Fifty years after it was submitted, the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report on the 1962 India-China war, has been partially released by Australian journalist Neville Maxwell, who was based in New Delhi when the war took place. The committee was mandated to look at the operational aspects of the war, and essentially blames the military leadership and intelligence apparatus for the debacle – one that has traumatised our national psyche since then.
However the report also indirectly points to a failure on the part of the political leadership at the time. The military and intelligence establishments which functioned under the instructions of the political establishment, shared the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s rather utopian outlook on China. While much has been written about Nehru’s naïve views, it would serve us well to examine how those views influenced the formulation and implementation of India’s policy towards China.
In The Discovery of India written in the early 1940s, before he became Prime Minister, Nehru had written about the centuries of friendship between India and China – one that he envisioned as the basis for Asia’s resurgence. After 1947, his views resonated with that of the then Defence Minister Krishna Menon. As Prime Minister, Nehru also linked India’s policy of non-alignment to policy towards China, indicating that non-alignment was essential for India achieve economic modernization, while not alienating China and the USSR.
The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report points out that this complacency was especially evident in the Indian government’s response to China’s road-building activities along the entire Himalayan frontier, particularly the Aksai Chin area. The report says there was enough evidence to suggest that the government was aware of these activities, but did not pay sufficient attention and recognise it as a sign of China’s aggressive intentions.
The myopia persisted even while strong differences were emerging between India and China over the boundary issue. When the Indian Army asked for new arms and weapons platforms, the Ministry of Defence responded to the demand for tanks with urgency as the government was convinced that tanks would play a decisive role in the event of an India-Pakistan war. Clearly the bureaucracy at the time was focused on Pakistan to the exclusion of everything else.
Between 1956 and 1962, India stepped up its defence expenditure from $403.52 million(1956-57) to $608.03 million(1961-62). The focus of this spending was Pakistan as Nehru wanted to match up to the Western military aid received by Pakistan. Having achieved relative supremacy over Pakistan, Nehru should have paid attention to addressing the challenge posed by China.
The disregard proved fatal and at the receiving end was the Indian Army as this affected its operational preparedness. In order to balance the Chinese threat, the Army needed to raise additional mountain warfare-equipped battalions and regiments. A proposal for this had been mooted in 1947, but was set aside due to lack of political will. None of the nine Army divisions deployed along the India-China border in 1962 were up to full strength – they were short of artillery, equipment and even clothing. As a result they were unable to take on the full-scale attack from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops.
As early as 1953, a report from the North and North-Eastern Border Defence Committee – also known as the Himmatsinhji Committee – had proposed re-organisation and expansion of the Assam Rifles to beef up security on the India-China border. The proposal was ignored and as a result only one division of the Assam Rifles was raised for deployment.
Towards the end of 1959, as China’s intentions became clear, Nehru was strongly criticised by Indian parliamentarians for glossing over China’s behavior. He responded in the Lok Sabha stating that, ‘Minus Communism or plus Communism, we have to face China,’ – a grudging acceptance of the Chinese threat.
But it was back to the old ways once the clouds of public scrutiny lifted. In 1960, the government directed Army commanders ‘to be prepared for and resist external aggression, mainly by Pakistan’. But on the China front, time had run out for India, leading to the questionable Forward Policy, whereby India began sending its troops and patrols into the disputed area, throwing the bilateral into turmoil and culminating in the 1962 Chinese invasion.
The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report comes at a particularly relevant time when India is tackling an assertive China on the Line of Actual Control. Given China’s parabellum paradigm which pays greater attention to the relative military capabilities of other competing nation-states, India would do well to look at the patterns of Chinese defence spending, which was recently hiked by 12% to $132 billion.
Dissonance within the two key policy establishments is also hampering an effective China policy. While the Ministry of Defence takes a dim view of China, the Ministry of External Affairs is at pains to discount the Chinese threat – as was evident during the Depsang incursion last year. Resolving these internal differences is the key to balancing the Chinese threat through clever realpolitik, rather than an open display of hostility.
Sameer Patil is Associate Fellow, National Security, Ethnic Conflict and Terrorism, at Gateway House.
This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.
For interview requests with the author, or for permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in.
© Copyright 2014 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited