During the hurly-burly of the Goa campaign in 1959 Bijji Kaul had assumed direct supervision of border operations in NEF A in order to ease the workload of an overworked DMO. Once he became involved with Operation Onkar (the establishment of Assam Rifles posts along the McMahon Line) he came to regard his control of this area as a personal commitment and continued to deal with it personally, even after the end of operations in Goa.
When he finally handed it all back to me in May 1962, I was somewhat out of touch with affairs on the north-eastern frontier where a new GOC, Niranjar Prasad, had taken over command of 4 Infantry Division. Clearly, it was time for me to pay a visit to Tezpur and Kameng FD. The Chip Chap and Galwan river episodes in Ladakh kept me at my desk during most of the summer and it was not till early August that I managed to get away from Delhi for a few days.
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When I called at HQ 4th Division in Tezpur, I found the atmosphere gloomy, in some ways almost hostile. Niranjan Prasad received me with a studied coolness, but he was too old a friend and too extrovert a character to continue with that for long. It was obvious that he was nursing a grievance and I persuaded him to come out with it.
Not so long ago it was I who had railed against the mindless rush to hustle troops up to the McMahon Line without giving them the potential to offer battle; now, as a representative of Army.
Once he had started, the floodgates opened. He virtually accused the General Staff of cravenness for meekly accepting from the government so impracticable and tactically pointless a task as Operation Onkar. He said that the establishment of thirty-five posts on the McMahon Line, some of them many days march even from the nearest mule-track, would strain his resources to such a degree that stocking programmes for his two infantry brigades would in. all probability have to be cancelled.1
Niranjan pointed out that although the forces to be deployed on Operation Onkar consisted of Assam Rifles personnel, it was his division that had been made responsible for establishing the posts and, despite disclaimers to the contrary, it would be from his quota of airlift that the Assam Rifles’ maintenance requirements would be met, thus hindering the logistical build-up at crucial places such as Towang and Walong. Furthermore, he saw no sense in locating a whole platoon at each of these remote border sites where, in any case, their potential for defence was virtually nil. A section at each site, he felt, would be sufficient to offer initial and temporary resistance.
In his opinion some of the less critical approaches could be covered by periodic patrolling from bases in the rear. He added that when he had tried to offer these suggestions to the CGS during the latter’s visit a month or so before, all he had received for his trouble was a blast of invective and threats, even though his own Corps Commander, Umrao Singh, had supported his arguments. The CGS had peremptorily asserted that since it was the Prime Minister himself who had ordered the posts to be set up, no counter-proposals would be entertained.
Niranjan asked me why Army HQ had accepted such operationally absurd directions from the politicians. Was the General Staff merely acting as a post office? He gibed.
“¦that in case we were proved wrong and the Chinese did launch a cross-border attack, the Army HQ plan was not to fight the main battle at the border”¦
Nirarijan’s tirade placed me in an awkward situation because essentially I sympathised with the greater part of his complaint. Not so long ago it was I who had railed against the mindless rush to hustle troops up to the McMahon Line without giving them the potential to offer battle; now, as a representative of Army. HQ, it was my role to defend that policy; it was I who would now have to act the would-be hus1ler. I felt that it might help clear the air if I gave a talk to the brigade commanders and the divisional staff to explain the General Staffs border options. I suggested as much to Niranjan and he willingly agreed.
In my talk to the officers of 4th Division I reiterated the Intelligence Bureau’s appraisal that while the Chinese might actively demonstrate against our posts, as they had done in the Chip Chap and I Gal wan valleys, they were unlikely to go to war on the border issue – and certainly not in NEF A, where they had tacitly agreed not to press their claims. This estimate, I said, was accepted by the government and by Army HQ and I added that in case we were proved wrong and the Chinese did launch a cross-border attack, the Army HQ plan was not to fight the main battle at the border; the Assam Rifles, after offering token resistance, would fall back to join the army, who would plan the main defences at selected and prepared positions such as Towang, Bomdila or Walong. I emphasised that that had been the concept of battle when I had commanded 7 Brigade; no orders from Army HQ had suggested a change front that concept.
I had expected a barrage of complaints about inadequate logistical cover but, curiously, no one raised that issue, and I assumed that the maintenance arrangements at Towang and other forward areas had improved as a result of the progress of road-building activities. (The road to Towang had reached Dhirang and beyond. Over Se-la it was still only a jeep track, expected to reach Towang within a month of the end of the monsoon season.)
Later, almost as an afterthought, Niranjan told me about the incident of the Dhola post and about his doubts regarding the alignment of the McMahon Line in the area west of the Nyamjang-chu. He said that whereas all the way from the Burma border to the Nyamjang valley the McMahon Line, as marked on the quarter-inch scale Survey of India map sheet, coincided with the Himalayan Crestline, westwards from Khinzemane the Line was marked as lying well to the south of the main Thag-la ridge. (The extent of the area between the Thag-la crestline and the McMahon Line marked on the map was about 60 sq km.)
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A patrol had set out across the Nyamjang River in mid-July to establish an Assam Rifles post near the Bhutan border. The political officer’s representative accompanying the patrol had insisted that the Thag-la ridge itself was the watershed border and. that was where our post should be. The patrol leader, a regular army officer, disregarded this advice because his map clearly showed the McMahon Line as passing well south of the ridge. Accordingly, he established a post on the southern bank of the Namka-chu, a stream flowing along the lower slopes of Thag-la ridge. He called it Dhola post, though in actual fact the site was known as Tsedong. Actually Dho-la was a pass on the ridge 3 km to the south.
“¦my experience of continuously having to resist pressure from the division to push more and more troops up to the McMahon Line. I had warned him, informally, to resist such pressures if he could, because of the logistical difficulties.
HQ 4th Division had referred the doubt about Thag-la ridge to HQ XXXIII Corps, asking for clarification on the exact alignment of the McMahon Line west of Nyamjang-chu. Niranjan had also suggested in his letter that if indeed the border lay along Thag-la ridge, he would like to establish his post tactically on the crest of the ridge, rather than in the valley below. In the month that had since passed he had received no reply and now, he added, the Chinese had beaten him to it because they had occupied Thag-la ridge. He told me that he would still like a clarification of the correct alignment of the border and asked me to have the reply expedited from Army HQ.
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