Indo China war: The shock and awe of 1962

Dear Veterans,
One wonders if the situation is any better now and with multiplied force levels of the Chinese. Are we not waiting for another humiliation? Who will be blamed politicians, bureaucracy or the armed forces? The special article by A Bhatacharayya of Statesman is a pointer to political indifference to National Security in connivance with Bureaucratic incompetence.
Warm regards,
Brigadier PTGangadharan,Guards,
Veteran

The Statesman, 21 October 2010- Shock and awe of ’62, A War That Was Lost Before It Began By Abhijit Bhattacharyya
After 37 years, precisely on 7 October 2010, Israel relived, as it were, the declassified documents of the Yom Kippur war. The confidential discussions of Israel’s top leaders in the first days of the Arab-Israeli war are now in the open. However, no such declassification has taken place in India even 48 years after the war with China. The most devastating setback was suffered by the army at the battle of Namka Chu (Kechilang to the Chinese) at 5 am on Saturday, 20 October 1962. Namka Chu was a national shame, an unprecedented battering for the military, an unparalleled command failure on the part of spineless, non-professional Generals, an ignominy for the over-rated and conspiratorial bureaucracy and a case of rare political irresponsibility and foolishness. It was not a military conflict fought on the ground, but the outcome of a myopic political process which was tantamount to self-inflicted humiliation in a potential conflict zone.
The Indian politicians in the fifties and sixties were so out-of-depth that the Government still does not feel confident enough to declassify the 48-year-old documents. This only encourages speculation.
Indeed, India was done-in much before the hostility in the Namka Chu valley. The die was actually cast on Sunday, 9 September 1962. With both Prime Minister Nehru and Finance Minister Morarji Desai out of the country, and Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri nowhere in the loop, Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon took upon himself the role and responsibility to hold a meeting in his South Block office on a holiday. With the army chief and two army commanders and presumably one or two ministry officials in attendance, Menon “unilaterally” gave the “marching order” to the army to go forward, according to Brigadier John P. Dalvi, the fall guy of the 1962 defeat, in his military classic, Himalayan Blunder. Neville Maxwell in his authentic India’s China War corroborates Dalvi’s version with a blow-by-blow account, which he reportedly “managed” to access from Lt. General Henderson Brooks’ enquiry report on the disaster.
The government decided to “go forward” and set up a post at the trijunction of India-Bhutan-China at Dhola on the Thagla ridge on the Namka Chu river. Dalvi’s description of the confusion, ignorance of Delhi-based military generals and civilian babus make ironic, yet comical and hilarious, reading. A sketch map was the “only map” available as there “were no accurate survey maps of this area. The ¼-inch editions were very old and vaguely based on the details provided by the British officer who was deputed to visit the area and align the McMahon Line, as agreed at the Simla Conference of 1913-14. It showed the Namka Chu flowing from north to south, whereas it actually flowed from west to east”.
It was another bigger river, named Nyamjang Chu, which flowed from north to south from the Thagla watershed. This appears to have led to the conclusion that the flow of Namka Chu too must be following the same north-south axis. Dalvi wrote: “I have often wondered if this map misled our planners into thinking that 9 Punjab were facing east instead of north”. The strategy, therefore, exposed a deficit in the planners’ knowledge of history and geography, ignorance of the terrain, non-application of mind and a political compulsion that was thrust upon the army’s field commanders. The end-result of India’s adventure in the face of the obdurate Chinese was a foregone conclusion.
The order issued by the Army chief’s office in mid-September 1962 stated: “9 Punjab will capture Thagla, contain Yumtsola and Karpola-II by September 19.” It was “issued while the Prime Minister and Finance Minister were abroad and the Defence Minister was having his western clothes dry-cleaned for New York. The Chief of General Staff of the Army was enjoying the salubrious climate of Kashmir. All the key desks in Delhi were empty”.
The Prime Minister made an uncharacteristically aggressive statement at Colombo airport on 12 October 1962: “The Army has been told to drive away the Chinese from our territory in NEFA”. This worsened the situation. It served as the clarion call for war by India’s Head of Government, and one that was made on foreign soil. It was a humiliating assault on the pride and ego of any nation, not to speak of China alone. It once again brought into sharp and contrasting focus the issue of war preparedness and the psyche thereof. The Indian military was simply in no position to fight because the 600 ragtag men had nothing to fight with and did not know where to fight and when and how to begin in the face of a mighty enemy of 40000 men coming from across the Namka Chu. The war was over in three hours, to be precise.
Nemesis caught up with Namka Chu because the operational “Brigade Headquarters was at Towang, some five days’ march from the intrusion at Thagla Ridge. Towang is a field posting and a hardship station. The Division was at Tezpur, 200 miles away. Although Tezpur is considered to be a field area, life is more or less normal, with planters’ clubs, golf courses and cinemas. Corps HQ was at Shillong, another 200 miles away. Shillong is a salubrious hill station and a ‘peace posting’. Command HQ was at Lucknow some 600 miles from Shillong ... The last tier is the holy of holies at Delhi where we have Army HQ and ‘Government’. Delhi is the most peaceful of the world’s capitals and so far removed from military realities that political factors perforce dominate the formulation of national strategy”.
This was the ground reality for the demoralized soldiers in the frontline during September-October 1962. It was a “lost war” even before the war had begun as the “peace stations” of Shillong (Corps HQ); Lucknow (Command HQ) and Delhi gave China a “head start” in the October 1962 war with India.
How were the Chinese placed in contrast to India’s plight at the Namka Chu/Thagla axis? How did they inflict one of the most spectacular and stunning defeats on an enemy in the field? The Chinese followed the doctrines of their ancient scholar-soldier Sun Tzu, enshrined in the Art of War. War, being a “matter of life and death for the state”, must not be neglected. “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting”. This is the doctrine that was followed in Namka Chu.
The Indian resistance simply ended in three hours on Saturday, 20 October 1962 “without fighting”. The soldiers fought as hard as they could from 5 am to 8 am, thereby writing a fresh, humiliating chapter in the country’s history.
Let India not forget that 48-year-old chapter written with the blood, toil, tears and death of some of the crack units of her fighting machine. Let India not allow Sun Tzu’s success to be repeated at its expense in the Namka Chu valley. Let India declassify the official documents and the full text of Lt.- Gen Henderson Brooks if the government is inclined to “prove” that 1962 was actually “China’s India war” and not “India’s China war” as Neville Maxwell would have us believe.

The writer is an alumnus of the National Defence College of India and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London
Indo- China war: The shock and awe of 1962