to land at Calcutta at 1.20 p.m. Before reaching Calcutta, the pilot announced that there was some problem with the under carriage not opening and that we might have to crash land, finally we landed ultimately at 2.30 p.m. at Dum Dum with all the fire tenders lined up. It would have been such an irony of fate if we had been killed in a crash landing in India!
In my opinion, the Chinese had prepared their attack for at least 2 or 3 years. I can give you few examples: one day a Chinese woman came and recited some of Bahadur Shah Zafar's poems, much to our delight. The Chinese had certainly prepared for this war most diligently because they had interpreters for every Indian language right in the front line. This Urdu-speaking woman must have lived in Lucknow for a long time. Same thing for one of our guards, though he had not said a single word for 5 months (we used to call him Poker Face), we discovered that he could speak perfect Punjabi when he left us in Kunming.
Their constant brainwashing was to make us accept that we had attacked them.