The Himalayan Misadventure–I

Amit Bhattacharyya

[This book ‘‘The Himalayan Adventure–India-China War of 1962: Causes and Consequences”, like Suniti Kumar Ghosh’s other books, bears imprints of his analytical and original mind. It consists of three parts: Part I deals with different aspects of the India-China War of 1962. Part II dwells on the Convergence of interests of the ruling classes of India, the USA and the USSR. Part III is on the aftermath of the war.]

While leaving for Sri Lanka on 12 October 1962, the prime minister of India declared that he had given orders to the army to throw the Chinese out from the India-China border area on the north-east. Next day, the New York Herald Tribune carried an editorial entitled “India declares war on China” (Cited in T.V. Kunhi Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade, Bombay, 1971, p.71). Thus did Suniti Kumar Ghosh begin his discussion on the India-China War.

This declaration of the war against China was, as Ghosh points out, the culmination of a policy that Nehru and associates had been pursuing since as early as April 1947 when India was still a British colony. On 25 April, the external affairs department of the government of India, of which Nehru was then in charge as a member of the viceroy’s ‘interim government’, informed the British secretary of state for India that “Government of India now wish to be represented in Tibet… and should be grateful to know whether His Majesty’s Government desire to retain separate Mission there in future. In case they do not, then it would seem feasible to arrange transition from ‘British Mission’ to ‘Indian Mission’ without publicity and without drawing too much attention to change, to avoid if possible any constitutional issue being raised by China” (N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief), Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power 1942-7 (Documents Released by the British Government), Vols.I-XII, London, 1971-1983 (hereinafter cited as TOP); Vol.X, p.430). At that time a civil war had been going on in China. Nehru and his associates took advantage of it to resort to surreptitious methods to fulfil their expansionist aims.

On August 15, 1947, the day Britain’s direct rule over India ended, the British mission in Lhasa–capital of Tibet–formally became the Indian mission. The last British representative in Lhasa, H. E. Richardson, became the first Indian representative there. Richardson wrote: “The transition was almost imperceptible: the existing staff was retained in its entirety and the only obvious change was the change in flag”. (See Neville Maxwell, India’s China War, Bombay, 1971, p.68). Thus, what had earlier been under British control, now, without drawing much attention, came under Indian control.

When World War II was drawing to a close, the Indian ruling classes dreamed of becoming a zonal power of Asia extending from the east coast of Africa to the Pacific under the umbrella of the Anglo-American powers. The defeat of Japan, the decline in the power of France and the Netherlands and the prospect of a bitter civil war between the Kuo-min-tang and the Communist Party of China whetted the appetite of the Indian big bourgeoisie. In January 1946, Nehru declared that “India is likely to dominate politically and economically the Indian Ocean region”. (S. Gopaled, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 1st Series (Vols. I-XV), 2nd Series (Vols.I-III), New Delhi, 1972-1985 (hereinafter cited as SWJN; Vol.XIV, p.325). Addressing army officers in October 1946, he said:

“India is today [when India was still under British rule] among the four great powers of the world, other three being America, Russia and China. But in point of resources India hasa greater potential than China”. (Ibid, 2nd Series, Vol.I, p.311).

In fact, it became the theme of many of his speeches and statements in 1945 and after that India was “bound to emerge as one of the greatest powers of the world”. (SWJN, 2nd Series, Vol.I, p.19).

Ghosh points out that after Britain’s direct rule of India came a close, the Indian rulers directed their attention to India’s northern neighbours: the Himalayan kingdoms of Kashmir, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. Even before the end of direct colonial rule, the Nehrus wanted to annex Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was then a native state under British paramountcy. (On the transfer of power in ‘British India’, J&K was free to accede to India or not). On 14 June 1947, V.K. Krishna Menon, Nehru’s confidant, made a fervent appeal to Viceroy Mountbatten to ensure the state’s accession to India. On 17 June, on the eve of Mountbatten’s visit to J&K, Nehru himself wrote a long note to the viceroy pleading for Kashmir’s joining India. (TOP, XI, pp.446-48). When the maharaja of J&K acceded to India in October 1947, the instrument of accession had a proviso that the accession would be final only after law and order was restored and the people of J&K freely decided in favour of it. (Nehru, Independence and After, Delhi, 1949, p.57; see also p.59). On behalf of the Indian government, Nehru gave repeated pledges to the people of J&K and to the United Nations Organization that this issue of accession would be decided finally “according to the universally accepted norm of plebiscite or referendum”. (Ibid, pp.65,89; J. Nehru’s Speeches 1949-53, Delhi, 1957, pp.152, 341-2, 345, 352–passim.). In fact, A UNO office was set up in Srinagar to oversee the work of the referendum or plebiscite when the time comes. However, no initiative was taken by the Nehru government to organize it, as promised. Ghosh observes that “But Nehru indulged in double-talk of which he was a consummate master (See ibid, p.361 and S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol.II, Delhi, 1979, p.122) The Indian ruling classes would not allow the people of J&K to decide their own fate through a fair plebiscite. Today, their political managers are more brazen-faced than before and claim that J&K is an integral part of India” (Ghosh, p.7). The natural result is that the land of Kashmir lies torn into two parts–about one third under the occupation of Pakistan and the rest under the virtual military occupation of India–and ravaged by hostile forces.

(On 5 August 2019, under the BJP government led by Prime Minister NarendraModi at the centre, the central government of India revoked the special status granted under Article 370 to J&K. Among the Indian government actions accompanying the revocation was the cutting off of communication lines in the Kashmir Valley. Thousands of additional security forces were deployed to curb any uprising. Several leading Kashmiri politicians were taken into custody, including the former chief minister. The president of India issued an order under the power of Article 367, overriding the prevailing 1954 Presidential Order and nullifying all the provisions of autonomy granted to the state. There were multiple petitions against the abrogation of Article 370 describing it as ‘unconstitutional’, ‘constitutionally suspect’, and ‘fraught with legal and constitutional defects’. However, on 11 December 2023, a 5-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India unanimously upheld the decision.)

More developments followed. On 7 November 1950, Patel, India’s home minister, wrote to India’s prime minister, Nehru: “The undefined state of the frontier [in the north and the north-east] and the existence on our side of a population with its affinities to Tibetans or Chinese have all the elements of potential trouble between China and ourselves. Our northern or north-eastern approaches consist of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, the Darjeeling and tribal areas in Assam… The people inhabiting these portions have no established loyalty or devotion to India”. Patel suggested that “The political and administrative steps which we should take to strengthen our northern and north-eastern frontiers” were to “include the whole border, i.e, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Darjeeling and the tribal territory in Assam”. (Durga Das (ed), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945-1950, (vols. I-X, Ahmedabad, 1971-4); Vol.X, pp.336-40).

Ghosh here refers to the observations made by Neville Maxwell in India’s China War: “In the case of Sikkim. India in 1949 seized the opportunity of a local uprising against the ruler to send in troops and bring the state into closer dependence as a protectorate than it had formally been under the British [and in 1974 Nehru’s worthy daughter and then India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi marched Indian troops into Sikkim and annexed it into India]; in the same year [1949] India signed a treaty with Bhutan, in which she over Britain’s right to guide Bhutan in foreign affairs. New Delhi’s influence in Nepal continued to be paramount, and was increased in 1950 when the Indian Government helped the King of Nepal to break the century-old rule of the Rana clan. The new government took over and consolidated the ‘chain of protectorates’, as Curzon had described the Himalayan states”. (Maxwell, op.cit, p.67-8).

That is not all. As Ghosh asserts, Nehru also considered Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to be “really part of India” and wanted her to be included within an Indian federation. Nepal, too, according to Nehru, was “certainly a part of India” and, as Chester Bowles, Nehru’s friend and US ambassador to India for two terms said: “So India has done on a small scale in Nepal what we have done on a far broader scale on two continents”. (SWJN, Vol.XV,p.458; ibid, 2nd Series, Vol.II, p.470; Nehru to Macmanage, 1 November 1945,J.Nehru Papers cited in B.N.Pandey, Nehru, 1977, pp.250; Chester Bowles. Ambassador’s Report, London, 1954, p.280).

India, Ghosh observes, was also interested in Tibet, which was a part of China. A civil war had been raging in that country. When World War II came to an end with the defeat of Japan, the US imperialists asked Japan not to surrender to the Chinese Communists Manchuria and the north-east provinces of China. The US rulers had been supporting Chiang’s rotten regime. They transported 480,000 of Chiang’s troops from the south to Manchuria and north China, trained and equipped more than 700,000 men. In fact, by 1947, the total value of war material and other aid given by the US government to the KMT regime amounted to $4,000,000,00. (Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, The Great Conspiracy (previously named The Great Conspiracy Against Russia), London, 1975 reprint, pp.429-30). To flee to Taiwan the US imperialist’s abundant financial and military aid could not save their lackey, Chiang Kai shek, who had to flee from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan Island in 1949.

The US imperialists were also engaged in intrigues in China’s far-flung provinces of Sinkiang and Tibet. From 1947, if not from earlier days, they were active in those provinces–not without the help of the Nehru government. US consul-general in Sinkiang was engaged in espionage and sabotage and in directing attacks against the revolutionary movement raging in that province. (Ghosh, p.8).

Taking advantage of the civil war, the Tibetan government of serf-owners established contacts with the US government as early as 1946. (L. Natarajan, American Shadow over India, Bombay, 1952, p.186). Ghosh points out that an experienced US intelligence agent, Nicol Smith, explored Kashmir and western Tibet for military bases in 1947. (Natarajan, p.168). Tibet was an autonomous region within China. The pretention of the government of the Tibetan serf-owners to independence was encouraged by the US imperialists. Ghosh states that an American, Lowell Thomas, visited Tibet in 1949 and delivered a letter from President Truman to the Dalai Lama. Returning from Tibet, Thomas declared in Kolkata on 10 October 1949 that “the Tibetan authorities wanted outside help to hold back the progress of communism and that India would have to play a major role in it. Later he suggested to the press in New York that that the United States might find a way to supply modern arms to Tibet and to give advice on guerrilla warfare. He also disclosed that he carries scrolls and oral messages from the Tibetan rulers to President Truman and Acheson, the Secretary of State. (Ibid, pp.186-7; Natarajan refers to a report in the New Herald-Tribune, 17 October, 19490).

Ghosh refers to the New York Times report dated 25 October 1949 according to which the US state department was considering recognition of Tibet as an independent country. The report also said that consideration was being given to the question of providing military help to Tibet (which could be sent only through India) in case the US government recognized Tibet as an independent state (Natarajan, op.cit, p.187).
Ghosh points out that the Nehrus also had a keen interest in Tibet. On 27 July 1949, Reuters reported that that Pandit Nehru was planning a visit to Lhasa in the near future. (New York Times,28 July 1949, cited in Natarajan, op.cit,p.189).On 29 July the London Times reported from Delhi: “Neutral observers are cautiously disposed to interpret signs of closer liaison between the Government of India and the Dalai Lam’s Government in Tibet as a gratifying indication that an important new bulwark against spread of Communism westward is being created”. (Quoted in ibid, pp.187-8–emphasis added).

H.S. Dayal, India’s political officer in Sikkim, left in August 1949 on a special mission to Lhasa. (Ibid, p.188). An American news agency reported from London on 10 January 1950 that “accord has been reached on 10 January 1950 that “accord has been reached between India, the United Kingdom and the United States on measures aimed at preserving Tibetan autonomy”. That such an accord had been reached was denied by the external affairs ministry in New Delhi days later, but it was not denied that consultations were held (Ibid).

A few days later the Lhasa government sent a “goodwill mission” to visit India, the USA and other countries, but, remarkably, not the People’s Republic of China. To quote Natarajan, “The Lhasa aristocracy was actively canvassing for foreign help to fight China. The Anglo-American powers were anxious to keep Tibet separated from China, and the Indian policy was aiding their effort.” (Ibid)

[To be continued]

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