by Kuldip Nayar
Faced with no option other than an immediate military operation, Thapar sought an interview with the prime minister to seek his intervention. A few minutes before his departure for Nehru’s house, S.S. Khera, then cabinet secretary, met him and said: ‘General, if I were you, I would not express my fears before Panditji for he might think that you are afraid to fight.’ Thapar’s curt reply was that he must tell the prime minister the truth; the rest was for him to decide.
Before Thapar got into his car, Khera once again said that he must realize that if India did not fight, the government would fall. Thapar did not argue further but was more convinced than ever that the decision to resist China was motivated by political considerations.
Thapar repeated to Nehru how the Indian army was unprepared, untrained, and ill-equipped for the operation it was being asked to undertake. (Menon told me before he became defence minister that there was no army worth the name and no equipment worth the mention.)
Nehru said Menon had informed him that India was itself producing a substantial part of the army equipment it required. Thapar emphasized that India was nowhere near the stage of even assembling the weapons required for war. He then mentioned the note he had submitted, complaining about the poor shape of the army and its equipment. Nehru said he had never seen it.
To reassure Thapar, Nehru told him that he had received reliable information that the Chinese would not offer resistance if there was a show of force to make them vacate the check-posts. Thapar knew from where the information had come. Obviously, the government had not taken any note of the Chinese warnings that ‘the Indian aggressor must bear full responsibility for the consequences of their crimes’.
The general was still not prepared to take the risk. He asked Nehru to speak to some of the army commanders. Lt Gen. Prodip Sen, commanding-in-chief Eastern Army Command, who was in Thapar’s room in the defence ministry at that time, was summoned. He supported Thapar and said that the army was far from prepared. Nehru repeated that his information was that the Chinese would not retaliate.
Thapar took heart from this. If that was true then even his unprepared forces might wear the crown of glory. No general can resist the temptation of marching at the head of a winning army, and Thapar was no exception. He began preparing for action. Thapar told me on 29 July 1970: ‘Looking back, I think I should have submitted my resignation at that time. I might have saved my country from the humiliation of defeat.’
Shastri took me along when he flew to the Northeast to make an assessment on the ground, as he had been asked to do by Nehru. When we reached Tezpur in Assam, Lt Gen. Harbaksh Singh was in command. B.N. Kaul, the controversial commander, had gone to Delhi on leave. Hostilities were yet to begin. Harbaksh Singh explained to us how the Indian forces would do better despite many handicaps. He assured Shastri that it would not be a walkover for the Chinese. Shastri was happy and told me on our return flight that he would request Panditji to let Harbaksh Singh stay on in place of Kaul. However, in the evening we heard on the radio at Calcutta that Kaul was back from leave and had resumed charge.
Menon’s specific instructions were not to move a single soldier from the border with Pakistan. India’s assessment since Independence had been that it would have to fight Pakistan one day. Detailed plans of ‘projected action’, if ever it became necessary, had been prepared in the defence ministry and kept ready. The border between China had however been left unprotected because no attack was expected from there.
Even as late as August 1962, a few weeks before the Chinese attack, Menon was talking of Pakistan’s preparations against India. In those days, Rajeshwar Dayal, India’s high commissioner to Pakistan, was in Delhi. One morning Dayal, as he told me, received a call from the defence ministry for a meeting. When he reached the ministry, he was ushered into a room where Menon was sitting with the army commanders, including Thapar.
Dayal had barely taken his seat when Menon asked him to tell the commanders about the preparations that Pakistan was making along the Indian border. Before Dayal could reply, Thapar told him in Punjabi, which Menon could not understand, that Dayal should not allow himself to be tricked because the projected danger from Pakistan was part of a larger plan.
Dayal said that he knew nothing about the preparations and that he had found no such sign at the border on his way to Delhi. Menon was annoyed and asked Dayal to send him a report to confirm that there was no evidence of preparations by Pakistan to invade India.
Against this backdrop, Thapar had been reluctant to ask for the withdrawal of any troops from the Pakistan front, but now conditions were different. He wanted a division to be withdrawn from that sector. Nehru immediately conceded to his request.
‘Normally, the time given to the defence forces to attack is a fortnight and an attack is timed at the break of daylight,’ said Thapar. The Chinese attack came on 20 October, at 5 a.m. in the eastern sector where the sun rose early, and at 7 a.m. in the Ladakh area where daylight was late to arrive.
As the war began, the Shah of Iran sent Nehru a copy of letter he had written to Ayub Khan, suggesting that he send his soldiers to fight alongside Indian forces against the ‘red menace’. (I have seen the copy.)
I recalled what Jinnah had said at Law College in Lahore when I had asked him what Pakistan’s reaction would be if a third power were to attack India. He had said that his soldiers would fight alongside Indian soldiers. Ayub told foreign powers who wanted him to help India that the fact that Pakistan did not take advantage of India’s vulnerability was a form of assistance and a sufficient gesture.
At the end of hostilities, Shastri recalled the Shah’s letter and said that had the Pakistani soldiers fought alongside us and ‘shed their blood with Indian soldiers’, it would have been difficult to say ‘No’ to Pakistan even if it had asked for Kashmir (Agar wo Kashmir bhi mangte to na karna mushkil hota). Probably he was right because emotions played a substantial part in our decisions.
Nehru had appointed a Citizen’s Council to generate public opinion against China’s attack and Shastri was a member of the council. I attended the meetings as the press officer. Indira Gandhi headed this council, an example of Nehru’s way of building up his daughter, and I met her there for the first time. As days passed we got to know each other so well that she started calling me by my first name.
As desired by the council, Shastri addressed many public meetings, not only to criticize China but also to defend Nehru who was being pilloried for having trusted China. At one public meeting in Delhi, Shastri asked for donations of ornaments to meet defence expenses. I was so moved by his speech that I immediately handed him my wedding ring, and he for his part announced my gesture at that very meeting. When I told my wife about the wedding ring she just remained silent. I thought she supported my decision but many years later she told me that I could have given money instead of the ring. A wedding ring was after all a wedding ring, she said quietly.
By the time Thapar went to meet Menon towards the end of October 1962, the Indian post at Dhola (3 kilometres north of the McMahon Line)had fallen and the Chinese forces were rushing downhill further into North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). Menon had already known about it because one copy of every signal to the chief of the army staff was going directly to the defence minister.
Thapar did not indulge in ‘I-told-you-so’. He simply reported what had happened and said, ‘Now we must plan what to do next’. Menon, brooding over a cup of black tea, only remarked: ‘How could I have known that they would come like an avalanche?’
Thapar told the defence minister that Indian forces should now fall back and hold out at Se-la Pass, about 40 miles from Dhola. Menon sarcastically remarked: ‘General, why not Bangalore?’ They talked very little after that and awaited the defence committee meeting over which Nehru was to preside.
Before the meeting, B.N. Mullick, the intelligence chief, came to Thapar to apologize for being so wrong in his intelligence reports in which he had said that the Chinese were too tied up wit
h the Khampas in Tibet to spare men for the border. The general’s reply was that it was the future which was more important.
Never before had India sought armed assistance from abroad, but after China’s attack it did. Nehru sent a frantic message to President Kennedy through B.K. Nehru, India’s ambassador in Washington. The latter told me that Kennedy met him without any delay, despite his preoccupation with the Cuban missile crisis, and found him, to his surprise, engrossed in studying a blow-up of a map of India. Kennedy had top civil and military officials with him.
The then Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested the use of tanks to stall China’s advance. B.K. Nehru explained that the tanks would have to take a long, circuitous route to reach the place. Rusk asked why they could not go there straight. B.K. Nehru said that it would not be possible because East Pakistan lay in between. The secretary of state said: ‘You are defending your country, not having a picnic. March your tanks through.’
Kennedy further asked whether Krishna Menon was still the defence minister. When B.K. Nehru replied in the affirmative, Kennedy remarked that this would make things difficult at home. He also asked B.K. Nehru to approach Khrushchev and tell him either to ‘put up or shut up’. (The latter had blamed the West ‘who wish to line their pockets by engineering a military clash between India and China’.) However, the comment of a top US official, after seeing the long list of armaments India sought, was that ‘Churchill with virtually no weapon worth the name had won the war but you want all the weapons while retreating’. He was pointing out India’s lack of combative spirit to confront China.
When Bomdi-la fell (19 November 1962), General Thapar was at Tezpur. He flew to Delhi and went straight to Nehru to say that in the best traditions of the Indian army he, as a defeated general, would like to submit his resignation. For the first time in many days Thapar saw a smile on Nehru’s face. Holding his hand tightly, he said: ‘Thank you, but this is not your fault.’
However, when Thapar met him the following morning Nehru said: ‘General, you remember what you said to me last night. I would like to get it in writing.’ Thapar came home and got the letter of resignation typed by his daughter and sent it within two hours. I saw Nehru in the Lok Sabha waving the letter of resignation. This did lessen the anger of members who were targeting Nehru. He thought that Thapar’s exit would assuage parliament’s anger against Krishna Menon. It did to a degree when Nehru changed Menon’s portfolio from defence to defence production.
Thapar wished to issue a statement in his defence, but Nehru dissuaded him from doing so and assured him that he would one day get an opportunity to tell his side of the story.
Later in September 1970, Thapar approached Indira Gandhi, then the prime minister, to allow him to see the report of the Australian-born Indian official Lt Gen. Henderson-Brooks who, along with Brig. Prem Bhagat, was appointed to inquire into the reasons for India’s defeat against China. She did not however concede to his request. (When I was a Rajya Sabha member from 1996, I wanted the report to be made public. The government refused do so ‘in public interest’. My hunch was that the report had so severely criticized Nehru that the government, even though headed by the BJP, did not want to face the public anger that would have been generated.)
Lt-Gen. M. Chaudhuri was appointed to officiate as chief of the army staff and Thapar was given ‘sick’ leave before being compulsorily retired. Nehru repeatedly inquired from Thapar whether Chaudhuri was a good choice. Thapar said he was a competent soldier but there were rumours about ‘his conduct’ when he was the military governor of Hyderabad following India’s police action against the state in 1950.
Nobody knew where and when the Chinese forces would stop as they were facing very little resistance. Only the Statesman editor N.J. Nanporia was repeatedly reporting that the Chinese would offer a ceasefire unilaterally. (After the war, Nehru asked him the reason for his assessment. Nanporia said that his reading was they wanted to punish India, not occupy it.) The Indian army was preparing to retreat to Assam. Nehru said at that time: ‘my heart goes to the people of Assam’. The Assamese took these words as a sort of goodbye and abandonment by India. They have never forgiven Nehru.
On 20 November 1962 Shastri was preparing to leave for Tezpur at the instance of Nehru to see things from close quarters. I was the first to reach Palam airport and found the newspaper stall unusually crowded. With great difficulty I was able to buy a copy of the Statesman. It carried the dramatic offer of a unilateral ceasefire by the Chinese.
Peking’s statement said: ‘Beginning from November 21, 1962 (midnight) Chinese frontier guards will withdraw to positions 20 km [12.5 miles] behind the lines of actual control which existed between China and India on November 7, 1959.’ The ‘unilateral withdrawal’ announcement was preceded about an hour earlier by flashes from news agencies that an ‘important announcement’ was expected from Peking. The announcements came early enough to catch the morning editions of Indian newspapers, but sufficiently late to prevent them from carrying any reactions from New Delhi.
In any event, the bureaucracy in New Delhi seemed blissfully unaware of press timings. A colleague in the Statesman recalled that he received a call from an external affairs ministry official at around 4 a.m., saying that they wanted to issue a statement countering Chinese claims on their advance. The official was surprised when told that the Chinese had already announced a unilateral ceasefire.
L.P. Singh and M.M. Hooja, joint director of intelligence, reached the airport just before we left for Tezpur. I showed them the announcement. Surprisingly, the bosses of the home ministry and the intelligence bureau were unaware of the ceasefire offer. Hooja rang up the IB to confirm the news. The home minister, who reached soon after, also did not know about the ceasefire. After reading the news, Shastri said: ‘This does make a difference. I may have to cancel my visit, but let me find out from Panditji.’
A cavalcade of cars moved to the prime minister’s residence. Nehru had just woken up and was totally unaware of the Chinese offer. This was typical of our intelligence agencies and of the functioning of the government. Though the statement on the ceasefire had reached newspaper offices just before midnight, the government was unaware of it. Even the official spokesman whom the pressmen awoke for a reaction expressed ignorance. What a way to fight a war, I thought.
Nehru’s first remark in Hindi after hearing the news was: ‘Has it happened? I was expecting it.’ He, however, wanted to see the newspaper. Shastri asked him if he should cancel the trip to Assam. Nehru’s reply was: ‘No, we cannot give up our plans. But you should come back soon.’
Shastri was not in favour of accepting the Chinese proposal. He told me that we would emerge as a tough nation if we did not seek a soft option. He was in favour of continuing the war despite the reverses.
When we reached Guwahati, Assam Chief Minister Bimala Prasad Chaliha was at the airport. According to Bhagwan Sahay, the state governor, Chaliha smiled for the first time in many days. Indira Gandhi, who was also in town, found the last paragraph of the ceasefire statement objectionable because, according to her, Chinese control would enable them to indoctrinate the people against India.
From Guwahati we flew to Tezpur. The airport had been saved in the nick of time. One day’s delay would have been too late because a decision had been taken to blow up the airport. The deputy commissioner of the area had fled, burning the files. Burnt currency notes were lying on the floor of the treasury. Private cars had been requisitioned to evacuate government officials and army vehicles were found to be carrying even the poultry of the bara sahib, but had no space for ordinary people. Prisoners had been released, including mental patients. There was little food, even for children.
We were received by a contingent of army officers. I met Lt-Gen. Kaul for the first time. How meek he looked, in contrast to the controversial figure he had become. I had expected him to be stouter and younger. His face was pudgy and his manner appeared reserved. My encounter with him was brief and formal, but
he squeezed my arm to express friendship. Kaul told Shastri that India must have peace at any cost. Shastri, who never favoured his appointment on the Chinese front, paid him scant attention.
Kaul told our pilot that he was travelling in a helicopter carrying food, clothes, and medicines to contact his men who were cut off when Bomdi La unexpectedly fell. I knew this information was meant for me to be passed on to Shastri.
The passenger lounge was still displaying a board ‘Beer Sold Here’ and had been converted into a map room. We were told how the debacle took place and where the Chinese soldiers now stood. The position was worse than we had expected.
I met young army officers sitting in another corner of the lounge. They were bitter and openly spoke of how every requirement of senior officers – soldiers had to carry commodes – were met at the last picket post even while the firing was going on. A captain admitted: ‘We are no longer fighters. We think of clubs or restaurants even in the trenches. We have gone too soft; we’re no good.’
One major who spoke in favour of fighting to the last drop of blood was from my home town, Sialkot. I had known him. He asked me to carry a trunk to Delhi so that he could fight without bothering about the luggage. When his wife collected the trunk and opened it before me, I was aghast to see it filled with smuggled imported goods. I had unknowingly carried the smuggled goods in the home minister’s plane.
The advice of General Thimayya, now the retired chief of the army staff, was: ‘One year is necessary to recoup.’ Even those who were keen on avenging the defeat were in favour of the ceasefire. The government had no choice. It activated a few non-aligned nations, led by Sri Lanka, to intervene and formalize the ceasefire on the line India and China held at that time. India withdrew its troops by 20 kilometres as required by the ceasefire proposal but the Chinese did not do so.
