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New
Delhi, 06 September 2002
The Prime Minister of
India and President Musharraf will be will be present in New
York to take part in the September 11 memorial function. The WTC
attack took a few thousand lives, but more than that was an assault
on the USA’s national pride and an abrupt reminder of its
vulnerability. However, closer to home, Mohan Guruswamy opines that
we should recall the events of 8 Sep 1962 to learn from the lessons
of history.
On September 8, 1962 the Chinese PLA surrounded a
small Indian Army post in Tsenjang on the northern side of the Namka
Chu stream just below the disputed Thagla ridge at the
Indo-Bhutan-Tibet trijunction. India's pride was hurt and we had a
forward policy, which Mohan Guruswamy calls assinine. He then
threads events and we hope we are not making the same mistakes
again.
“Zara
Aankh Mey Bhar Lo Paani”
By
Mohan Guruswamy
The Prime Minister of India
will be present in New York to take part in the September 11
memorial function. The WTC attack took a few thousand lives, but
more than that was an assault on the USA’s national pride and an
abrupt reminder of its vulnerability. It has shaken the USA out of
its complacency and despite George Bush’s limited worldview; much
rethinking seems underway in reworking its policies and discarding
long held attitudes. It’s a good time, weather wise, to be in the
USA and the Prime Minister has a longtime habit of spending a good
part of September each year in New York, a city he obviously is fond
off. But I would rather have had him stay back this year, for
September 8, 2002 will mark the fortieth anniversary of a tragic
event in our history, a seminal event whose significance should in
no way be any less than what September 11 is to the USA.
On September 8, 1962 the Chinese PLA
surrounded a small Indian Army post in Tsenjang on the northern of
the Namka Chu stream just below the disputed Thagla ridge at the
Indo-Bhutan-Tibet trijunction. The Indian post came to be
established as a consequence of the asinine “forward policy”
which was adopted by the Indian government after the Sino-Indian
border dispute began hotting up, particularly after the flight of
the Dalai Lama to India. The Chinese couldn’t have chosen a better
place than Tsenjang to precipitate a military conflict with India.
For a start, Tsenjang was north of the de facto border, which at
that point ran midstream of the Namka Chu. The PLA also commanded
the high ground. By surrounding Tsenjang the Chinese had now flung
the gauntlet at India. India walked right into it.
On September 10, the then Defence Minister.
VK Krishna Menon conveyed his decision that the matter must be
settled on the field, overruling the vehement objections of the Army
Chief, Gen. PN Thapar. Thapar warned that the Chinese had deployed
in strength and even larger numbers were concentrated at nearby Le,
very clearly determined to attack in strength if need be. He warned
that fighting would break out all along the border and that there
would be grave repercussions. Bur orders are orders and consequently
the Eastern Command ordered Brig.JP Dalvi commanding 7 Brigade to
“move forward within forty eight hours and deal with the Chinese
investing Dhola.” Having imposed this order to the reluctant Army,
Krishna Menon left for New York on September 18 but not before slyly
conveying to the press that the Indian Army has been ordered to
evict the Chinese from Indian Territory. The Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru too was abroad having left India on September 7
only to return on September 30. The Indian Army was under pressure
but Thapar was still not prepared to bow to sheer stupidity.
On September 22, at a meeting presided over
by the deputy minister, K Raghuramiah, Thapar once again warned the
government of the possibility of grave repercussions and now
demanded written orders. He received the following order signed by
HC Sarin, then a mere Joint Secretary in the MoD: “The decision
throughout has been as discussed at previous meetings, that the Army
should prepare and throw out the Chinese as soon as possible. The
Chief of Army Staff was accordingly directed to take action for the
eviction of the Chinese in the Kameng Frontier Division of NEFA as
soon as he was ready.” It was unambiguous in so much it conveyed
the government’s determination to evict the Chinese, but by
leaving the Army Chief to take action when he was ready for it was
seeking to pass the onus on to him. With such waffling skills it is
no small wonder that Sarin rose to great heights in the bureaucracy.
Under the previous Army Chief, Gen. KS
Thimayya, the Indian Army had developed a habit of winking at the
government’s impossible demands often impelled by its fanciful
public posturing. The posturing itself was an outcome of the
trenchant attacks on the government in Parliament by a galaxy of
MP’s. One particular MP, the young and less somnambulatory Atal
Behari Vajpayee, was particularly eloquent in his quest to put
Jawaharlal Nehru on the defensive. He and others like Lohia,
Kripalani and Masani would frequently thunder that every inch of
sacred Indian territory must be freed from the Chinese and charge
the government with a grave dereliction of its duties. Nehru finally
obliged by initiating the stupid forward policy and resorting to the
use of more extravagant language to signal his own determination to
the Indian public. A general summed this policy succinctly by
writing: “ we would build a post here and they would build one
there and it became a bit of a game, to get there first!”
Jawaharlal Nehru returned on September 30 and
was furious that the Chinese were still not thrown out from the
Thagla ridge. He was tired of the Indian Army’s refrain of grave
repercussions. He shouted at the hapless Army Chief: “I don’t
care if the Chinese came as far as Delhi, they have to be driven out
of Thagla.” Unlike, Thimayya, Thapar was possibly a more obedient
soldier, probably even less understanding of the government’s
compulsions and hence took its orders far more literally and
seriously than it deserved.
Within the Indian Army there were serious
reservations about the efficacy of the governments orders. The GOC,
Northern Command, Lt.Gen Daulat Singh warned the government that
“it is imperative that political direction be based on military
means.” The 33 Corps, which was responsible for the sector, sent
its candid opinions on the order. Its Brigadier General Staff,
Jagjit Singh Aurora, who later won enduring fame as the liberator of
Bangladesh, called up his friend Brigadier DK Palit, the then
Director of Military Operations, and berated him for issuing such
impractical orders. Not only were the Chinese better placed in terms
of terrain, men and material, the Indian troops were woefully
ill-equipped, ill-clothed and had to be supplied by mule trains or
airdrops. They were acutely short of ammunition. The objective of
evicting the Chinese from Thagla itself was of no strategic or
tactical consequence. The nation clearly needed a greater objective
to go to precipitate an unequal war.
The government’s reaction was a typical
instance of political and bureaucratic chicanery and cunning. It
ordered the establishment of the 4 Corps culled out from 33 Corps
and appointed Maj.Gen BM Kaul, a Nehru kinsman and armchair general
who never commanded a fighting unit before. Kaul was from the Army
Supply Corps and earned his spurs by building barracks near Ambala
in record time. He was a creature peculiar to Delhi’s political
hothouse and adept in all the bureaucratic skills that are still in
demand here. He had the Prime Ministers ear. And so off he went, a
dubious soldier out seeking dubious battle and possibly battlefield
glory that would propel him to much higher office. Welles Hangen in
his book “After Nehru Who?” profiled BM Kaul as a possible
successor. The rest is history, a tale of dishonor, defeat and more
duplicity about which much has written about, even in these columns.
Forty years is a long time ago and the memory
of 1962 is now faint. But what should cause the nation concern is
that the lessons of 1962 still do not seem to have been learnt. If
at all anything, the Indian Army is now an even greater and much
more misused instrument of public policy. If in 1962 it was a
relatively small army with 1930’s equipment, it is a million man
army in 2002 with 1960’s equipment. In 1962 our jawans went into
battle with .303 bolt action Lee Enfield rifles. They now are still
mostly equipped with the obsolete 7.62mm FN rifle made in Ishapore.
Its twenty years since it was decided to add to the lethality of the
infantry by equipping it with 5.56 mm automatic rifles, with little
success. Let alone the Chinese PLA, almost every terrorist and
insurgent in J&K has better arms and communication gear than our
soldiers. Even the BSF has superior logistics, vestments and small
arms. We persist in benchmarking against the Pakistanis when we
should be benchmarking against the Chinese, if not the Russians and
Americans.
Governmental decision-making still
characterized by ad-hocism and a tendency to grandstand. It was this
tendency that cost us so many lives in Kargil when we went into
quick battle mostly to assuage public opinion and for domestic
political gain without thinking through tactics. It is only the
unquestioning soldiers of the Indian Army who will still charge like
the Light Brigade! But in Kargil some did question and that should
cause us to wonder why, rather than to seek to quell the questioning
attitude. Our general staff will not be doing their duty if they do
not question the government’s orders, as they apparently did not
in 1962. Has anyone questioned the continued mobilization following
the attack on Parliament on December 13 last year?
It is fine commiserating with the Americans
one year after their great loss. But does anyone of consequence in
India, including in the Indian Army, commiserate these days over the
futile and quite unnecessary loss of over 7000 lives, so much of
humiliation as a consequence of so much of foolishness by men
holding high offices? In 1962, the lyricist Pradeep wrote the now
famous song whose first line runs “ay mere watan ke logo, zara
aankh mey bhar lo paani, wo shaheed hue hain unki, zara yaad karo
qurbani.”
When Lata Mangeshkar sang this to an audience
that included Jawaharlal Nehru, it is said that tears flowed from
every pair of eyes. The song still has that magical quality, but few
now seem to know what train of events caused those poignant words to
be written and what emotions put that enduring magic in Lata’s
voice.
If the Prime Minister cannot find the time or
the attention span to read some of the numerous books and articles
written on the subject, he should at least listen to the song and
shed a tear for our fallen warriors. We owe them that much for they
have, as Kaifi Azmi wrote in 1964, “Kar chale hum fida jaan aur
tan sathiyon, Ab tumhare hawale watan sathiyon!”
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