India’s china war
Neville Maxwell
Natraj Publishing
Rs.595 Pages 510

This book first published in 1970 was banned in India by Indira Gandhi and the dynasty for 40 years. An updated version was reprinted in 2015

Although liberals put up a stout defence, no politician’s star has fallen from the zenith of his glory to near rock-bottom as of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister who passed away in 1964. Undoubtedly there were some fine elements mixed in him. He united the country after Partition — the parting kick of the British Raj — led by example in transcending caste and religion, and ensured free India remained a functional democracy by according high respect and accountability to Parliament.

Yet this great man who strode not only the Indian, but world stage like a colossus, burdened the nation with three toxic legacies which makes it impossible for an objective historian to forgive him.

First, despite his claim to being a historian — he wrote Discovery of India (1946) — he ignored India’s several millennia tradition of private enterprise and imposed the socialist economic model of development upon the newly independent nation under which the State would “dominate the commanding heights of the Indian economy”. Private enterprise was strangulated and national savings and huge foreign loans were canalised into giant public sector enterprises (PSEs) managed by bureaucrats and government clerks.

Unsurprisingly, Central PSEs whose number has multiplied to 256, never made a half decent profit and dragged down the economy. For over 50 years, post-independence India’s GDP grew at an average 3.5 percent per year, while GDP growth in our neighbour nations of South-east Asia including China, grew at two and three multiples thereof.

Nehru’s second abiding sin was dynasticism and nepotism. Himself parachuted into the top echelon of the Congress party by his father Motilal whom he succeeded as president of the party in 1929 when he was only 29 years of age, Nehru signalled preference for his daughter Indira Nehru Gandhi as his successor, when he appointed her as president of the Congress in 1957. In turn, she anointed her totally inexperienced and unqualified sons Sanjay and later Rajiv as her heirs.

Moreover, Nehru saw nothing wrong in appointing his sister as ambassador to the United Nations, nephew R.K. Nehru ambassador to the United States, and several Kashmiri pandit kith and kin to highest offices including head of RAW, and most disastrously Gen. V.K. Kaul — an officer of no combat experience — as Chief of Defence Staff during the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, in which India suffered a humiliating defeat.

Nehru’s third egregious error for which the country has paid a huge price — and continues to do so — was neglect and failure to negotiate a clearly demarcated boundary between China and India. As a result, a hazy boundary which divides the world’s two most populous nations stretches over 4,000 km from the Aksai Chin plateau in the north-west to Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east.

As Neville Maxwell, a former Delhi-based correspondent of the prestigious Times, London, recounts in this diligently researched book, Nehru had numerous opportunities to negotiate a settled border with China, but for mysterious reasons stubbornly declined olive branches offered by the Chinese government.

For telling the story of the Sino-Indian border dispute like it was, this book first published in 1970 was banned in India by Indira Gandhi and the dynasty for over 40 years, and this new updated version under review was reprinted in 2015.

It’s a mystery why Nehru insisted that China should respect British drawn maps which showed the entire Aksai Chin as British Raj territory, when it was well- documented that Tibet and Aksai Chin were part and parcel of China for centuries before 1911, when China became a weak republic and was subjected to “unequal treaties” by European colonial powers, the Brits in particular.

Not only that, when the Chinese fed up with his “talk but not negotiate” policy began to assert control over what they claimed as their territory, Nehru directed the Indian Army to implement a “forward” policy under which patrols were sent deep into Chinese claimed territory to plant the Indian flag. Most of these patrols airlifted from the plains were ill-equipped for the Himalayan heights and were quickly surrounded and decimated by the Chinese army. Maxwell says that hundreds of jawans of the Indian Army lost their lives because of the forward policy.

As Maxwell recounts, in 1960 Chinese prime minster Zhou-en-Lai visited India with a detailed proposal under which the Chinese would accept the MacMahon Line in the north-east imposed upon Tibet (over which India had accepted Chinese suzerainity in 1950) by the British in 1914 in exchange for India accepting a Chinese drawn boundary in Aksai Chin. Under pressure from vociferous opposition parties in Parliament, Nehru rejected the proposal and persisted with “his talks but no negotiations” policy.

In October 1962 when Indian troops occupied Chinese claimed territory beyond the Thagla Ridge in the north-east, the Chinese attacked with full force. Within three weeks the border war in the north-east was all over with the troops of the Indian Army in full retreat. Having taken the vital town of Tawang and with the whole of Arunachal and the plains of Assam open before them, the Chinese declared a unilateral cease fire and retreated north of Tawang.

Unsurprisingly, Indira Nehru-Gandhi didn’t appreciate this Chinese magnanimity. She and a string of Nehru-Gandhis who succeeded her as prime minister persisted with Nehru’s “talk not negotiate” line. While this is explicable, one wonders why the BJP government ruling at the Centre since 2014 has continued with this Nehruvian policy. Meanwhile all our neighbouring countries including Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan and Russia have negotiated and settled boundaries with China.

Nor is this a matter of semantics. India’s defence budget at Rs.5.9 lakh crore in 2023-24 is 5x of the Centre’s education outlay. Government schools are in a shambles and 48 percent of India’s children under age five are under-nourished, in danger of stunting and brain damage. Instead of getting on with the task of quintupling annual outlays for public education and health, India has emerged as the world’s largest importer of guns and armaments.

All right-thinking citizens need to read this comprehensively researched book to understand how many opportunities Nehru and his heirs missed to turn swords into Smartboards.

Dilip Thakore