Indian Defence Review

Mules carrying ammunition over a mountain pass during 1962 War

Claude Arpi’s demand to release the Henderson Brooks report is akin to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seeking asylum in India. Understandably, Wikileaks disclosures of black money stashed abroad by Indians had sent many personalities scurrying for cover. There was flurry of movement to foreign lands, personal jets, and chartered planes, jets lent by birds of same flock, unexplained mysterious absences and what have you. Now that there is some measure of relief, Julian Assange wants asylum here. Where is the guarantee that he will not release another list disclosing how the black money has been siphoned out, to which new destinations, how much has been surreptitiously routed back to India, by whom, and into which developmental, private construction or other projects. Edward Snowden is even bigger threat. That he is already in league with Julian is an established fact, implying Julian can always leak information through Edward. But the bigger threat is what information Edward has swiped from the US NSA’s Prism. Although our Foreign Minister has certified “no data has been stolen” from the Indian Embassy in Washington DC, his own subordinates are not convinced of his credentials as cyber expert. So getting back to Edward Snowden, God knows what secrets this guy may leak out given that even Obama appears so shaken up.

Claude has quoted Neville Maxwell in questioning that even if Jawaharlal Nehru emerges in in bad light in the Henderson Brooks Report, why should it be kept in wraps in a modern democracy like India. He also writes that in 2008, Defense Minister, Mr AK Antony told the Indian Parliament that the Henderson Brooks could not be declassified. Mr Antony claimed that the report could not be made public because an internal study by the Indian Army had established that its contents “are not only extremely sensitive but are of current operational value.” When did the Government of India start seeking military advice on strategic security issues? As to Claude pointing out that the report only generally points out to lack of political direction, which report in India ever has indicted individuals in power?

Claude Arpi has quoted the Henderson Brooks Report in saying, “No major security threat other than from Pakistan was perceived. And the armed forces were regarded adequate to meet Pakistan’s threat. Hence very little effort and resources were put in for immediate strengthening of the security of the borders.” What stands obfuscated was this was ‘whose appreciation’; political appreciation, military appreciation, individual appreciation? Perhaps there could have been no one better to warn Nehru of China’s intentions and in no better form than Sardar Patel’s strategic advice through his letter dated 7^th November 1950, excerpts of which are as follows:

“…We have to consider what new situation now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we knew it, and the expansion of China almost up to our gates. Throughout history we have seldom been worried about our north-east frontier. The Himalayas have been regarded as an impenetrable barrier against any threat from the north. We had a friendly Tibet which gave us no trouble. …..Chinese irredentism and communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the western powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it ten times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lie concealed racial, national or historical claims. The danger from the north and north-east, therefore, becomes both communist and imperialist…….for the first time, after centuries, India’s defence has to concentrate itself on two fronts simultaneously….. we shall now have to reckon with communist China in the north and in the north-east, a communist China which has definite ambitions and aims and which does not, in any way, seem friendly disposed towards us…….”

But, what was the military appreciation about the Chinese threat? It is well known that both Nehru and Krishna Menon remained convinced China would not attack us. Krishna Menon attended a war game conducted by the military in Lucknow in 1961 that assessed how the Chinese would attack, which was exactly the way it happened in 1962, but Krishna Menon rubbished it totally. More significantly, in 1962 (the very year of the Sino-Indian War), Krishna Menon addressed the National Defence College in Delhi and when queried about the possibility of China attacking India, shouted at the audience to shut up saying if such was the thinking of the students, then the NDC should be shut down. This incidentally, is available on audiotape.

The 1954 Panchsheel Agreement with China gave Nehru visions of everlasting peace. UNSC seat offered to India was magnanimously given away to China. Demonstrators urged Nehru to take a firm stand towards Chinese violations of the Indian border during Zhou-en-Lai’s visit to India in 1960 but Zhou-en-Lai cunningly sang peace lullabies that were lapped up by Nehru. Krishna Menon had the distinction of orchestrating the first defence deals scandal in independent India by making money through manipulating prices of jeeps being imported for the army while Nehru made the first move, in what in today’s parlance is termed as fiddling with the institutional integrity of the military, by appointing his blue eyed General , BM Kaul (an Army Supply Corps officer) to head the Corps facing the Chinese battlefront.

Historians agree that Zhou-en-Lai’s guile completely outwitted Nehru. Nehru’s neglect of military, utopian belief that China and India could live peacefully with open borders and not recognizing that economic growth and national security is symbiotic, ignored Pant’s advice. Military preparedness continued to be wholly neglected. Nehru continued to support China’s control over Tibet (an autonomous region) without reciprocal commitment from China regarding status of the Sino-India boundary. AG Noorani in his recent book ‘Two Sides of Nehru’ says that it was Nehru who “shut the door to negotiations on the (India-China) boundary on 1^st July 1954″ and his refusal to negotiate plus the 1960 rebuff to Chou-en-Lai…. may well have sowed the seeds of the 1962 India-China war.

What happened in 1962 is well known including Nehru’s missive to throw the Chinese out of Thagla Ridge. We fought a superior enemy in 1962 not because of the size of China but because we lacked strategic forethought, were unable to read the enemy, had poor political and military leadership, latter more because of the inexperienced BM Kaul thrust  by Nehru as the Corps Commander. To say that the army was poorly armed, equipped and trained would be an understatement, for Nehru believed he only needed police forces along the border with China. That the army had to fight in canvas shoes, sans winter clothing at those heights and meager amount of ammunition, should have put the hierarchy to shame. But political loyalty surpasses all other considerations in India. So we have in Delhi a prominent road named Krishna Menon Marg with a bust of him, garlanded every year on his birthday though India feels no need for a war memorial.

Nehru died a disillusioned man after telling the nation that “a powerful and unscrupulous opponent had responded with evil to our good”. The lessons of 1962 can be summarized as follows: China used deception at the highest political level in duping India’s political hierarchy into believing that China would never attack; lack of strategic thought and political beliefs devoid of reality led to the ill armed, ill equipped and ill trained state of Indian Army; India failed to read Chinese intentions despite Chinese ousting nationalists from Manchuria in 1948, sweeping into Tibet in 1951, occupying Sinkiang and shelling Taiwan in 1954, occupying Aksai Chin (38,000 sq kms) from 1955 to 1957, butchering own 30-40 million population during the ‘Great Leap’ and occupying Tibet in 1959 breaching promises made; military advice was totally ignored by Nehru and Krishna Menon; Thagla Ridge incident was mere excuse for PLA’s already planned pre-emptive strikes across a vast frontier creating massive shock action; China timed the offensive coinciding with the Cuban Missile Crisis to ensure US and USSR had no chance to look at the Sino-Indian border; Indian positions that had adequate fighting potential and could have been re-supplied by air too were ordered to withdraw due to poor higher leadership; IAF could have been used to bomb the enveloping movements, positions and administrative bases of the China as PLAAF was handicapped without requisite airbases in Tibet. However, this was not done; appointing BM Kaul as Corps Commander at the Chinese front and making him responsible for entire NEFA front was a huge mistake. He was ineffective in operations, reported sick at a crucial juncture and was sitting in a Delhi hospital while his troops were routed. He resigned after the war.

It is not that all the aforementioned is not known and has not been penned down by scholars, historians and participants of this unfortunate war over the years in books and articles. To that end, declassifying the Henderson Brooks is not going to bring out anything new. The danger is the debate that would follow about the dark side of Nehru’s Foreign Policy towards China and some of the legacies left by him: disdain for military; ignoring military advice; military kept out of strategic security considerations; disorganized higher defence set up; belief that political autocracy supported by bureaucracy is enough to run the country; utopian ideas of peace discounting ground realities – in plain terms no strategic sense whatsoever.

It may be argued that even the aforementioned issues are quite well known and so what is the problem in making the Henderson Brooks report public. The fear could well be whether India has been able to overcome these Nehruvian legacies, as mentioned above, or at least have we modified them to suit our national interests? This requires detailed analysis that may need many pages but a few examples as under could provide the cue:-

•  India acknowledged Tibet in the Chinese sphere of influence without reciprocal commitment by China concerning status of the Sino-Indian boundary. Similarly, through the 1972 Shimla agreement, India returned 93,000 Pakistani prisoners without resolving the J&K issue, not even resolving the ambiguity of the CFL beyond NJ 9842 under the 1947 Karachi Agreement, and even more significantly, not getting our military prisoners released from Pakistani jails in exchange. If India had applied strategic sense, Pakistan should have been made to agree to extension of the CFL beyond NJ 9842 to the Wakhan Corridor to the north (northwestern extremity of J&K), which would have obviated the subsequent Siachen issue altogether.
• When China made a road right through Aksai Chin in 1950’s, India came to know only one month before its completion, though Claud Arpi writes Nehru knew but kept quiet and “lied” to the Parliament in 1959. 60 years later, India came to know of 11000 Chinese having come into POK / Pakistan through a newspaper report in New York Times.
• Zhou-en-Lai kept singing peace and both Nehru and Krishna Menon believed China will never attack us. China says the same today and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the nation last December that “China will not attack us”. This is despite R&AW has been warning that China may attack us and some national and international scholars have also voiced similar warnings.
•  India’s forward infrastructure was atrocious in 1962. It is only slightly better today. Forward movement of forces, especially mechanized forces, remains problematic. Alternative alignments reconnoitered by army years back have not been cleared because of lack of operational priority communicated to the States by the Centre and concerned States stonewalling proposals on mundane grounds of tree cutting despite army assuring double the numbers the number of trees cut will be planted.
•  The gap between the PLA and Indian Military was large in 1962. Today the gap is widening exponentially, more because of political and bureaucratic intransigence than lacking finances.
• Nehru’s disdain for the military was well known but today an amazing situation exists in India, unparalleled anywhere in the world,  where military personnel have to approach the Civil Courts to get justice even for their authorized dues. It is not without reason Stephen Cohen’s wrote in his book on the Indian Army. “India has virtually ignored the military as a factor in nation building. This is surprising, for the military had a profound impact on the course of nationalist politics and also upon policies after 1947.”
• India did not have an integrated tri-Service set up in 1962 and still is in the same state. HQ Integrated Defence Staff which should have been fully merged with the MoD has come up as a separate HQ altogether. There has been little movement towards creating Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs) and Integrated Functional Commands (IFCs).
•  No National security Strategy in 1962. We are in the same state today. The higher defence set up has only been tinkered with – not streamlined.
•  India was bending backwards to China in 1962 and continues to do so. A 19 kilometres deep Chinese intrusion id described as “a small acme on the face” by our Foreign Minister. According to former ambassador P Stopden (himself native of Ladakh), over the years India has ceded to China over 400 square kilometres of territory in Ladakh alone. The implications are therefore clear – there have been many intrusions in the past that have been hushed up and similar may be the case in the eastern theatre. This apart, our political hierarchy is even acquiescing to Chinese in not hosting the Tricolor in open at Demchhok in Eastern Ladakh and stopping development work in border village Koyul in Leh.

Now why should the military not want the Henderson Brooks report de-classified when its de-classification can set in motion the much needed national debate and reforms? Though the media houses are in firm grip of the government why even allow such pinpricks? The bottom line is that the political hierarchy is taking refuge behind the cover that military cannot open its mouth and any reports of operations are always classified but then even in case of ‘Top Secret’ documents, which this report is not, a review is done afte10 years of its origin. Talk unofficially to any military officer and none would want this report to remain secret.  As regards the view that keeping this report under wraps is disservice to the nation, this is very true but only one among a long list of disservices. Inder Malhotra wrote in the Tribune on 12 April 2013, “Fourteen years after the formation of the National Security Council, this august body has met but rarely. During the last three years or so, it hasn’t met even once! Worse, to this day the second largest country in Asia does not have a national security doctrine ……The Army, the Navy and the Air Force each plough a lonely furrow in this day and age when every battle is a joint land-air-sea undertaking. The crux of the issue is what Trefor Moss wrote in The Diplomat dated 25 March 2012, saying, “The problem is the incoherence of India’s defense establishment, from industry through to government – therein lies the inferiority. It’s a danger to Indian security that has nothing to do with China, and that’s within India’s own power to put right.” But the question is does the political hierarchy have the will and inclination to do so? There appear to be no indications to this effect as of now!