1962: The War that Wasn’t

Title: 1962: The War that Wasn’t – The Definitive Account of the Clash between India and China

Author: Shiv Kunal Verma

Publisher: Aleph, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9789382277972

Pages: 425

The humiliating defeat inflicted on the Indian army in its 1962 war with China was a turning point in the country's military history. The nation was in high spirits when the army could thwart the incursion of tribal lashkars (religious fighters) into Kashmir immediately after independence in 1947. The irregular forces stood no chance before the trained soldiers who had proved their fighting mettle at various battlegrounds spread over three continents. This perhaps would have made them a bit complacent against the threats facing the country. It is true that the regular Pakistani troops could not support the lashkars openly in the face of international public opinion. Even if they did, Indian army's victory was still sure, probably delayed by a few more weeks. This is because the Pakistani army was a mirror image of the Indian one at that time, raised and trained by the same authority and sharing the same strategies and battle plans. China was different. Not only was the country shrouded in mystery, but its troops had a grueling experience of fighting internal and external enemies for at least three decades at the time of birth of the People's Republic in 1949. Moreover it was led by the crusading spirit of Maoism while India was wallowing in an illusory Gandhian idealism and the enervating ideology of nonviolence (ahimsa). At the time of establishment of the Chinese republic, it did not share its borders with India. But Mao Zedong systematically planned and executed the annexation of Tibet and Xinjiang which had nominal Chinese overlordship before the British arrived on the scene. China always disputed the sanctity of the McMahon Line that delineated Tibetan boundary with India. Border clashes escalated into serious incidents and in 1962 and all-out war erupted between the two nations. This book is a definitive account of this struggle and the factors that ensured the defeat of India. Shiv Kunal Verma is a filmmaker and military historian who was born into an army family. He has worked with all three arms of the Indian armed forces over the last 25 years. Verma has had a ringside view of matters military and his film on the National Defence Academy – The Standard Bearers – is considered a classic.

Verma narrates the carefully choreographed Chinese manoeuvres with which they crawled in to India’s doorsteps. Nehru's policy was flawed with its emphasis on his personal grandstanding and moralising sermons. While China stepped in to annex Tibet, India looked the other way and contended itself with sending mild diplomatic protests to Beijing about respecting Tibetan autonomy and settling the issue in a nonviolent manner. Verma says that the Chinese could not believe their luck at this tepid response from India. Thus the Chinese forces arrived at the very gates of India and suddenly the Himalayas ceased to be an impenetrable barrier. Nehru's towering personal ambitions also played a corrosive role. It is to be doubted that Nehru eagerly longed for a Peace Nobel. His unwillingness to take up controversial though pretty useful national issues, meaningless pursuit for building up a non-aligned movement and the backstabbing in the Indus Waters Treaty in which he conceded to Pakistan almost eighty per cent of the waters all point to his craving for the Nobel. With this in mind, he cultivated the image of ‘a man of peace’. In 1954, the Panchsheel Agreement was signed with China on which ‘eternal peace and friendship’ was guaranteed – on paper. No reciprocal concessions were granted to India even though she recognised China's suzerainty over Tibet. This was actually a disaster for India, but its PR machinery trumpeted it as a triumph for Nehru. Even though it may sound ironic with hindsight, Nehru’s victory was in fact a disaster for the nation.

Another crucial factor Verma identifies as contributing to the background of India's poor preparedness was Nehru’s apathy to his own military. Nehru veered away from building military power often exhibiting an inane reluctance to engage with the men in uniform. When the first Commander-in-Chief visited him as prime minister, he rubbished the General’s suggestion of framing a national defence policy. Nehru retorted that he wanted to scrap the army (!) and that his policy was ahimsa (p.24). Fear of a military coup also provided a subconscious context in his systematic effort to downgrade the status and influence of the army. It was only after his death that Shastri, his successor as prime minister, equated the soldier to the farmer in contributing to rebuild the nation. Nehru's decisions were arbitrary with little or no military logic that effectively sealed the fate of the army. Even as late as 1959, defence minister V K Krishna Menon rejected talks of a war with China and declare that in the unlikely event of there being one, he was quite capable of fighting it himself on a diplomatic level. The belligerent Menon could effectively browbeat the senior officers and appointed his yes-men to all vital positions.

Was China justified in claiming parts of Ladakh and NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) as their own? Varma strongly refutes this argument, but drops clues that the boundary condition was not unambiguously settled when the British left India. Tibet and Xinjiang were two states that figured prominently in the ‘Great Game’ between Russia and Britain for supremacy in Central Asia. In 1907, an Anglo-Russian convention stipulated that both the British and Russians acknowledge Chinese supremacy over Tibet and that neither side could sign an independent treaty with Tibet. In 1911, the ruling Qing dynasty was toppled in a revolution and Chinese power was eclipsed in Tibet with the ousting of the royal emissary. The Dalai Lama declared independence in 1913. The British exploited this situation by holding the Simla Convention in 1914 with Tibet’s representatives. The McMahon Line was established as a result of the deliberations of this convention. A Chinese delegate attended the meet, but China later refused to ratify the treaty. Some amount of bribing and arm-twisting also went in in the negotiation process, in a way favourable to the British, and eventually to India. Tawang was handed over to India at a price of 5000 Lee Enfield rifles and 500,000 rounds of ammunition sold to the Tibetan army. Under the cover of Japanese invasion during the Second World War in 1944, Tibet occupied Tawang. They were later evicted by the Indian army. If we look back on this past, it does not point to the veracity of Chinese claims since Tibet was never a part of China culturally. Their claim on the province is simply a product imperialist aspiration like what Britain did to India.

No patriotic Indian who reads the shamefully inept and visionless conduct of the war would fail to squirm at the callousness with which the political and military leadership sold India out to the Chinese. Several factors were pointed out as the reasons for the fiasco. Superiority of Chinese numbers and weaponry, the shortages faced by Indian troops on all fronts ranging from clothing to ration to ammunition were some of them. But this fails to convince an objective reasoner. The author claims that a decade-plus of peacetime unrealistic training against dummy enemy in exercises and camps had dimmed the warlike instincts of the army. If this assertion is true, we must seriously sit up and take notice of the fact that our army is virtually idle for half a century after 1971! The bitter military rout of 1962 finally opened Nehru's eyes. None of his non-aligned friends had come to India's rescue. A helpless Nehru sought arms and equipment from the US and UK. Verma notes that the latter part of the war was fought with American weaponry, especially the superb 7.62 mm self-loading rifles sourced from NATO after the outbreak of hostilities on October 20, 1962.

You should not be misled by the lengthy evaluation you see above. This book is a torture for the reader on account of its minute description of moves and actions on the warfront. More than half of the text is filled with finer nuances of fighting on the frontlines that is reminiscent of military textbooks taught to cadets in military academies because the terminology is understandable only to them. Ordinary readers who cannot distinguish between a company, platoon, brigade and regiment are still stranded at the point where they started the book. The book is unreasonably huge with 400 pages of narrative printed in very small typeface.

This book is recommended only for enthusiasts of military history.

Rating: 2 Star