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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
1 Some of the most important: Bhargava, G. S., The Battle of NEFA (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1964)Google Scholar, a generally balanced and reliable short account; Karnik, V. B., ed., China Invades India (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1964)Google Scholar; and the authoritative but unofficial “Treachery in the Himalayas,” The Round Table (No. 211), June 1963.
2 Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1967. Also reprinted in a Jaico paperback version which has become an Indian best seller.
3 New Delhi: Orient Longman's, 1968. Khera was Principal Defense Secretary as well as Cabinet Secretary during the 1962 war.
4 Ibid., p. 228.
5 Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1970. Rao notes that his manuscript was basically completed in December 1967, but publication was delayed for security reasons.
6 The Government of India is not uncooperative with those wishing to examine security issues and Rao himself was instrumental in establishing India's important Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (New Delhi). Still, simple data such as the size and caste structure of the military are not yet public.
7 Lucknow: Himalaya Publications, 1968.
8 Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1969.
9 London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.
10 The Indian reviews of Maxwell's book have been bitterly hostile; one informed evaluation is by K. Subrahmanyam, “Neville Maxwell's War,” Hindustan Times, October 18 and 25, 1970, reprinted in the Journal of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, Vol. 3, No. 2 (October 1970), 268–291. It should be noted that Maxwell uses virtually none of the extensive source material available in Chinese; his book also deals at greater length with The diplomatic and historical background of the China-India conflict than any other volume under review here.
11 New York: Praeger, 1968. There are several brief Indian versions of the war, notably Mankekar's, D. R.Twenty-Two Fateful Days (Bombay: Manaktalas, 1966 [and 2nd rev. ed., 1967])Google Scholar, Verghese, B. G., India Answers Pakistan (Bombay: 1965)Google Scholar and Berindranath, Dewan, The War With Pakistan (New Delhi: Asia, 1966)Google Scholar. Mankekar is the author of The Guilty Men of 7962 (Bombay: Tulsi Shah Enterprises, 1968), also a response to Kaul.
12 Rawalpindi: Al Mukhtar Publishers, n.d. (prob. 1967).
13 Woodman, Himalayan Frontiers (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 285. Dalvi indicates that the Chinese needed three stocking seasons for their preparations, pointing to a 1959 decision to attack in 1962. This is not necessarily true as their stock- pile could indicate prudence as well as malice. In fact, the forces involved were roughly equal in NEFA, but the Chinese achieved tactical superiority. Maxwell, p. 325.
14 Brines, p. 167. See Fisher, Margaret, Rose, Leo, and Huttenback, Robert, Himalayan Battleground (New York: Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar and Lamb, Alistair, The China-India Border (London: Chatham House Essays/Oxford University Press, 1964).Google Scholar
15 Maxwell, pp. 371–72.
16 Maxwell provides new evidence concerning the Indian belief in the substance of their position. He describes the 1959 mission of Dr. S. Gopal (an-eminent historian and then director of the Historical Division of M. E. A.) to “disregard all contemporary political considerations [and] make an objective appraisal of the historical evidence.” Alin though Maxwell does not indicate the substance of Gopal's findings he does report that they coincided with the government's position and that as a result any trace of uncertainty in the Indian claim to Ladakh disappeared. Maxwell, pp. 119–120.
17 There was a fatal delay in assigning full operational responsibility to the military in NEFA. There the External Affairs Ministry controlled the Assam Rifles as very much a private army. They were deployed for political, not military purposes and maintained only tenuous contact with regular army units in the same region. Dalvi, pp. 47–48, 124–25.
18 Indian thrusts towards Aksai Chin were probably seen by the Chinese as directly serving the interests of the U.S.S.R. as India had little practical use for the trans-Karakoram territory. They certainly underestimated the symbolic importance of such territory, however.
19 The ill-fated Forward Policy had its genesis in the need to balance the Chinese presence in Aksai Chin while avoiding open hostilities. The Indian Army was asked to stop the Chinese by siting their posts along the Chinese line of advance, on their flanks, and later to their rear. This was expected to simultaneously flesh out India's territorial claims. It had no military weight behind it and was only an attempt to gain a better position on the ground, a position which might be of use in some future bargaining session. Of course, it was also used to demonstrate to the Indian public that something was being done about Chinese “aggression.” The paternity of the Forward Policy is disputed. Kaul asserts it was Nehru's idea, Dalvi cities two earlier studies and claims it was Kaul who actually outmaneuvered Menon in suggesting the policy, and Maxwell argues with some force that the policy was devised by Kaul, sold to Nehru, and then later enthusiastically supported by Menon. Kaul, p. 280; Dalvi, pp. 68–69; Maxwell, p. 303.
20 Krishna Menon, as told to Inder Malhotra, “Look Back Without Anger,” in Black. November and After, supplement to The Statesman, Nov. 20, 1967, p. 14.
21 Ibid.
22 Rao, p. 85.
23 Maxwell, p. 291.
24 Ibid.
25 “While Nehru's surrender to legislative supervision of policy was almost complete, that worked only to push him on in directions he had chosen himself.” Ibid., p. 134 (italics in original).
26 India's nonalignment policy always bore the assumption that any war between India and China would involve the superpowers, and by late 1962, that they would not necessarily be on opposite sides. This assumption proved correct in that India received material and political assistance from both the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., but this was still not enough to deter the Chinese. This, I believe, is the essence of what Rao calls Nehru's “gamble” with Indian security. Rao, p. 10.
27 Kaul's appalled reaction to the presence of massed Chinese (“Oh my God, you are right, they mean business”) symbolizes his considerable responsibility for the failure of divisional level estimates of Chinese strength and intentions to reach the top of the decision-making chain in which he was a crucial link. Sec Dalvi, p. 293.
28 Kaul's role in egging Nehru on is disingenuously reported in his own The Untold Story, pp. 300–301.
29 In Brecher, Michael, India and World Politics: Krishna Menon's View of the World (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 153–154.Google Scholar
30 Maxwell, pp. 348 ff.
31 Chapter X, “The Trap is Baited,” and later chapters dwell on this theme. Dalvi notes and Maxwell stresses that the Indian objective—Thag La Ridge—was in the most disputed portion of NEFA. Dalvi additionally points out that the ridge was of military value to the Chinese as it overlooked their base at Le. Dalvi, p. 287.
32 Maxwell, p. 350.
33 The Indian Army's own enquiry, the so-called Henderson Brooks Report, disclosed serious shortcomings in intelligence, senior military leadership, equipment, and training. It also implied that civilian direction of the war was faulty. In summarizing this report (it has not yet been made public) the government attempted to disarm its opponents with these generalized revelations and the plea that further disclosure would only aid the enemy. However the report was limited in scope and never took testimony from a number of key figures, notably Dalvi, Kaul, and Menon. Their later statements and books are in part responses to implied criticism of them in the report; all three have rejected its validity.
34 Maxwell, who has probably had access to the Henderson Brooks Report as well as to other analyses also doubts its accuracy. He has reproduced extracts from such documents. See pp. 438–439.
35 See K. Subrahmanyam, op. cit., who calls for a new enquiry.
36 Kaul, pp. 275 ff. One of these is partially reproduced (but unattributed) in Maxwell, p. 232.
37 Maxwell, p. 351. This hardly squares with Menon's own version.
38 In contrast senior Chinese political leadership was considerably more expert in evaluating military information and advice, having recently been engaged in operations in Korea and being able draw upon the rich experience of their own civil war (Mao is a strategist of no small stature). The Indian leadership had deliberately avoided contact with military affairs during the Indian struggle for independence. See, Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), Chapter Four, “Defense Problems and the Nationalist Movement.”
39 General P. N. Thapar, Chief of the Army Staff in 1962, reminisced in 1969: “looking back, I think I should have submitted my resignation that time. I might have saved my country from the humiliation of a defeat.” Quoted by Kuldip Nayar in a recent book and cited in the Overseas Hindustan Times, Feb. 20, 1971.
40 Without the latter Indian soldiers had to spend a great deal of time and effort at menial, tiring labor as they cut timber and built their bunkers; across the Namka Chu the Chinese were visibly (and audibly) better equipped, and the morale of the jawans suffered accordingly. Even more upsetting was the fact that the Chinese infantry mortars were so good that they outranged the few Indian artillery pieces brought up to the Dhola sector. Dalvi, p. 315.
41 The greater the quantity of material dropped the greater the number of troops drawn away from combat positions; there were very few porters available to the army. In addition, as the air drops increased a greater proportion of supplies were damaged or lost. Dalvi, p. 321.
42 Griffith, Samuel B. II, The Chinese People's Liberation Army (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), p. 256.Google Scholar
43 Johri indicates that a mixed Sikh and untouchable Sikh (Sikh Light Infantry) patrol did not function well, and each regiment has since accused the other of weakening the operation (p. 141). Other military errors were the use of troops with low morale in critical defensive positions and continually splitting up companies and battalions.
44 For details of the breakup see the accounts by Johri and Maxwell; Dalvi was captured early in the battle.
45 Large quantities of unopened U. S. equipment and weapons were captured by the Chinese when Fourth Division disintegrated. This was widely publicized by the Chinese and later used in the U. S. Congress as a reason to restrict arms supplies to India. Galbraith, John K., Ambassador's Journal (New York: Signet, 1969), p. 464.Google Scholar
46 Dalvi, p. 474.
47 Brines, p. 345. Many officers on both sides were retired or reduced in rank after the war, some for remarkable indiscretions. The general who had been Dalvi's division commander in 1962 —and who was rehabilitated after petitioning the President of India—was nearly captured by the Pakistanis. They did seize his personal diary and proceeded to publish embarrassing excerpts from it. See Gulzar Ahmed, p. 36.
48 Dalvi, pp. 475–477.
49 Rao, pp. 327 ff.
50 Ibid., pp. 106 ff., 150.
51 Upon assuming the office of Defense Minister India's leading scheduled caste politician, Jagjivan Ram, proceeded to criticize the caste base of the Indian Army, creating a minor public furor.
52 Rao recalls that before 1961 the military resisted requests from the Ministry of External Affairs to set up posts on the actual borders, but were forced to give in to pressure from Nehru. Rao, pp. 71, 84.
53 Rao, p. 306.