Self-Deception: India's China Policies, by Arun Shourie.

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Self-Deception: India's China Policies

by Arun Shourie.

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"Around 7 October 1950 as many as 40,000 Chinese troops invade eastern Tibet. They seize Chamdo, the capital. Several thousand Tibetans are massacred—Tibetan sources put the dead at over 4,000. On 19 October 1950 Panditji cables Panikkar to convey his counsel to the Chinese rulers. We are not entering into the merits of the Chinese or Tibetans’ claims in regard to the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China, he says. ‘It is quite clear to us that any invasion of Tibet by Chinese troops will have serious consequences in regard to their position in the United Nations. It will strengthen the hands of the enemies of China and weaken those who are supporting their cause there.’

"How profoundly he errs in his assessment of the Chinese leaders in assuming that they care as much about what the world thinks of them as he does!

"And Tibet can be taken by the Chinese for the asking. Why jeopardize your international reputation for what you can take at any time?

""Easy success in Tibet, which can be had at any time later, will not counterbalance loss in international sphere. "

"And he is defensive to boot:

""We have no ulterior considerations in this matter as we have pointed out. Our primary consideration is maintenance of world peace and reducing tensions so that all questions can be considered in a more normal atmosphere. Recent developments in Korea have not strengthened China’s position which will be further weakened by any aggressive action in Tibet.""

" ... Our position should be clarified to the Chinese, he says. And see the reasons in his mind:

""We cannot afford to have our world policy injuriously affected without at least trying our best to inform the Chinese Government in a friendly way of what we think is right and what is wrong. That world policy is based, apart from preservation of peace, on friendly relations between China and India as well as between China and other countries and United Nations.7 "

"Would the Chinese rulers be caring for ‘our world policy’? Why was the burden of keeping world peace to be borne specially by us? Should we have been so concerned about ensuring good relations between China and other countries and the United Nations? Notice also that the interests of Tibetans, to whom he has promised ‘diplomatic support’, do not figure in the enumeration at all."

"Panikkar had been sending messages that were the American forces to cross the 38th parallel, a conflict with China would ensue. These assessments were conveyed by us to the governments of the UK and the USA, Panditji tells Panikkar. They said that China is bluffing. We told them that it appears to be dead serious. American forces crossed the 38th parallel. China did not act up to its threat, Panditji notes, ‘and the U.K. and the U.S.A. took some pleasure in informing us that they had been right when they considered China’s warning as mere bluff.’

"‘I am glad that China did not intervene at that stage and thus prevented the Korean War from assuming huge dimensions,’ Panditji said, adding, however:

""Still I must confess that this episode has weakened China’s prestige to some extent and made people think that she indulges in empty threats. This is not a good thing; when a like crisis arises again, her warning might not be seriously taken."

"The Chinese had started issuing the customary statements—about conspiracies being executed by foreigners in Tibet: in fact, apart from a wireless operator and two or three other sundry persons, there were no foreigners in Tibet at all at the time. They even alleged that Nepal of all countries, a Nepal which at that very time was in the throes of an internal convulsion, was planning to intervene militarily in Tibet. The allegation that the British and Americans are intriguing in Tibet ‘has no foundation in fact’, Panditji tells Panikkar. The allegation about Nepal ‘is even more fantastic’—the Nepalese government is encoiled in internal troubles.

"With all the efforts that Panditji has been making on behalf of China, the moment he demurs in regard to China’s plans in regard to Tibet, they denounce his ‘friendly and disinterested advice’ as having been instigated by the British and American imperialists! Panditji is touched to the quick:

""If the Chinese Government distrust India and think that we are intriguing against it with Western Powers, then all I can say is that they are less intelligent than I thought them to be. "

"But could it not be the other way? That they know exactly what will work with him? That all they have to do is to hurl an accusation at the liberal in Panditji, at the Panditji so conscious of what others think of him, and he will strain even harder to earn their approval? ‘The whole corner-stone of our policy during the past few months,’ Panditji explains, ‘has been friendly relations with China and we have almost fallen out with other countries because of this policy that we have pursued.’ But he is concerned with the ‘larger issues’—world peace and the like. And, of course, about China’s best interests: ‘There is the danger of China feeling isolated and convinced of war and, therefore, plunging into all kinds of warlike adventures. This is too grave a risk for any great nation to take.’ ‘North Korea has been smashed,’ he writes, again from the point of view of what is best in China’s interests and reputation, ‘and at this stage for China to help her directly, or to start an invasion of Formosa, would be foolish in the extreme from a military or political point of view...’"

"How good is his strategic assessment is shown up within the month: in the latter half of October, Chinese soldiers start entering Korea. Precisely a month after Panditji had pronounced that the move would be ‘foolish in the extreme’, on 26 November Chinese troops cross into Korea in massive waves. By 16 December the American army has got back to the 38th parallel. Trudging through frozen mountains, they at last reach Hungnan, from where they are evacuated by US ships. But to get back to Panditji’s communication."

" ... 26 October 1950, newspapers carry an official handout from Peking: the Chinese army has been ordered to advance into and ‘liberate’ Tibet! Panditji cables Panikkar. He tells Panikkar of his ‘great regret’ at this development, which, he says, ‘we deeply deplore...’ And he chastises Panikkar: there has been no information from you even of this official announcement, he tells the ambassador."

" ... What Chou and his colleagues think of Panditji giving such ‘friendly and disinterested advice’ will soon become evident. And, having conquered China through force, believing as they do in violence of the most extreme kind, are they the ones to think that the ‘peaceful approach’ is the one that yields more enduring solutions?

"By the next day, Panditji is scolding Panikkar. There was no information from you of Chinese troops advancing into Tibet. We were embarrassed to receive the official announcement of the Chinese government from the British government. Your representation to the Chinese government ‘was weak and apologetic’, Panditji tells Panikkar. Our views were ‘evidently’ not conveyed. ‘The Chinese Government’s action has jeopardized our interests in Tibet and our commitments to Tibet,’ he says—remember these words when you read how he will minimize these interests and commitments in the coming months. Moreover, the action jeopardizes ‘our persistent efforts to secure the recognition of China in the interests of world peace have suffered a serious setback.’11"

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As per Wikipedia, for what it's worth - often incorrect as Wikipedia prefers to be in interest of kowtowing either to China or to jihadists - indeed, any anti-Indian for that matter -

"After Beijing repudiated Simla, the British and Tibetan delegates attached a note denying China any privileges under the agreement and signed it as a bilateral accord.[43][full citation needed] British records show that the condition for the Tibetan government to accept the new border was that China must accept the Simla Convention. As Britain was not able to get an acceptance from China, Tibetans considered the McMahon line invalid.[3]"

If Tibet had accepted suzerainty of China to this extent, there would be no dispute such as one described by Nicholas Roerich regarding the then Dalai Lama's visit to China; he describes the visit cancelled instead due to China insisting Tibet was a part of it and Dalai Lama's behaviour shoukd reflect it.

The sentences above regarding Tibet's non-acceptance of the line despite signing, are, one may bet safely, Chinese insertion post Chinese invasion of Tibet.

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As one begins reading, Arun Shourie in his fearless account of facts reminds the reader of just what has gone on vis-a-vis China, and to anyone who lived through the horror of 1962 war it's a reminder of the pains quite unnecessary; but what makes reading this a painful necessity is his account of what went on at various levels, from the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru aspiring yo be the next messiah of peace to the world - and not only thinking wistfully from that perspective, but actually acting and writing as if it were a fact, even forgetting thst others might not quite see it his way, or have every intention of taking advantage of a country not ready to go to war to defend herself.

One must say, they, all of them, forgot two important pieces of history. One they had lived through, and might just have been absorbed by China, was that of Hitler's tactics from Rheinland to Austria to Czechoslovakia to Poland; other was to recall that Mongolian history was closely related to that of China, and thus the claim to Tibet by china based on treaty between Kublai Khan and Tibet, even though it did not involve China, was the basis of China's claim to Tibet. China has since mao been nothing so much as attempting to be the heir to Attila the hun and Chingis Khan in their conquest of the world, but going slower and consolidating.

And more so, the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru. For some reason, he'd not learned any lesson at all, from any part of history, whether of ancient India being invaded and massacred by barbarians for centuries, or the history he'd himself lived albeit only from far, of Europe falling to Hitler for over half a decade because France and England were unwilling to go to war for either Rheinland or Czechoslovakia, much less Austria.

So he emulated Gandhi and forgot the lesson he should have learned from fall of Neville Chamberlain due to giving up Czechoslovakia for peace, despite having had a prior, much more personal lesson in Kashmir - and forgotten that Himaalayan region is not only dear to but revered by India.

Funny, his - the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru's - looking back is limited to colonial invader empires, in both India and Tibet! He never looks at era prior to Kublai Khan in case of Tibet, much less that before Mongolian migration to Tibet; and as for India, neither pre-colonial era nor sentiments of any Hindus seem to matter to him.

It a hardly likely that he was unaware of the reverence and love in India for Himaalayan ranges, which top pilgrimage destinations for India. And this isn't out of an enforced faith, but a history that goes back several millennia.

Repeatedly, he takes the stance that India cannot encourage Tibet to look to India for help, and any such indication from India will harm Tibet; this reminds one of the typical stance taken by most society, including very often parents and police, when confronted with domestic violence.

Over and over, words and attitudes from the then PM of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, towards Tibetan people and Tibet, remind one of those from Gandhi's towards Hindus caught across the borders at independence and required to take flight, if not massacred, without options; one is reminded of his repeatedly demanding refugees to be sent back to the newly created Pak, explicitly mentioning that they should go back even if only to be massacred, but do so with love of the muslims who were murdering them, without any rancour.

Nehru isn't going that far, but almost, in increasingly stating his views of refugees from Tibet, and expressing no concern for those massacred.

" ... ‘They have used the language of the cold war regardless of truth and propriety. This is peculiarly distressing in a great nation with thousands of years of culture behind it, noted for its restrained and polite behaviour. The charges made against India are so fantastic that I find it difficult to deal with them.’ ... "

Perhaps he forgot that the civilisation, most often, especially outside India and her peculiar caste system and philosophy so different from all others, belongs to the upper echelons of power and wealth in the world, a thin veneer at that; and when that's so, it's instantly thrown off at a moment's notice; hence too the all too easy conversions of most of the world yo the two conversionist abrahmic religions. His own behaviour reflected, on the other hand, civilisation of India, ingrained deep, despite the veneer of English education and more, despite his preference for other civilisations over that of India. Hence the immediate switch of Chinese crowds cheering him to Chinese people hostile to India, and hence too the continuing disbelief of his own in this change, and his continuing courtesy. Tibet is closer to India in this respect too, and in most respects has always been, with a false opposite appearance due to racist view of world outside India, due to migration from Mongolia to Tibet giving an appearance of the population being Chinese.

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Repeatedly, China accused Tibetans, and everyone but their own invasion, but especially Tibetans taking refuge else where, of bring anti Chinese and thus provoking the world against them, as a justification for the genocide perpetrated against Tibetan people by China, albeit never admitted.

How's this different from Hitler's pronouncements re Jews in the world?

Obviously it was an attempt to not so subtly blackmail Jawaharlal Nehru into forcing Tibetan refugees, including Dalai Lama, to be handed over to China for extermination.

And wasn't China's occupying Tibet on strength of the flimsy, not quite legitimate connection of a treaty between Tibet and Kublai Khan who styled himself"Mongolian emporer of China" directly in violation of Woodrow Wilson's principles whereby League of Nations had heard various groups through the world petition regarding their independence?

Why did Jawaharlal Nehru think China invading Tibet was any different from Hitler's invasion of Europe, or Chingis Khan invading Asia and Europe?

Author quotes Jawaharlal Nehru saying -

"In a long-term view, India and China are two of the biggest countries of Asia bordering on each other and both with certain expansive tendencies, because of their vitality."

And comments -

"China is the one that has invaded and taken over Tibet. India has done nothing of the kind. But, to justify not doing anything about the Chinese invasion, Panditji implies that we are the same kind; hence, why be so upset at what China has done?"

One notices a trend in Jawaharlal Nehru's pronouncements at this time, mostly in his writings regarding the is due of China invading Tibet and consequences of danger to India, to equalise it by pretending India is equally guilty, and therefore must not accuse China; this trend of false equalisations to accuse India - and especially Hindus - fraudulently, has been since carried to absurd extremes since, by all sorts of sources including leftists, congress, and of course West, including pretence that Hindus are terrorists or that there is a Hindu terrorism. But it's shocking to see that it began with someone known not for dishonesty.

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As Arun Shourie begins the chapter after the visit by Chou En-lai to India, with what Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to chief ministers from Mashobra after the visit by Chou En-lai, what suddenly becomes startlingly clear is that Jawaharlal Nehru had long ago, perhaps always, accepted China's claim over Tibet! But why? It certainly was not acceptable to India that China own Himaalayan region, why did Nehru have this view? The answer is clear- perhaps this, more than anything else, proves that his critics are correct when they point out that he was at heart English, not Indian, not Hindu, which in fact they are quoting him as saying. And until British rule woke up India, political rulers had not mattered as much to India, which is - and had always been, a land united by culture, tradition, et al. So there had been no claim by India over Tibet, and of course British had always followed the policy of least expenditure for most profits - hence the difficult regions left administered by locals, and hence too acceptance of claim by china over Tibet.

Jawaharlal Nehru, of course, had made further mistakes in refusing even the countries that pleaded to join india - Nepal, Baluchistan, and at one point a decade after independence, Pakistan too! And, of course, he'd stopped Indian army from finishing a complete takeover of Kashmir, and had instead gone to U.N., eager more to prove himself to the world a Gandhian man of peace, leaving huge problems for India instead - and the world, eventually!

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As one reads this book, one is returned to the initial impressions about the then PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, about his being a comparatively naive and unselfish man who'd been brought up a gentleman of the world, and had only an aspiration to do well in cause of peace for the world and independence for various colonies of yore. He lacked the necessary shrewdness to deal with crooks and evil, bullies and beasts of prey, and treated his opponents as friends until they proved otherwise, and still thereafter as gentlemen. That he didn't stand by Tibet is no different from what France and England did to Czechoslovakia at Munich, and pretty much for the same reasons too.

One still recalls the impression one had, even young, that his demise was brought on earlier than expected, due to the heartbreaking attack by China, and the humiliation of facing a complete helplessness in face of loss of territory of India, the nation he gave his life to and was given charge of as her first PM post independence.

Shouldn't congress, especially those members who are his descendants, hate China for what they did to him? Instead of which, one finds the quarter Italian heir anxious to give Indian territory over to China! Well, it isn't his to give, but one may safely bet he wouldn't be so quick to hand over his other heritage.

Shourie gives excerpts from Jawaharlal Nehru's writìngs that show his awakening to reality of China, and reminds the reader that Sardar Patel had warned him a decade prior to this, which would hsve been sufficient time for fortifications of the border - and, of course, a different, safer policy regarding Tibet, much better for Tibet- if only he'd not brushed it aside.

Shourie doesn't say most of the above, of course, leaving it to the reader to infer. But he also doesn't say the obvious - thst it was fault of Gandhi, not India, in that Nehru was not the elected first PM of India- he was forced on India by Gandhi, who commanded Sardar Patel to step aside despite being elected. If only Sardar Patel had not obeyed this supposedly saint but in reality a dictator who routinely went on hunger strike fasting unto death - but never against a bully who'd be unaffected letting him starve to death, only against those who cared - India, and too Tibet, but certainly Kashmir, even Nepal and Balochistan, and for that matter, Pakistan (including today's Bangladesh), would have had a much safer, progressive, better history after 1947.

The mental and emotional stress reader sees Jawaharlal Nehru going through, as one reads the excerpts in this chapter from his writings, showing his agony of not only facing reality of his having been incorrect about China, but of being now forced to make a choice, unwilling to let go of the beautiful ideals of world peace and friendship, and instead having to face possible war if not willing to allow territory of India overrun by a belligerent bully - the agony he's going through is all too familiar to anyone who's known even one woman in agony, about the only husband and the father of her children - and the only man she's ever been with - leaving nobody in any doubt thst he has been, and intends to, not only spend nights regularly elsewhere, but also assault the wife and children brutally, as and when he chooses when he's home.

Jawaharlal Nehru being so unwilling to let go of his beautiful ideals is only slightly different from the wife and mother agonising over her possible choices, if any. He had more and better choices, and a guarantee that India and the world woukd support his fighting back a bully. World may not be unkind to Neville Chamberlain, but forgets him when the much longed for peace turns out to be a trap of the villain that he's been shamefully tricked into; world may not worship Churchill and villains of his own nation may badmouth FDR, but they had the satisfaction of having saved their nations, possibly the whole world, just as likely humanity and civilisation. Women in quandary in personal life rarely have such a guarantee of support if they choose to fight back.

But roots of the reason Jawaharlal Nehru faced such agony was not too different from that of the woman facing a domestic situation - just as her early conditioning imprinting on her thst her virtue equals her not leaving her husband, never rebelling, and never thinking of herself, making no decision except thise approved by parents and husband - Jawaharlal Nehru's formative years, after the education in England amongst English sons of upper strata as a gentleman, were completely overshadowed by Gandhi. Hence his stopping Indian army from taking Kashmir, refusing Balochistan and Nepal's pleas to join, refusing Ayub Khan when he sent message to reunite, and leaving a legacy of bloodshed to be faced by India for decades, beginning with 1962 total betrayal of his love and friendship by China. It went against all idea of virtue for him to get ready for a possible war, just as it goes against an average woman's upbringing to be ready for self defense.

Arun Shourie brings out a shocking treatment given General Cariappa, whom Jawaharlal Nehru mentions as "an ex-commander-in-chief" of the Indian army, but Arun Shourie names, by the PM in his writings, treating him with the usual disdain accorded anyone who recommends anything that Nehru isn't yet ready to receive; it's unclear if it's Cariappa he's referring to, but the suggestion he's scoffing at is simply positioning army at the border. It's clear, even if there had been no attack in 1962, that this was a dire necessity and only prudent course of action after china had attacjed tibet and claimed it belonged to China. If Jawaharlal Nehru had had an open mind, he'd have considered it and understood it was the only way - and this should have happened beginning with any advice from Sardar Patel. As it is, his mind was closed with two strong gates or possibly three - English gentleman's code, leftist ideology and Gandhian insistence on not only being but being seen as man of peace.

India was lucky he did not go quite as far as Gandhi in pursuit thereof, and when China did attack, he did not simply hand over the territory demanded - unlike Gandhi who'd insisted India give up a million square miles when Pakistan occupied that sizable chunk in the east, claiming not Ganga but another smaller river as the border.

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November 8th sees a stormy session of parliament, with 165 members speaking.

Jawaharlal Nehru replies on November 14, 1962, his birthday. Not a happy one, thus birthday.

But reading excerpts selected by Arun Shourie, one is struck here for the first time by a tactic used, however subconsciously, by the then PM, which has since been used - completely consciously and deliberately in their case - by the opposition since 2014 That has until 2014 ruled India for most of the decades since independence, chief of which has been congress alone, and then congress either supported by left or vice versa.

It is this - Jawaharlal Nehru then says that any criticism by anyone is not against anyone including any minister in the government, but the army; and having said that, he calls it unfair.

He wasn't known to be capable of conscious, deliberate dishonesty; but following neither leftist thought nor Gandhian politics is possible without a dish9at some level, or an acceptance thereof, subconsciously. And this is a huge example of that.

No one in india then had any thought or emotion of any criticism against the Indian military, and this has been since too, with the exception of the UPA government of the decade between 2004 to 2014, who roped in army amongst the accused - and a stray one or two amongst the conspirators - for the nefarious purposes of fraudulently portraying Hindus as terrorist, by kidnapping, torture and threats of dire consequences to families, chiefly women. Those political parties and persons have not stopped this maligning of the Indian army as part of malicious fraudulent accusations against Hindus, since.

But in 1962 it was especially out of the question, and this tactic used by the then PM was clearly a cowardly deceptive attempt to deflect the severe criticism, that was chiefly of his faults of policy, and other shortcomings that were heavily to be paid for by India and her various parts separated, and Tibet. Some of the criticism was too against his preferred advisers such as chiefly Krishna Menon and another leftist. The former had proposed doing away with Indian army and converting the arms and ammunition factories to turn out cheap aluminium pots and pans for poor.

But Indian army was, especially in 1962, deservedly cherished, respected and more, by India. Nobody would have even thought of blaming any soldier of the Indian army, except him - and it was the worst falsehood on his part to seek to deflect his own blame by pointing fingers at those whose advice wasn't heeded and those who were paying valiantly then for his mistakes with their lives. They often, as they did at Rezang-La, exceeded the commands and went to unimaginable lengths, daunting the enemy in the process. They deserved every bit of the paens then written and sung for them, bringing tears as per legend to the PM's eyes on hearing just one. According to a current analysis, Rezang-La was responsible for China stopping and declaring ceasefire, although common whisper since 1962 has given credit to U.S. - specifically, to JFK - for a quiet communication. Shourie gives other excerpts of his various speeches in 1963, blaming him chiefly for Chinese attack and ending the chapter with "He never recovers", mentioning his credibility having gone low.

It is definitely required to take stock realistically of the situations, policies et al, as it is to be alert against such attacks; but despite Nehru's speeches and writings attempting to keep up an atmosphere or a pretence of friendship, it does come through that he wasn't quite blind to reality, but only trying to pull through the difficult initial years of recovering from post colonial poverty that colonial regimes had imposed on India after centuries of loot; his talk about choosing industrial development of India over purchasing arms and ammunition abroad was quite real. He was afraid after Tibet had been attacked and any child could see India was next, and his desperate attempts to create or pretend friendship were hoping to postpone need of facing such a conflict.

That it could have been dealt better another way, along lines of Sardar Patel dealing with Hyderabad instead of Gandhi dealing with Pakistan, is true; but not all people can be identical and Jawaharlal Nehru simply wasn't brought up adequately to be a Winston Churchill or even an FDR, and just as England hasn't vilified a poor Neville Chamberlain, India wasn't unkind to the much loved PM foisted on her by Gandhi. Sardar Patel woukd definitely have done better, if he'd not obeyed Gandhi and given up, and if he'd survived. So would Subhash Chandra Bose if he hadn't been pushed out by Gandhi.

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" ... If China had been repudiating the acquisitions that resulted from its expansionism and imperialism, where would the modern state of China be?—he will be asking soon, and very justifiably, for the original Chinese Kingdom was a third of what it had become by 1949."

[Wikipedia:-

"The British invasion alarmed the Qing rulers in China, and they sent Fengquan (鳳全) to Kham to initiate land reforms and reduce the numbers of monks.[4] An anti-foreigner and anti-Qing uprising in Batang led to Fengquan's death, while Chinese fields were burned.[1]

"The Qing then undertook punitive campaigns in Kham[4] under Manchu army commander Zhao Erfeng, also the Governor of Xining, where he earned the nickname of "the Butcher of Kham".[9] In 1905 or 1908[10][11] Zhao began executing monks[3] and destroying many monasteries in Kham and Amdo, implementing an early "sinicization" of the region:[12]

"He abolished the powers of the Tibetan local leaders and appointed Chinese magistrates in their places. He introduced new laws that limited the number of lamas and deprived monasteries of their temporal power and inaugurated schemes for having the land cultivated by Chinese immigrants. Zhao's methods in eastern Tibet uncannily prefigured the Communist policies nearly half a century later. They were aimed at the extermination of the Tibetan clergy, the assimilation of territory and repopulation of the Tibetan plateaus with poor peasants from Sichuan. Like the later Chinese conquerors, Zhao's men looted and destroyed Tibetan monasteries, melted down religious images and tore up sacred texts to use to line the soles of their boots and, as the Communists were also to do later, Zhao Erfeng worked out a comprehensive scheme for the redevelopment of Tibet that covered military training reclamation work, secular education, trade and administration.[13]

"After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Zhao was stripped of his post and executed by the revolutionary commander Yin Changheng."

"A year before the collapse of the Qing, the Beijing-appointed amban Zhong Ying invaded Lhasa with the Chinese army in February 1910[9] in order to gain control of Tibet and establish direct Chinese rule.[14] The 13th Dalai Lama escaped to British India, and returned before China surrendered via a letter from the amban to the Dalai Lama in the summer of 1912. On 13 February 1913, the Dalai Lama declared Tibet an independent nation, and announced the end of the historic "priest-patron" relationship between Tibet and China.[9] The amban and Chinese army were expelled, while other Chinese populations were given three years to depart.

"By late 1913, Kham and Amdo remained largely occupied by China. Tibet proposed re-establishing the border between Tibet and China at the Dri River during the Simla Conference with Britain and China, while Britain countered with another proposal which was initialed but not ratified.

"In 1917, the Tibetan army defeated China in battles at Chamdo, west of the Dri River, which were halted after Britain refused to sell Tibet additional armements.[9]"

"The official position of the British Government was it would not intervene between China and Tibet and would only recognize the de facto government of China within Tibet at this time.[15] In his history of Tibet, Bell wrote that "the Tibetans were abandoned to Chinese aggression, an aggression for which the British Military Expedition to Lhasa and subsequent retreat [and consequent power vacuum within Tibet] were primarily responsible".[15] Later, Britain defined the Indo-Tibetan border at the 1914 Simla Accord with the McMahon Line. China's delegation refused to agree to the line and still claims the land India received from Tibet as South Tibet, although the McMahon line remains the de facto border.

"In 1932, an agreement signed between Chinese warlord Liu Wenhui and Tibetan forces formalized the partition of Kham into two regions: Eastern Kham, which was administered by Chinese forces, and Western Kham, which was administered by Tibet. Eastern Kham subsequently became the actual area of control of China's Xikang province. The border between eastern and western Kham is the Upper Yangtze - Dri Chu in Tibetan and Jinsha Jiang respectively, in Chinese.

"Tenpay Gyaltsan, a Khampa who was 5 years old, was selected as the fifth Jamyang Hutuktu in 1921.[16]

"The Kham Pandatsang family led the 1934 Khamba rebellion against the Tibetan government in Lhasa. The Kuomintang reached out to the Khampas, whose relationship with the Dalai Lama's government in Lhasa were deteriorating badly. The Khampa revolutionary leader Pandatsang Rapga founded the Tibet Improvement Party to overthrow the Tibetan government and establish a Tibetan Republic as part of China. In addition to using the Khampa's against the Tibetan Government in Lhasa, the Chinese Kuomintang also used them against the Communists during the Chinese Civil War.

"The Kuomintang formulated a plan where three Khampa divisions would be assisted by the Panchen Lama to oppose the Communists.[17]

"Kuomintang intelligence reported that some Tibetan tusi chiefs and the Khampa Su Yonghe controlled 80,000 troops in Sichuan, Qinghai, and Tibet. They hoped to use them against the Communist army.[18]"]

In short, Tibet is only as much a province of China as Kazakhstan or for that matter Russia, and exactly by the same logic too - Tibet signed a treaty with Kublai Khan while Chingis Khan overran Asia deep into Russia in Europe.

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Contents

1. Bal chhutkyo bandhan padey…

2. Wish as policy

3. ‘We may have deceived ourselves’

4. The policy is set

5. Anxieties are brushed aside

6. A satisfying tutorial

7. Carried away

8. ‘Two miles this side or two miles that side’

9. ‘You didn’t even know we were building a road…’

10. Prelude

11. ‘These are not excuses, but merely facts’

12. The avalanche

13. A roundabout thesis

14. The chasm

15. Putting our hopes in inevitability?

16. Shilpa Shetty trumps Arunachal, again

17. Understanding them, understanding what they think themselves and us to be

18. Bal hoa bandhan chhutey…

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1. "Bal chhutkyo bandhan padey… "

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"‘A nation has security when it does not have to sacrifice its legitimate interests to avoid war,’ Walter Lipmann wrote long ago, ‘and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by war.’1

"Consider Aksai Chin: The unanimous resolution that the Parliament passed in the wake of the Chinese attack in 1962 notwithstanding, are we prepared to go to war to recover the area? Or, is it more likely that we will rationalize not going to war by giving credence to doubts: ‘Do we have an interest in the place? Is such interest as we have in it, vital? Is it legitimate?’ How many of us even know that this vast expanse that China grabbed at the time is two and a half times the size of Kashmir? ‘The only unfinished business in regard to Kashmir is to recover the part of Kashmir that Pakistan has usurped’—words of one of our prime ministers. Does anyone seriously believe that we will do anything substantive to recover any part of Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir in any foreseeable future? What about Arunachal? Are we confident that, when challenged over it by China, we will be able to hold it by war? Is China clear on that? Building up capacities to defend our interests apart, bearing sacrifices for them apart, are we one even on what our vital, legitimate national interests are?"

"Not long ago, at the India International Centre, during a discussion on India’s Tibet and China policy as part of the release of the original edition of this book, a commentator—a prominent fixture at discussions on China, on defence—said, ‘I am a south Indian, for heaven’s sake. I have not grown up with this feeling of Delhi being the centre of things. How does what happens to Tibetans concern us? If the Tibetans want to strive for their independence, good luck to them; let them do so on their own. Why should we allow ourselves to be dragged into their problem?’ Indeed, I have heard the same sort of dismissive righteousness on Kashmir—‘The fellows want to go? Let them go, for heaven’s sake. Let them go and suffer for their sins. That will teach them a lesson.’ Five years later, the same ‘analyst’ was holding forth on television. We should reach out and get the Chinese to invest in India, he declaimed. They will then have a stake in India. They are the only ones who have the money. They can build our infrastructure like no one else can…

"Nor is there any shortage of analysts like him in regard to our border with Tibet and China. They are suffused with a unilateral objectivity, espousing which is taken as the hallmark of ‘independent thinking’ in India. Books have been put out showing how in regard to Aksai Chin, for instance, the Indian borders were successively advanced northwards and eastwards by British surveyors in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. That the Chinese have similarly enlarged the entire concept of ‘China’ is not mentioned at all: is it not a fact that the original China was only one-third of what China is today? I hear similar ‘objectivity’ in regard to the eastern border, in particular in regard to Tawang. This cannot but dissipate national resolve; it cannot but further expose Tibetans to Chinese oppression; and it cannot but ultimately endanger India.

"And there is unilateral silence too: China conveniently shifts its statements on Jammu and Kashmir as its calculations change; but we must never whisper a word about the true position of Tibet in history; we must not whisper a word about what the Chinese are doing to beat down Tibetans; we must stick to Article 370, but not say a word about how the Chinese are systematically reducing Tibetans to a minority within Tibet—and the Uyghur within Xinjiang, as the Mongols have already been reduced to a helpless minority within Inner Mongolia. The Dalai Lama must not be seen anywhere near an official function. No official functionary must be seen attending any function that has to do with the Dalai Lama—lest the Chinese…

"Recall what happened in 2008.

"The brutal—the customarily brutal—way in which the Chinese government suppressed the protests by Tibetans in Lhasa in the months preceding the 2008 Beijing Olympics once again drew attention to the enormous crime that the world has refused to see: the systematic way in which an entire people have been reduced to a minority in their own land; the cruelty with which they are being crushed; the equally systematic way in which their religion and ancient civilization are being erased. Protests by Tibetans in different cities across the world, joined as they were by large numbers of citizens of those countries, had the same effect.

"No government anywhere in the world did what the Manmohan Singh government did in Delhi, no government reacted in as craven and as frightened a manner as our government did. The Olympic Torch was to be relayed across just about two kilometres—from Vijay Chowk to India Gate. The government stationed over twenty thousand troops, paramilitary personnel, policemen and plainclothes men in and around that short stretch. Tibetan refugees were beaten and sequestered. Government offices were closed. Roads were blocked. The Metro was shut down. Even members of Parliament were stopped from going to their homes through the square that adjoins Parliament, the Vijay Chowk.

"Do you think that any of this was done out of love for the Olympics?

"It was done out of fear of China.

"Dread as policy—that is all such steps are. But, of course, there is the rationalization, rather a premise: that if only we conduct ourselves properly, the dragon will turn vegetarian.

"On every issue—the WTO, economic liberalization, terrorism, Maoist violence, Arunachal, death for rapists, even for terrorists, name it—the pattern of discourse leaves the people feeling that there are two sides to the question: call ‘X’ knowing that he is for a step, call ‘Y’ knowing that he is against it; have each interrupt the other, interrupt both. The ‘debate’ done, rush to the next ‘breaking news’. As every issue has two sides, where is the reason to act, to bear sacrifice?"

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"‘Acne’"

"Delhi was surprised when news broke out that Chinese troops had come 19 kilometres into Indian territory and pitched tents in the strategic Daulat Beig Oldie. The rulers in Delhi acted true to form—as the news could not be suppressed, they set out to minimize what the Chinese had done: ‘Acne’, they said; a ‘localized problem’, they said.

"Soon, the Indian foreign minister was in Beijing. He was happy as can be—he had been able to call on the Chinese prime minister, after all.

"Did any clarity emerge as to why Chinese troops had intruded 19 kilometres into our territory? he was asked. ‘Frankly, I did not even look for it,’ the foreign minister said. ‘How we responded is clear to us. It is not clear why it happened. They were not offering that background and we were not asking for it at this stage.’ How considerate!

"Had China admitted the provocation? Again, the minister was empathy itself: ‘You cannot expect any country to say we provoked.’

"Not just that—he proceeded to furnish explanations that even the Chinese had not advanced! ‘It happened in a remote area,’ he said. ‘To get the message to government, it is a long haul. It will take a little time to analyse.’

"And he was statesman-like: ‘It is not helpful at this stage to apportion blame between them and us’—so statesmanlike as to be completely neutral between the arsonist and the fire-fighter!

"Has China given any assurances that such intrusions will not occur in the future? ‘I don’t think it is fair to ask for assurances… We already have agreement to address this kind of issues.’"

"Soon, he was giving expression to his ardent desire—that he aspired to live in China, ‘though not as India’s foreign minister,’ he added—we should be thankful for small mercies, I suppose.

"‘Acne’? ‘A localized problem’? ‘Not fair’? ‘Not helpful’? ‘Frankly I did not even ask for it’? ‘It happened in a remote area. To get the message to government, it is a long haul’? Of course, neither the prime minister nor the foreign minister mentioned that this was not just an inadvertent strolling into Indian territory. This time tents were pitched. The point of ingress that the Chinese had picked itself showed that it had been chosen carefully. ‘The PLA has carefully chosen its spot,’ Major General Sheru Thapliyal, a former commander of 3 Division, told the defence analysts Ajai and Sonia Shukla. ‘Along the entire 4,057 kilometres of the LAC, India is most isolated at DBO, being entirely reliant on airlift. In contrast, the PLA can bring an entire motorized division to the area within a day, driving along a first-rate highway.’3

Nor did they mention that this setting up of tents was but the latest instance of what China has been doing. It would not have been ‘fair’ to mention, as the foreign minister would say, that China has been steadily eating into the territory on our side of the Line of Actual Control; it would not be ‘fair’ to mention that they have already taken over the Galwan Valley and the Chip Chap Valley—and that by doing so they have already pushed the Line of Actual Control substantially further into India. Nor to mention that, further south, as Ambassador P. Stobdan pointed out in the wake of the incursion, since 1986 they have systematically scared away Indian herdsmen from the grazing lands within Indian territory, occupied the pastures and built permanent structures. It would not have been ‘fair’ to point out the cruel facts that the Ambassador listed: …

"In Eastern Ladakh, the 45-kilometre long Skakjung area is the only winter pasture land for the nomads of Chushul, Tsaga, Nidar, Nyoma, Mud, Dungti, Kuyul, Loma villages.… The Chinese advance here intensified after 1986, causing huge scarcity of surface grass, even starvation for Indian livestock. Since 1993, the modus operandi of Chinese incursions has been to scare Indian herdsmen into abandoning grazing land and then to construct permanent structures.

"Until the mid-1980s, the boundary lay at Kegu Naro—a day-long march from Dumchele, where India had maintained a forward post till 1962. In the absence of Indian activities, Chinese traders arrived in Dumchele in the early 1980s and China gradually constructed permanent roads, buildings and military posts here. The prominent grazing spots lost to China include Nagtsang (1984), Nakung (1991) and Lungma-Serding (1992). The last bit of Skakjung was taken in December 2008…4

"‘Acne’? ‘A localized problem’? Taken by itself, each one of the usurpations was! But taken together, the unremitting advances have a pattern—to go on pushing the Line of Actual Control, and hence ‘Chinese territory’ right up to the eastern banks of the Shyok and Indus rivers, and to absorb the entire Pangong Lake into China.

"The reactions of Indian officials to these successive incursions have also been to a pattern:

"Suppress information

"Deny

"Who is misled when information is suppressed? Who is kept in the dark when what has happened is denied? Who is led to believe that nothing serious has occurred, that ‘the situation is under control’, that ‘all necessary steps are being taken’? Not the Chinese—after all, they know what they have done; they know the plan of which each step is a part. Not other countries, be they the US or Vietnam: apart from the fact that those governments have sources of information better than our people do, the general patterns—of what China is doing, and how we are reacting—cannot but be evident to them. The people who are lulled are the people of India. And the object of lulling them is straightforward—not just that they should not come to think that their government has been negligent, but that they should not pressurize the government into doing anything more than what it is doing.

"Wait Micawber-like for something to turn up

"Wishful construction—read into Chinese statements and manoeuvres what we wish to hear and see

"Paste a motive, fling a doubt at the messenger, discredit him: ‘O, you see, he is from Ladakh. O, you see, he is from Arunachal—persons from an area on the front always tend to exaggerate the threat, to exaggerate what has happened on the ground.’

"Minimize what the adversary has done. In 1959, it was ‘a small matter’, ‘a remote place’ where ‘not a blade of grass grows’. This time the expressions of choice have been ‘acne,’ ‘a localized problem.’ That is exactly what is being said and done about the dams that the Chinese have already started building across the Brahmaputra.

"Exculpate the government of the country: 26/11? O, it was the handiwork of just the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. As we just saw, the ingress into Daulat Beig Oldie called forth the exact replay: communication from those remote areas is so difficult; must have taken time for the local commanders to get instructions from Beijing…

"Manufacture explanations—sometimes these are so ingenious that even the adversary has not thought of them! ‘You see, the real problem is that the LAC has not been delineated on the ground’—of course, don’t mention that it is China which has not let the delineation proceed by just not exchanging maps.

"Take the high road: ‘We are not here to satisfy the jingoism of others,’ said the foreign minister this time round. Whatever happens in the end, proclaim it to have been ‘a triumph of our diplomacy’, use the media to put out that whatever has happened is exactly what you planned should happen. And leave them to rush to the next story—spot fixing in IPL, Sanjay Dutt surrenders, should Srinivasan go because his son-in-law has been charged for betting in IPL…

"And at each turn, ‘But what else could we have done?’ This is what was asked in 1950 as China invaded and subjugated Tibet. Sixty-three years later, the same question remains: ‘What else can we do about Tibet?’ It is what was asked in 1959 when news of the Chinese road through Aksai Chin broke out: and 1962 showed that, given what we had not been doing, there really wasn’t anything that we could have done. It is what was asked after each bout of terrorist strikes in Kashmir. It is what was asked in the wake of 26/11. It is what was asked when two Indian soldiers were beheaded. It is what is asked every time news of China’s incursions bursts through. ‘What else can we do? Our Army could break up the tents in minutes with just a small contingent. But the Chinese, being Chinese, would set up tents elsewhere. We could send a few more soldiers and just throw the fellows out. But, given the roads and other infrastructure that they have built across Tibet right up to the LAC, they would be able to move a much larger force… The whole border would get inflamed… Is that what you want?’

"How come no one—certainly not us—is ever able to put the Chinese in that kind of a dilemma? How come no one dares to chop off the heads of two Chinese soldiers?

"One does not have to look far—just three/four instances mentioned in passing by Jacques Martin will provide the answer. The mere rumour online that a company that owned shares in Carrefour, the French retail giant, had given financial assistance to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile was met with such fierce protests across China that Carrefour put forth explanations, offered an apology, the works. A wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete was accosted during protests in Paris at a torch rally to protest the fact that the Olympics were being held in Beijing. President Sarkozy seemed to suggest—even if vaguely—that France may not participate in the Beijing Olympics in view of China’s record on human rights. China’s reaction was such a fusillade that Sarkozy wrote personally to that Chinese athlete, sent his senior-most diplomatic advisor to Beijing, and France participated in the Beijing Olympics. Earlier, Peugot-Citroen had carried an advertisement in a Spanish newspaper in which a scowling Mao looked askance from a hoarding at a Citroen car. The Chinese claimed the advertisement hurt their sentiments. It was hurriedly withdrawn and the company expressed regret. The American actress Sharon Stone seemed to have remarked that the earthquake in Sichuan Province was karmic retribution for how China had treated the Tibetans. Christian Dior had been using her visage in its advertisements. It was threatened that its products would be boycotted. It swiftly dropped her from its advertising in China.5 Beheading two of China’s soldiers? Who would even think of doing so?

"Nor is it just a matter of reputation, of appearances. The fact is that, at each turn—the attack on Parliament, 26/11, the beheading of two of our soldiers, another chunk of our ‘sacred motherland’ swallowed up—we cannot do anything—because we have not built up capacities over the preceding twenty-thirty years."

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"Two Roads That Weren't"

"Recall what Major General Sheru Thapliyal had said—that the spot that the Chinese chose for the incursion was carefully selected: we can access it only by air or by foot or mule track while they can bring a large number of troops at short notice on the first-rate highway they have built. On going into the events, Ajai Shukla found that we had actually planned to construct not just one but two roads to this very spot. What happened speaks to the current state of affairs."

Author describes a fracas that might have been arranged by leftists to incite civilian wives against BRO, although he doesn't hint at such a possibility.

"Anyhow, back to the area that the Chinese came into in 2013. Around 2007–08, the Border Roads Organization finalized a plan to build one summer and one winter road to Daulat Beig Oldie—the reason for two roads was that some long stretches become inaccessible in the winter, and others in the summer: for instance, a lake on the way freezes in winter and you can drive over it; but it melts in the summer and you cannot motor across it."

"In 2010, an officer of GREF, one Ghasi Ram, set out to inspect the portions that were being constructed by taskforces headed by officers from the Army’s Corps of Engineers. He duly found fault—the alignment could have been ‘Z’ to ‘Y’ instead of ‘X’ to ‘Y’, etc. Complaints were lodged, and inquiries instituted.

"And that brought all construction to a halt.

"And, what with decision-making within the organization paralysed and the flow of funds halted, no one has been able to get the construction started again, even though three years have passed.

"And Ghasi Ram? He was shifted as chief engineer to a project in Rajasthan. There he had to be removed for incompetence. He is now in Tripura…

"But his work lives on! The date by which the two roads were to have been completed has been shifted from 2012 to 2016–17—that is what senior officers in the Border Roads Organization say in Delhi. On the ground, officers say that the roads will be useable only by, hold your breath, 2022."

Meanwhile 2014 elections gave India an opportunity to change, and so far it has been exponentially better, even in this respect - BRO has been allowed to proceed, and has done it, and more, just as other departments, of Government of India, and of states run by BJP, have too.

"India soon found that the road infrastructure across the Line of Actual Control would give the PLA an enormous advantage in war. Accordingly, around 2005, Shyam Saran, who besides being the former foreign secretary and special envoy of the prime minister, and currently the chairman of the National Security Advisory Board, is a keen trekker, was tasked to visit various areas along the India-China border, check up on road construction work, identify the gaps, and pinpoint what more needed to be done. He identified 73 roads that had yet to be built and completed. What with developments of early 2013, and the public outrage these triggered, high-ups felt the need to review what had been done on Shyam Saran’s Report.

"The party assigned to assess what had been done couldn’t get the Report. ‘You know how difficult it is to retrieve paper in our system,’ I am told as exculpation.6

"You think the Chinese don’t see this? And see the opportunity in it?"

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"China Turns The Worm"

"The Manmohan Singh government had been battered out of shape by scandal after scandal .... In a sense, this was the perfect moment for another lunge—an illegitimate government, one preoccupied with just trying to survive from day to day would hardly be able to react. But precisely because the government had become so illegitimate, precisely because the prime minister was seen as vacillating and weak, it could not do nothing in the face of public anger at what the Chinese had done.

"As a result, in talks with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, during Li’s visit to India between 19 and 21 May 2013, Manmohan Singh took up the incursion. Newsmen were briefed that he had made the border a ‘focus’ of the exchanges, telling Li that peace and tranquillity on the border ... At their joint press conference, Manmohan Singh alluded to the two of them having discussed the Depsang episode, and to have noted that the existing mechanism to deal with such occurrences ‘had proved its worth’. Li noted that there were differences, that peace and tranquillity should be maintained jointly at the border, and that steps should be taken to strengthen the existing mechanism. The two agreed to ‘encourage’ their special representatives to proceed to bring the second stage of the three-stage border negotiations to a conclusion, and to speed up demarcation and delineation of the border.

"One omission showed that the Government of India had stood its ground, another reference showed that at least India had taken up a vital issue, though China stood its ground. The joint statement did not contain the ritual reference to ‘One China’. The joint statement that was issued in 2010 by Manmohan Singh and Wen Jaibao had also not contained the customary phrase. This was a step forward: Indian media were told that India was not going to go on endorsing the Chinese position regarding, say, Tibet being a part of China, when China was espousing the Pakistani position on Kashmir—exemplified, for instance, by its insistence on giving stapled visas to residents of Kashmir.7

"The other issue was that of diversion of waters from rivers flowing into India from Tibet. Manmohan Singh took this up. He urged that the existing arrangement for exchange of hydrological data be expanded to include exchange of information on projects that are being taken up to dam the rivers. China agreed to inform Indian hydrologists more frequently about the water levels and flow in the rivers. It did not agree to establish any mechanism to exchange information or do anything else about dams and infrastructure that are being built across and around the rivers. The Indian Ambassador to China ‘characterized the Chinese response as sympathetic,’ The Hindu reported—how touching, their sympathy for us. ... "

"People have come to realize that China is the principal threat to our country. That the gap between China and India has grown so vast in the last twenty years that we cannot at this time protect our interests on our own. That we must forge agreements and alliances with other countries that feel similarly threatened by China. The US-bashing of just a few years ago is hardly audible today: on the contrary, people are relieved at the announcement that it will focus on the Pacific."

Author discloses his plan for this work, based mostly on writings of the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru, those of President Rajendra Prasad, and some correspondence from the then ambassador Panikkar to the President.

"We find K.M. Panikkar, who was our Ambassador in China and of whose assessments we shall have occasion to read a good deal in what follows, giving the same sort of assessments to the President. Of course, there are certain things that the Chinese government is doing within China which we do not like, Dr Rajendra Prasad has him say, but we are not concerned with them. The point of concern to us is, ‘They are friendly with our country and want to strengthen this friendship. It is in their interest also because they know well that in case they have bad relations with India, India and Burma together can create problems for them and they cannot harm India in any way.’

"‘They talk irrelevantly [irreverently?] about Tibet,’ the President records Panikkar as telling him. ‘It is not possible for them to attack India from Tibet. Some of their military personnel are stationed in Tibet. ‘Some? By this time, July 1952, China had swamped Tibet with a conquering army. ‘They have a problem of supplying rice to these troops from China; supply through India is easier, which they are now doing’—the tell-tale and incredibly tortuous reasoning behind this supply of materials to Chinese troops through Calcutta, we shall soon encounter. The conversation moves to the consulate in Lhasa and the pilgrimage to Mansarovar: ‘So, there is no fear from China but we hope to maintain friendly relations with her.’"

One must say, they, all of them, forgot two important pieces of history. One they had lived through, and might just have been absorbed by china, was that of Hitler's tactics from Rheinland to Austria to Czechoslovakia to Poland; other was to recall that Mongolian history was closely related to that of China, and thus the claim to Tibet by china based on treaty between Kublai Khan and Tibet, even though it did not involve China, was the basis of China's claim to Tibet. China has since mao been nothing so much as attempting to be the heir to Attila the hun and Chingis Khan in their conquest of the world, but going slower and consolidating.

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"This Study"

"Later in the year, on 20 November 1952, H.V.R. Iyengar, who is to discharge several vital responsibilities in the coming years, calls on the President. The President has called him to be briefed on the administrative conditions in the country. The conversation shifts to China and Tibet. Iyengar tells the President, ‘China is making a lot of roads, etc., in Tibet. But it would not be right today to say that it has any ulterior designs towards India. Of course, it would be an error to say anything about what may happen in politics in the future because relations between countries can turn hostile at any time. Even so, there is no reason to entertain any doubts at this time…’13

'Assessments, indeed the very vocabulary is very different seven years later, and it is to an important document of this later period that Agrawal’s book led me. As we shall see, by then the Chinese have constructed a road through Aksai Chin and thereby hacked off a large chunk of our territory. Information has had to be prised out of the government, and Panditji personally. Indeed, they are unable to keep it under wraps any longer as the Chinese release an official announcement that the road is being inaugurated on such and such a date! Even as Panditji is minimizing the road and its consequence, the President learns from other sources that the Chinese have built yet another road. This one is further to the south and west of the original road, and hacks off even more of our territory.

"He writes to Pandit Nehru on 5 December 1959. He begins by recalling that he had written ‘a pretty long Top Secret letter’ on 23 September, in which he had made several suggestions about the long border with China. ‘Now that Tibet has practically ceased to exist for our purpose,’ the President writes, ‘we are face to face with a long Chinese border extending over 2,500 miles.’ Apart from administrative work, and work to improve the lives of the people of the area, ‘I think a plan should be prepared for making arrangements for security and defence.’

"The border in the Northeast at least has the McMahon Line to delineate it, the President says. In the Ladakh region, on the other hand, the border is nebulous. The sentences that follow are worth reading in the original:

"We know that one big road has been built in the Aksai Chin area and it runs through our territory and the road is being used, and presumably the Chinese are in possession of the entire area to the north of this road, perhaps to some distance to the south of it also. I understand that there is another road or track more or less parallel to it further south and running across our territory. If this road has been built or is being built, it will undoubtedly be in constant possession and occupation of the Chinese, and not only the entire area between the two roads, but also practically the whole of that part of Ladakh would be fully occupied by them as far as occupation is possible in that terrain. I do not know to what extent the Chinese have already penetrated in this area into our territory. We may resist any further entry, but whenever there is any question of our reconnoitering the area and our police or military personnel passing into it, the Chinese would treat them as trespassers and shoot them or capture them as they did with some of our personnel some days ago. It is right that we should do our best to negotiate and settle this dispute with China in a peaceful way. But I do not know what will happen if such negotiation either does not take place or proves fruitless. They are already in possession of thousands of square miles of our territory and if negotiation does not take place or does not succeed, they simply sit quiet and remain where they are on our territory. We have therefore to think also of the steps which some day or other we may be called upon to take to recover our territory. That enterprise cannot be undertaken unless there is preparation for it. As it is, the Chinese have the advantage in the first place of terrain in their favour and nearly ten years’ advance in preparation by building roads joining with our territory, apart from the big road or roads going east and west across it."

"Concluding his letter, Dr Rajendra Prasad writes,

"We are now forcibly awakened to the fact of the existence of a long border which has to be protected as best we can, and, what is more, we have to prepare for the recovery of the thousands of square miles already encroached upon in case all negotiations fail, unless we are prepared to write it off. We shall continue to hope that there will be a peaceful settlement and we shall do our utmost to get that effected, but we cannot rest only on that hope and that effort of ours, and as any effective steps to be taken will require very long preparation, the sooner such preparations are begun, the better.14

"The President is saying things that seem innocuous, in retrospect even obvious. And yet, as will become evident as we proceed, he is urging positions that Panditji has been loath to embrace. In the form of suggestions about steps that should be taken, he is putting forth a deep criticism of the approach that Panditji has insisted on following for years in regard to China.

"Panditji replies two days later. The President is at a loss. He takes some time to think through the matter. He writes to Panditji on 18 December, 1959.

"Rajen Babu has also drawn attention of the prime minister to reports of corruption, and Panditji has told him that he, Panditji, is satisfied with the functioning of the government. The President’s letter is a brief one, and is worth reading in its entirety—for we see through it what is to become a most corrosive course: Panditji has told the President that when the latter comes across information, he should not put it in writing; instead he should send for Panditji and talk it over:

"Rashtrapati Bhavan

"New Delhi

"18th December 1959

"My dear Jawaharlalji, I received your letter No. 2585-PMH/59 dated the 7th December 1959 in time, but have not yet acknowledged it as I have not been able to make up my mind as to what to write. I must say that I am somewhat disappointed. The question of corruption has been too prominently and too long before the public to brook any further delay in making a probe into it. I think Deshmukh has given enough details about cases to be traced and once the Government makes up its mind and gives immunity to informants against vindictive action, proofs will be forthcoming. I would therefore suggest that thought be given to finding out cases. It is not enough that you are satisfied that all is well. A popular Government’s duty is to give satisfaction to the people also.

"Apart from what I have said, I have been worried by your suggestion that I should send for you and speak to you if I have anything to communicate rather than write. I am afraid this will stultify me in performing my constitutional duty to bring to the notice of the Government any matter which I desire to communicate to it in the way I consider best. I am afraid it may well begin a convention regarding the method of communication which will embarrass not only me but also my successors. I hope you will not mind my frankly expressing this fear which has been weighing on my mind and is responsible for the delay in replying to your letter. Yours sincerely, Rajendra Prasad15"

"Why this anxiety about things being put in writing? That information should not ‘get into the wrong hands’? That history should be kind? We shall glean the pattern as we proceed. And, just as important, we shall see how that pattern continues to the present day."

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December 31, 2021 - January 01, 2022.

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2. Wish as policy

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"‘On the issue of the reform of the United Nations Security Council, President Hu Jintao reiterated the assurance given by the Chinese Premier to the Prime Minister in April last year that China understands and supports India’s aspirations to play a bigger role in the United Nations, including the Security Council, and that China would be happy to see India succeed in its endeavour to become a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council’—the minister of external affairs, Pranab Mukherjee, said in the course of his statement on 28 November 2006, in the Rajya Sabha about the discussions of the Indian prime minister and the Chinese president.

"Along with his statement, Pranab Mukherjee placed on the table of the House, the Joint Declaration that had been issued by Manmohan Singh and Hu Jintao about their discussions. In regard to the Security Council, this Declaration had the following to say:

""The reform of the U.N. should be comprehensive, ensure balanced representation of developing and developed countries in the U.N. Security Council, and add to the efficiency and efficacy of the U.N. and its Security Council. The two sides shall conduct consultations on the question of U.N. reform, including the reform of the U.N. Security Council."

"How does ‘shall hold consultations’ become ‘would be happy to see India succeed in its endeavour’? The Joint Declaration continued to record,

""The Indian side reiterates its aspirations for permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council. "

"What could be more plaintive? And what did China say in turn?

""China attaches great importance to the status of India in international affairs. It understands and supports India’s aspirations to play a greater role in the United Nations."

"What could be more condescending? And how does the last sentence translate into the claim of Pranab Mukherjee that ‘China would be happy to see India succeed in its endeavour to become a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council?’ Could ‘a greater role in the United Nations’ not as well mean a greater role in UNESCO or in UNICEF? Could it not mean that China would be happy to see us contribute more soldiers for peacekeeping operations in Africa? Similarly, read the sentence again in the Joint Declaration which states that the reform of the UN must be comprehensive, etc. Among other criteria, it says that the reform of the UN system, including the Security Council, must ‘add to the efficiency and efficacy of the UN and its Security Council’. Has it not been the Chinese position that extending the veto to a larger number of members in the Security Council will impair ‘the efficiency and efficacy’ of the Security Council?"

"Soon enough, to no one’s surprise, the Government itself put out documents that detailed communications between the additional secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Islamabad, and Pakistan’s envoy in Nigeria, which established that, in June 2007, that is, just months after those homilies about understanding India’s aspirations for playing a greater role in the UN, China had gone to great lengths to coordinate efforts with Pakistan to ensure that the African governments stuck to a stand that would make it impossible to make any advance towards according a greater role for India, Japan, Brazil and Germany in the Security Council.2

"But no secret documents were required. The statements that China had been issuing in public, the ‘principles’ it had been spelling out from time to time, were carefully crafted to puncture the case of both India and Japan. Using publicly available information up to just 2004, Mohan Malik, for instance, documented how the five ‘principles’ that were being advanced by Chinese ‘analysts’ nullified India’s case point by point.3 ‘Top priority [should be assigned] to achieving equitable geographic distribution’ in the Security Council, Malik quoted the Chinese foreign ministry analyst as advocating: as Asia is already represented by China, this ‘principle’ excludes India and Japan! China also advocated that, to ensure balanced representation from regions, the aspirants should conduct consultations ‘until a final consensus is reached through a secret ballot within the regional group’—Pakistan is going to partake of a consensus in India’s favour? Next, ‘whether the newly elected permanent members shall be granted the power of veto’, shall be decided by ‘discussion and consensus among the present permanent members’—China will allow a consensus to emerge which puts India and Japan at par with it?4 All this and more was in the public domain. But here was the minister of external affairs reading into the Joint Declaration what was manifestly not in it.

"Mukherjee reported that Hu Jintao ‘stressed that China had taken a “long-term and strategic view” of the relationship with India, desiring to build a strong and cooperative relationship based on shared and common interests’. Really? That is why it has ringed India? What do a nuclearized and armed Pakistan; a fully militarized Tibet; a military pact with Bangladesh; Myanmar as a dependency; naval facilities in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and now Sri Lanka, signify? A ‘long-term and strategic view’ of India no doubt! Is it because of this ‘long-term and strategic view’ of India that China has been supplying technologies, materials, components, technicians and more for Pakistan’s missile and nuclear programmes so much so that the scale and persistence of the assistance have led the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control to testify, ‘If you subtract China’s help from the Pakistani nuclear program, there is no Pakistani nuclear program?’5 ‘Economic cooperation emerged as a major thrust area of the visit...,’ Mukherjee told Parliament. As in the way China has trounced India in bid after bid for oil-bearing tracts—from Ecuador to Kazakhstan? As in its strenuous efforts to stall India’s access to ASEAN?"

"Just days before Hu Jintao was to arrive in India, the ambassador of China in Delhi, Sun Yuxi, declared that Arunachal is a part of China. He repeated the claim in Chandigarh a few days later. The cry was taken up in November itself at meetings of Chinese think tanks—the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China International Institute for Strategic Studies. Arunachal is ‘Chinese territory under India’s forcible occupation,’ analysts declared. They talked of ‘China’s Tawang region’, of Arunachal as ‘Southern Tibet’ which must be brought under the control of the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’. All this was on record. Several commentators, including persons like me, had repeatedly drawn attention to these claims.

"A 107-member delegation of new IAS officers was scheduled to visit China on a study tour in May 2007. One of the officers happened to be from Arunachal. The Chinese refused to give him a visa: since he is from a part of China, why is he to be given a visa? The entire tour had to be cancelled. The following month, as we just noticed, they told Pranab Mukherjee that the fact of settled populations could not come in the way of their claim—the reference was pointedly to their claim over Arunachal, in particular over Tawang. In January 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to visit Tawang, among other places in Arunachal. The Chinese protested: he shouldn’t be visiting Arunachal as it is a ‘disputed area’, they maintained.

"Events in regard to Sikkim tell the same tale. It has been assumed all along that as a consequence of discussions during Mr Vajpayee’s visit in 2003, China had finally recognized Sikkim to be a part of India. In return, India had paid the price of stating that the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region of China is a part of the territory of China.’ Misgivings in this regard were brushed aside. We are acknowledging no more than has been stated for years, it was said; in return, we have got China to give up the claim implicit in its maps—maps which show Sikkim to be part of China.

"Astute observers had pointed out even at the time that, in fact, China had not changed the position in its maps, that it was maintaining that Sikkim is ‘a historical issue’ between China and India, and that China ‘hopes’ it will be resolved as bilateral relations improve—in no way did any of this suggest that China had agreed to the Indian inference.8 In November 2007, Chinese troops demolished two posts of the Indian Army at Doka La, at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet border junction. Two weeks had not passed and Chinese troops brought materials to build a road in the ‘Finger Area’ in north Sikkim. In January 2008, the Chinese government issued a démarche lodging a formal protest at movements—routine movements—of Indian troops within Sikkim. In March 2008 it made a formal claim to the ‘Finger Area’. In June 2008 it formally brought Sikkim back into the discussions during Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Beijing—the same visit during which the Chinese prime minister cancelled the meeting that had been scheduled with Mukherjee. And Mukherjee had but to leave China, and, within days, China again sent its vehicle-borne troops into the ‘Finger Area’.

"All this comes as a continuation of a series of pins that China has been thrusting into India over the last three years. The director general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Force reported that in 2007 alone there had been over 170 incursions—again, right from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal in the east. Several of these had been deep into our territory."

"As the incursions have proceeded, the Chinese have kept inventing occasions to push India—from hacking into Indian networks, including those of the Ministry of External Affairs, of the National Informatics Centre, of the National Security Council Secretariat, to summoning the Indian ambassador in Beijing, well past midnight, to demand that Tibetans in Delhi be reined in.

"Surely, none of this could be by inadvertence. Quite apart from the fact that these measures have been executed by China, which does nothing without calculation, and the very fact that in the last three years there has not been one incursion but over 300, the very fact that these have not taken place once or twice but have continued for three years, and the very fact that China has accompanied the incursions with a barrage of ‘diplomatic’ shoves show that all this is by design, that it is in furtherance of a definite objective. To make India feel small.

'To make India look small—in the eyes of countries in Asia in particular.

"To convince people of the Himalayan states, as well as Indians living along our border with Tibet, that, even if it can, India will not stand up to China, and that, therefore, they better look up to and towards China for their future.

"To keep India off-balance.

"To put pressure on India to settle the boundary question on China’s terms.

"The aggressive thrusts that China has been executing would further each of these objectives.

"And what has been the response of our government?

"First, strenuous efforts to keep the people from getting to know the facts, to shut up any official who speaks up.

"Second, when the facts do burst out, to downplay what is happening. The incursions are no reason to ‘press the panic button’, government rationalizers say; such things keep happening, the terrain is such that straying here and there is natural, they say. Why is it that our soldiers never stray into Chinese territory? No, no, please don’t make so much of our ambassador being called in the middle of the night, a government high-up told me. There was a specific situation, and that was the only reason she was called; others also have been summoned at such times."

Third is questions in parliament being responded to with "have taken it up appropriate channels" and ,"expressed disappointment", author notes.

"The fourth mode of response of the government has been to be at its craven best in the belief, presumably, that, if only we are humble enough to the python, it will not swallow us. Annual reports of the Ministry of Defence used to describe, ever so summarily, but at least describe a bit, the advances that China was making in its military prowess and what implications these had for India’s security. The 2007 report omitted the subject all together, trilling on about the way China was being a good and friendly neighbour to one and all! Government officials have been barred from attending functions where the Dalai Lama is present. The government, having seen the Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasreen, out of India by its pusillanimity, the minister of external affairs has lectured the Dalai Lama as if he were another Taslima and told him not to do anything that can be dubbed ‘political’. The nadir of this approach has been the cravenness with which the government handled the passage of the Olympic Torch. Close to twenty thousand troops were brought in to seal off a route that is scarcely longer than a kilometre; government offices were closed; Parliament was sealed off from the road; the Metro was shut down... But why look for specific examples like these? Look at the cover of this book. That mudra is the Government’s response to everything Chinese."

" ... I had gone to speak at a seminar organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies here in Delhi. One of America’s prominent security experts, indeed one of the principal architects of the Indo-US nuclear deal, was there too. He had just arrived from Beijing. ‘You Americans should learn from the Indians,’ he said the Chinese had told him, half mocking him—for, though an American now, he is of Indian origin. ‘Learn from the Indians? What should we learn from the Indians?’ he said he had asked them. ‘See how properly respectful they are. You Americans should learn from them!’"

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January 01, 2022 - January 01, 2022.

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3. ‘We may have deceived ourselves’

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'It is after months of waiting that the Tibetan delegation is able to meet him on 8 September 1950. Panditji counsels them to proceed to Peking, and strive to secure assurances from the Chinese that their autonomy will be honoured. India can help only by giving ‘friendly advice to China’, and this it has already done ‘by asking China that the problem of Tibet should be settled in a peaceful manner’. Put this alongside of the advice he has actually asked Panikkar to convey to the Chinese: bide your time a little longer!

"The Tibetan delegation pleads that he urge at least that the talks be held in India as they are apprehensive that, if these are held in China, the Chinese communists will completely overawe them. No, we can’t do that, Panditji says. ‘This would mean that India had a dominant position over China and Tibet.’ ‘In a peaceful settlement we can give Tibet diplomatic support,’ he says—what kind of ‘diplomatic support’ he is actually prepared to give will become apparent soon—‘but we cannot give any help in the event of an invasion. Nor can any other country.’ ‘It is for the Tibetans to make their choice between war and a peaceful settlement but in doing so they should clearly understand the consequences of their choice.’ The Tibetans are disconsolate.6

"Panikkar in Peking and Panditji in Delhi continue to maintain that an invasion of Tibet is highly unlikely. For one thing, the Chinese would not like to do anything that would give a handle to those who are opposed to the UN seat being given over to them, they maintain. They would not want to give a handle to ‘warmongers’ everywhere who are already trying their fervent best to undermine the new China’s image."

"How profoundly he errs in his assessment of the Chinese leaders in assuming that they care as much about what the world thinks of them as he does!

"And Tibet can be taken by the Chinese for the asking. Why jeopardize your international reputation for what you can take at any time?

""Easy success in Tibet, which can be had at any time later, will not counterbalance loss in international sphere. "

"And he is defensive to boot:

" ... Our position should be clarified to the Chinese, he says. And see the reasons in his mind:

"‘I am glad that China did not intervene at that stage and thus prevented the Korean War from assuming huge dimensions,’ Panditji said, adding, however:

""If the Chinese Government distrust India and think that we are intriguing against it with Western Powers, then all I can say is that they are less intelligent than I thought them to be. "

"Two days later he is giving an interview to I.F. Stone. ... What is ‘disturbing more than anything else’ is that Peking promised to negotiate differences with Tibet peacefully.13 Should this modus operandi, of promising to negotiate a settlement peacefully and instead sending troops to settle the matter, not have remained in Panditji’s mind when it came to our own borders?"

It isn't clear if Arun Shourie is actually criticising Jawaharlal Nehru here for having sent army to deal with Goa! He should know, more than anyone, presuming he's made himself familiar with circumstances before discussing it, as one has come to expect from his work, just how different the two cases were. Portuguese rule in Goa was at despotic as could be, and it can very well compare with that of China in Tibet, at that. Besides, China wasn't liberating Tibet from any outside regime, that language was used as fraudulently by China as it was by Hitler in invading various neighbourhood lands.

Kashmir was the only other place until then where military had been sent by independent India (Pondicherry accession to India was without military intervention), but it was after the ruler signed the accession to India, which was after Kashmir had been attacked by paki forces disguised as tribals; and at that, India only succeeded in getting sooner to Srinagar because the pakis stopped to rape nuns, in a convent outside the city.

Jawaharlal Nehru went wrong, not in sending forces, but in stopping them from routing pakis completely out, and taking the matter to U.N..

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How's this different from Hitler's pronouncements re Jews in the world?

Obviously it was an attempt to not so subtly blackmail Jawaharlal Nehru into forcing Tibetan refugees, including Dalai Lama, to be handed over to China for extermination.

Why did Jawaharlal Nehru think China invading Tibet was any different from Hitler's invasion of Europe, or Chingis Khan invading Asia and Europe?

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K.M. Munshi recalls a meeting of the Cabinet on events in Tibet. ‘All of us acquiesced in what Jawaharlal Nehru had already done,’ he writes, ‘only one or two venturing to voice feeble criticism. Among them was Sri N.V. Gadgil for whom there was a snub: “Don’t you realize that the Himalayas are there?” I timidly ventured to say that in the seventh century Tibetans had crossed the Himalayas and invaded Kanauj.’16 A few days after the Cabinet meeting, Munshi records, Sardar Patel wrote a detailed letter to Panditji.

"The letter is one of the most important and prophetic documents in recent Indian history. The Sardar spells out almost to the dot what is going to happen in the coming years. He sets out steps that need to be taken, and suggests that a special meeting be held to determine the course of action. ‘To my knowledge the meeting suggested by Sardar did not take place,’ Munshi writes after reproducing the communication. ‘Comment is hardly necessary,’ he concludes.17 Not only was the meeting never held, Panditji did not reply to the Sardar at all.

" ... ‘The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put their faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence.’

"‘Our Ambassador has been at great pains to find an explanation or justification for Chinese policy and actions,’ the Sardar writes. ‘There was a lack of firmness and unnecessary apology in one or two representations he made to the Chinese Government on our behalf.’"

"Finally, and this too must have pricked Panditji,

"Recent and bitter history also tells us that Communism is no shield against imperialism and that Communists are as good or as bad Imperialists as any other. Chinese ambitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side but also include important parts of Assam.18 They have their ambitions in Burma also... "

"In fact, the Sardar points out,

"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 and historical claims. The danger from the north and north-east becomes both communist and imperialist.""

"The Sardar goes on to describe the situation in north Bengal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, the Naga Hills, swathes of Assam, and observes, ‘I am sure the Chinese and their source of inspiration, Soviet Russia, would not miss any opportunity of exploiting these weak spots, partly in support of their ideology and partly in support of their ambitions.’"

"The Sardar goes on to list a series of steps that need to be taken: military and intelligence appreciation of the threat that China posed; an examination of our military capabilities and the disposition of our forces; a long-term evaluation of our defence needs; a reappraisal of our policy of going on advocating the Chinese case in the United Nations; methods to strengthen administration, policing, roads and communication across the Himalayan frontier; developing closer relations with Burma... He urges that a meeting be held early to consider all these matters.

"The meeting is never held. Panditji does not so much as reply to the Sardar’s letter. A month has hardly gone by and the Sardar passes away."

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January 01, 2022 - January 01, 2022

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4. The policy is set

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Author quotes Jawaharlal Nehru saying -

"In a long-term view, India and China are two of the biggest countries of Asia bordering on each other and both with certain expansive tendencies, because of their vitality."

And comments -

Most shocking is - and author quotes Jawaharlal Nehru writing decisively on the issue - Nehru justifying not only not helping Tibet, but discouraging any possible effort by anyone to bring the issue for discussion in U.N..

" ... Other countries maintain that as India is the major country that is affected, they will go by what India decides. The record shows that as India conveyed its view that the resolution should not be discussed, it is never put on the Agenda.3

"Recall, what he had told the Tibetans—that India would help diplomatically. That help now has come to mean that India will keep China in good humour even as it crushes Tibet, so that it may not crush Tibet more swiftly."

Author gives extracts of PM speaking to the parliament.

"We can see the operational conclusion that flows from such reasoning. As the main advance has halted, there is nothing that we need to do. When the main advance resumes, the full picture is not clear. When it is completed, and the place is subjugated, there is nothing for us to do as, by then, the place has already been subjugated. For us to do or say anything will only enrage the occupiers, and bring even greater hardship on the poor Tibetans!"

Shourie gives on to describe the furor in parliament, with several members questioning the assertions and conclusions of the PM, and the treatment they receive.

" ... China will do everything necessary for the purpose of keeping intact what it considers to be China’s border, it includes Tibet as well and the undefined boundary of Tibet so far as it touches the Indian border.’ Dr Mookherjee charges Panditji with following ‘a surrendering policy’ in regard to Tibet, and warns of the day when the Himalayas will themselves become the route for infiltrating personnel into India.4

"Acharya Kripalani draws attention to the alacrity and fervour with which the government has gone about, first, recognizing the new Government of China, and then urging other countries to recognize it and hand over the UN seat to it. ... "

"M.R. Masani is the most scathing, and, it turns out, the most prophetic. The anxiety that the prime minister has expressed about the possibility of a world war should be supplemented, Masani says, with the anxiety ‘against the possibility of another Far-Eastern Munich’. The prime minister stated that the issue is ‘peace or war’. ‘May I suggest that there is also the other issue of peace or appeasement leading to war?’

"We have been acting out our friendship for China for a year, Masani tells the House. By now, we can judge what the character of the new rulers of China is: ‘in three different directions the Chinese Communist regime has shown its aggressive character: in Korea it is at war with United Nations forces, which are seeking to establish a free and united Korea; in Indo-China, where they have armed and sent Communist guerillas across the frontier as was done in Greece some years ago; and our own neighbours of Tibet are now having an invasion of their country.’

"He recalls the message that Mao had sent to the general secretary of the Communist Party of India: a message with wishes ‘for the liberation of India’ and the hope that India would go the Chinese way soon. Masani recalls the statement that has just been put out in the New China News Agency to the effect that ‘the Anglo-American imperialists and their running dog, Pandit Nehru, were plotting a coup in Lhasa for the annexation of Tibet.’ ‘If this is the reward that comes to this country from one year’s friendship and advocacy, surely the least we can do is to reconsider our estimate of the Chinese Communist regime... While we might maintain diplomatic relations with the Chinese Government on a basis of reciprocity, there can be no longer any illusions about friendship, about cordiality and about comradeship in Asia.’ Masani goes on to say:

"By the one act of attacking Tibet and deceiving the Indian Government after their assurances given repeatedly, they have shown their utter contempt for the idea that we embraced, namely, of a free and united Asia. They have cut Asia into two—Communist and non-Communist Asia. Those of us who are not prepared to go all the way with them must fall on the other side of the fence. In that setting and in the face of this remark which comes from the New China News Agency in the last few weeks, that ‘the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will hoist the Red Flag over the Himalayas,’ what are we to think of the friendship we may expect from them?

"Do not rely on the Himalayas as an impregnable wall, Masani warns. They may turn out to be no stronger a defence than the Maginot Line turned out to be for France... 5"

Shourie describes responding "at length" by PM -

"About China, about Tibet more particularly, Professor Ranga was somewhat displeased at my referring occasionally to the Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. Please note that I used the word suzerainty not sovereignty."

"So far so good. But then the next sentence:

"There is a slight difference, not much."

"He repeats, and he says that he has no hesitation in telling the Chinese this, that ‘it is not right for any country to talk about its sovereignty or suzerainty over any area outside its own immediate range. That is to say, if Tibet is different from China, it should ultimately be the wishes of the people of Tibet that should prevail and not any legal or constitutional arguments.’"

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January 07, 2022 - January 07, 2022

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5. Anxieties are brushed aside

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"13 March 1951: Panditji is addressing a press conference in Delhi. The Chinese have by now crushed Tibet under an avalanche of troops. Several thousand, have been killed. ... "

"‘What is the strength of the Chinese troops in Tibet?’ he is asked. ‘The Chinese troops who came into Tibet were relatively small in number,’ he says.

"11 June 1951: Panditji is addressing another press conference. ‘Will the presence of Chinese troops in Tibet hinder preservation of India’s interests?’ he is asked. ‘The facts are rather vague about the presence of forces, etc., and to what extent they might or might not hinder is also therefore not clear to me...’2

"The Dalai Lama has had to flee Lhasa. He takes shelter in the Chumbi Valley near the Indian border. He decides to return to Lhasa—not surprisingly, given what has become evident about India’s attitude. Panditji is relieved. We had advised the Tibetan delegation that they should try to come to a peaceful settlement preserving their autonomy, he recalls. ... "

"‘About maps,’ he says, referring to Chinese maps that are showing large chunks of India to be part of China and to which Sardar Patel had tried and others have been trying to draw his attention,

"I may tell you something that I have not told you before, and that is this. All the maps used in China at present are very old maps and in fact, we were told by the Chinese Government not to pay the slightest attention to these maps. They are their old maps and they have no time to print them anew; they are simply carrying on with them because they are too busy with other things.4

"What would Mao—with his maxim, ‘Shout in the East, strike in the West’—have thought of a rival so gullible?"

" ... As we shall see when we come to the conversations that Panditji has with Chou En-lai and later with Mao, there is hardly a person who measures up to much in his eyes. Anyone who remembers what Lenin and Mao had written about intellectuals and the like would have little difficulty in imagining the inference that Mao and Chou En-lai would have drawn from such expressions of loftiness."

"Two years have gone by since the Chinese invaded Tibet. They have crushed the people mercilessly. Monasteries have been ransacked. The lamas, beaten and tortured.

"28 February 1952: Panditji is asked at a press conference, ‘Has there been any infiltration of Chinese troops in Tibet?’ ‘Not that I am aware of,’ replies Panditji.7"

"The cable to Panikkar gives us another glimpse also. In their meeting on 5 April 1952, Chou En-lai has told Panikkar that for some years China will have to depend on India for the ‘daily necessities’ in Tibet, in particular foodgrains. Won’t India like to help get rice into Tibet? Panikkar is all for the proposal—to consolidate relations between the two countries in which history is being made! Panditji demurs: the proposal raises ‘very difficult problems of transport’, he tells Panikkar. ‘We are prepared to examine this matter,’ he continues, ‘but this would be a concession which we should retain as a bargaining counter for negotiations for an overall settlement between China and us. It is not advantageous for us to accept such proposals piecemeal and yet have no general settlement.’ Not just that, Panditji clearly sees what this request amounts to. He tells Panikkar, ‘Presumably these food supplies are meant for Chinese army in Tibet which, from all accounts, is in great need of them. We are not particularly anxious to facilitate movement and retention of large numbers of Chinese troops in Tibet.’10

"This is what Panditji says in his cable on 12 April 1952.

"Later in the month, he visits Kalimpong, a place that has a large concentration of Tibetans who have had to flee from the Chinese forces. He addresses a public meeting. ‘Nobody need get upset over the recent developments in Tibet,’ he tells the gathering. ‘I would like to repeat that one of the foremost interests of India is cultivation of friendly relations with her neighbours, especially China and Tibet.’ A public meeting is, of course, not the place in which to explain how he is going to square that circle—of being friends simultaneously with Tibet and China—and so he doesn’t!11

"By 24 May, however, he has changed his mind. Panikkar has been inquiring about the shipment of foodgrains to Tibet. Panditji agrees to send 500 tons of grain, with a target of 3,500 tons. He repeats his general view: ‘We have told you that any permanent or semi-permanent arrangements can be discussed only as part of general settlement of our interests in Tibet.’ And he adds in parentheses,

"(These interests, as you know, are not confined to trade relations but involve political interests such as affirmation of the Frontier.)"

Author goes on to document changes in this policy by PM, until India was supplying not only rice but diesel too, to China in Tibet, all within a short period - without the specific quid pro quo that the PM had stated he wanted. Author gives extracts from his correspondence with Pannikar, the Indian ambassador to China.

"‘We are interested, as you know, not only in our direct Frontier but also in Frontiers of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, and we have made it perfectly clear in Parliament that these Frontiers must remain,’ he goes on to observe, only to repeat that fatal operational direction:

"There is perhaps some advantage in our not ourselves raising this issue.

"‘On the other hand,’ Panditji tells Panikkar, ‘I do not quite like Chou En-lai’s silence about it when discussing even minor matters.’ Why should Chou En-lai not have been proceeding on the same assumption—that ‘There is perhaps some advantage in our not ourselves raising this issue?’ Especially so, as, in his case, he would have added ‘till we have consolidated our hold over the areas we want.’"

"In a ‘clarification’ of what Chou En-lai had told Panikkar, the Chinese Foreign Office states that what Chou had said was as follows:

"Chinese Government would like to state a principle at the same time solving problems and then follow this up with successive solution of other specific problems. . . The existing situation of Sino-Indian relationship in Tibetan China was scar left by Britain in course of their past aggression against China. For this Government of India was not responsible. . . Relations between new China and new Government of India in Tibet should be built anew through negotiations.17 Everything, therefore, was to be thrown into the melting pot.

"Everything, including the border, was to be negotiated anew. And if India stuck to what had been agreed upon during the British period then it was trying to take advantage of what had been wrested from China by imperialists, and thus thwarting Sino-Indian relations from blossoming anew! A classic communist bind."

"That was patent. Panditji and his acolytes also must have seen it. But they chose to swallow the ruse. Not just that. As we shall see as we proceed, they internalized this reasoning, and started repeating the very words."

So much so, one could hear supposedly intelligent Indians parroting the argument blaming India, and Jawaharlal Nehru, for the 1962 attack by China, making one wonder if they thought genocide of Tibetans was OK. But then, they'd usually swallow any propaganda against Israel, and blame Jews for being persecuted in USSR, so presumably their sympathies were with totalitarian dictatorships as long as they painted it red or black, and mouthed leftist words.

"In early September 1952, the Indian Mission in Lhasa reports that there is unrest, that several groups of Tibetans have emerged, that one of them has asked for assistance, a mere two lakh rupees. Panditji comes down as a thunderbolt. ... "

"We have to judge these matters [the request for Rs. two lakh] from larger world point of view which probably our Tibetan friends have no means of appreciating...

"Our own appraisal is that owing to geography and climate and other factors, it is difficult for Chinese Government to exercise full control over Tibet. But if any challenge to their authority takes place, they will easily crush it ruthlessly and this will result in ending such autonomy as Tibet might otherwise have.19"

" ... An officer, S. Sinha, has been in charge of our mission in Tibet in 1950. He has come back, having seen first-hand what the Chinese have been doing. He is now officer on special duty in the Ministry of External Affairs—which Panditji heads. He puts up a note about the Chinese in Tibet, and what this spells for India. ... "

Shourie describes scathing comments by PM on this report.

"‘While there is much in Mr. Sinha’s report that has a basis of truth, this is put forward in such an exaggerated and emotional way that it loses force. I am sorry that a representative of ours should allow his objective analysis to be affected in this way. That does not help in understanding a situation’—dress down an officer on file like this, and that too when you occupy as exalted a position as Panditji did at the time, and see who comes up with honest counsel in future."

"He repeats his standard reason for not doing much: ‘It must always be remembered that the strength of our position lies in certain geographical factors which cannot easily be changed or overcome—not so much to Himalayan mountains but the added and inhospitable land of Tibet on the other side which cannot support or logistically provide for any large forces.’ Next, he repeats the point Sardar Patel had emphasized and to which at the time he had not responded: ‘The weakness of our position on those borders lies in the fact that Bhutanese, etc., are closely allied culturally and socially to the Tibetans and naturally look towards Tibet from that point of view.’"

"What did the situation nine years later—in 1962—show? That this important matter had received the attention it deserved? This is one of the lessons that comes through: when the prime minister is so busy saving the world, when he has taken so many things upon himself within the country as Panditji had, the truly important things will get neglected. He will, of course, keep ordering on files and in meetings that such and thus be immediately done, but as, the next moment, his attention moves elsewhere, so will that of the machinery of administration."

" ... Chinese denounce him roundly:

"India, in this case literally Panditji personally, is acting under foreign influence, they charge, when he expresses how dismayed he is at their invasion of Tibet. ‘The Anglo-American imperialists and their running dog, Pandit Nehru, were plotting a coup in Lhasa for the annexation of Tibet,’ the New China News Agency declares as justification for the invasion."

"As anger against the Chinese invasion mounts, leaders and citizens decide to observe a ‘Tibet Day’ in August 1953. Panditji shoots off a missive to the general secretary of the AICC. ‘Obviously, no Congressman should join such committee or participate in the observance of “Tibet Day”,’ he lays down. ‘This is an unfriendly act to China and is against the policy we have pursued during these years. There is absolutely no reason for observing such a day now. I really do not understand why Professor Ranga or the others should suddenly decide to observe this day.’ ... "

"On 16 October 1953, Chou En-lai replies to Panditji’s message. ... He says that ‘the existing situation of Sino-Indian relations in the Tibetan region of China were the vestiges of the process of the past British aggression against China.’ ‘For all of these, the Government of India was not responsible’—this had but one meaning: we are not blaming today’s India for the way things have been, correspondingly today’s India can claim no rights or facilities that arise from the way things have been till now. ‘Special rights which arose from the unequal treaties between the British Government and the old Chinese Government were no longer in existence,’ ... "

"Panditji is clearly taken aback ... He tells the ambassador, ‘Chou En-lai’s message to me raises some controversial points and there are a number of inaccuracies in it. However, I have not discussed these in my reply, as they are relatively matters of detail.’33"

"S. Sinha puts up another note. Entitled ‘Chinese Designs on the North East Frontier of India’, it enumerates dangers that flow ineluctably from the steps that China is taking in Tibet, and right along our borders. The predictable dodge is adopted. The note is sent to the selfsame Panikkar for his comments. Panikkar says that ‘the issue is not one of Chinese, or Chinese-inspired military adventure against the borders of India.’ The issue is of developing the areas on our side of the border, of strengthening administration, etc., of making the people of these regions feel that they are Indians and have a valued place in India. ... "

"Fortified with the comments of Panikkar, Panditji comes down on Sinha. ‘For Mr. Sinha to talk about China’s designs itself indicates that he is not taking quite an objective view of the situation but has started with certain presumptions,’ he begins. ‘I do not rule out the possibility of such developments in Tibet, on our border or elsewhere. But we must take a balanced view.’ The view that he disapproves is always unbalanced; or stuck in the past; or stuck in the cold war mould; or subjective and emotional..."

"Panditji couldn’t be busier saving the world than he is in the coming months. Indo-China, Formosa, the irresponsible pronouncements of Dulles, hydrogen bomb, racialism, colonialism, the Colombo Conference... In between, we sign the agreement with China about trade with Tibet. ... "

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January 07, 2022 - January 08, 2022

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6. A satisfying tutorial

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Shourie gives detailed description of visit to India by Chou En-lai, beginning with invitation by India, and very flattering description of him as frank and honest, able and observant and clever, by Krishna Menon.

As the chapter proceeds, one is completely stymied by this detailed description of an extraordinary exchange, at once striking true and yet incredible - how Chou En-lai played a naive curious pupil, how Jawaharlal Nehru was only too happy to respond so frankly and overcome with benevolence in parting wisdom, how he believed it was all genuine, and never suspected it was all a thin veil on reality, whereby China - and particularly Chou En-lai - played India until the former was ready to strike viciously to bring down, not only India, but personally the friend, Jawaharlal Nehru.

"Chou En-lai visits India. Panditji has five rounds of discussions with him on 25, 26 and 27 June 1954. The verbatim record of the conversations covers forty pages of the Selected Works. Tibet is not mentioned at all. Uncertainties about our boundary that Panditji has been growing more and more anxious about are not mentioned at all.

"The first round is devoted to what has been happening in Geneva. Panditji inquires. Chou fills him in. After this round, Chou En-lai speaks little, just a sentence or two at a time. Panditji talks most of the time. In fact, Chou does more, he does what many in the years to come will come to see as his special skill—he flatters Panditji off the ground.

"Knowing Panditji’s view of himself—as the one concerned with saving the world from the foolishness of lesser men, as the one who has deeper knowledge about the world and its affairs—Chou En-lai sets himself up as the eager student."

They talk on everything, and Jawaharlal Nehru is expansive, giving information on countries from U.S. to Thailand, promising all help.

"‘Your Excellency said that the national and popular movements in West Asia are not mature,’ Chou remarks. ‘Does that mean that there is a lack of mature leaders in these States?’

"‘Is the present situation that the United States is gradually replacing Britain and US influence is increasing?’...

"‘The living conditions of the people in this area are still very bad?’...

"‘Afghanistan has very good relations with India. Is it different from other West Asian States?’...

"‘In this area the population is not much?’... ‘It is a desert area. The total population of the Arab countries is less than thirty million and more than half of this is in Egypt,’ Panditji explains.

"‘Is Afghanistan included in this?’

"‘No, Afghanistan is not Arab.’

"‘Iran and Afghanistan are also Islamic countries?’... Panditji explains Islamic resurgence, and how the Iranians belong to a different sect...

"‘Is it impossible for India to get Thailand into the Southeast Asian countries...?’"

"Panditji takes off on Thailand: ‘...There is a small group of people on top and the rest of the people are lazy, as they do not need to work.’

"‘Do they export much rice?... They export large quantities of rice?’ Chou inquires innocently."

"Panditji ranges far and wide—the fear among smaller countries of bigger ones; the way hostile forces take advantage of this; how fear distorts perception; how, having himself been through struggle and suffering, ‘I do not find any difficulty in understanding and appreciating the background of China, the recent developments during the last ten or twenty years,’ adding, ‘Unfortunately I have not been there and I want to go there...’; the influence Gandhiji has exerted; India’s role in the Commonwealth—‘In the Commonwealth, India’s influence has become more and more and we have influenced the policy of the Commonwealth considerably’; the US—‘It is a powerful country and yet it is afraid, and it is more afraid than any country in Europe...’; ‘I cannot influence American thought very much although I get a large number of letters from ordinary people from America against American policy at present and appreciating Indian policy...’; how Revolution cannot be exported; the communists of India...

"And then on to another country and people about whom Chou has forgotten to ask: ‘Does Your Excellency know about the Burmese people?’ Panditji asks Chou. ‘I had no chance to know them,’ Chou replies helpfully. ‘They are a friendly people, rather childlike. They are calm and composed. They are very proud, and, therefore, sometimes take offence very easily. But they are a very nice people and hospitable and friendly...’"

They met several times over the next few days, continuing the pattern.

"Again the conversation traverses the whole globe—except Tibet, our border, Chinese activities and plans around these parts. Panditji thinks little of the US and its system: ‘Excellency must remember that the US Constitution has many things bad in it... No one can speak with authority in America—not even the President, because the Congress may pull him up.’ Panditji elaborates."

Author quotes what Jawaharlal Nehru writes about the visit -

" ... We are playing, almost against our will, an important part in international affairs and, to some extent, the maintenance of peace in future might well depend on us...’ ... "

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January 08, 2022 - January 08, 2022

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7. Carried away

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"‘It was clear that China would establish its sovereignty over Tibet.’ Any uncertainty there? And notice the word, not ‘suzerainty’ that he has been using saying it is different from ‘sovereignty’, but sovereignty itself. ‘This had been China’s policy for hundreds of years, and, now that a strong Chinese State had been formed, this policy would inevitably be given effect to. We could not stop it in any way, nor indeed had we any legal justification for trying to do so. All we could hope for was that a measure of autonomy would be left to Tibet under Chinese sovereignty.’

"And there have been reasons for this outcome, as solid as they have been valid. To start with, our position in Tibet was a relic of imperialist Britain: ‘In effect, therefore, we were successors to certain expansionist policies of the old British Government. It was not possible for us to hold on to all these privileges because no independent country would accept the position.’ ... "

But Tibet wasn't his to cede! And so to ease his giving up, he is seen in his writings, quoted by Shourie, justifying it, by describing Tibet as feudal, justifying China building roads, and so on, while at the same time fudging over Chinese troops spreading through Tibet, genocide of Tibetans, and the troops at border of India.

" ... Of course, the factor of far greater consequence had been the ‘real influence of India... insubstantial but important’. This arose from the fact that the Tibetans looked up to us for guidance. But ‘this tendency was a relic from the old days of British dominance and partly because they were afraid of China coming more firmly into the picture.’ But all we could do was through diplomacy. And ‘We did that as tactfully as we could, knowing that we could not make very much difference.’ ‘I think, however, that our efforts had some influence and somewhat delayed the Chinese invasion of Tibet’— something you wouldn’t have guessed from his cables of two years earlier!"

"But haven’t B.C. Roy, the chief minister of Bengal, and others been sending him information about these troops? Panditji has the answer for that also: ‘We get news often from Kalimpong about these Chinese military preparations in Tibet,’ he explains. ‘It must be remembered that Kalimpong is a nest of all kinds of spies and the information these people gather is utterly unreliable. It usually comes from émigrés who leave Tibet.’

"He returns to his faith in geography: ‘Indeed, the chief defence of Tibet is its very difficult terrain and the inhospitable nature of the climate. It is no easy matter for very large numbers from outside to live there.’"

"Being clear in our minds, instead of getting lost in what we could not help, he says, ‘we concentrated on one matter which was important to us. This was our frontier with Tibet.’ ‘...On this matter we were not prepared to parley with anyone, and I declared publicly in Parliament and elsewhere that this frontier, including the McMahon Line was a firm one and was not open to discussion.’ ‘Indeed, I went further,’ he continues, explaining how very firm he has been, ‘and said that, from the defence point of view, we considered the Nepal frontier with Tibet also our defence line.’ He did this for a reason, he explains: ‘I said all this deliberately so that the Chinese Government might have no doubts about our attitude.’ But then why shy away from clarifying the matter directly to the Chinese? Panditji has the answer: ‘I did not think it necessary to address the Chinese Government on this question because that itself would have shown some doubt on our part.’"

He signed instead a trade deal, giving up the until then existing rights in Tibet and signing a treaty that mentions Tibet as a region of China.

"Chou En-lai stops over in Burma. U Nu writes to Panditji about the talks he has had with Chou En-lai. During these, Chou has said that the question of the boundary between China and Burma has never been settled in the past. ... "

" ... B.K. Kapur is India’s political officer in Sikkim. He sends notes and a letter. He expresses apprehensions about the designs of China’s communist rulers, and suggests what we must do to prepare for eventualities. He recommends that we should not close our options in regard to Tibet. He warns that the Chinese will not be deterred by pledges of non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, etc., of the kind contained in the preamble to the Sino-Indian Agreement on Tibet."

"‘Naturally, the Tibetans have our sympathy,’ Panditji says. ‘But that sympathy does not take us far and cannot be allowed to interfere with a realistic understanding of the situation and of our policy. I have an impression that Mr. Kapur has not fully appreciated this wider policy of ours. It is necessary, therefore, that he and others concerned should understand it and should realize that this policy is the only one which might be helpful to the Tibetans, not in the measure perhaps that they desire but to some extent.’ ... "

Further, he says -

"The Americans and others can only think in terms of Communist aggression and villainy, of international communism trying to dominate over the world. And so on. All this prevents intelligent thought. If we wish to discuss these matters helpfully, we must avoid certain terms which create powerful reactions in the mind, such as imperialists, communists and the like. I do not like Mr. Kapur talking about Chinese communists, although they are communists. He should talk about the Chinese Government. In the same way, I do not like people talking about the Iron Curtain. The mere mention of these words confuses thought and shows that we are not considering a matter objectively."

He's forgotten early years of WWII, and who shared Poland between them. One nation had a regime with "Socialist" in the title of the party, and the other was until the end of WWII the only leftist nation, by whatever name be the particular brand of leftism.

"‘Of course, both the Soviet Union and China are expansive,’ Panditji continues. ‘They are expansive for evils other than Communism, although Communism may be made a tool for the purpose. Chinese expansionism has been evident during various periods of Asian history for a thousand years or so. We are perhaps facing a new period of such expansionism. Let us consider that and fashion our policy to prevent it coming in the way of our interests or other interests that we consider important.’"

"In a word,

-The system in Tibet has been and is feudal;

-The ones who are upset are the feudal chiefs;

-We can hardly be the defenders of feudalism;

-Moreover, the terrain and altitude of Tibet will save its autonomy;

-In any case, why this inordinate concern? The Chinese have been careful not to interfere with the religion and social customs, not even with the land system."

"The Indian delegation at the negotiations in Peking is led by N. Raghavan, our ambassador there. His adviser, K. Gopalachari, sends a report on the discussions. Panditji dictates a long note of instructions. It has all the ingredients with which we have become familiar: putting others down, the intellectual superiority; the string of unwarranted assumptions—‘our border is settled and firm because our policy is that it is settled and firm’; the half-measures—check-posts must be set up forthwith but no contingents need be provided to defend them.

"Just as he had come down on Kapur for using the word ‘communists’ while referring to the Chinese, Panditji now says that the line to which he has himself been referring as the ‘McMahon Line’ should not be referred to as that:

"In future, we should give up references, except in some historical context, to the McMahon Line or to any other frontier line by date or otherwise. We should simply refer to our frontier. Indeed, the use of the name McMahon is unfortunate and takes us back to the British days of expansion."

"He lays down the ‘forward policy’ which is to cost the country so dearly—the ‘policy’ of putting stakes in the ground with nothing to back them, the policy which the army generals are warning him will prove disastrous, and which does prove disastrous in just a few years. But as he has ruled that this is what the ‘policy’ will be, that is what it will be:

"It is necessary that the system of check-posts should be spread along this entire frontier. More especially, we should have check-posts in such places as might be considered disputed areas. Check-posts are necessary not only to control traffic, prevent unauthorized infiltration but as symbols of India’s frontier. As Demchok is considered by the Chinese as a disputed territory, we should locate a check-post there. So also at Tsang Chokla... In particular, we should have proper check-posts along the UP-Tibet border and on the passes, etc., leading to Joshi Math, Badrinath, etc.

"He puts his foot down on the proposal to back these checkposts with the only kind of force that will make them viable ... "

And proposes, instead, a border militia with local people, but no increase in forces at border.

"Panditji has told Chou En-lai how he would want to visit China. He is duly invited. The visit in October 1954 is to sweep him off his feet. From now on he will just not brook any suggestion that more be done about our border with China ... "

"In passing, Panditji mentions as examples the apprehensions about the loyalties of overseas Chinese, he mentions the maps that the Chinese government continues to publish and which show large chunks of other countries—like Burma—to be parts of China. Chou En-lai gets what Panditji is driving at. On infiltration and assistance to insurrectionist groups within other countries, matters that are of concern to India also, Chou says,

"As regards the question of infiltration, this is entirely a matter for the people of various countries. You referred to it in Delhi and you said that decisions were made by the people of each country and, therefore, no interference was permissible from outside. As far as we are concerned, we will make greater efforts to implement the Five Principles. We can build greater confidence and show to the world an example that not only can we strictly abide by the principles but we can do it well. We can do it by specific examples and during your visit here we can talk more about some more specific questions.8

"A little later, Chou En-lai turns to the question of maps. He says,

"Maps: It is a historical question and we have been mostly printing old maps. We have made no survey of the borders and not consulted with our neighboring countries and we have no basis for fixing the boundary lines. We made our maps and revised them from the maps of other countries. At least we do not have any deliberate intentions of changing the boundaries as KMT had. The whole thing is ridiculous. The question of boundaries between China and Burma was not settled even in Manchu regime and you will find differences even in our boundaries with the Soviet Union and Mongolia. We can further discuss the matter with U Nu but we want time for preparation.9"

"There is a vast volume of literature that records how fellow travellers and even sceptical visitors were bamboozled by communist regimes over the decades. Panditji who had himself been taken in by the Soviets when he had accompanied his father on a visit to the Soviet Union in 1927 was well acquainted with much of this literature—the trumped-up trials of Stalin’s time, the Potemkin villages, the reality behind Soviet claims of Stakhanovite workers and economic miracles, all these were the staple literature of his generation. So, it wasn’t that Panditji was an innocent. And yet he was completely taken in, and this, even more than his general predilections about progressive regimes, was to lead him and, through him, India into 1962.

"‘Over a million people lined the twelve mile long route from the airport,’ the editor’s note records about the welcome in Peking, ‘and for the first time the Chinese dispensed with the bullet proof cars and Nehru rode in an open car. Desmond Donnelly of the Daily Mail described the reception as a “Roman triumph”.’12"

China was only fattening the lamb!

It's heartbreaking to read excerpts from his letters describing this visit, quoted by Arun Shourie. Hiw naively he believed it, and how very shocking must the betrayal subsequently have been personally! The latter, we all shared, even those whod never heard the name of China until then - but he, whod been used to the welcome everywhere in India, was especially touched at this genuine emotion he describes from people, never expecting that the same Chinese woukd turn so hostile so soon, not just government but people too, towards all Indians, not just a matter of border dispute.

" ... I did not sense the presence of any fear among the Chinese. They had plenty of self-confidence and self assurance.’15 No fear in Mao’s China as literally hundreds of thousands are being killed!"

As to that, a final tally estimated, of deaths in twentieth century mass events including WWI and WWII, and of course Russian revolution, mentions to Mao's credit a hundred million in China, and a million Tibetans to boot. Stalin's is one fifth of that.

Shourie quotes excerpts from his, Jawaharlal Nehru's, press interviews including to press from European media, after he returned from his visit to China; Nehru was confident China intended to follow Panchsheel, had no intention of interfering in other countries, much less war.

"So, the Chinese dedication to peace and not to get entangled in the foreseeable future, is almost a historic inevitability! And on top of that, it has been sealed and set in the Panchsheel! This is Panditji’s assessment of rulers who just three years earlier had hurled their forces on to two fronts simultaneously—Tibet and Korea. This is his assessment about rulers for whom ‘power flows out of the barrel of a gun,’ with whom exporting revolutions is an article of faith. ... "

Author describes Jawaharlal Nehru speaking to commonwealth prime minister's in London in February 1955, visiting Soviet union later that year and writing to President Eisenhower about it, all in the same confident strain about peaceful intentions of the two communist nations, and about his having stymied communists in India. .

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January 08, 2022 - January 09, 2022

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8. ‘Two miles this side or two miles that side’

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What woke up Nehru was Soviet union printing maps identical to Chinese ones in showing large swathes of Assam as part of Tibet.

"At the time of the agreement with China about Tibetan questions, it was taken for granted by us that all pending questions between India and China had been settled. In some of our communications too, stress was laid on this. But, China has never admitted this clearly, though they did not deny it either."

And

"I find that the Russian maps (and we have good Soviet atlases which were given to us in Moscow) also reproduce the Chinese maps in regard to the Indian border and show a part of India as being in Tibet."

And Shourie mentions

"Every year, there are petty incidents on our UP-Tibet border. Some Chinese soldiers come across up to ten or fifteen miles or even more."

" ... Panditji writes,

"On the Tibetan side, roads and airports are being built. That is, I think, natural because the Chinese wish to develop Tibet and to improve communications. This does not necessarily mean any hostile or aggressive intention against India, but this, taken together with occasional petty raids and the maps which continue as they were, does produce a sense of disquiet."

" ... He merely reiterates the ‘set up check-posts’ strategy. ... "

"He records:

"From a military point of view, we can do little except

(1) check-posts at all suitable points on the border;

(2) giving efficient training to our men in mountain warfare; and

(3) developing roads and other communications."

When long range bombers are suggested, he rejects the proposal, arguing that its more necessary to proceed with industrial development of the country. He comes down heavily on Pant, the officer in Sikkim, whose information about hundred and twenty thousand troops in Tibet is rejected in favour of Krishna Menon's figure of forty five thousand.

"A few weeks later, in July 1956, Panditji is at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London. He gives a long exposition on China. ... "

"Three days later, he is again arguing China’s case for the seat in the UN. The minutes of the meeting record:

"Mr. Nehru said the problems concerning the international status of Communist China were so important that there would be justifiable criticism if there was no reference to them in the final statement about the discussions at these Meetings. There was, in his view, no more vital or urgent issue than the admission of Communist China into the United Nations."

"By the time he returns to Delhi, the papers are reporting large-scale incursions by Chinese troops into Burma. There has been no provocation. There is no occasion for them to do so. They just force their way in, occupy a thousand square miles of Burmese territory, and settle down.

"We just have to do something, Panditji tells his officers. The Government of Burma has approached us. The incursions violate the Panchsheel. They can have a bearing on our own borders. After weighing alternatives, he suggests that an aide-memoire be prepared for being sent to China. He sets out the points to be made."

Tarek Fateh has repeatedly pointed out how India fights like lawyers while pakis doo goon act; it all goes back to Munich, reflected here in Jawaharlal Nehru acting Neville Chamberlain while China does one up on Hitler.

"A week or so later, on 4 September 1956, Panditji sends a telegraphic message to U Nu through the Indian ambassador in Rangoon. With Chinese forces in firm occupation of Burmese territory, Chou En-lai has invited U Nu to Peking for discussions about the border tensions. Panditji counsels U Nu that ‘it would be advisable for you to accept this invitation and discuss these matters frankly and informally with Chou En-lai. This is a more helpful way than tackling them only at official and government level.’ A contrast to the position he has set for himself! ... "

Reminds one more and more of the frightening invitation to Czechoslovakia premier to Munich, and the whole menacing description by William Shirer in Rise And Fall of The Third Reich!

Did China ever return the occupied territories of Burma?

"Ten days have not passed, on 20/21 September 1956, the wake-up alarm rings louder—Chinese troops cross a pass in Himachal, the Shipki La. The decision to cross deep into this border, is manifestly a deliberate one. The Chinese officer says that they have been ordered to patrol right up to Hupsang Khad, a spot 196 miles from Simla. It turns out that they have come in thrice in the preceding weeks. ‘This is a serious matter,’ Panditji records, ‘we cannot accept this position.’ We should, of course protest. But that will not be enough. Our guards must remain at their post ‘even at the cost of conflict’.8

"Soon, there is a cable from R.K. Nehru about the dates on which Chou En-lai proposes to visit India. Either for this reason or because he thought that police and not the army will be the appropriate force, by 8 October 1956, Panditji is taking a softer view. He emphatically turns down a proposal to send troops to Shipki La. ‘In fact, even in the spring next year, I do not envisage the necessity of sending troops. The fate of Shipki La is not going to be decided by fighting or by large show of force... The main thing to do is to have a Police outpost there and that our personnel should be in physical possession of the Shipki La when the snows melt.’ He does allow that it may be useful to send a few army men to reconnoitre the area.9"

"The Dalai Lama is in India at India’s invitation. Panditji meets him on 26 and 28 November 1956. The Dalai Lama is distraught. Panditji jots down the points of their exchange. The Dalai Lama puts the figure of Chinese troops in Tibet at 120,000, the very figure for which Panditji had come down on Apa Pant. The foreign secretary inserts a paragraph in Panditji’s notings about the talks: ‘The Dalai Lama appealed to India for help. PM’s reply was that, apart from other considerations, India was not in a position to give any effective help to Tibet; nor were other countries in a position to do so. Dalai Lama should not resist land reforms.’ ... "

Jawaharlal Nehru feared being seen helping Tibet in any way, and being accused of having designs on Tibet, because he'd always taken the English, not Indian, position on most matters. This was as Gandhian as it could get.

"Chou En-lai arrives in Delhi on 28 November 1956. Panditji welcomes him at the airport. ... "

"There are four rounds of talks—one round at Bhakra-Nangal; one on the train back, this round in effect from 10.30 p.m. to 2.30 a.m.; and two rounds in Delhi.

"The talks differ in two respects from the ones that were held when Chou first came to Delhi. Chou En-lai talks as much as Panditji. Second, while several subjects come up—the crises in Suez and Hungary, for instance—the two have candid exchanges on Tibet and the Sino-Indian border.12"

Chou En-lai blames India, U.S. and Taiwan for China's troubles in Tibet.

" ... Chou returns to the theme—India has to ensure that Tibetans do not do anything that the Chinese government regards as anti-Chinese. He tells Panditji that, if the Dalai Lama goes to Kalimpong, attempts might be made to keep him there, or that if the Panchen Lama goes there, he may be treated ‘discourteously’. ‘If such incidents happen,’ Chou states, ‘Indian Government has power to intervene and check them, because such incidents, partake of the nature of anti-Chinese activities or activities designed to create an independent Tibet or espionage or encouragement to subversive activities. We are mentioning these possibilities to your Government in advance so that, if anything happens, the Government of India could take preventive measures.’

"The message goes home. Panditji assures Chou En-lai, ‘As regards the Dalai Lama, we do not want any incident to take place about Dalai Lama in Kalimpong or while he is in India. We will do as Your Excellency and Dalai Lama decide. What kind of incident does Your Excellency fear might happen? If you can give some specific idea about the trouble, we can prevent it.’ The Dalai Lama does not go to Kalimpong. Tibetans there are put on notice. The Dalai Lama returns to Tibet."

Abject kowtowing! But then, Gandhi had done it to the other enemy of India!

Chou En-lai conveys his having not known anything of McMahon line, and claims Tibet has a problem with it. He repeats acceptance of McMahon line thrice.

"Two points should be borne in mind. First, Chou’s statements on accepting the McMahon Line are unambiguous, they are repeated thrice. Yet the Chinese will have no difficulty in going back on them. Second, even as Chou is saying all this about the border in the east, the Chinese government has begun constructing roads that will hack off thousands of square miles of our territory in the west."

" ... Chou has told Panditji,

"Tibet is divided into three parts...These three parts still have some distance (differences) among them. We have always advised unity. Our policy has always been to give them an autonomous government under the Central Government, enjoying a large measure of autonomous rights. The Central Government always consults them on all related matters and local matters are handled by themselves. We fully respect their religion; everyone lives in religion there and every family has to give one or two of its members to the temple. At present we do not talk of democratic reforms to them; but when other parts of China become economically better and if Tibetans feel the need and agree to it, then we can introduce them."

The only clue to reality in that whole statement is about tibet being divided inyo several oarts by china - and only a small part retaining name of Tibet.

Chou En-lai repeats accusations against refugees in Kalimpong.

" ... Even more important from the point of view of lessons we must draw for the future, the two aspects of policy that are going to have the maximum effect on Tibetans and their religion are ones that Chou doesn’t mention at all: that the Chinese government will swamp Tibet with the Han Chinese and reduce the Tibetans to a minority in their land; and that they will split the ‘three parts’, subsume two of them into adjacent provinces, and redefine ‘Tibet’ to be the truncated ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’."

U Nu conveys trouble he's had with China, and needs help from Nehru. Partly it's about China not liking mention of McMahon line.

"Panditji says that he agrees that the expression ‘McMahon Line’ should be discarded—‘It reminds one of British incursions and aggression.’ The basic point is that ‘our frontier with China, except for two or three very minor matters, was a fixed and well-known frontier and there was no dispute about it. We had never raised this question with China, but I had stated in Parliament here and also to Chou En-lai in Peking that there was nothing to discuss about our frontier as it was fixed and well-known. We have now our check-posts all along this frontier.’"

There's correspondence with chief minister of U.P., where there has been trouble at border.

" ... ‘As you know,’ he tells the chief minister, ‘this border was settled long ago by a tripartite meeting, and this border is often referred to as the McMahon Line.’ Chinese maps have been showing large parts of India to be part of China. ‘So far as we are concerned, we have made it repeatedly clear in Parliament and elsewhere that this border is a firm one, and there is nothing to discuss about it,’ Panditji says. ‘In fact, there was some slight attempt on the part of Chou En-lai to discuss this matter with me when I went to Peking. I told him there was nothing to discuss.’"

As per Wikipedia, for what it's worth - often incorrect as Wikipedia prefers to be in interest of kowtowing either yo China or to jihadists - indeed, any anti-Indian for that matter -

The sentences above regarding Tibet's non-acceptance of the line despite signing, are, one may bet safely, Chinese insertion post Chinese invasion of Tibet.

"Panditji is not entirely at ease. ‘The fact, however, remained that this could not be treated as an agreed border, between India and China,’ he writes immediately afterwards, ‘and the question might be raised at any time by China. This would affect not a few miles of mountain territory, but quite a large area.’

"Panditji goes on to recall that on his last visit to Delhi, Chou En-lai had talked about the China-Burma border, and stated in that context that China had accepted the McMahon Line in regard to the boundary between China and Burma. Furthermore, ‘He [Chou En-lai] added that although the matter was by no means clear, as the British Government of the day had been committing aggression in various places, nevertheless, as India and China were friends, he was prepared to accept this McMahon Line as the border between India and China also.’ ‘This was an important statement and admission from our point of view,’ Panditji tells Sampurnanand, ‘and I therefore had him repeat this quite clearly. I added then that quite apart from this long frontier about which there was no argument, there were two or three smaller border disputes, and the sooner we settled them, the better. This settlement should take place on the basis of usage and geographical features. He agreed.’"

Tibetans ask for help, and Nehru refuses, advising them instead to accept China's sovereignty and only claim autonomy.

" ... The Chinese continue to issue those maps. By August 1958, Panditji’s assessment turns. ‘I do not think that we should allow this matter to pass without some kind of protest,’ he instructs the foreign secretary. ‘To ignore this repetition of inaccurate maps showing large parts of India in China is, in a sense, to accept them. ... referred to this matter to Premier Chou En-lai on more than one occasion,’ Panditji writes, ‘that is, when I visited China and also I think when Premier Chou En-lai came to India. His answer was that present maps were based on old maps and the Chinese Government had no time to correct them. As the People’s Republic of China has now been functioning for many years and new maps have been repeatedly printed and published, it is surprising that these corrections have not been made. ... "

" ... On 4 September 1958, questions about the maps showing large parts of the Northeast including Assam as parts of China put by the Praja Socialist Party member from Assam, Hem Barua come up. ... "

Jawaharlal Nehru's answer includes border violations mentioned by the representative -

" ... ‘They are of no particular importance. The area concerned is very little and there is no other value… Honourable Members will remember that these places in high mountains are such that they are not easily accessible and in fact nobody can go there for six or seven months in the winter—only in summer months some people go for grazing purposes there.’ ... "

"Two months have not passed, and a party of Indian surveyors is arrested by the Chinese at Shyok, south of the Karakoram Pass. For a month, there is no news of them. Upon inquiry, the Chinese tell our embassy in Peking that they had arrested the party a month earlier. The counsellor at our embassy in Peking does not realize the importance of the matter. Instead of informing Delhi by cable, he sends a letter. Panditji approves the proposal of the foreign secretary that a strong protest be lodged with Peking. ... ‘…we might indicate that the fact of this particular area being in Indian or Chinese territory is a matter of dispute between the two countries. This question will be dealt with separately. But the fact that our surveying party went there in the ordinary course of their work cannot be said to be an intrusion in admittedly Chinese territory.’22"

"What is becoming patent is not just what Chou En-lai had said but also the imprudence of relying on what he had said. And even more so on the deduction that because Panditji had said that there was nothing to discuss and Chou En-lai had not pressed the matter, the latter had accepted the position that the border was settled, established, firm."

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January 09, 2022 - January 10, 2022

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9. ‘You didn’t even know we were building a road…’

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"The Chinese now put a different construction on the maps being ‘old maps’. Up till now they have been saying that these were old maps dating from the Kuomintang era, and that they had not had time to correct them. Now they leave out the last clause. These are old maps, in the sense that they are authentic in that they are based on maps that have been continuously published since the pre-liberation times!"

Nehru responded at length, reminding Chou En-lai of their talks, and Chou En-lai expressing agreement or willingness to accept the McMahon line.

Chou En-lai writes back to say there never has been any border agreements between the two countries.

" ... ‘The latest case concerns an area in the southern part of China’s jurisdiction. Patrol duties have continually been carried out in that area by the border guards of the Chinese Government. And the Sinkiang-Tibet highway built by our country in 1956 runs through that area. Yet recently the Indian Government claimed that that area was Indian territory. All this shows that border disputes do exist between China and India.’"

" ... Chou is saying that China built the road through Aksai Chin in 1956. For three full years, the Government of India did not say anything—it knew nothing about it. Three years having gone by, it has suddenly woken up, and is asserting that the area through which this area has been built belongs to it: that is what his statement says in effect. Years later, during his talks with Henry Kissinger, Chou En-lai is to make fun of Indian authorities on this very point. Chou recalls for Kissinger that China had built the road from Western Sinkiang to the Ali District of Tibet, and how, suddenly Pandit Nehru had raised the issue of this road. Chou tells Kissinger, ‘I said, “You didn’t even know we were building a road the last three years, and now you suddenly say that it is your territory.” I remarked upon how strange this was...’2"

"As for recent incidents, like the one at Barahoti, Chou proposes that both sides keep to the areas that are under their control at the moment, and that disputes be resolved through consultation.3"

" ... Information about happenings in Tibet also showed that the Chinese were unrelenting in their efforts to suppress and subjugate the Tibetans."

"Two days later, on 22 March 1959, Panditji sends his reply to Chou En-lai. Yes, it is true that the border has not been delineated on the ground in all the sectors, Panditji says, ‘but I am surprised to know that this frontier was not accepted at any time by the Government of China.’ The traditional frontier follows the watershed on the crest of the Himalayan Range, he points out. Moreover, in most parts, it has the sanction of specific international agreements between the Government of India and the Central Government of China. Panditji lists these one by one. He also notes that old revenue records establish the areas as having been under Indian administration. As for the McMahon Line, Panditji points out that, apart from the advantage that this line ‘runs along the crest of the High Himalayan Range which forms the natural dividing line between the Tibetan plateau in the north and the sub-montane region in the south,’ ‘In our previous discussions and particularly during your visit to India in January 1957, we were gratified to note that you were prepared to accept this line as representing the frontier between China and India in this region and I hope that we will reach an understanding on this basis.’

"Panditji moves to the happenings at Barahoti to which Chou has referred. What he records is of interest—the pattern of what China has been doing since is exactly what it did then, and we too have been doing the same thing which the government was prepared to do then: that is, to desist from sending our personnel even to areas which we were convinced were well within India. We provided ‘extensive documentary proofs that this area has been under Indian jurisdiction and lies well within our frontiers,’ Panditji points out. We proposed that neither side send their civil or military officials to the area. ‘Unfortunately, your delegation did not agree to our suggestion.’ But there has been a change since: ‘I learn that a material change in the situation has since been effected by the dispatch of Chinese civil and military detachments, equipped with arms, to camp in the area, after our own civil party had withdrawn at the beginning of last winter. If the reports that we have received about an armed Chinese party camping and erecting permanent structures in Hoti during winter are correct, it would seem that unilateral action, not in accordance with custom, was being taken in assertion of your claim to the disputed area.’"

He expresses being hurt by Chinese accusations about India encroaching on Chinese territory and states flatly that independent India has never done that.

"The situation in Tibet continues to deteriorate. The Chinese have moved a large number of troops into Tibet. The people of Tibet are being put down with great force. Panditji is now seeing a different side of Chinese character. ... "‘The Chinese always and, more especially, now are given to arrogance and throwing their weight about. I have no doubt that they have treated the Tibetans very harshly ... ""

There's agitation in parliament due to Chinese troops in Tibet perpetrating atrocities, and danger to India from massing of Chinese troops at border; Nehru reacts by objecting to a word here or there.

" ... ‘The measure of the autonomy has varied,’ Panditji tells the House, ‘because the strength of China, the weakness of China, the strength of Tibet, the weakness of Tibet has varied in the course of the last hundreds of years. But, that is the position. Every Government in China has claimed that. Many Governments in Tibet have repudiated that. So, there it is. ... "

He mentions Chou En-lai emphasising during his visit to India that while Tibet was always part of China, it was not China, and China intended to retain full autonomy of Tibet.

"The Chinese assault becomes more and more oppressive. Lhasa itself is crushed. Shells land in the compound of the Dalai Lama’s residence. His closest advisors and he decide that he must leave immediately. After an arduous journey, he and his small group reach the Indian border. The Government of India receives him with due honour, and he is formally given asylum. Till final decisions can be taken about where he will set up his residence, he, his closest relatives and colleagues are taken to Mussoorie.

"The developments create a sensation around the world. Public opinion is aroused in India also. The decision that Panditji has taken about giving the Dalai Lama is indeed a far-sighted one. It is based on principle. It has been taken in the full knowledge that China will be incensed by it. For all these reasons, the decision is a bold and principled one. And there can be no doubt that Panditji is the one to whom we owe this decision, and to whom, accordingly, we owe gratitude.

"Parliament is in furore at what China has done.9 Panditji is at pains to balance several considerations. He says our policies must rest on three objectives. first and foremost, we have to take care of India’s interests and security. Second, we want to maintain friendly relations with China—that these relations remain friendly is vital for us, for China and for the world. Third, we have to bear in mind the close ties we have with Tibet—of culture, of history, of religion; and, of course, there are the reverence that people here feel for the Dalai Lama and the sympathy they have for the people of Tibet in these trying times."

He is questioned in parliament, disquiet due to Soviets copying Chinese maps persistent in showing large swathes of India as parts of China. He doesn't tell them about Chou En-lai having completely reversed on boundary and now claiming those parts on strength of Chinese maps.

"The members are not at all satisfied. ‘Apart from the maps, because after all, the question of the maps is academic, may I know whether there are certain portions of land between India and Tibet where they are encroaching on the basis of these maps—encroaching into our territory—particularly in Taklakot which is near the border of Almora?’ asks a member of Panditji’s own Party, the Congress. He represents the Nainital constituency in the Lok Sabha. ‘At Taklakot they have come six miles this way, according to their map. It is not a question of map alone. They have actually encroached on our territory; six miles in one pass.’

"Once again, Panditji minimizes what the Chinese have done. ... "

He talks about the places being more accessible from the other side than from india.

"A member asks, ‘May I know whether Government’s attention has been drawn to the news item published in several papers alleging that the Chinese have claimed some 30,000 sq. m. of our territory and they have also disputed the McMahon line?’

"Panditji’s answer is true to form: it is misleading. ‘No, Sir,’ he says, and puts the onus on the members. ‘I would suggest to hon. Members not to pay much attention to news items emanating sometimes from Hong Kong and sometimes from other odd places. We have had no such claim directly or indirectly made on us.’"

"By now the Chinese have seized Aksai Chin. They have endorsed the maps that claim all of what is now Arunachal Pradesh and large parts of Assam as being parts of China. They have gone back on their willingness to accept the McMahon Line. What more would they have to do to make a claim ‘directly or indirectly’?"

He is questioned if China does not accept McMahon line as boundary. He is vague in response.

" ... Panditji travels to Mussoorie to meet the Dalai Lama.

"The two meet for four hours on the 24 April 1959. ... "

Dalai Lama explores if Tibet would be able to find help from anywhere- India, U.N., other countries. Nehru is severe in telling him that Tibet has to accept reality, that India cannot help. Dalai Lama tells him that Tibetans must have complete independence, that the students have been writing to him.

"‘If one has to fight for anything one should choose one’s weapons carefully, weapons which are to one’s own advantage and not to that of enemy. Violence is all right if one can be equal or superior to the enemy in arms. One must also know how to use violence in that case. I am not criticizing but only analysing the factors of the situation in Tibet. Spiritual efforts and physical force are two different things. In an actual physical conflict the physical force that can be brought to play and its result will have to be taken into account. ... Take India’s own case. We had a background of relative backwardness ourselves and how hard the Indian people had struggled before they actually achieved independence.’" Nehru responds. He asks why Dalai Lama did not discuss frankly with Chou En-lai when they met last, in Delhi. " ... The Chinese, although outwardly make a show of welcoming criticism, were extremely angry when any criticism is levelled against them. ... ", Dalai Lama tells him, recounting what happened when Tibetans talked to Chinese occupational force in Tibet. Nehru tells him that Indian people's sympathy is with Tibet, but India cannot go to war with China.

"When Panditji does not want to or cannot do anything, he tends to frame the question in terms of ‘either/or’. Either peace or World War."

He tells Dalai Lama that Tibet won't get independence unless Chinese state is dissolved, and the world cannot make it happen without an atomic war, when Dalai Lama says Tibet must have independence.

"‘Help is required for the present juncture,’ the Dalai Lama says. ‘Since 20th March, the Chinese have been killing indiscriminately and burning large numbers of people. Can’t this be stopped?’

"‘How can I stop it?’ Panditji exclaims. ‘How can I stop anything from happening inside Tibet?’

"‘There are killings by machine-gunning from the air. If there can be only a solution to this?’ the Dalai Lama inquires.

"Panditji turns logician: ‘There is a definite contradiction between this talk of a fight and this fear of killing. Ultimately if Tibet’s independence is to be achieved, it will be due to its own people’s courage and ability to stand up to suffering, whatever it may be, and not due to any help anybody else in the whole wide world can give.’

"‘We do not have a speck of a desire to fight the Chinese violently for our independence,’ the Dalai Lama protests. ‘It was the Chinese who said that the Tibetans started the fight but this is completely untrue.’

"‘It does not matter who started the fight and there is no good complaining,’ Panditji says. ‘Only old women complain! Physically it is not possible to fight on behalf of Tibet. Even such a suggestion will harm them and their cause. Sympathy at present for Tibet cannot be converted into help by any country. D.L. should be under no illusion and, therefore, should fashion his policy with reference to actuality.’ No other country can help at present, and India has gone to the limit: ‘...at the present moment if the D.L. reads newspapers he will find the anger of the Chinese against India. See for example the Panchen Lama’s statement.13 We have gone to the limit of our efforts. It is true not much has been done. Today we cannot even privately advise Chinese, because of this suspicion. The so-called help being given to you would close all the doors to such help.’"

"‘... The Chinese say India wants to grab Tibet and with this suspicion they suspect everything we say.’

"The tactic of hurling wild charges—that the Tibetan uprising is being organized from the ‘command center’ of Kalimpong; that India is conspiring with the Tibetans to break it away from China; even Chou En-lai has himself told the National People’s Congress in Peking on 18 April 1959 that the Dalai Lama has been abducted to India! The Chinese Ambassador tells the Indian Foreign Secretary that the uprising in Tibet has been ‘caused by India’!—has worked."

"‘The mere fact of D.L. living in India has some consequence to India, to Tibet, to China and to the rest of the world,’ Panditji reminds the Dalai Lama. ‘In China it is immediately one of irritation and suspicion. D.L. being in India keeps alive the question of Tibet in the minds of the world. Tibet, as it were, cannot close up without news. It becomes a difficult thing to manage. The tendency of the Chinese authorities would be to crush Tibet as soon as possible. Nobody can help.’

"Panditji advises the Dalai Lama to say as little to the press as possible. ‘The only kind of statements, if at all necessary, could relate about peace and ending of fighting in Tibet. An indication that despite all her sufferings Tibet had no quarrel with the Chinese may be helpful. P.M. deprecated the taking up of an attitude like “we must have independence or nothing else”. This would not help, nor would the cursing of China help. Stress on peace and stopping of fighting and killing will help in keeping the subject in the right place and level.’

"Panditji then inquires about the report that there is a proposal to set up a Tibetan government-in-exile. The Dalai Lama gives some details.

"‘Certain consequences follow from this,’ Panditji says. ‘We as a country cannot recognize this Government under international law. The moment we do this, we will have to withdraw our C.G. [Counsel General] in Lhasa and lose all touch with Tibet.’

"The Dalai Lama asks whether the Counsel General was not responsible to the old Tibetan Government and since it had been dissolved, did the position not change?

"Panditji: ‘It is an act of war against China, a step like that of withdrawing our C.G. and recognizing the new Government.’14"

He returns to Delhi and gives an account of the meeting to the parliament. He's distressed about Chinese accusations.

" ... He recounts the events that have led to the situation in Tibet and to the Dalai Lama having to leave Lhasa. We gave up the extraterritorial rights that the British government had acquired in Tibet. All that we have wanted to do since then is to preserve the traditional contacts between India and Tibet, he protests repeatedly: ‘.our actions in this matter and whatever we have done subsequently in regard to Tibet are proof enough of our policy and that India had no political or ulterior ambitions in Tibet. ... "

"He continues: ‘It is therefore, a matter of the deepest regret and surprise to us that charges should be made which are both unbecoming and entirely void of substance. We have conveyed this deep feeling of regret to the Chinese Government, more especially at the speeches delivered recently in the current session of the National People’s Congress in Peking’—a reference that includes what Chou has told the body about the Dalai Lama having been abducted to India against his will.

"He recalls what Chou had told him about respecting the autonomy of Tibet.15"

"In a telegram he sends to India’s Ambassador in Peking, G. Parthasarathi, he writes:

" ... It seems to me that Chinese authorities have developed a habit of trying to bully and imagining that offensive language will produce results they desire. It produces exactly opposite results in any self-respecting country. It is difficult enough to restrain these strong reactions in India, but we shall do so. Our general policy will remain firm, though not unfriendly to China. We realize the importance of these friendly relations, but friendship cannot be obtained by threats and coercive attitude. If Chinese friendship is necessary for India, so is Indian friendship for China. The time for any country to display arrogance in dealing with India is long past. ... "

"As I mentioned, the Chinese tactic—it used to be at the time the Standard Operating Procedure of Marxists—of hurling extreme and wild charges, in extreme language, that tactic has worked: instead of focusing on what the Chinese have done and are doing in Tibet, Panditji is forever defending what he and his government have said in regard to the Chinese."

" ... The Khampas have mounted a fierce movement to resist the Chinese occupation, the suppression of the Tibetans, and especially the Chinese policy of settling a large number of Hans in Tibet. The Tibetans clearly see the danger: they will be reduced to a minority in their own land. Panditji devotes a large part of his letter of 25 March 1959 to justifying the policy he has followed. He goes over grounds that have become familiar to us by now: no Chinese government gave up its claim to Tibet, even though it could not exercise effective control over the region; we could do little when Chinese forces went into Tibet; the seventeen-point 1951 Agreement—how it recognized autonomy of Tibet under the sovereignty of China, how the Dalai Lama was a party to this agreement, ‘it is true that even that Agreement was accepted by the Tibetans without joy and under the compulsion of circumstances. But it was accepted...’; the facts about who started the violence—the Khampas or the Chinese—are not clear...,20 remarks which we should pause to consider—as they help explain how Panditji was able to not see for so long what was patent."

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January 10, 2022 - January 10, 2022

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10. Prelude

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Throughout this chapter three themes run concurrently, beginning with increasing Chinese aggression coupled with sudden exposure of their rejection of the long settled India-Tibet border, and false accusations against India coupled with abusive language.

The second theme is Nehru having to face parliament and press, as these parodies of supposed friends come to light, and answer about loss of territory and personnel, apart from questions of policy and planning next moves.

But the greatest seems the difficulty Nehru had facing the fact of the perfidy, of loss of trust, of coming liberalisation that it wasn't a gentleman's club but a dark ally with a goon all too ready to hit any which way, and more than anything else, not only his having to accept this but facing loss of face if he did accept this reality. Neville Chamberlain must have gone through it all, after Munich wasn't enough as he thought for peace, and certainly after Britain was forced to declare war.

[Wikipedia:-

"After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Zhao was stripped of his post and executed by the revolutionary commander Yin Changheng."

"In 1917, the Tibetan army defeated China in battles at Chamdo, west of the Dri River, which were halted after Britain refused to sell Tibet additional armements.[9]"

"Tenpay Gyaltsan, a Khampa who was 5 years old, was selected as the fifth Jamyang Hutuktu in 1921.[16]

"The Kuomintang formulated a plan where three Khampa divisions would be assisted by the Panchen Lama to oppose the Communists.[17]

" ... ‘The Khampa revolt started in an area of China proper adjoining Tibet, more than three years ago,’ Panditji observes, and asks, ‘Is Kalimpong supposed to be responsible for that?’ ... ‘Even according to the accounts received through Chinese sources, the revolt in Tibet was of considerable magnitude and the basis of it must have been a strong feeling of nationalism which affects not only upper class people but others also...’ ‘The attempt to explain a situation by the use of rather worn-out words, phrases and slogans, is seldom helpful,’ Panditji points out."

Acharya Kripalani spoke at length on the issue.

"‘England went to war with Germany not because Germany had invaded England, but because it had invaded Poland and Belgium,’ he reminds the House. Acharya Kripalani recalls that the same argument was being put forward in 1954, and he had pointed out at that time, ‘It is also well-known that in the new map of China other border territories like Nepal, Sikkim, etc., figure. This gives us an idea of the aggressive designs of China. Let us see what the Chinese themselves did in the Korean War. As soon as the U.N. troops, or more correctly the American troops, reached the borders of China, it felt insecure and it immediately joined the Korean War.’ ‘I do not say that because China conquered Tibet, we should have gone to war with it,’ he says. What he had been suggesting from the beginning, he recalled, was that we should not rush in to recognize the new regime. Let it show its colours first, he had counselled. Let us not go around the world pushing others to hurry up and recognize it. Let us not push its case for the seat in the UN to the exclusion of everything else. True, we could not go to war with it because of its aggression against Tibet, Acharya Kripalani had said, ‘But this does not mean that we should recognize the claim of China on Tibet. We must know that it is an act of aggression against a foreign nation.’

"He recalls that the previous year, in 1958, talking about Panchsheel, he had said, ‘This great doctrine was born in sin, because it was enunciated to put the seal of our approval upon the destruction of an ancient nation which was associated with us spiritually and culturally.’"

" ... ‘Panchsheel implies a mutuality of respect for each other’s integrity and sovereignty,’ Kripalani points out, that is the essence of it—respect for each other’s territorial integrity, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs... ‘How can there be respect for these things unless there is mutuality?’ Is there mutuality in the way China is conducting itself vis-à-vis countries like ours?

"They have charged that Kalimpong is the ‘command center’ of the troubles they are facing in Tibet. Their charge was investigated last year, Acharya Kripalani recalls. It was found to be totally unfounded. The report was sent to them."

"A young member advances telling points. We have been advocating the case for China in international councils even more fervently than China itself, he says—muddai sust aur gavah chust... Under the agreement of 1951, Tibet is to have autonomy in its internal affairs. But China has violated the agreement. It has interfered in the internal affairs of Tibet. Lakhs of people from China are being settled in Tibet so that the Tibetans shall be reduced to a minority in their own land... Thousands have been taken from Tibet for inculcating a new religion in them... When we recognized the suzerainty of China over Tibet, we made a great mistake. That was an unfortunate day... China has violated the agreement that it signed with India... When people cannot protect and practise even their religion under communism, how can one say that communism and democracy are compatible?... Tibet is not the internal affair of China... The Government of India should think again about the policy it has been pursuing... If we can champion the cause of Algeria’s independence, why can we not speak out for the independence of Tibet? On the same criteria, is Algeria not the internal affair of France?... Our party supports the independence of Tibet... Can Tibet conceivably attain autonomy within China? Communism and autonomy are antonyms... When we were championing the cause of China in the UN, we could as well have championed that of Tibet. Ukraine is a part of the Soviet Union but it has its own membership of the UN... With howsoever much restraint our prime minister may pursue our policy, if that policy does not help solve the problem of Tibet, then we will have to acknowledge that there is need to inject some firmness into that policy, some activism... A large country has swallowed a small one... As far as India is concerned, China has a malevolent eye towards us... How come, the new Government of China has thrown Chiang Kai-shek out but kept his maps?... This is hidden aggression against India. In Uttar Pradesh, China is squatting over two places that it has wrested. Such incidents point to a gathering calamity... The Tibetan refugees now in India should be allowed to campaign for the freedom of their country just as our freedom fighters campaigned in foreign lands for India’s freedom... This is a new imperialism. Its danger is that it comes wearing the disguise of revolution. It comes shouting the slogans of a new era. But this is imperialism, it is expansionism...4"

Nehru proceeds to speak to cut him - Atal Bihari Vajpayee - down, by quibbling about the statement that China has broken the agreement. But he also says, Chinese have looked down on Tibet for a long time; Chinese look down on everyone else. They consider themselves a celestial race.

Nehru refuses to raise the matter of Tibet in U.N. even as China escalates verbal assaults against himself and against India. Parliament is up in arms. He tries to diffuse and dodge, and gets away with it only due to respect he commands, but is now expending the capital.

Several members ask if a large part of territory of Ladakh has been now occupied by China. He responds by beginning with a description of the terrain, and admitting serious incursions, as well as an encounter of an Indian patrol party by a larger Chinese one. China has not responded to protest yet.

"'But hasn't China built a road through Ladakh?' N. G. Goray asks." Nehru admits that is so, from Barton to Yarkand. He's questioned on why parliament was not told, if he's known of this having happened a year ago. He responds with the regions remoteness and the dispute about borders. Goray questions again if that's how it is, any nation can built in any remote part of our country and apprehend our parties, and so on. PM responds with a general speech about borders, disputes, demarcation on grounds and so on. Atal Bihari Vajpayee questions about security measurements; instead of using the opportunity to inform the house, PM proceeds to put the young member down. There have been serious incidents at Longju in northeast, of which PM now informs the house. Entire NEFA has been placed under the army, he informs them.

Longju, incidentally, is in existence on Wikipedia, with the short history above; Wikipedia informs one as of few hours ago that it's a place that was part of NEFA, its residents are a tribe from Arunachal Pradesh and that it's occupied since 1962 by China despite India's claim. But on Google maps, it's not shown. If one queries Leningrad, Google maps do show St Petersburg, so it's not about a change of name. Did China simply bulldoze it and finish off the residents, who were citizens of India? Well, China dies false claim that Tibet is part of China, and has changed nomenclature to pretend that Tibet was always the size they've cut it down to, but fact is China was one third of its current size before China swallowed Tibet - and conducted a genocide of tibetans, and of Khampas even across the border in China while Tibet still was Tibet. Communist nothing, it's still just the warlord land of killers and liars.

Quoted from Wikipedia -

"India had a border post manned by Assam Rifles at Longju until August 1959, when it was attacked by Chinese border troops and forced to withdraw. After discussion the two sides agreed to leave the post unoccupied.[6] India established a new post at Maja,[c] three miles to the south of Longju,[9] but continued to patrol up to Longju.[10] After the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the Chinese reoccupied Longju and brushed off Indian protests.[10]

"Since late 1990s and early 2000s, China has inched forward further south, establishing a battalion post at erstwhile Maja.[11][12] In 2020, China built a 100-house civilian village close to this location in disputed territory.[10][12]"

"By the beginning of 1958, China had completed the Aksai Chin Road and obtained the capacity for large-scale troop movement into Tibet.[28] In March 1959, an uprising erupted in Tibet, and troops moved in to quell it. The PLA was deployed along the McMahon Line,[29] and four regiments were deployed in the Shannan region bordering Subansiri and Kameng Divisions.[20][30] In response, India set up advance posts manned by Assam Rifles[g] along the border. The two places where the map-drawn McMahon Line differed from the prevailing ethnic frontier, the Khinzemane post along the Nyamjang Chu river valley and Longju in the Tsari Chu valley, came in for contestation. The Chinese suppression of the Tibetan uprising and India's decision to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama inflamed the public opinion on both sides.[32]

"On 23 June, China handed a protest note to the Indian embassy in Beijing, alleging that hundreds of Indian troops had intruded into and occupied Migyitun (among other places). Migyitun was said to have been "shelled" and the Indian troops were alleged to be working in collusion with "Tibetan rebel bandits". The Indian government denied that any such actions took place.[33] There is no record of any Tibetan armed resistance operating in the Migyitun area.[27] Evidently, the Chinese were highlighting the discrepancy between the map-marked McMahon Line and the Indian-claimed border.

"On 7 August, Chinese forces initiated hostilities at Khinzemane as well as Longju, pushing back the Indian post at the former and "actual fighting" at the latter.[34][32] Reports state that a Chinese force of two to three hundred men was used to drive out the Indian border troops from Longju.[35] On 25 August, they surrounded a forward picket consisting of 12 personnel (one NCO and 11 riflemen),[36] and fired upon it killing one and wounding another. The rest were taken prisoner although some escaped.[37] The following day, the Longju post itself was attacked with an overwhelming force. After some fighting, the entire Longju contingent withdrew to Daporijo.[38] Chinese troops began to entrench themselves at the Indian Longju post, digging mines and building airfields, demarcating it as their territory.[39]

"When the Indian government protested about the incident, the Chinese replied that it was the Indian troops that opened fire and later "withdrew ... on their own accord".[40][36] They also said that Longju was in Tibetan territory according to the McMahon Line.[32]"

"The Indian media reported the 25 August attack on Longju on 28 August 1959. Nehru faced questions in the parliament on the same day. He revealed that serious border incidents occurred between India and China along the Tibet border. Nehru went on to reference four cases: Aksai Chin Road, Pangong Lake area, Khinzemane and Longju.[41] He also announced that the border would be the responsibility of the military from then onwards.[42][43]

"The Longju incident came while numerous questions were already being raised in India based on leaks and news reports. In order to stem the "tide of criticism", Nehru had decided to publish the entire correspondence with the Chinese government as a "white paper". The first of these appeared on 7 September. In due course the white papers would severely restrict Nehru's room for diplomatic manoeuvre.[44]

"On 8 September, Nehru received a reply from the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to his letter from March 1959 quizzing about the Chinese maps claiming Indian territory. Zhou stated that the maps were "substantially correct", thereby laying claim to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh as well as Aksai Chin.[45] (Until this point Zhou had been claiming that PRC was just reprinting the old Kuomintang maps and hadn't had the time to examine the boundary question.)[46]

"In the same letter, Zhou also proposed that border differences should be settled through negotiations and that the "status quo" should be maintained until such settlement.[47][48][h] Nehru accepted the proposal in his response. He indicated that the Indian forces would withdraw from Tamaden—another location where the McMahon Line was contested—and invited Zhou to do the same at Longju, while reassuring him that the Indian forces would not reoccupy it.[52] The Chinese forces are said to have subsequently withdrawn from the Indian post at Longju, but remained in force at Migyitun.[i]

"On 2 October 1959, a discussion took place between Soviet and Chinese delegations in which Khrushchev asked Mao "Why did you have to kill people on the border with India?" to which Mao replied that India attacked first. Zhou Enlai, also present at the discussion then asked Khrushchev "What data do you trust more, Indian or ours?" Khrushchev replied that there were no deaths among the Chinese and only among the Hindus.[53]"

Arun Shourie mentions the letter from Chou En-lai dated 8th September 1959, mentioned above; he mentions that amongst other things, China claims 40,000 square miles of India.

Nehru is beginning to face facts, but still unwilling to face immediate realities, such as Tibetan refugees reporting the huge numbers of Chinese troops fanned across Tibet massing close to border of India. He simply says it's not possible.

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January 10, 2022 - January 10, 2022

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11. ‘These are not excuses, but merely facts’

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Arun Shourie describes parliament's unwillingness to rest with assurances from PM, asking for definite review in policy regarding Tibet and China. He writes about Nehru arguing in favour of India continuing her policies despite the changed situation. He's unwilling to give up gentleman's code, policy of non-alignment, and efforts for peaceful resolution by dialogue, but he's also unwilling to compromise more that a Mike here or there. Excerpts quoted from speeches and writings of Nehru show a growing realisation about reality of China and her claiming huge territory of India, which as a consequence amounts to Himaalayan ranges no longer being the border of India; this, last, wakes him, finally, and he rejects this categorically. He's Indian, deep at his roots.

Unfortunately he still sticks to treating tibet as a nonentity, refusing to find a solution vua U.N., even though he champions causes if algeria and other colonies.

Shourie mentions an attack by Chinese in Ladakh following that in Longju in NEFA. He mentions Nehru writing of it to chief ministers, but blaming Chinese troops on Tibetan rebellion. Nehru writes now that Chinese policy seemingly is to creep forward and occupy empty areas where there's no opposition. But the two attacks against Indian personnel show Chinese are far from unwilling to kill.

Arun Shourie mentions that Nehru wrote to Chou En-lai in November 1959, proposing that both armies vacate the disputed territory and withdraw to their own side. Chou En-lai, when he responds eventually, rejects the proposal.

The captured Indian soldiers, when returned by China, recount the cruelty with which they were treated. Nehru writes how grim and distressing their accounts are. He's forgetting the horrors of history of India suffered when invaded by Asian barbarians, intimately related with China - after all, its on strength of Mongol invasions that China claims Tibet!

Nehru met Chou En-lai again in 1960 in Delhi, and proposed the officials of two sides examine documents supporting their claims. Chou En-lai agreed. Nehru and President Nasser were keen on Disarmament Conference in Geneva succeeding, but Nehru reports that China expressed pleasure at its breaking up, and tried to run down India.

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January 10, 2022 - January 11, 2022

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12. The avalanche

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"In June and again in October, Chinese troops intrude, into NEFA and then into Sikkim. Panditji is compelled to address the situation. It's impossible not to see what the Chinese are driving towards - go on pushing India until it agrees to settle the issue at hand on their terms. ... "

Nehru is still unwilling to get ready for the war China seems to be getting ready to inflict; his writing about the matter to chief ministers is given with context of all the possible tinderbox situations then current in the world, from Berlin to Vietnam to Cuba to Africa. In Rajyasabha he describes how peaceful the region was in time of the Maharaja of Kashmir, how some four or five villages in heart of tibet were owned by Kashmir and the Maharaja went every two or three years yo collect taxes, how there had never been any need of a border administration.

Arun Shourie describes Chinese propaganda in Chinese publications at end of August 1962, accusing India of various things, and it's so blatantly false, it's so strongly reminiscent of the then not too long past Nazi tactics against Czechoslovakia and Poland, it could only be a deliberate copy by Mao of Hitler's regime and tactics.

Nehru realises thry are getting ready to attack, and hopes it's minor skirmishes.

Within a few days, Arun Shourie records, Chinese troops cross Thagla pass in NEFA and stay put. On 16th October they attack at Dhola in Northeast, and on 20th October China attacks everywhere along the border of Tibet with India. This all out attack is accompanied by Chinese announcement of India attacking, again very reminiscent of German tactics of September 1st, 1939. The places captured by China are labeled "recovered".

Nehru addresses the nation on 22nd October 1962. He's appreciative, in early November next, speaking of how india has risen to the occasion, uniting above petty concerns.

This period was very memorable to anyone who lived through it, with brides donating their jewellery in midst of their weddings and such, all in effort to support the army.

November 8th sees a stormy session of parliament, with 165 members speaking.

Jawaharlal Nehru replies on November 14, 1962, his birthday. Not a happy one, thus birthday.

It is this - Jawaharlal Nehru then says that any criticism by anyone is not against anyone including any minister in the government, but the army; and having said that, he calls it unfair.

Even before this, on 8th, he'd sought to equalise by saying he didn't see it fit to blame "This minister or tgat", rather than face responsibility and assume it, which in fact did factually rest with him, not only as the supreme executive and legislative office holder but also as the policy maker who'd not listened to any suggestions, advice, warnings, information or correction, from any of the huge number of such helping minds, eyes and ears that anyone at such a post in India has always had recourse to, and instead arguing caustically to put such people down while arguing in favour of his course that basically sought to put up his image on a high pedestal through the world, a very gandhian course of thought and action.

He continues this even now, blaming the army commanders on post, instead of heeding the nation blaming his favourite Krishna Menon and the officers he, Menon, promoted, the bunch responsible for wrong course of policies and action, apart from the PM himself.

Over and over, one wishes Sardar Patel had heeded the nation that needed him and the cabinet of elected representatives that had elected him, rather than the supposedly saint whose despotic decision demanded he step aside for the young Prince.

Arun Shourie mentions Indian army being "out-gunned" by LTTE, and being short of provisions in Kargil. The latter was during the all too short tenure then of a political party far more nationalist than congress and left and therefore not only abused by the latter but far worse, victimised using every possible fraud; nevertheless Kargil was a difficult victory, instead of a complete rout as intended by enemy, and when regime changed soon after, the then leader of opposition who'd called it a "communal war" blaming India and subsequently come to power for a decade, pretended Kargil either was a non sequitur or forgettable incident blamed on the "Hindus" instead of the enemy who'd attacked.

Indian army finally got the much deserved memorials and celebrations of victory only after 2014.

As for shortage of supplies in the Kargil war, it was too soon into change of government, and the then PM was far more of a Gandhian gentleman in the erudite learned style of Nehru (but completely Indian, unlike him), and thus the hand of friendship he'd proffered the enemy, unaware that, attack was being planned and executed even as the handshake progressed. Nevertheless, he's credited with swift decisions responsible for victory, in the same way the PM after Jawaharlal Nehru, PM Lal Bahadur Shastri, was for the first complete victory of India in 1965, in another war inflicted by enemy.

And in a policy move similar to that of Shastri, Atal Bihari Vajpayee too held the army back instead of allowing them rein to capture and keep the enemy controlled territory, despite it being claimed by India since after Kashmir signed accession.

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January 11, 2022 - January 12, 2022

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13. A roundabout thesis

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Suggested by a visiting vice-president of Yugoslavia, and also told him by another prominent Arab leader, Jawaharlal Nehru mentions a reason for Chinese attack in the next letter to chief ministers, that the author calls "roundabout", but was very likely substantially true.

It has more to do with the world situation, power blocs, Nehru's non-alignment policy, China's then estrangement from its then only support USSR, and China's move to disturb the whole multiple player chess board into attempting to force the world into two confronting power blocs by attacking and decimating India and her prestige, her peace message and more.

Territory conquered in plains helps, too, of course, for future fertilisation and blackmailing of India further, every now and then.

Author records other views, chiefly of China; regarding 1962 China has in talks with Kissinger and subsequently with Jimmy Carter mentioned that it was about taking down India; more seriously, China talked with U.S. about U.S. holding back USSR in 1971 if China attacked India to stop India from doing anything for East Bengal.

Of course, one has to point out that none of that contradicts what authir calls roundabout explanation by Nehru about power blocs and China's bid to get USSR to help China get ahead.

Author quotes Nixon, used extremely derogatory language towards the then PM Indira Gandhi, about Chinese contempt for India. Nixon's verbal abuse of her as a woman was only exceeded by - mostly not reported, despite being known - physical exposure and gestures, by a bunch of Muslim men Kashmir, indicating pornographic assault, at a public speech venue, when she was as the then PM of India visiting Kashmir.

But despite China, U.S. and even U.K. and France ganging up in favour of the genocide being perpetrated by pakis in East Bengal, India with Indira Gandhi at the helm had won in rescuing East Bengal from the intended complete annihilation by the western paki military, with not insignificant help by USSR in stationing a nuclear submarine at a critical point where sighting it was enough for the ships of others coming to aid of pakis to turn back.

Author gives brief summary of Jawaharlal Nehru's writing in February 1963, about the war having been not about territory so much as about dominance.

Shourie gives other excerpts of his various speeches in 1963, blaming him chiefly for Chinese attack and ending the chapter with "He never recovers", mentioning his credibility having gone low.

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January 12, 2022 - January 12, 2022

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14. The chasm

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Author deals with gaps between the two countries in terms of not only economic progress, China having raced past after 1980, but also in terms of education and more.

In the former context, he doesn't take into account the U.S. factor, which is a major fault. If U.S. - specifically Nixon and subsequent republican regimes - hadn't for their own reasons adopted the policy of befriending China, this economic miracke was far less likely, especially not at the rate it happened. Mao's genocide terrorising people helped in availability of slave labour when China was offered the opportunity and turned it into advantage beyond expectations from U.S.; thus wasn't that different from the rapid economic recovery of Germany after nazis came to power.

As for India, corruption prior to 2014 was chief culprit, as everyone knows.

Shourie mentions that China finances deficits of U.S., while Russia lacks resources for dominance in central Asia that China has. Again, he's not mentioning the U.S. factor, in that in a bid to break up USSR U.S. has created not one but two demons, who were demons before but lacked the strength, and have now - post decimation of USSR - nothing to check them.

In process of discussing problems China might face, Shourie asks how China woukd deal with it- and mentions the 1962 attack against India having diverted attention from problems brought on by Great Leap.

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January 12, 2022 - January 12, 2022

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15. Putting our hopes in inevitability?

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Author discusses the turn around 2008 from Deng's policies of remaining obscure to expansiveness and flexing muscle, familiar through the severe disagreements with various Southeast Asian and Pacific countries over various islands, even as China has executed a policy of surrounding India with war capable bases in South China sea connecting to those closer at Gwadar, while connecting China via toad and more through Pakistan.

Border talks froze with India due to China's change of attitude, incursions multiplied, Chinese soldiers came deeper and deeper into Indian territory, author notes, reminding the reader of the history shortly before 1962 attack by China.

Shourie discusses China's muscle flexing and reactions it evokes through the world, from awakening of Southeast Asia to needs of defence to backlash throughout Africa against the Chinese, and repucussions through the rest of the world against China due to this.

Shourie gives specific instances of how badly India has behaved in respect to letting opportunities go, and as he writes this quoting instances up to 2013, it's all too true.

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January 12, 2022 - January 12, 2022

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16. Shilpa Shetty trumps Arunachal, again

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Arun Shourie discusses the media's lack of serious attention paid to serious issues. Again, this was before 2014.

Since then, there has been a difference, especially since shortly after demonetisation.

"In part the problem is extreme, brazen partisanship - "

Arun Shourie brings out an issue hidden in plain sight - the partisanship of Indian media (which was true of most of them, when he wrote this book), which takes various forms; one is a premise by such media, along with politicians on left, and the so called intellectuals who are in reality merely fellow travellers, that India cannot be right, and anyone anti-Indian, including an enemy attacking or a racist criticising, must be superior and correct.

Thus, since 2014, took form of strange campaigns, such as calling anyone who does not abuse the present PM "bhakta" and accuse them of worshipping him. What's strange is the abrahmic assumption therein, which is neither common sense nor good philosophy but merely an imposed creed further assumed right to the exclusion of all other thought.

Arun Shourie specifically quotes two extreme - and mutually contradictory - lies by the then ruler of Pakistan, Musharraf, one claiming Pakistan did not attack India at Kargil - so much so pakis refused to take bodies of their soldiers (until relatives of the totally decimated Northern Light Infantry created a ruckus, so Pakistan was firced to bring back some), and later claiming in his autobiography that Kargil was one of the most successful operation by Pakistan.

" ... You have to just recall such falsehoods, and see how they were glossed over by the Indian media. ... "

Next Arun Shourie points at the underlying assumptions by the media for this - India is wrong in Kashmir and so must bend till Pakistan expresses satisfaction; as he points out, this is also the assumption regarding China. And second premise he points at is that BJP is held evil incarnate, and so forth.

This last bit, again, has roots in the deep slavery of minds of most who have these atti9,rooted in the millennium and half of colonisation by barbaric invaders who were out to destroy civilisation of India as they had done with Egypt, Persia and most of the world, imposing and forcing a conversionist abrahmic creed, and getting it forced down into most non converted ones thst they were wrong for not converting, and converted were suoerior. British caste system imposed on India, mostly rooted in race and creed apart from gender, and not too different from thst of Islam except in specific details, firmed this attitude.

If BJP raises an issue, it must be trashed, Arun Shourie describes the attitude of this section - and so have been treated issue of infiltrators and illegal migrants from east Bengal, now Bangladesh; so has been treated the antinational politics of dual faced secessionist in Kashmir, and so on.

Arun Shourie goes on to list other serious problems of media. He points out that sustained attention is required for matters such as Chinese incursions and claims, invasions and occupation of territory of others - whik e mist leaders in India dare not even say the name Tibet.

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January 12, 2022 - January 13, 2022

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17. Understanding them, understanding what they think themselves and us to be

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Shourie describes a repetition of the pre-1962 pattern of behaviour of china in 2005, when fresh talks led to signing of new guiding princilple treaty, emphasising following natural contours and not disturbing settled populations; later China claimed Arunachal Pradesh and asserted that people there woukdnt be disturbed.

The latter claim nay be questioned looking at how Tibetans were treated by China in Tibet. Chinese think in years, decades, and longer, making claims and repeating them, and being puzzled so when accused of betrayal because their deception works, Shourie points out. He points out that, as they put their faith in conspiracies, they expect everyone else does so too, and look for devious strategies behind mist straightforward proposals.

Shourie notes facts of Chinese expansionist, racist imperialism, not even thinly veiled by the communist ideology that has changed the Chinese character but little. He gives documentary evidence in support of the statements quoted from publications by a British leftist.

But really much of what he states is quite well known to anyone who's had any encounters with Chinese - and the hostility that's ever ready to manifest, even when diners in a Chinese restaurant have been invited in, explicitly, by the management. They simply plead the guest order without delay, then pay already because the cashier needs to leave, before assaulting the guests with abusing, screaming, demanding that they leave - before the diners are halfway through soup!

"The contempt that Mao and Chou had for India, for Indians, leap through their exchanges with Kissinger and Nixon."

Of course, birds of a feather so to speak - or, to translate a Hindi phrase, thieves hidden cousins. Of course Mao and Chou got along with Nixon, of course Kissinger sought them out to befriend on behalf of Nixon!

Shourie speaks of China's aid to Pakistan with nuclear weapons, and to other countries surrounding India in diverse ways, such as building deep sea ports at Chattagram and Gwadar, acquisition of Coco islands, and more.

" ... It has repeatedly refrained from exchanging maps of the Line of Actual Control thereby leaving the Line ambiguous, and then, asserting the line is unspecified, gone on advancing into India. ... It has taken up and is executing a series of projects in the part of Kashmir which is under Pakistan occupation."

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022

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18. Bal hoa bandhan chhutey…

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"We must be Arjunas - with one single aim, to forge a strong India."

"Never take silence to be consent."

"What is lost can seldom be recovered. ... "

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2022

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January 01, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

Purchased January 03, 2022.

Kindle Edition

Published September 1st 2013

(first published September 1st 2008)

Original Title

Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again

ASIN:- B01MDQ1DQ8

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................................................................................................

................................................

January 01, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

Purchased January 03, 2022.

Paperback, 398 pages

Published 2013 by Harper Collins

(first published September 1st 2008)

Original Title

Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again

ISBN:- 139789351160939

................................................

................................................................................................

Self-Deception: India's China Policies

by Arun Shourie

Kindle Edition

Published September 1st 2013

(first published September 1st 2008)

Original Title

Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again

ASIN:- B01MDQ1DQ8

Purchased January 03, 2022.

Paperback, 398 pages

Published 2013 by Harper Collins

(first published September 1st 2008)

Original Title

Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again

ISBN:- 139789351160939

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4429436768

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Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG

Friday, January 14, 2022

Self-Deception: India's China Policies, by Arun Shourie.

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