Despite warnings, Nehru misread the Chinese: Shiv Kunal Verma

What really led to the debacle of 1962? Why were we caught unprepared when the Chinese army attacked India all along the Himalayan frontier, resulting in heavy loss of human life, some territory, and a sharp blow to our national pride. Fifty-four years on, military historian and documentary filmmaker Shiv Kunal Verma's 1962: The War That Wasn't dusts the cobwebs to uncover the 'truth' of what really happened.

You have an army background are their personal associations, traumatic perhaps, with the debacle of 1962?
Even as a little three-year old, I knew something dark and terrible had happened. My father's battalion - 2 Rajput - had been deployed in the Lohit Valley at Walong since 1959 and shortly after he left, the battalion was also ordered to hand over their defences to 6 Kumaon and move to Mathura. However, the battalion was subsequently ordered off the train at Misamari (near Tezpur) and told to proceed to Nam Ka Chu immediately. The men were in summer clothing, they had no equipment, be it digging tools or ammunition, yet they were asked to cross Se-la which was at an altitude of over 13,000 feet. 2 Rajput, which was stupidly deployed along the river then faced the first concentrated assault of the Chinese and it was a massacre. We lost 282 men in a couple of hours. Though the details of the disaster were immediately not known, the Chinese attack in October and then again in November ripped out the soul from independent India's self belief. For all of us – the families at ground zero as it were – it was not just traumatic, it was something we would never forget.

You have been commended everywhere for the exhaustive research. How long had you been working on this book? Did you face problems accessing files of the time?
2 Rajput was being commanded by Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier) Maha Singh Rikh. He was badly wounded before he was overpowered by the Chinese and along with the other survivors, taken prisoner. When he along with Brigadier John Dalvi (the commander of the ill-fated 7 Brigade at Nam Ka Chu) and the other officers was repatriated to India, he put all the facts down as he saw it. These notes he passed on to my father who used to be his blue-eyed boy, asking him to tell the story of what happened to the battalion, for they all passionately felt the truth had to come out, if for no other reason as a posthumous tribute to those who had fallen fighting for their country. Accordingly, after he retired from the Army, Rivers of Silence was published in 1997. However, the scope of this book was limited to just the one action relating to 2 Rajput on the Nam Ka Chu. By then, I had also started making films that documented the history of the three services and as a result, had the opportunity to visit or fly over places where the fighting had taken place – Daulat Beg Oldi, the Qara Qash region, the Galwan Valley, Chushul and the Demchok Sectors in Ladakh; and eventually each and every place in NEFA in the east – from the Nam Ka Chu Valley and Zimithang to Bum-la, Se-la, Dirang Dzong and Bomdila in the Kameng sector to all the other divisions – the Subansiri, Siang and Dibang catchments to the Lohit Valley up to Walong and Kibithu. And then as you keep probing and asking questions, a lot of interesting files land up at your doorstep. I also did a book on the Assam Rifles, so that was a huge bonus, for it gave me an insight into the early military history of the region. I'd say this book took almost thirty years - though when I started writing it, it took the better part of two years.

Your book discredits the "Forward Policy" theory of the 1962 war, but wasn't Nehru to blame for ignoring all the portents of Chinese aggressive along the borders?
(Journalist and scholar) Neville Maxwell in his writing after the event zeroed in on the 'Forward Policy' and used it as a stick to put the blame on Prime Minister Nehru for starting the '1962 War'. This is not true, for the Forward Policy had been in existence since the early 1900s as the British extended the writ of the Government of India into what until then had been un-administered areas. The 1913 Morshead-Bailey expedition then not only did an extensive survey of the watershed between Tibet and India, they also studied the demographic patterns of the people on either side of the Himalayas. A year later, this boundary was firmed up as the McMahon Line. The Chinese who were also in Shimla refused to ratify the maps not because they had any objections to the Indo-Tibet boundary, but because they had issues pertaining to the Inner and Outer Lines that separated Tibet and China. After independence, this policy continued as the Assam Rifles, then under the External Affairs Ministry, firmed up the border by setting up and manning small posts. If this had not been done, the Chinese would have taken Arunachal as they took the Aksai Chin, citing that there was no Indian presence on the ground. Unfortunately, no one ever challenged Maxwell and his pro-Chinese tilt. One thing is very clear – Nehru did not start or provoke the war, he failed to prevent it! All the other major blunders that led to our getting steamrolled are there in the book…

If you had to compile a list of primary villains responsible for the war, who would they be?
I think the initial part of my book establishes the fact that Chairman Mao's PRC successfully pulled off the largest real estate coup ever after World War II by annexing both Sinkiang and Tibet. Until then (1950), India did not have China on her radar, and while one can keep quibbling over nomenclatures like Autonomous Regions and the like, the fact is, we now had an expansionist China sitting on our entire northern boundary. Sardar Patel spelt it out in his letter to Nehru in November 1950, but he died 38 days later. The problem was that Nehru completely misread the Chinese despite repeated warnings from within the army and elsewhere – he simply was not willing to listen. Coupled with this fact was his blatant interference in the command structure of the army – he repeatedly insisted on pushing Bijji Kaul up the chain of command despite the fact that all the checks and balances were in place which repeatedly warned that Kaul was existing in a zone far above his weight category. We can pick holes and point fingers at Krishna Menon (defence minister), BN Mullik (the intelligence chief), General Pran Thapar (chief of army staff), 'Bogey' Sen (Eastern army commander) and 'Bijji' Kaul, but the fact remains that the buck has to start and stop with Nehru. At the tactical level, once the clash became inevitable, then the main villain in my eyes was Bogey Sen. Unfortunately, he got away while most of the others named earlier were mostly put to pasture.

The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat (HBB) Report is yet to be officially declassified. What is your view? And also on the whole issue of putting military records in the public?
I think the entire HBB Report is unnecessarily being hyped. Most of it has been put on the internet by Neville Maxwell and the released sections only underline the fact that the entire issue has been blown out of proportion.

The terms of reference for the two officers was that they would restrict themselves to the operations of IV Corps. This was a formation that was set up just 15 days before the Chinese came down the Thag-la Ridge and attacked our boys on the Nam Ka Chu while also launching simultaneous attacks in Walong and in the Daulat Beg Oldi sector in Ladakh. The HBB Report was used by the Government to initially deflect the blame from Nehru by making it look like a complete military fiasco (which it also was).

The day the boundary with China is ratified and demarcated, the report will be made public, I think. When that happens, people will be in for a shock – they'll probably be absolutely nothing in it.

What are the lessons of 1962 and have they been learnt? Both for the way the military-political establishment works, and how China has been making repeated incursions into our territory in both Ladakh and Arunachal?
For any lessons to be learnt, we first have to be able to face the truth about what actually happened. We have to set aside who is related to whom, who belonged to which party, who was from which regiment and who got the awards, and then try and piece it all together. Many people who fought in the war and otherwise have been China-watchers, say I've done that in this book. I filmed the Kargil war in 1999 for the army and I know that its impossible for any one individual to get to the entire truth, especially when you are looking at such a broad canvas. The details of the fighting apart, we then also have to recognise the fact that while the men were facing the Chinese ahead of them, the real drama was being enacted behind them. The period between 1948 and 1961 saw the firming up of civilian control over the military – and this was not just restricted to the politicos and the generals but also the bureaucrats. I'd like to think we have learnt some lessons, but then you see all the tamasha being enacted all around us and thinks look bleak, sometimes even worse. On the other hand, I have also seen enough of the army, air force and navy – especially their leadership at the lower levels of command – to know that they are no pushovers. The Chinese, on the other hand, will continue to keep irritating us to test the waters.

That is their aim, else they would have settled the boundary issue years ago.

Do you think India-China relations have managed to overcome 1962, or is the balance of power between the two still somehow psychologically affected by the defeat?
Before we start worrying about Indo-Chinese relations, I think it is important for people to understand the 'what and the whys' of 1962. From the reaction the book has got so far – the first print of the book sold out in two weeks – and the fantastic reviews and feedback across the board, I think, as a people, we are now not only prepared to look back in the mirror of time, but also bury the ghosts of 1962. The Chinese are a pragmatic people and they know they struck it lucky, getting a level of success that was way beyond what they would have hoped for. They are fully aware they have absolutely no claim on NEFA, and they got what they wanted, which was to secure Aksai Chin in the west by pushing their Claim Line forward. Today, we face China on various fronts and we cannot afford to live life in the past. It's a fluid and changing scenario – who knows, the next India-China tussle may well take place in Africa!

After the launch of the book in Mumbai on the 8th under the aegis of Literature live, we are repeating the talk at IIT Bombay for the students who might be interested. Students need to be engaged with these issues that pertain to our national security. Our objective is now to get this book read by the youth, for they are the ones who will carry the torch forward, hopefully minus the baggage of the past.