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Dividing Lines
The chessboard of Sino-Indian relations, fraught with emotion, diplomatic strategy, military stand-offs and global ambitions, will perhaps be the most keenly watched during the 21st century; certain to send ripples across the world, influence markets and international policy. So where do the fault lines lie in this contest between the two Asian giants, poised on either side of the Himalayas?
India and China, inheritors of two of the world’s most ancient civilisations have had aeons of neighbourly bonds, cemented by Buddhism and the bridge building missions of Fa Hien, Huen Tsang and Kotnis. No strife was witnessed till the fateful autumn of 1962, when the two countries fought a short and bitter war on the desolate Himalayan heights. Ever since, mutual suspicion, sporadic face-offs and a spirit of competitive nationalism have bedeviled relations between them, even as unsettled borders possess the ability to trigger
further conflict.
In a cogent and comprehensive analysis, the author traces the origins of the discord to the flawed legacy of imperial Britain’s unilateral border delineation and the ebb and flow of Chinese activism in Tibet. The gripping narrative carries the reader from the post-1947 Panchsheel bonhomie to years of mutual distrust, aggravated, among other causes, by Chinese paranoia over Tibet, and Indian public opinion. India’s cataclysmic defeat in the 1962 war, which remains a young nation’s humiliation, is attributed to the ill-advised Forward Policy and failure of the politico-military leadership of the time.
In this revised and updated edition, the author chronicles the events after the 1962 war and the changes in the relationship subsequent to the evolution of China into a economic and military superpower. The impact of China’s special relationship with Pakistan, their apprehensions about the Dalai Lama, the role of USA, and the recurring incidents at the border, including Doklam, are analysed lucidly as are the challenges faced by Indian military and diplomatic establishment in tackling the threat from across the Himalayas.
India and China, inheritors of two of the world’s most ancient civilisations have had aeons of neighbourly bonds, cemented by Buddhism and the bridge building missions of Fa Hien, Huen Tsang and Kotnis. No strife was witnessed till the fateful autumn of 1962, when the two countries fought a short and bitter war on the desolate Himalayan heights. Ever since, mutual suspicion, sporadic face-offs and a spirit of competitive nationalism have bedeviled relations between them, even as unsettled borders possess the ability to trigger
further conflict.
In a cogent and comprehensive analysis, the author traces the origins of the discord to the flawed legacy of imperial Britain’s unilateral border delineation and the ebb and flow of Chinese activism in Tibet. The gripping narrative carries the reader from the post-1947 Panchsheel bonhomie to years of mutual distrust, aggravated, among other causes, by Chinese paranoia over Tibet, and Indian public opinion. India’s cataclysmic defeat in the 1962 war, which remains a young nation’s humiliation, is attributed to the ill-advised Forward Policy and failure of the politico-military leadership of the time.
In this revised and updated edition, the author chronicles the events after the 1962 war and the changes in the relationship subsequent to the evolution of China into a economic and military superpower. The impact of China’s special relationship with Pakistan, their apprehensions about the Dalai Lama, the role of USA, and the recurring incidents at the border, including Doklam, are analysed lucidly as are the challenges faced by Indian military and diplomatic establishment in tackling the threat from across the Himalayas.
325 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 11, 2012
A lucidly written book on a turbulent period in young Independent India's history, when the two Asian giants , India and China clashed over a boundary dispute. Ending in a debacle for India,the author goes beyond the boundary issue and puts a lot of things in perspective. The tinted glasses are off and it is an honest account of what led to the war and its far reaching consequences on the subsequent relations between the powerful neighbors on the sub continent. As a nation remembers the war on its 50th anniversary, the author gives an impartial, but impressively accurate account of the events leading to the cataclysmic event.
December 18, 2012
This year – 2012 – marks the 50th anniversary of the only war ever fought between China and India. India was inflicted a crushing defeat and much has been written about it over the years as to whose fault it was. The Hindu nationalist politicians point the finger at the then Prime Minister, Nehru, and others point to the disastrous decisions taken by the civilian and army leaderships leading up to the war. I have never been much interested in the military defeat itself but more in how the two great peaceful and civilizational races ended up fighting a war over a desolate piece of land. After all, India's leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a pacifist to the core and he hated violence and war. In addition, he had a great vision of Asian and African nations coming together in a new togetherness after centuries of colonial oppression. He was particularly taken with the vision of India and China, as two great neighbours, leading a new, resurgent Asia in partnership. How then, did he end up on the wrong side of a peaceful solution? This book provides some answers.
I found this book is to be different from other ones on the subject in one significant aspect. The author is least connected with the Indian Foreign Service or the Army or the political class. He is a civilian who is simply interested in researching this subject without any ideological and nationalist baggage. He is only in search of gathering the facts and finding out what conclusions they lead to. In that sense, it is a scientific piece of work and that is what I liked best about this book. In the end, as I finished reading it, the salient facts that stood out on the issues related to the skirmish were as follows:
1. Britain was extremely anxious about Czarist Russia's advance on their Indian empire. As a result, in trying to secure India's northern borders, they bequeathed a bad legacy of cartographic flip-flops on the issue to India. In addition, they illegally gifted Gilgit to Pakistan after partition, thereby shutting out India's link to Central Asia.
2. The Chinese communist leadership correctly pointed out that the border problem is one of hangover from our colonial history and that India and China, as two independent young nations, must sort it out without viewing this historical baggage as sacrosanct.
3. In 1959, China offered the most obvious and fair solution to the problem by suggesting that India keep the Eastern sector at the McMahon Line (NEFA) in return for China keeping Aksai Chin on the West, which was crucial for China's control of Tibet and Xinjiang. Aksai Chin was anyway in their possession by the late 1950s. India declined, claiming both NEFA and Aksai Chin. This intransigence was the prelude to eventual hostilities.
4. Indian democracy played a dysfunctional role in whipping up nationalist frenzy through its English-language media. Opposition politicians, who were determined to embarrass Nehru, raised the bogey of Mother India being dismembered yet again (after partition in 1947 ) if we accept China's reasonable offer of exchange. Instead of educating the public about the facts of the border dispute, they pushed Nehru's government into a corner whereby it became impossible for him to trade Aksai Chin for NEFA without India appearing to be a loser in the nation's eyes. Ironically, it is liberal democracy which pushed matters towards inviting war with China.
5. Nehru, on his part, was phenomenally popular with the people and could have reached a peaceful solution by trading Aksai Chin for NEFA and then 'sold' it to the people of India. His popularity was immense and the Indian people in late 1950s would have never believed an opposition charge that Pandit Nehru would do something harmful to India. But he failed to utilize this option and chose instead to adopt the more nationalist position of intransigence.
6. Finally, China's victory was comprehensive, both on the military as well as the diplomatic front. India, as the leader of the Non-aligned Movement had the chagrin of finding no non-aligned nation coming to its support in the dispute. They all remained neutral. China, by teaching a lesson to India through war, withdrew all the way back beyond the McMahon Line, thereby making it clear that they don't have any aggressive designs, which won them kudos in the international community.
Looking at the destructive role played by the free press and the democratic opposition in the 1950s and 60s in preventing a peaceful resolution to the conflict, I feel a sense of deja vu today in India's problems with its neighbours like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The central governments of today's India are substantially weaker than the ones under Nehru. Consequently, democracy allows little wiggle room for peaceful resolutions of our conflicts. It forces a ruling party to adopt a strident position for fear of being seen as 'selling out Mother India'. The same imperatives apply to our neighbours as well as their free press and the opposition raise the bogey of 'big brother' India trying to overwhelm them. This leads both of us to a stalemate. I doubt if we will see resolutions to even solvable conflicts in our lifetime. Even American democracy has similar problems in lifting their irrational trade embargo on Cuba. A small fringe of Cuban exiles hold their foreign policy hostage. We also saw how media and political frenzy drowned out all rational arguments in 2002 on the question of WMDs in Iraq, allowing the Bush administration to wage war on false premises. Democracies need to address this dysfunction by putting more onus on its press and political leaders in educating the public on the facts related to important matters.
I strongly recommend this book to all Indians as a way of educating themselves about the facts on the border question. There is too much focus in the Indian discourse on the unimportant issue of the military defeat rather than the golden opportunities we lost to settle the issue and live in peace with China.
I found this book is to be different from other ones on the subject in one significant aspect. The author is least connected with the Indian Foreign Service or the Army or the political class. He is a civilian who is simply interested in researching this subject without any ideological and nationalist baggage. He is only in search of gathering the facts and finding out what conclusions they lead to. In that sense, it is a scientific piece of work and that is what I liked best about this book. In the end, as I finished reading it, the salient facts that stood out on the issues related to the skirmish were as follows:
1. Britain was extremely anxious about Czarist Russia's advance on their Indian empire. As a result, in trying to secure India's northern borders, they bequeathed a bad legacy of cartographic flip-flops on the issue to India. In addition, they illegally gifted Gilgit to Pakistan after partition, thereby shutting out India's link to Central Asia.
2. The Chinese communist leadership correctly pointed out that the border problem is one of hangover from our colonial history and that India and China, as two independent young nations, must sort it out without viewing this historical baggage as sacrosanct.
3. In 1959, China offered the most obvious and fair solution to the problem by suggesting that India keep the Eastern sector at the McMahon Line (NEFA) in return for China keeping Aksai Chin on the West, which was crucial for China's control of Tibet and Xinjiang. Aksai Chin was anyway in their possession by the late 1950s. India declined, claiming both NEFA and Aksai Chin. This intransigence was the prelude to eventual hostilities.
4. Indian democracy played a dysfunctional role in whipping up nationalist frenzy through its English-language media. Opposition politicians, who were determined to embarrass Nehru, raised the bogey of Mother India being dismembered yet again (after partition in 1947 ) if we accept China's reasonable offer of exchange. Instead of educating the public about the facts of the border dispute, they pushed Nehru's government into a corner whereby it became impossible for him to trade Aksai Chin for NEFA without India appearing to be a loser in the nation's eyes. Ironically, it is liberal democracy which pushed matters towards inviting war with China.
5. Nehru, on his part, was phenomenally popular with the people and could have reached a peaceful solution by trading Aksai Chin for NEFA and then 'sold' it to the people of India. His popularity was immense and the Indian people in late 1950s would have never believed an opposition charge that Pandit Nehru would do something harmful to India. But he failed to utilize this option and chose instead to adopt the more nationalist position of intransigence.
6. Finally, China's victory was comprehensive, both on the military as well as the diplomatic front. India, as the leader of the Non-aligned Movement had the chagrin of finding no non-aligned nation coming to its support in the dispute. They all remained neutral. China, by teaching a lesson to India through war, withdrew all the way back beyond the McMahon Line, thereby making it clear that they don't have any aggressive designs, which won them kudos in the international community.
Looking at the destructive role played by the free press and the democratic opposition in the 1950s and 60s in preventing a peaceful resolution to the conflict, I feel a sense of deja vu today in India's problems with its neighbours like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The central governments of today's India are substantially weaker than the ones under Nehru. Consequently, democracy allows little wiggle room for peaceful resolutions of our conflicts. It forces a ruling party to adopt a strident position for fear of being seen as 'selling out Mother India'. The same imperatives apply to our neighbours as well as their free press and the opposition raise the bogey of 'big brother' India trying to overwhelm them. This leads both of us to a stalemate. I doubt if we will see resolutions to even solvable conflicts in our lifetime. Even American democracy has similar problems in lifting their irrational trade embargo on Cuba. A small fringe of Cuban exiles hold their foreign policy hostage. We also saw how media and political frenzy drowned out all rational arguments in 2002 on the question of WMDs in Iraq, allowing the Bush administration to wage war on false premises. Democracies need to address this dysfunction by putting more onus on its press and political leaders in educating the public on the facts related to important matters.
I strongly recommend this book to all Indians as a way of educating themselves about the facts on the border question. There is too much focus in the Indian discourse on the unimportant issue of the military defeat rather than the golden opportunities we lost to settle the issue and live in peace with China.
June 29, 2017
Lucid account from a non partisan aspect. Even though written before the leaks of the Brooks-Bhagat Report, Raghavan was indicatively able to predict as to what would lie in the biography of one of the darkest hours of post independence India.
Raghavan has been objective in the narrative and gives adequate caveats due to the lack of material available. The book is additionally from the aspect that it has been solely written by an enthusiast and not by a professional historian, military or establishment personnel or serial academic.
It maps the history of the dispute at its origins and also how the collision has served in the aftermath. The Cuban Nuclear Crisis has been elemental to this war and its importance has been adequately represented.
A must read for research on the topic.
Raghavan has been objective in the narrative and gives adequate caveats due to the lack of material available. The book is additionally from the aspect that it has been solely written by an enthusiast and not by a professional historian, military or establishment personnel or serial academic.
It maps the history of the dispute at its origins and also how the collision has served in the aftermath. The Cuban Nuclear Crisis has been elemental to this war and its importance has been adequately represented.
A must read for research on the topic.
August 10, 2014
This book traces the history of the India-China conflict in the backdrop of the 1962 war. This book is different from the accounts written by various actors in a few ways:
- The book starts not at post independence history, but a 100 years back, tracing the boundary conflict in its entirety.
- The book does not stop at Oct 62 but goes on to over the conflicts of Nov 62 and their implications for future.
- There is no attempt of any witch hunt against any particular section or individuals, though of course the war produced several villains.
This is a lucid account of the build up of the war. It covers not just the problems India had in the Eastern sector with China, but also the root of conflict in the Western sector, which other books generally don't touch upon.
Having read a few versions of this event, I feel the author soft peddles on the contemporary Indian political leadership. While there are several pertinent questions raised - the roles of Lt Gen BM Kaul, General Thapar, and V.K. Krishna Menon for example - none of them are traced back to the root cause - i.e. the political backing and complete failure on part of the PM to let go of that backing in a timely fashion. The author also credits the PM for being a visionary but wherever the "benefit of the hindsight analysis" is invoked, the author concludes that the PM could not have gauged specific outcomes of a decision / indecision. That approach seems jarring.
Overall, this is a good non-political, non-military account of the war and dispassionate enough to add to one's knowledge and understanding of the events as well as the Indian and Chinese perspectives.
- The book starts not at post independence history, but a 100 years back, tracing the boundary conflict in its entirety.
- The book does not stop at Oct 62 but goes on to over the conflicts of Nov 62 and their implications for future.
- There is no attempt of any witch hunt against any particular section or individuals, though of course the war produced several villains.
This is a lucid account of the build up of the war. It covers not just the problems India had in the Eastern sector with China, but also the root of conflict in the Western sector, which other books generally don't touch upon.
Having read a few versions of this event, I feel the author soft peddles on the contemporary Indian political leadership. While there are several pertinent questions raised - the roles of Lt Gen BM Kaul, General Thapar, and V.K. Krishna Menon for example - none of them are traced back to the root cause - i.e. the political backing and complete failure on part of the PM to let go of that backing in a timely fashion. The author also credits the PM for being a visionary but wherever the "benefit of the hindsight analysis" is invoked, the author concludes that the PM could not have gauged specific outcomes of a decision / indecision. That approach seems jarring.
Overall, this is a good non-political, non-military account of the war and dispassionate enough to add to one's knowledge and understanding of the events as well as the Indian and Chinese perspectives.
August 4, 2018
Well researched book that outlines the history with great authenticity. A must read for all those who want to contribute positively towards India-China relations. A better understanding of history will lead to better management of relations between the two countries.
October 30, 2012
A comprehensive and unbaised account of the conflict between the two countries....
December 3, 2016
A must read for all those history buffs
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews