REPEATING THE 1962 HIMALAYAN BLUNDER IN
2013
Part 1
Dr. Ishanand Vempeny
The recent Chinese invasions (not just
excursions or incursions) reminded me of a cartoon I had seen in 1962, just
before the India-China war. The Personae
in the cartoon were Jawaharlal Nehru and Chairman Mao. Mao, sitting in the Indian
Territory, goes on planting tiny Chinese flags, as a farmer planting seedlings.
Nehru, standing behind the Chairman, proposes gently, “Comrade Mao, let us have
a friendly chat and settle our land problems amicably”. Chairman Mao, without
bothering about this request for talks, goes on planting the Chinese flags.
Jawaharlal, as our first Gentleman Prime Minister with humanistic rationalism
and anti-western nationalism, could not understand such hostile gestures from a
“friendly Asian nation” of “Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai” reputation.
But Mao taught that “Power comes through the barrel of a gun”. One might say
that this language is the common factor between the Maoist China of 1962 and
the capitalist China of today. Its usual articulation is “Might is Right” which
is known among the civilized nations as the “Law of the Jungle”.
Newspapers
have been reporting about the setting up of camps in the Indian Territory by
the Chinese from the middle of April (2013). Our PM said that it was a “local
affair”. When the number of Chinese tents in different localities in the Indian
Territory may reach three or four, I wonder what the PM might say. Had they set
up a tent in Delhi he could very well have said that it is a significant local problem.
Suppose that a dentist told a patient with an intensely aching tooth: “Don’t
worry, it is a local pain. The rest of your teeth are quite good”. No less
foolish was the metaphor used by the foreign minister saying that it is ‘acne’
in the glorious and happy face of Indo-Chinese friendship. Rajput Purohit wrote
on May 2 (2013): “The ‘acne’ could well turn into a deep scar on India’s face
with the Chinese reinforcing their position across the Line of Actual Control
and raising the real prospect of India losing access to 750 sq km. in the
strategically crucial northern Ladakh” (Times
of India, “750 sq km at stake, India gets tough with China”, May 2, 2013,
p.1).
Expressing her
shock at such reactions by the representatives of the Indian government Tavleen
Singh in her usual Sunday column in the Indian
Express wrote: “Sonia Gandhi and PM
Manmohan Singh rarely deign to explain their policies to the Indian public and
always vanish in times of crisis. They leave it to their ministers to speak for
them and when these gentlemen speak, they confirm the growing impression that
the destiny
of India is in the hands of jokers” (Italics ours) (“Jokers in
Charge”, April 28, 2013). The Honourable Foreign Minister’s statement soon
after his return from China, that he would like to have his residence in China,
makes one agree with Nihal Singh’s calling the central ministers “jokers”. The
Chinese hospitality to our Foreign Minister was like stretching the hand out
for a shake-hand to a person soon after stabbing him at the back. Fortunately
the defense minister was not as gullible as the foreign minister with regard to
the Chinese hospitality. When will the Krishnamenonized Indian Politicians
learn something about the subtlety of Chinese diplomacy?
It
took the government quite a few days to admit that the Chinese are in the Indian
Territory. “The government on Friday (April 26, 2013) for the first time
officially admitted that People’s Liberation Army troops had intruded as far as
19km inside Indian Territory to pitch their tents there. The admission came
even as the Centre kept a third flag meeting between local commanders in
eastern Ladakh ‘on hold’ to give China ‘time and space’ to withdraw its
soldiers on its own” (The Times of India,
“Chinese troops 19km into India”, April 27, 2013, p.10).
A
Glance back to 1962
By
the defeat of 1962 what happened to India? We lost thousands of square
kilometers of land to the Chinese, and in a sense, also the life of our first
PM (Indian Express, Inder Malhotra,
“Busy till the end”, April 30, 2012, p.11). But the greater loss is our loss of
face internationally. However the greatest loss of all is the legacy of
defeatism handed down to the ‘Indian Psyche’ as a whole and to every Indian
citizen in particular. This is very obvious even when Indians face the Chinese
in sports events. Because of this defeat the Indian government representatives
are willing to crawl when the Chinese ask them to bow. Do the UPA governments
know the cost of another defeat at the hands of Chinese?
In this context of
Chinese intrusions in April (2013) into the Indian Territory, what will our
present army General Bikram Singh say? This is what he said last year (2012)
about the readiness of the Indian Army: “I am assuring the nation as the Army chief
that 1962 will not be repeated. No way. We have plans in place on all borders
to safeguard our country’s territorial integrity” (Times of India, “No 1962 repeat: Army chief”, Rajat Pandit, September 20,
2012, p.10).
Is India
prepared to defend herself?
When somebody talks about the unpreparedness of the
Indian Armed Forces to face the Chinese, Admiral Suresh Mehta the then Chairman
of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and Navy Chief said: “In
military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the
capability nor the intention to match China, force for force. These are indeed
sobering thoughts and therefore need our strategy to deal with these realities”
(Cfr. Indian Express, Ahmedabad, Aug.
11, 2009, pp.1 & 2). The public confession three or four years ago (Oct.
2009) of Chief Air Marshal that the Indian Air Force is just one third of the
Chinese one (Times of India, Oct. 9,
2009, p.12).
In
the second editorial of the TOI (“India and China: softly, softly” April 27,
2013, p.12), Kanti Bajpai wrote:
“The fact is that China’s economy is four times
India’s size. This is a measure of the difference between the two countries. It
suggests that China has a much greater capacity to prosecute any conflict
anywhere with India. Militarily it has more nuclear weapons by a factor of
three, at the very least. In terms of conventional weapons, there is glaring
mismatch as well. China has about two times as many active military personnel
as India. Its army has the advantage of the heights and infrastructure along
our northern border. …A fight with China would be disastrous”.
The
Vietnamese Example
The Chinese proclivity of “Teaching Lessons” has a
long history. Decades back when Vajpayee, the then foreign minister of India visited
China, the Chinese army had moved towards Vietnam “to teach Vietnam a lesson”.
What was the reaction of the leaders of that small country? The Vietnamese Defense
Minister, General V. N. Giap really taught the Chinese a lesson. Indeed, it was
he who taught also the American Super-Power some lessons, when their identity
and freedom were threatened. Mr. Defense Minister, it is not enough to consult
only your ministry’s Krishnamenonized bureaucrats. Consult military experts
(Mrs. Sonia Gandhi is no military expert) especially your Generals and also
some history books which describe how small nations like Greece defeated the
attacking Persian Emperor.
No comments:
Post a Comment