Indian Defence Review

The vast tableland of Tibet abuts the Himalayan wall for most of its length. With bases in Tibet, a detemined enemy can infiltrate into India through the Himalayan passes. For ages Tibet had been a friendly neighbour with whom India had cultural and trade relations. During the British regime, the Indian Government had acquired special interests in Tibet. It ran Tibet’s postal and telegraph services besides running a mission at Lhasa, military posts at Gyantse and Yatung and several rest-houses on the Kalimpong-Lhasa road. Pilgrims and traders could travel freely between the two countries.

With China too, India’s relations had been good. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang leader, was on friendly terms with leaders of the Indian National Congress and had paid a visit to India during the Second World War. However, when the People’s Republic of China was inaugurated, the Indian Government was quick to grasp the realities of the situation and India was one of the first countries to recognize the new regime. The invasion of Tibet, therefore, came as a rude shock to the Indian Government. Chinese maps, which had till then been a minor irritant, now assumed a sinister significance. A protest note to Peking had no effect and was virtually rejected.

“When in 1952, in the early stages of our advent into the field of foreign intelligence we had asked his [Nehru’s] advice about our targets, he had clearly visualized that the two enemies whom India would have to confront would be Pakistan, which would utilize Pan-Islamism in its support, and China, which would use international communism for its ends, and had fixed these to be our main targets in the foreign field. . . . He counselled us not to be led away by the open professions of the Government in these matters, but to judge everything in India’s interests and seek his advice whenever there was conflict”.¹⁰

The Chinese too played the same game but did it more astutely. While acting the big brother, they prepared themselves militarily for the attainment of their national aims. The Chinese leadership had a grand design: the establishment of China’s hegemony over South-East Asia, so as to fill the power vacuum created by the British withdrawal. They went about their task with thoroughness and made each move at the time of their choosing, while allaying India’s apprehensions. For example, in September 1951, the Chinese Premier, Chou En-lai, told India’s ambassador that China intended in every way to safeguard India’s interests in Tibet and that ‘there was no territorial dispute or controversy between India and China’.¹¹

In September 1952, the two Governments signed an agreement regarding retention of the Indian Mission at Lhasa, which was converted into a Consulate General. In return, the Indian Government agreed to the opening of the Chinese Consulate General at Bombay. But conditions had changed in Tibet after the Chinese occupation and the agreement did not bring much relief to scholars, pilgrims and traders who attempted, according to the time-honoured custom, to enter Tibet. They suffered many frustrations.

After lengthy discussions, another pact called an Agreement for Trade and Cultural Intercourse was signed between India and China on 29 April 1954. The Panchsheel, or the Five Principles,¹² which was to govern future relations between the two countries, formed the preamble to this agreement. Some time before the negotiations began, the Indian Government gave wide publicity to its intention to relinquish its extra-territorial rights in Tibet inherited from the British regime. A day after the agreement was signed, it made a gift of its postal, telegraph, telephone and rest-house facilities to China.

In China as well as India, the agreement was hailed as a great step towards peaceful co-existence. Panchsheel was acclaimed as an ideal basis for relationship between nations and Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai became a popular slogan. Surprisingly, the Indian Government made no effort to settle the question of Chinese maps during the negotiations preceding the agreement. In return for all that India surrendered to the Chinese, they could have been brought round to making a declaration in this regard, accepting existing treaties and customary borders. The Indian leadership missed this opportunity. On the other hand, the Indian Government went out of its way to appease the Chinese. During the British regime, the Government of India had recognized only the suzerainty of China over Tibet. The new agreement referred to Tibet as a ‘region of China’.

The boundary issue did, however, come up for discussion at the negotiations. This was in respect of Himalayan passes on the Uttar Pradesh-Tibet border. After some discussions, both sides agreed to incorporate the following words in the agreement: ‘Traders and pilgrims of both countries may travel through the following passes. . . (1) Shipki Pass, (2) Mana Pass, (3) Niti Pass, (4) Kungribingri Pass, (5) Darma Pass and (6) Lipu Lekh Pass’. This was taken to be an indirect recognition that these were border passes.

Strangely, it was in this sector that the first border dispute arose. Bara Hoti is a small trading post, a few kilometres South of the Niti Pass. On 17 July 1954, the Chinese Government sent a protest note to India regarding the presence of Indian troops at Bara Hoti. When talks on this question began, the Chinese persisted in claiming that this place lay North of the pass. Despite Panchsheel this dispute never came to be settled.

The agreement was not fulfilled in respect of the trade agency at Gartok. Difficulties were always put in the way and no permanent agency was ever established there. The Indian consulate at Kashgar was obliged to close down after the Chinese Government moved to exclude all foreign interests from Sinkiang.

What were the Indian Army’s reactions to the events in Tibet? Retired civilian officials who held important posts in the post-Independence period have, in their writings, blamed the Army leadership for the happenings of 1962. S.S. Khera, who was the Cabinet Secretary during the crucial years, has said:

“The Army Chiefs did not appear to have become alive early enough to the threat from the North. Their whole training and mental make-up seemed to shun the possibility of a campaign along the Himalayan heights and on the Tibet border. . . . The Army Chiefs did not consider it a feasible proposition at all even to envisage an armed conflict with the Chinese. They seemed unable to escape the conditioning they had had under the British regime in India. . . . Inhibited in this way, not unnaturally, the Army Chiefs were reluctant to extend their activities to meet the threat across Tibet”.¹³

These are very serious charges. If true, they would condemn the Army Chiefs of the time in the eyes of posterity. Fortunately, they are not true and it is most surprising that a senior official of the Government should make such sweeping statements, which bear no relationship to facts. The reality was entirely different.

First, the British were well aware of the danger from the North. That was why they sent a military expedition to Tibet in 1904 and made it a buffer state, although, at that time, the danger was not from China, but from Czarist Russia. The Defence Services Staff College at Wellington is an institution where middle-rank officers of the three Services learn the mechanics of war. At the time of the Chinese invasion of Tibet a distinguished British soldier, Major General Lentaigne, was the Commandant of the Staff College. Brigadier Dalvi, who was a student at the College, recalls Lentaigne’s reaction when the news of the invasion came through. He was so perturbed that he walked into the main hall, interrupted the lecturer and proceeded to denounce our leaders for their shortsightedness and inaction, in the face of the Chinese action. Speaking purely as a soldier and a strategist, he said that India’s back-door had been opened and the Himalayas had become the boundary with a large, powerful and expansionist China. He dwelt on the vulnerability of our Eastern regions due to the concentration of industry and sources of raw materials and said that these would be within range of bombers operating from bases in Tibet.¹⁴

According to Dalvi, some weeks after this incident a very senior official’ of the External Affairs Ministry came to give the students of the Staff College a talk on Sino-Tibetan relations. He tried to ‘justify the [Government’s] policy of allowing China to subjugate Tibet’.

I asked General Cariappa in 1979 as to what his reaction was to the Chinese occupation of Tibet; he was, after all, the Army Chief at the time. He stated that after partition Indian troops were withdrawn from the Eastern frontier area and all airfields and Army camps were closed down. The Assam Rifles, who were at that time under the Government of Assam, were responsible for the security of this area. Early in January1951, Cariappa received an urgent message from the Assam Government that large bodies of Chinese troops were operating around Rima, a place North of Walong in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) and was asked if the Army could do something to stop any threat to Indian territory. The only thing that Cariappa could think of was to drop some paratroopers in the threatened area. The drop consisted of two officers and a platoon of men, including one officer and two men from the Engineers. Three Dakotas flew the party to the dropping zone near Walong and, after operating for about three weeks in the area, the paratroopers trekked back to Sadiya.

The parachute action had its effect and the threat of Chinese intrusion into Indian territory was removed for the time being. However, taking a long-term view of Chinese presence on the Northern borders, Cariappa appreciated that they might create trouble on the McMahon Line, the boundary between NEFA and Tibet. He felt that the remedy was to place NEFA and the Assam Rifles under the Army for the purpose of defence. His intention was to stabilize the McMahon Line in the same way as the British had done in the case of the Durand Line on the North-West Frontier. He wanted to establish posts all along the boundary and garrison them with the Assam Rifles. At the same time, he wanted to open up the wartime airfields, roads and military camps right up to the Chinese border. Accordingly, he took the matter to the Defence Minister, who told him to discuss it with the Prime Minister.The next day, Cariappa was called up by Pandit Nehru. Major General Daulat Singh was then officiating as Chief of the General Staff. Cariappa took him along. Cariappa outlined his plan for NEFA to the Prime Minister. Having listened to him, Nehru asked for the reason for all these measures. When Cariappa mentioned that the Chinese might have designs against this region, Nehru flared up, thumped hard on the table and said: “It is not the business of the Commander-in-Chief to tell the Prime Minister who is going to attack us where. In fact the Chinese will defend our Eastern frontier. You mind only Kashmir and Pakistan”. Cariappa walked out of the Prime Minister’s office, very disappointed.

Prime Minister Nehru could brush aside the Army Chief’s advice. But there was a man in his Government whose advice he could not ignore. He was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister. Unfortunately, he died in December 1950. Had Patel lived a few more years, India might have been spared the ignominy of 1962. A month before his death, on 7 November 1950, he wrote a long letter to Nehru, giving a masterly exposition of the threat that India faced on account of Tibet’s invasion and recommended certain measures to meet it. He said that the attitude of the Chinese Government was unfriendly and its policy expansionist. He further said that the invasion of Tibet would bring the Chinese Army to the gates of India and throw into the melting pot all past frontier settlements with Tibet. He pointed out that the Himalayan passes offered several ingress routes and that the population in most of the border regions bore affinity to the Tibetans – factors which the Chinese would exploit to achieve their ambitions.

In his advice to the Prime Minister, he stressed the following:

1. Urgent need to formulate a defence strategy.
2. Appraisal of the strength of the armed forces and, if necessary, reconsideration of the retrenchment plans for the Army.
3. Long-term co-ordination of defence needs, such as an assured supply of arms, ammunition and equipment.
4. Improvement of communications in the border regions, including rail, road, air and radio.
5. Policing of border posts, and building of an intelligence network in the threatened regions.¹⁵

According to Mullik (My Years with Nehru – The Chinese Betrayal), Patel’s letter was circulated to the ministries concerned. Later, a small committee was formed to visit NEFA and recommend places near the frontier where the Assam Rifles would be deployed. At the same time, another committee was formed under the chairmanship of Major General Himmatsinghji, Deputy Minister for Defence. It had representatives from the Army,¹⁶ the Air Force, the Ministries of Home, External Affairs and Communications and from the Intelligence Bureau. The Government also sanctioned the Indo-Tibet Border Force for manning the checkposts on the frontier less the Norh-East.

The Himmatsinghji Committee submitted its recommendations in two parts: on the Sikkim, Bhutan, NEFA and Burma border in April 1951, and on the Ladakh, Himachal, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh border in September that year. The committee’s recommendations included the reorganization and redeployment of the military forces in the area, some increase in the infantry and supponing arms, the development of certain airfields and the setting up of a radar network on the Eastern frontier. The committee also recommended considerable increase in the Assam Rifles and other armed police units for larger concentrations at vulnerable points, from which effective patrolling could be regularly undertaken. So far as intelligence was concerned, it recommended the abolition of the military intelligence organization in the field and its amalgamation with the Intelligence Bureau, the reorganization of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureaus at Calcutta and Shillong and the formation of an Intelligence Corps. The Committee also recommended the extension of civil administration into the interior of tribal areas along the borders and the establishment of a cadre of Frontier Service officers.

The Committee brought to light grave shortcomings in the security of India’s borders and in the administration of regions that lay close to them. According to Mullik, the Cabinet accepted all its recommendations and told the departments concered to implement them. This was where the hitch came.

Many factors affected the implementation: paucity of funds, difficult terrain and the absence of a sense of urgency. The last factor was the main reason for the state of unpreparedness in 1962. This is evident from the fact that the Border Roads Organization was set up only in 1960, nine years after the committee had sent in its recommendations, though the building of roads in the strategic regions should have received top priority. In the early fifties, NEFA and Aksai Chin must have seemed far away to those sitting in New Delhi.

The net result of the labours of the Committee, in so far as the immediate future was concerned, was an increase in the strength of the Assam Rifles, besides the growth in the importance of the Intelligence Bureau. A beginning was also made towards the extension of civil administration in NEFA, but nothing tangible was done for preparing the Army for the­ defence of the border. On the other hand, contrary to Patel’s advice, the retrenchment plan for the Army, formulated earlier, was put through, and about 50,000 men were sent home in 1951. This rundown was to some extent compensated by the integration of the state forces. In 1953, the Indian Army comprised between 325,000 and 350,000 officers and men of all categories, organized into seven divisions (4, 5, 10, 19, 26 and 27 Infantry Divisions, and 1 Armoured Division), two independent brigades (2 Armoured and 50 Para), administrative Headquarters, depots and installations.

In the autumn of 1953, there were reports of Chinese activity in the area inhabited by the Tagins, about a day’s march beyond Daporijo, in NEFA. When an Assam Rifles patrol was sent to investigate, some 300 of the tribesmen attacked its camp in the night. They killed 26 of the party, including the officer in command and a civil official who accompanied him. The remaining 72 men of the party were taken away as hostages, together with all the weapons of the patrol. To rescue the hostages, the Assam Rifles were ordered to mount an operation, with Daporijo as base. However, this place had no landing ground at the time and despatch of troops by land would have taken weeks. By then the hostages would, in all probability, have been massacred. A landing ground was, therefore, quickly built at Daporijo by dropping about a company-strength of paratroopers (infantry and engineers) on 4 November. The action against the Tagins was thereafter taken in hand.

Incidents like this and the one at Walong should have spurred the Indian Government to hasten its preparations for a possible showdown with the Chinese. But it was then busy with the negotiations that brought about the 1954 Agreement. According to Mullik, Nehru’s suspicions regarding Chinese intentions were aroused on account of their attitude during these negotiations and within a few months of its signing he ordered that frontier posts should be set up. Obviously, the recommendations of the Himmatsinghji Committee in this regard had not been implemented till then. Things moved slowly during the ‘Lotus Decade’. It is interesting to note that the Indian Government wanted to sign an agreement for 25 years, but the Chinese limited it to eight years.

The Army carried on with its routine existence from day to day on the premise that it had only to worry about defence against Pakistan. To save money for the country’s development, the Army was told to economize on expenditure. All sorts of ways of saving money for the Government were thought up. The Director of one of the services at Army Headquarters went so far as to dismantle and dispose of a factory that manufactured jerricans. He brought about a sizeable saving by issuing petrol and kerosene oil to units in bulk, in 200-litre barrels or from kerbside pumps, instead of jerricans. For this he was publicly praised by the Finance Minister. However, the result of this short-sighted economy was that in the 1962 operations in NEFA, there were no jerricans for dropping supplies of kerosene oil to the troops operating on the snow-clad Himalayan slopes. The Air Force had perforce to drop this commodity in 200-litre barrels and the jawans were expected to carry them up and down mountain slopes to their bunkers.

Such instances could be multiplied ad nauseum. Saving on defence became a fetish in India during this period. The Government went so far as to impose a cut in the men’s rations. The Army was told to make do with what equipment it had and to improvise for what it did not have. In fact improvisation became a routine in the Army. Among the lower echelons, it came to be known facetiously as doing things on Jai Hind basis.

Even the annual manoeuvres were largely run on Jai Hind basis. An officer who served with the prestigious 1 Armoured Division for three years (1956–59) says:

“All our vehicles were of Second World War vintage and had seen hard service. The progress of the Divisional column was marked by broken-down vehicles and by the time you reached your destination one-third of the vehicles had been written off. . . .I remember how a column of 40 bridging vehicles was represented by a single lorry flying a chequered flag. When a bridge was required to be “constructed”, this vehicle was given priority and it used to roar grandly down the road, bypassing all the vehicles on the convoy. What a farce! . . . A minefield was represented by two tapes laid on the ground and we used to carry out a mimicry of clearing mines, which were not there. Sometimes, even this was not done; if it would take eight hours to clear a lane, this time was merely added on paper, and the exercise continued”.¹⁷

A glaring example of the myopia among the policy-makers of the time was the move of Headquarters Eastern Command from Ranchi to Lucknow. NEFA was, and still is, a part of this Command’s responsibility. At a time when the threat to this region had become apparent, it would have made sense if this Headquarters had been moved further East, so as to be nearer the possible scene of operations. It was instead moved further West, perhaps because of the availability at Lucknow of better accommodation and other amenities for officers. Nearness to Delhi may have been another consideration.

After Cariappa, the first decade of Independence saw two more Army Chiefs, not counting Thimayya who took over in May 1957. Cariappa was succeeded by General Rajendrasinhji. Scion of a princely family of Kathiawar, he was commissioned after graduation from Sandhurst. While serving with 2 Lancers in the Second World War, he earned praise for his part in the hard-fought action at Meikili against Rommel’s Panzers. His gallantry brought him the first DSO to be won by a Sandhurst-trained Indian. To the high office of C—in—C he brought a princely dignity, sincerity and a sense of fair-play. Quiet by nature, he did not have Cariappa’ s swank or his messianic zeal. His tenure lasted a little less than two years. His successor, Shrinagesh, was an infantry soldier from the Kumaon Regiment.

It is interesting to note that the first three Chiefs did not have much difference in the matter of age or seniority. In fact, Cariappa was younger than his successor. Both Shrinagesh and Rajendrasinhji received their education in the United Kingdom. Shrinagesh served in Burma during the Second World War though he did not see much action. A good speaker and administrator, he held many gubernatorial posts after retirement from the Army in May 1957.­

All that can be said of the tenure of these two Chiefs is that, like good soldiers, they carried out the policies of the Government of the day. They did all they thought was good for the Army, within the financial limits imposed by the Government. Regimental traditions were preserved; so were officers’ messes, with their sacrosanct customs, except that the health of the Head of State was drunk in plain water instead of port or sherry. The morale of the troops was excellent. Good discipline was insisted upon and maintained. So were good turnout and drill. Hindi words of command were introduced. They sounded as impressive, and produced as good results, as the English commands that many generations of Indian soldiers had become used to.

Behind the facade of peacetime ceremonials and nicely kept messes, however, there was a certain hollowness. Appearances came to mean a good deal more than reality. The official history of the Regiment of Artillery has an interesting incident of this period. Some British officers had come to attend a regimental reunion and were taken round the Artillery establishments in the Nasik-Deolali area. ‘When they looked in at the expensive carpet and curtains in a Commandant’s office, one of them was overheard remarking in an aside – “Very nice, but will it fight?”¹⁸

Initiative was discouraged instead of being encouraged. It is normal military practice to study the organization and tactics of other armies and especially those of a possible enemy. During the early fifties, when Nehru heard that a pamphlet on the Chinese Army was being prepared at Army Headquarters, he at once had it stopped.¹⁹

While war clouds were gathering for India on her Northern borders, there were other developments that affected her security environment adversely. The growth of communist power in Europe and Asia led the United States and her allies to adopt a strategy of containment. The formation of the (NATO) in 1949 had been the first step in this direction. But this, organization, comprising a combined force from signatory nations, was meant chiefly for the defence of Westren Europe. During the mid-fifties the containment was extended to West Asia and South-East. Two organizations were created for this purpose. Like NATO both were sponsored by the USA. The (SEATO) had as its members Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and the USA. The (CENTO) consisted of Britian, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and the USA. Membership of these organizations gave Pakistan modern weapons and equipment in return for bases on her soil. India too was invited to join these alliance, but refused: such a step would have compromised the policy of non-alignement. With American equipment for Pakistan’s armed forces, the balance of military power on the Indian sub-continent began to change.

The Indian Government decided at this stage that it was not going to be drawn into an arms race with Pakistan. But to prepare the people for a struggle against external aggression, a citizens’ Army was created. Initially called the National Volunteer Force, it later came to be known as the Lok Sahayak Sena. The Government planned to train 500,000 citizens over a period of five years. Training camps were set up at various places, chiefly in the Punjab and Army instructors were posted to help train the volunteers. Somehow the idea failed to catch the public imagination and the scheme was later abandoned after a good deal of money had been wasted.

It was perhaps American aid that made the Pakistans more aggressive in 1956. They created incidents, may be to test Indian reaction. Early that year their troops occupied Chhad Bet, in the Rann of Kutch and opened fire on an Indian patrol that was sent to investgate. The Indian brigade at Ahmedabad took prompt action and forced the Pakistanis to quit. Their attack at Hussainiwala was more serious.

At this border-post, on the Sutlej River, near Ferozepur, both India and Pakistan had some troops. On the night of 18/19 March, Pakistani troops made a sudden attack on the Indian position, held by 4 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles. The attack was beaten back and the Pakistanis were dislodged from the area they had occupied. During the fighting, Lance Naik Sunder Singh showed great presence of mind and courage of the hightest order in silencing an enemy maching gun. His bravery won him the Ashoka Chakra class 1.²⁰

There were provocative incidents on the East Pakistan border also. Such occurrences only increased the tensions between the two countries. Some attempts had been made after the signing of the Nehru-Liaquat Pact to bring about a rapprochement. But every time the negotiations came to a dead-end on the question of Kashmir. Pakistan wanted the settlement on her own terms.

Click to buy

Besides the tension with Pakistan and the difficulties with the Chinese, the Indian Government had a revolt on its hands in the Eastern region. The Nagas had been restive for quite some time. By 1954, they were in open revolt. The civil authorities failed to cope with the situation and in 1956 the Army was ordered to deal with it. The insurgency in the region later became a complex affair, involving not only local politics but also covert foreign aid to the insurgents. How the Indian Army tackled the insurgency is the subject of another chapter but the commitment there, as also the build-up in Pakistan, brought a small increase in the strength of the Indian Army.

1. “The frequent evocation in India of the symbols pertaining to the golden era of Ashoka in the decade following Independence is significant”., P.V.R. Rao in Defence Without Drift, p. 9.
2. He was Defence Secretary from 1963 to early 1967.
3. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906.
4. The Defence of India and South-East Asia, by Lieutenant General P.S.Bhagat,vc, P. 64.
5. At the outbreak of the Second World War, 50 per cent of the ICS officers were Indian, while in the Army only 10 percent of the officers were Indian, At the time of Independence, many government departments had ICS officers as secretaries, while the highest rank till then attained by any KCIO was that of Brigadier.
6. The Myth of Independence, by Z.A. Bhutto, p. 80.
7. The Indo-Pakistani Conflict, by Russell Brines, p. 82.
8. Now Beijing.
9. Witness to an Era, by Frank Moraes, pp. 220 & 21.
10. My Years with Nehru - The Chinese Betrayal by B.N. Mullik, pp. 80–85.
11. Himalayan Battleground, by Fisher, Rose and Huttenback, p. 83.
12. These principles were non–interference in each other’s internal affairs; respect for each other’s territory and sovereignty; efforts for each other’s benefit, forswearing of aggression; and adherence to the ideals of co-existence.
13. India’s Defence Problem, by S.S, Khera. In his book My Years with Nehru - The Chinese Betrayal Mr B.N, Mullik has also made disparaging remarks about the Army’s leadership.
14. Himalayan Blunder, by Brigadier J.P. Dalvi, pp. 15&16.
15. Patel’s letter has been published and quoted extensively. In Brigadier Dalvi’s book it appears as an appendix.
16. Lieutenant General Kalwant Singh was the Army’s representative.
17. Major General R.M. Rau, avsm (retd) in a letter to the author.
18. History of the Regiment of ArtiIIery, published by Artillery Directorate, Army Headquarters, p. 179.
19. India’s Quest for Security, by Kavic, p. 95.
20. At that time there were three grades of this award: Class I, II and III. Later, the three grades were redesignated as Ashoka Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra.