10-15-2008, 02:25 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Recall the '62 Chinese aggression</b>
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Prafull Goradia
If India wishes to learn from its Himalayan blunder and subsequent experiences, it must give as much weight to domestic Islamists, Maoists and infiltrators from Bangladesh as to foreign adversaries
For me October is usually the saddest time of the year. The Chinese aggression of 1962 affected me so much that neither Gandhi's birth anniversary nor even the festive days do anything to console me. In October 1961, I was on a tea-tasting visit to Ananda tea garden situated on the border of the then North-East Frontier Agency and now Arunachal Pradesh. I was taken to the forest surrounding the Subhasari river after which was also named one of the divisions of NEFA.
In less than a year, on September 20, Jawaharlal Nehru announced that he had asked the troops to throw the Chinese out of India. Come October and all hell broke loose, so, at least, it appeared in Calcutta. By the end of the month soldiers with frostbites on their hands and feet had begun to reach army hospital camps in Fort William. The present Command Hospital on Alipore Road was built much later. I applied for a commission in the Territorial Army; the application form got misplaced in the TA office. I tried again but nothing happened until January.
My depression was out of frustration and not so much out of the humiliating defeats we were suffering. November was militarily much worse but not for me because I had felt assured by then. Of all things, my reassurance came from reading a 2,000-word little book written by Carl von Clausewitz, the guru on war who taught after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Virtually an illustrated nursery book written for the crown prince of Prussia. There were two interesting points that I was able to register. One, a defender should not depend on terrain because most likely an imaginative opponent would bypass it.
Sure enough, soon the Chinese circumvented the Sela Pass and surrounded Bomdilla.
Two, the season can often help the defender to judge the aggressor's intentions. As it happened, on November 21, the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew beyond the borders of NEFA. Had they intended their invasion to be on going, they would have launched it in spring and not autumn. Their troops could survive on the plains around Tezpur but their newly established lines of communication across the mountains in NEFA would be difficult to hold against possible assaults by the Indian Air Force.
If only our leaders, whether political or military, had known what a ten-year-old Prussian prince was taught, the Indian Prime Minister need not have wept on All India Radio : "My heart goes out to the people of Assam et al. As soon as Tawang fell, we should have realised that the Chinese meant to humiliate us true and proper. We were not prepared in any way; neither weapons nor heavy woollen clothes for the soldiers nor the placement of troops."
The obvious answer was for us to quickly withdraw to the plains around Tezpur and wait for the Chinese. There, we could fight them on level ground with their lines of communication extended and ours shorter. The tragic events of October 1962 are so fixed in my memory that I cannot help being convinced that we are not so much a culture of non-violence Gandhi preached but a civilisation blissfully innocent of war and peace being the two inescapable faces of life.
If India wishes to learn its lessons from the Chinese aggression and subsequent experiences, its Government should devote some time and energy to evolving a grand strategy. It must give as much weight to domestic Islamists, Maoists and the infiltrators from Bangladesh as to external adversaries. The first step that needs to be completed is a settlement with Beijing; China is beyond the capacity of New Delhi to defeat. As expressed by the great Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore in a recent interview on the CNN, China's new priority for decades to come is to become the greatest economic power. It would therefore avoid any conflict with other countries as it could divert its national energies. China is likely to give up all claims in Arunachal Pradesh provided it gets what it wants in Aksai Chin.
Thereafter, New Delhi would find it much easier to deal with its other neighbours as well as domestic enemies which includes those in the Kashmir Valley. With global warming, rising sea level and shrinking land mass, migrants are likely to willy-nilly flow out of Bangladesh, thus adding to potential Islamists. On this subject, it is difficult to find an authority greater than Dr BR Ambedkar. What he asserted in 1940 deserves to be reiterated even today. (His book : Thoughts on Pakistan, 1940, Thackers, Bombay and reprinted by Govt of Maharashtra 1990).
Should the Muslims be without and against or should they be within and against? If the question is asked of any prudent man, there will be only one answer that if Muslims are to be against Hindus, it is better that they should be without and against, rather than within and against. Indeed, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished that Muslims should be without. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
link
Prafull Goradia
If India wishes to learn from its Himalayan blunder and subsequent experiences, it must give as much weight to domestic Islamists, Maoists and infiltrators from Bangladesh as to foreign adversaries
For me October is usually the saddest time of the year. The Chinese aggression of 1962 affected me so much that neither Gandhi's birth anniversary nor even the festive days do anything to console me. In October 1961, I was on a tea-tasting visit to Ananda tea garden situated on the border of the then North-East Frontier Agency and now Arunachal Pradesh. I was taken to the forest surrounding the Subhasari river after which was also named one of the divisions of NEFA.
In less than a year, on September 20, Jawaharlal Nehru announced that he had asked the troops to throw the Chinese out of India. Come October and all hell broke loose, so, at least, it appeared in Calcutta. By the end of the month soldiers with frostbites on their hands and feet had begun to reach army hospital camps in Fort William. The present Command Hospital on Alipore Road was built much later. I applied for a commission in the Territorial Army; the application form got misplaced in the TA office. I tried again but nothing happened until January.
My depression was out of frustration and not so much out of the humiliating defeats we were suffering. November was militarily much worse but not for me because I had felt assured by then. Of all things, my reassurance came from reading a 2,000-word little book written by Carl von Clausewitz, the guru on war who taught after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Virtually an illustrated nursery book written for the crown prince of Prussia. There were two interesting points that I was able to register. One, a defender should not depend on terrain because most likely an imaginative opponent would bypass it.
Sure enough, soon the Chinese circumvented the Sela Pass and surrounded Bomdilla.
Two, the season can often help the defender to judge the aggressor's intentions. As it happened, on November 21, the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew beyond the borders of NEFA. Had they intended their invasion to be on going, they would have launched it in spring and not autumn. Their troops could survive on the plains around Tezpur but their newly established lines of communication across the mountains in NEFA would be difficult to hold against possible assaults by the Indian Air Force.
If only our leaders, whether political or military, had known what a ten-year-old Prussian prince was taught, the Indian Prime Minister need not have wept on All India Radio : "My heart goes out to the people of Assam et al. As soon as Tawang fell, we should have realised that the Chinese meant to humiliate us true and proper. We were not prepared in any way; neither weapons nor heavy woollen clothes for the soldiers nor the placement of troops."
The obvious answer was for us to quickly withdraw to the plains around Tezpur and wait for the Chinese. There, we could fight them on level ground with their lines of communication extended and ours shorter. The tragic events of October 1962 are so fixed in my memory that I cannot help being convinced that we are not so much a culture of non-violence Gandhi preached but a civilisation blissfully innocent of war and peace being the two inescapable faces of life.
If India wishes to learn its lessons from the Chinese aggression and subsequent experiences, its Government should devote some time and energy to evolving a grand strategy. It must give as much weight to domestic Islamists, Maoists and the infiltrators from Bangladesh as to external adversaries. The first step that needs to be completed is a settlement with Beijing; China is beyond the capacity of New Delhi to defeat. As expressed by the great Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore in a recent interview on the CNN, China's new priority for decades to come is to become the greatest economic power. It would therefore avoid any conflict with other countries as it could divert its national energies. China is likely to give up all claims in Arunachal Pradesh provided it gets what it wants in Aksai Chin.
Thereafter, New Delhi would find it much easier to deal with its other neighbours as well as domestic enemies which includes those in the Kashmir Valley. With global warming, rising sea level and shrinking land mass, migrants are likely to willy-nilly flow out of Bangladesh, thus adding to potential Islamists. On this subject, it is difficult to find an authority greater than Dr BR Ambedkar. What he asserted in 1940 deserves to be reiterated even today. (His book : Thoughts on Pakistan, 1940, Thackers, Bombay and reprinted by Govt of Maharashtra 1990).
Should the Muslims be without and against or should they be within and against? If the question is asked of any prudent man, there will be only one answer that if Muslims are to be against Hindus, it is better that they should be without and against, rather than within and against. Indeed, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished that Muslims should be without. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->