Ghost of The Past Rises To Haunt Congress: 1962 Indo-China War Report Blames Nehru for India’s Defeat
Fifty years since the Sino- Indian war of 1962, for the first time, the famous Henderson Brooks report describing the causes for India’s humiliating defeat was made public for a short duration. However, soon after the report was uploaded, it was suddenly removed from the website. The still classified Henderson Brooks Report indicts former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Army Chief Lt Gen B M Kaul and the Director Intelligence Bureau (DIB) B N Mullick for India’s defeat in the 1962-Sino Indian war.
A portion of the Henderson Brooks report was made public by Neville Maxwell, a journalist at The Times, London who was a war correspondent. Maxwell is the author of one of the most controversial books on the war, ‘India’s China War’ published in 1970. Maxwell wrote on his website that the report was being made public as he wanted to end his complicity in keeping it a secret.
The report, submitted in 1963, was prepared by Lt Gen Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P S Bhagat on the instructions of the then Chief of Army Staff General J N Chaudhuri. The Henderson Brooks report gives an analysis of the 1962 war and contains details of India’s humiliating defeat at the hand of China. The report was submitted in 1963, but was never made public by the government.
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The Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 is the least discussed of the wars fought by India. After the Dalai Lama was granted asylum in India in 1959 and violence between Tibetans and the Chinese Army escalated, relations between India and China become strained. In 1962, claiming that India had set up forward observation posts within Chinese territory, the Chinese army advanced and overran Indian positions in the then Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA), Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. The Chinese later withdrew, although China still continues to hold strategic positions. The periodic border dispute regarding Arunachal Pradesh in the recent times traces its origin to the 1962 Indo-Chinese war.
The Henderson Brooks report states that the ill-conceived ‘Forward Policy’ of Jawaharlal Nehru, without proper intelligence or adequate military preparation, was the primary cause of India’s military debacle. Nehru had instructed the army to continue building military posts and ordered the military to patrol the areas claimed by the Chinese, as part of a forward policy to deter the Chinese. The Forward Policy ‘increased the chances of conflict’ at a time when India was militarily ill-prepared in Ladakh and NEFA. ‘With the introduction of the forward policy, the chances of a conflict certainly increased,’ the report said.
The report holds that the Forward Policy was based on the ‘flawed premise’, primarily driven by inputs from the then Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director B N Mullik, that ‘the Chinese would not react to our establishing new posts and that they were not likely to use force against any of our posts even if they are in a position to do so’. This proved to be a gravely erroneous reading of the situation. The report notes that while the Forward Policy may have been ‘politically desirable’; the Indian Army simply did not have the resources to implement it.
The report is highly critical of the the role of Lt Gen B M Kaul who was the Chief of General Staff and was appointed as the commander of the IV Corps that was routed in the Northeast. The report has also questioned the role of the then Army Chief Gen P N Thapar. Lt Gen Kaul repeatedly ordered that ‘Forward Policy’ must be carried out, over ruling the objections made by the Western Command.
The Indo- China war of 1962 created a bitter relation between the two Asian giants, which persists even now. China still holds large tracts of Indian territory and lays claim to other areas in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. India and China remain locked in the territorial dispute although trade ties between the two nations have boomed in the recent years.
The report leaked just a month ahead of the 2014 general elections has already stirred up strong reactions from the political parties. The BJP has already called for the report to be made public. The BJP, led by Narendra Modi, has demanded that the government release the report.
‘What are they trying to hide by making the war report classified?’ BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said. ‘We have a right to know what went wrong. We lost the war because of Nehru.’
Prasad said that the time had come for a debate as to who had secured the country more Nehru or the first Union Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He said that Nehru and the then Defence Minister Krishna Menon had left the Indian armed forces to fend for themselves in a state of ‘complete unpreparedness’. Supporting Prasad’s demand for the report to be made public, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said that the report would have a bearing on the upcoming polls.
Meanwhile, the Congress hit back and said that the BJP was playing ‘cheap politics’ ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. ‘I don’t think that such cheap allegations deserve a response,’ Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said. Singhvi added ‘Everybody knows that what happened in 1962 was a product of a complex multitude of diverse factors.’
The request for the report to be declassified has also been made by BJP President Rajnath Singh. However, Defence Minister A K Antony in Parliament stated that the report could not be made public as it contains sensitive information and also because the contents of the report had current operational value. The report continues to remain a closely-guarded secret by successive governments since it was submitted in April 1963. It is still a ‘classified document’.
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