https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Telegram-Kissinger-Forgotten-Genocide/dp/0307744620Toward the end of the 19th century, battered by the great rebellion of 1857, Imperial Britain set about laying social foundations for a loyal native military. The tool it chose for this social engineering was a system of new irrigation canals running across then-arid Punjab, creating what were called ‘Canal Colonies.’ In 1912, 10 per cent of colonised land in British-ruled India was reserved for the military. The British Empire provided patronage to clan chieftains in British-ruled India through the grant of lands and military contracts. These Indian elites, in turn, ensured order and raised soldiers. Economist Shahid Alam called the feudalisation, “proceeded via alliances of marriage and acquisition of agricultural lands, with or without quid pro quo.” Entire Indian villages that refused to enlist to serve in the WW-1, historian Tahir Mahmood has recorded, were evicted from their lands, and women were separated from husbands and sons until the men fell in line. For soldiers who agreed to serve the British Empire, good pay, pension and land were on offer.Praveen Swami After Partition, this system consolidated in Pakistan under the army general and second President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan. Social scientist Raymond Moore, writing in 1967, recorded that "over 300,000 acres of [taxpayer-funded] land have been made available in the Sind [Sindh], plus rich acreage along the Indian frontier." The Pakistani military rests on a system of patronage. This system of land accumulation does not exist independently of Pakistani politics. The Generals are just the leaders of the largest organised political force, exercising their influence to ensure their privileges will be protected. From 1965 to 2003, the military handed out a staggering 2,303,706.5 acres of irrigated land to its personnel. During Partition, a large number of Hindus and Sikhs from Rawalpindi and Sialkot started arriving since March 1947, bringing "harrowing stories of Muslim atrocities in West Punjab". In response, an estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred and others driven away to West Punjab. Meanwhile, many Hindus and Sikhs refugees from Jhelum, on and after 25 November 1947 gathered in Mirpur for shelter and protection were killed by the Pakistani troops and tribesmen. "A 'greatly shocked' Sardar Ibrahim, the then president of Azad Kashmir, painfully confirmed that Hindus were 'disposed of' in Mirpur in November 1947. The raiders killed 10,000 of the captives along the way and abducted 5,000 women. The death toll was estimated to be over 20,000. Many Hindus and Sikhs from Muzaffarabad and Mirpur that survived the raids became displaced within the former princely state. During the WW-II, over 60,000 Muslims from the Poonch and Mirpur districts enrolled in the British Indian Army. Punjab was held by the Unionists, and the NWFP by Indian National Congress. Undeterred, the Muslim League decided to bring down both the governments, with the help of its militia. 500 hostile tribesmen in green and khaki uniforms entered Poonch, and they were joined by 200–300 Sattis from Kahuta and Murree. Their purpose appeared to be to loot the Hindu and Sikh minorities in the district. These efforts exacerbated Hindu-Sikh-Muslim communal tensions in the two provinces. The trauma was especially acute in the Hazara district, a Muslim League stronghold, which directly bordered the Poonch and Muzaffarabad districts. Communal fires were set ablaze in Multan, Rawalpindi, Amritsar and Lahore, spreading to Campbellpur, Murree, Taxila and Attock in Punjab. The rigorous restriction on the movement of goods and men between Pakistan and Poonch also generated shortages, causing prices to skyrocket. The State troops in Poonch ran out of rations and demanded the local populace to provide their supplies. When the populace eventually declared their inability to do so, the Revenue Minister of the State came down to Poonch to collect the tax arrears. Rebellious militias gathered in the Palandri–Nowshera–Anantnag area, attacking the state troops and their supply trucks. The state troops were at this time thinly spread escorting refugees between India and Pakistan. About 10,000 Poonchies gathered mainly to air grievances regarding high prices, and wanted to pass through the town of Bagh. The local officials at Bagh barred them from entering the town. Then the protesters surrounded the town. The army opened fire on the crowds. Reinforcements of State troops were sent from Srinagar, which dispersed the protesters. A local zamindar (landlord), is said to have led an attack on a police-cum-military post in Dhirkot and captured it. The event then led the Maharaja to unleash the full force of his Dogra troops on the population. Kashmiri identity, actually, included both Muslims and the Hindus who were forced from the valley. In 1211 when Delhi was under Muslim rulers, Kashmir was Hindu. Around 1372 or 1383, Turk Islamic preacher Sharaf-ud-Din Abdul Rehman Bulbul Shah and Persian Sufi poet Mir Sayyid (Second-)Ali Hamdani brought Islam & various Iranian crafts & textiles to Kashmir. After 1320 till 1753, Kashmir was ruled by other Mughal-Afghan dynasties. During that time Kashmir converted to Islam. By the mid 16th century, Hindu influence in the courts and role of the Hindu priests had declined as Muslim missionaries immigrated into Kashmir from Central Asia and Persia, and Persian replaced Sanskrit as the official language. In the 19th century, it was ruled by Sikhs and later the British. What is unique for J&K state is that even though it is a Muslim majority state, its population numbering 93 lakh is mainly concentrated in Kashmir valley in an area which is just 32% of the entire area of J&K. The balance 60 lakh population comprising Hindus and Buddhists are in Jammu and Ladakh regions respectively in the remaining 68% area. “Kashmir can claim the distinction of being the only region of India which possesses an uninterrupted series of written records of its history, reaching back beyond the period of the Mohammedan conquest and deserving the name of real chronicles.” Walter W. Lawrence, The Valley of Kashmir, 1895. Why has Indian leadership not been able to change the behaviour of Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi General Headquarters (GHQ)? Indian and Pakistan's politicians and bureaucrats (civilian leadership) have not realized that Pakistan Army's strategic use of state-sponsored proxies, started in Pakistan's inception in 1947 in J&K, and it only turned worse after the Indo-Pak War of 1971. Pakistan already occupies Gilgit-Baltistan (and Muzaffarabad, Bag, Poonch, Sudhnutti, Kotli, Mirpur, Bhimber), however if India lost the rest of Kashmir, it would not only clear the strategic positions for future invasions from the North but turn Pakistan as the most dominant power in the region due to its strategic location. Pakistan Army's strategic use of state-sponsored proxies means Indian Army has to focus on COIN-OPS which has slowly weakened the capabilities of Indian Army operation environment level by loss of brave Indian Army officers and generating intense interests in COIN-OPS. Moreover, the 3- and 4-star Indian Army Generals during peacetime, have better chance to rise in COIN-OPS, than strengthening the Indian Army's Air-Land Battle capabilities in operation environment level for future wars that they may never command. A letter written to Jinnah by his secretary, Khursheed Husain, from Srinagar in 1945 made this crystal clear, for in it, he advised Jinnah not to accept the J&K Muslim Conference’s offer to join the Muslim League because the Kashmiris practiced ‘a strange form of Islam, worshiping saints and relics, that drove a coach and four through all the tenets that orthodox Muslims considered most sacred’. Kashmiris, he concluded, would need ‘a long period of re-education’ before they became fit to be included in the ranks of true Muslims. It is the re-education that a shepherd voted when he misguided Pakistani infiltrators who entered Kashmir in 1965, and cycled all the way to Srinagar to warn the police. It was the reason why Sheikh Abbdullah fully supported the Maharaja’s accession to India. In 2009, a Chatham House survey of the 4 most districts of the valley showed that while 75% said they wanted independence but only 2% said they wanted to secede to Pakistan. A majority of Pakistan-administered (Azad) Kashmiris see the current political and constitutional status of the area as a joke. Pakistan denied to the people of POK the same fundamental right to determine their future, which they appeared to champion for the people of J&K. The original Jammu and Kashmir geographical area, which was controlled by the last Maharaja, Hari Singh, at the time of his accession to India, was much bigger than what India is holding now. It had PoK in addition to Shaksgam Valley and Aksai Chin. Pakistan teaches that Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, decided to sign Treaty of Accession with India because Indian Army went in Kashmir. Implying that the Indian Army took Kashmir by force, which is completely baseless. Hari Singh, the last Maharaja of Kashmir had decided to remain independent. On 12th August 1947 he sent a telegram to the heads of India and Pakistan asking for the existing arrangements between the Kashmir state and British India (now India and Pakistan) to continue. Pakistan had planned the tribal invasion known as Operation Gulmarg, a major event in the modern history of J&K as it changed the course of the region's history. Pakistan claims that the Muslim population revolted against the Maharaja and the tribal groups went to help their endangered Muslim brethren. Indian Army was called by Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, to come into Kashmir save him from the tribal invasion. India had conditioned that if Indian blood was only going to be spent to defend India so if Maharaja of Kashmir wants Indian Army to defend Kashmir than he needed to sign the Treaty of Accession with India. India also claims that on the basis of this document, Kashmir became an integral part of the Indian Union. Mohammad Ali Jinnah's rejected the UN-supervised plebiscite proposed by Louis Mountbatten on November 2, 1947. Why did Pakistan repeatedly reject a Kashmiri plebiscite? The invading tribals sponsored by Pakistan looted, killed, and raped Hindus and Muslims alike in Kashmir. It was unlikely that the outcome of a vote would have favoured Pakistan. In April 1950, Pakistan's government sacked Sardar Ibrahim Khan, POK's first president. This triggered the Sudhan revolt by his tribesmen. The Pakistani army had to resort to military operations to quell the rebellion. It mentioned mass arrests, detention and rape of women by security forces. Pakistan could hardly afford a plebiscite. Jinnah & Bhuttos rejection of a UN-supervised plebiscite stands in contradiction to the fake narrative developed by Pakistan. After the 13th amendment in 2018, Pakistan assumed direct legislative and executive authority over Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A majority of Pakistan-administered (Azad) Kashmiris see the current political and constitutional status of the area as a joke. In 2019, Indian parliament revoked Article 35A, the autonomous status of Indian-administered Kashmir, just like Pakistan had done in 1949, when it brought the Northern Areas (now renamed as Gilgit-Baltistan) under its direct administration. The Gilgit-Baltistan area account for 85% of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India and Pakistan were very poor nations during Independence. After Partition, of India & Pakistan, all things were divided in 82.5:17.5 (or 4:1) ratio between India and Pakistan. Things that could not be divided were to be paid in money. When Pakistan demanded the money. India was unhappy and took the case to a tribunal. The tribunal, ordered India to initially meet all the liabilities and pay Rs. 75 crores (which was 10 times India's total external debt) to Pakistan, and that Pakistan would then pay back its share of the debt of Rs 300 crore to India. It was mutally agreed that both nations would pay in installments. India gave first installment of 20 crore, but Pakistan used that money in tribal invasion known as Operation Gulmarg, a major event in the modern history of J&K as it changed the course of the region's history. After which India refused to pay the rest of the installments untile Pakistan accepted that Kashmir is part of India. However, Mahatma Gandhi insisted India pays the remaining 55 crores to Pakistan and hoped that Pakistan would oneday payback its share of the debt of Rs 300 crore to India. This was one of the reason given as why Mahatma Gandhi was assasinated in India. Neither Pakistan nor India paid their debt to each other. India also took the responsibility of paying Pakistan's foreign debt. Currently, India still owes it a little over Rs 55 crores to Pakistan, while Pakistan owes debt of Rs 300 crore to India. India has not added interest to this amount since its entry in the books. "Imagine, between 1947 and 2018, a period of 71 years, we took on debt amounting to Rs 30,000 and then in a matter of about four years we took on an additional Rs 21,000 billion" Pakistani economist Farrukh Saleem. by Shams Rehman: Pakistan, on the other hand, has primarily built its case on the ‘Two Nation Theory’ and UN resolutions. The Two Nation Theory was a term coined to mean the partition of the British India on the basis of Muslim majority areas becoming part of Pakistan. Since this principle was applicable solely and exclusively to the British India of which Kashmir was not a part in any sense of the word, the Pakistani claims on Kashmir on these bases have no legal status. The first resolution by the UN Commission on 13th August 1948 recognised the unfettered right of Kashmiri citizens (the state subjects) to self-determination, including and with the right to independence. The UN resolution, passed on 13th August 1948, asks Pakistan to take all of her civilians and military personnel and non-resident Pakistanis out of Kashmir before India was to withdraw a bulk of her armies, after which Kashmiris will decide the future of the state through a plebiscite. This plebiscite never happened. Pakistan claims that India did not withdraw her armies, whilst India argues that withdrawal of her armies was to follow the withdrawal of Pakistan’s armies, which never happened. However, gradually the Indian argument changed into a claim that after the accession by the Kashmiri Maharaja Hari Singh in 1947 and its ratification by the Kashmir Assembly, headed by the National Conference in 1949, Kashmir became an integral and inseparable part of India. Why then did India take the Kashmir case to the UN and accept to withdraw its armies and hold a plebiscite for Kashmiris to decide the future of Kashmir? It can be argued that India took the case to UN in 1948 before the affirmation of accession by the Kashmir assembly, however, the question remains why India sat through and accepted so many resolutions discussed and passed after 1949. Some BJP activists dismiss the entire UN exercise as a blunder by the socialist Nehru. The Majority of the people supporting the National Conference, on the one side, and the Muslim Conference, on the other – at least in the Indian occupied Valley and the Pakistani-occupied ‘Azad’ (Free) Kashmir – waited with great optimism for the International community to make Indian and Pakistani rulers fulfil their promise to give Kashmiris the right to determine their future. However, after clashes between the aspirations of Kashmiris for independence, and of the Indian and Pakistani rulers for accession, optimism began to give way to scepticism and resentment as early as 1953 when the Indian government deposed the head of Kashmiri Government in IOK (Sheikh Abdullah) and the Pakistani government did the same in POK (Sardar Ibrahim). While Pakistan imprisoned and tortured Bhatt and his comrades, and India executed him on 11th February 1984, the world remained almost indifferent to this largely peaceful resistance, with the Ganga Hijacking and killing of an Indian diplomat in Birmingham as two exceptions. Both India and Pakistan are not in Kashmir to protect Kashmiris from the ‘other’ but for the resources of Kashmir – mainly water but also minerals and forests. "If one considers that India recovered after the initial setbacks and took the war to Pakistan, ending it on its terms, then India could be said to have won it. On the other hand, Pakistan treats it as an unqualified victory and celebrates it as 'Defence Day', a clever ploy to settle the argument!" Prologue Indo-Pak War of 1965: The seeds of the birth of Bangladesh were sown on December 25, 1962 when Sheikh Mujibur Rehaman had a midnight meeting with Indian diplomats at the Indian Consulate in Dacca. In 1962, the IAF created aviation history by landing 6 AMX 13 Tanks, dismantled in two parts, at Chushul (14000 feet) using AN 12 aircraft. In the 1965 war, using an old photograph of bunched up AMX-13 tanks from Chhamb-Jaurian Sector for example, Pakistan claimed it had decimated 20 Lancers; whereas in reality, the one lone squadron of light tanks had held up two regiments of the far superior Pattons. In the 1965 war, 12 Vampire fighters were launched from Pathankot to stop the Pakistani advance on Chammb in the Akhnoor sector — but they slowed down the thrust, with four of them getting shot down. The aircraft, owing to their vintage nature, Vampires were withdrawn from front line service after losses to Pakistan Air Force’s modern F-86 that they were up against, and were replaced by Mystères, Hunters and Gnats. Speaking of the Pakistan Air Force, the Pakistanis had indeed destroyed almost three times the number of Indian aircraft, but Squadron Leader Alam’s claim of having shot down nine Hunters is a bold faced lie. After more than 200 years, when the British colonizers finally made an exit following the economic devastation of second World War, the vast swath of Indian sub-continent got divided into two parts: The secular India and the Muslim-dominated Pakistan. The British official thought the transfer of power would need 5 years but due to the rising communal roits, the last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten had agreed to complete the transfer of power in 4 months. The region of Kashmir, a predominant Muslim territory ruled by a Hindu provincial ruler, was left in a case of ambiguity. In a letter Shastri explained as to why India agreed to a plebiscite in Kashmir in 1948 and this is no longer an option: “The reason why, when in 1947, we first went to the Security Council with a complaint of aggression against Pakistan, we made a unilateral promise of having a plebiscite in the State of Jammu & Kashmir, was that, at that time, the State had no democracy, having been under the rule of a prince in the British days, and we were anxious ourselves to be satisfied that the people, as distinct from the ruler, genuinely favoured accession to India. Ever since the accession of the State, we have been building up democratic institutions. There have been three general elections in conditions of freedom. The results of these elections have demonstrated clearly that the people of Jammu & Kashmir have accepted their place in the Indian Union.” Shastri wrote, according to a copy of the letter released by U.S. State Department. Jinnah, before the formation of Pakistan, told the Life Magazine, stating that it was his view that Pakistan’s geo-strategic location has made it imperative for the US policy makers to forge an alliance with the country. He said that the US interest in countries along the Soviet boundaries will be considered for military aid — “since Pakistan is not very far from Russia, the US would build our Army and give us the arms to prevent Russia from walking”. After freedom, Jinnah placed Pakistan firmly in the western camp, in contrast to Jawaharlal Nehru, who took a position of nuance. The Eisenhower administration responded by flooding Pakistan with US weaponry and assistance. The hesitant, often elliptical, Indian requests for similar assistance were ignored on the grounds that Pakistan was now a “treaty ally”, which India declined to be. Pakistan, despite its obsession with Kashmir, maintained the ceasefire for over 16 years (1949 to 1965) was due to two factors: India had a strong and stable government under a towering leader and the western front, unlike the eastern border, was well fortified. Jawaharlal Nehru died in May 1964 and by the end of the year Pakistan had finalised plans to seize Kashmir by force. The defeat of the Indian Army by the Chinese in 1962 and Nehru’s death had given the Pakistanis the erroneous impression that India was vulnerable. Borders remained volatile all through out the 1950s and 60s. Much less is known of the battle of Rann of Kutch which was conceived by the Pakistani military as a “trial run” before launching a full-scale war to annexe Kashmir. In Pakistan, Iskander Mirza, the then president, abrogated the Constitution in 1958 and declared martial law only to be deposed by Gen Ayub Khan (who was almost court-martialled for cowardice during the Burma campaign under General William Slims). In early January 1965, Ayub Khan defeated Fatima Jinnah, sister of Mohd Ali Jinnah, in an unfairly conducted election. He chose the Rann of Kutch as the area for the Pakistan Army’s “trial operation” against India. He raised a claim of about 3,500 square miles of territory in this area which, according to his foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was in the “adverse possession” of India. In January 1965, an Indian police patrol noticed that an 18-mile long track, running within the Indian territory and connecting Ding (in Pakistan) with Surai (in India), was being patrolled by Pakistanis border guards on the plea that it lay within the Pakistani side of the border. The Indian police expelled the Pakistani guards and destroyed the outposts they had erected to secure the area. A further incident of violation of Indian territory by Pakistani patrols took place in February 1965. When the Indian government lodged a protest, the Pakistan foreign office denied any such violation and claimed that the area in proximity to Kanjarkot had been in the continued possession of Pakistan since August 1947. On April 24, Pakistan simultaneously attacked four Indian positions — Sardar Post, Biar Bet, Vigokot and Point84 — using Patton tanks and 100-pound guns for the first time. Fierce fighting continued till April 30, when Indian Army artillery caused heavy damage to Pakistani ammunition dumps. The Pakistani attack faded away. At the end of this week-long fierce engagement, India was still in possession of Sardar Post, Vigokot and the southern tip of Biar Bet, but had lost its hold on Point-84. Pakistan then made a proposal for talks, but India insisted on the vacation of Kanjarkot by the occupying Pakistani forces before any talks could be held. Rawalpindi would not agree to the vacation of Kanjarkot and no talks were therefore held. After an immense amount of diplomatic activity, Wilson succeeded and a ceasefire became effective on July 1, 1965. As a part of this arrangement the status quo ante as on January 1, 1965, was fully restored. Paradoxically, even Ayub did not want to intensify the Rann of Kutch conflict. He had launched that operation because he wanted to give his troops and armour, the newly acquired American Patton tanks, a full dress rehearsal to prepare them for a full-scale invasion of India, first in Kashmir and immediately thereafter Punjab. He also wanted to assess the will and capability of Indian soldiers to fight a war. Pakistan (having technologically superior U.S.-made fighters) became confident that IAF will not be used in the war as happened in the 1962 India-China War, since with IAF involvement, the conflict will escalate to a full-fledged war. By the end of May 1965, the Pakistanis seemed to have completed their “trial run” to their apparent satisfaction. Military historian Russel Brines writes, “Ayub and the Pakistani military top brass drew self-comforting and encouraging conclusions from the Rann of Kutch conflict.” Emboldened by his Army’s adventure, Ayub Khan authorised a covert invasion of Kashmir that would escalate into a full-scale war with far-reaching consequences for India-Pakistan relations. In 1965, Pakistan under the leadership of General Ayub Khan launched an aggressive attack on India. The war began on August 5 following the initiation of Operation Gibraltar, a strategically planned infiltration in Kashmir valley by Pakistan troops. More than 50,000 armed Pakistani soldiers entered in Kashmir disguised as locals. The rationale behind the move was to create a scenario of insurgency within the valley and cut-it-off from the rest of India. Pakistani troops were successful in making in-roads in various sectors of Kashmir owing to the heavy artillery they were equipped by United States and United Kingdom, in the Cold War era. On the other hand, India was yet recovering with the devastation suffered in Indo-Sino War (1962). However, General J N Chowdhary made a strategically wise decision to attack Pakistan on the western frontier. Punjab’s battles are restricted by the river corridors. Pakistan had the option to swing south from Khem Karan or go east into uncontested territory but the presence of the River Sutlej forced it to advance along the grain towards the Beas Bridge. Despite, maintaining a strong grip in Kashmir, Islamabad was forced to divert its resources towards its southern frontiers. As Pakistan was fast running out of ammunition, US feared that any delay in ceasefire would put Pakistan at a disadvantage position and could be very well run over by a strong Indian Army, which was moving fast inside the Pakistan side of Punjab. PM Lal Bahadur Shastri surprised many with his wartime leadership that saw Indian troops cross into Pakistani territory, bringing to naught Pakistan’s second attempt to snatch Kashmir by force. US President Lyndon Johnson, who chaired a special meeting the following day on the subject, gave instructions to “sit it out”. One of the reasons for United State’s coyness to act against Pakistan was described, in the declassified cables revealed was because of the U2 spy plane base in Peshawar, Pakistan. The air force station run by the CIA remained at that time the only authentic source of spy-in-the-sky information on Soviet and Chinese missile plans, even after U2 planes were shot down in 1960. Spy satellites had not been fully developed as yet. With increased Soviet pressure, Pakistan formally terminated the Peshawar facilities in 1968. The turning point of the battle was the capture of Haji Pir Pass by the Indian troops on August 28. As a result, Pakistani troops stationed in Kargil and other important junctions were cut-off from the supplies sent to them. In a desperate mode, Pakistan launched ‘Operation Grand Slam’ to occupy the Akhnoor sector in Jammu. However, Indian army curtailed their ambitious mission in a relatively easy manner. In the next couple of days, the Pakistani troops were eliminated from Poonch, Phillora, Barki and Dograi. Intelligence and maps was very poor. India failed to pick up the fact that the Pakistanis had surreptitiously raised an additional armoured division and the IAF could not locate the PAF aircraft in East Pakistan. There was no joint planning, leave alone coordination, between the Air Force and the Army. This led to the Lahore fiasco when Pakistani air strikes disrupted the Indian offensive on September 6. The IAF was unprepared for the strike on September 6 when the Pakistan air force (PAF) destroyed 13 aircrafts in a raid on Pathankot, including two new MiG-21s. Similar raids found the IAF station Kalaikunda in the east unawares leading to the destruction of eight aircraft on the ground. MiG-21s had recently been inducted and were not yet night capable for interception. Night flying of Gnat aircraft was limited due to poor cockpit lighting. The night fighter Vampires were already obsolete. If there is anything this war proved, was that 1965 war was show of mutual incompetence. This applies to Pakistan in Chhamb-Jaurian so early on in the war, then in Khem Karan, and to India in the Lahore and Sialkot sectors, where initial surprise and local superiority did not translate into decisive gains. On September 6, XI Corps launched a surprise attack at 4am, led to the crossing of the Ichhogil canal and the capture of the Bata shoe factory on the outskirts of Lahore by 11am. Despite capturing some 140 sq mi of land, and crippling Pakistan’s 1st armoured division at Khem Karan, XI Corps performance, Singh says it was “a sickening repetition of command failures leading the sacrifice of a series of cheap victories.” Senior commanders ordered a withdrawal to the east bank of the canal. I Corps captured 200 sq mi of territory and destroyed a great deal of Pakistani armour. The month-long battle finally came to a halt with intervention from United Nation Security Council. Both sides claim to have won the war, but international defence experts found India in a stronger position. On September 22 , UN passed a resolution demanding an unconditional ceasefire from both sides. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri wanted to know from Army chief JN Chaudhuri whether India could gain any great victory if it continued to fight. The general declared that India had run out of ammunition and it would be okay to accept the ceasefire. In 1965 war, Indian Army had captured the strategic Haji Pir Pass. Soviet Union was placed in charge to hold mediation talks between the warring neighbours. During the Tashkent talks between Indian and Pakistan, held through the good offices of Soviet Union, India agreed to return Haji Pir Pass, Pt 13620 which dominated Kargil town and many other tactically important areas. Had this pass been held by us, the distance from Jammu to Srinagar through Poonch and Uri would have been reduced by over 200 Kms. Also, later on when Pak commenced its infiltration into J & K in 1965 through the Uri – Poonch Bulge which continues even today. To add mystery to the whole process, Prime Minister Shastri died on 10th January, 1966 after signing the Tashkent Declaration with President Ayub Khan of Pakistan. He was denounced by all and sundry for caving in to the Russian pressure. But in hindsight, India was remiss in not capturing Haji Pir Pass in 1971 war. It was the only worthwhile objective on the Western Front. A fortnight into the war, both were tired in body and mind, short of ammunition or tactical ideas. This has been documented on both sides by honourable soldiers who fought each other. Both sides started building up for the next, more “decisive” war. As a result, India turned to the Soviet Union, which replaced Britain and France as our main weapons supplier. Disillusioned with US, Pakistan turned firmly into the Chinese camp. India and Pakistan continue to commemorate the 1965 war on both sides of the border in September, claiming success over the other. Pakistan Army lost its last chance to force a military solution on the Indians." This was the first war that saw, what is now a familiar pattern, of Pakistani leaders rushing off to China to seek succour after getting into trouble with India. India had learnt a harsh lesson that neither NAM, nor the Afro-Asian group would come to its aid. Near the end of 1948, Władysław (Józef Marian) Turowicz and 45 airforce veterans of World War II from Poland, opted to relocate to a country that was a rather new entry on the world map: Pakistan. Initially, they established technical institutes in Karachi. Turowicz later helped restructure the nascent (ex-Royal) PAF Academy as an Instructor and Chief Scientist. His colleagues assisted him in imparting specialized technical training to PAF technicians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUN02gUnyxc By November 1971, almost 10 million refugees from East Pakistan had fled their homes and streamed into India in the wake of mass killings perpetrated on the Bengali population by the Pakistan military under the ‘Butcher of Bangladesh’, Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan. Indira Gandhi's secretary, P.N. Dhar had reminded D.P. Dhar of Napoleon’s advice: "never interrupt an enemy when it’s making a mistake." The Pakistani attack came as good news to India, too. Indian decision-makers had been expecting an attack on the western front by Pakistan. D.P. Dhar was on the PM’s aircraft travelling with her from Calcutta when the pilot informed them of the Pakistani air strikes. "The fool has done exactly what one had expected". The Indian Government's directive given to the Eastern Command focused on capture of maximum territory, including the major towns and the port cities of Chittagong and Khulna, but declared that Dhaka was an “objective too far”. But the brilliant commanders and staff officers never lost sight of why Dhaka had to be the critical operational objective. The aim was to dismember Pakistan and create the new nation state of Bangladesh. The victory had to be absolute, leaving the international community with no option but to recognise the new state. This “default strategy” ended up being adopted by the Army Headquarters midway through the war. In manoeuvre style of warfare, selected positions are attacked to force logistic breakthrough corridors and these ‘gaps’ created are exploited to reach the critical vulnerability. Then an all-out effort with high firepower is made to capture or destroy the critical vulnerability of the enemy. Once the critical vulnerability is captured, the enemy forces, regardless of their strength, are rendered ineffective.
Pakistan consisted of East Pakistan & West Pakistan flanking India on both sides and China (which till today has border disputes with India's northern boundaries) had declared its full support. Even the U.S. fully supported the relatively small Muslim nation Pakistan and saw it as an ally against Soviets. The Soviets on the other hand had fought with China and so India had became its natural ally. The Soviet made it clear that it would block any move to prematurely summon the UN Security Council. It is important to state that while some Bengali East voices were challenging the unity of Pakistan, most were still in favour of a united, democratic, federal Pakistan, despite the growing realisation in the eastern wing that East Pakistan had by now become a mere colony of West Pakistan. As the Bengali East was treated like second class citizens and their common religion could not make them feel any less alienated by distance, customs and temperament. They were appalled at the response of the Pakistani administration in dealing with the devastating cyclone in November 1970 in Bangladesh, which claimed the lives of close to 200,000 people. And the Pakistani generals were not willing to honour the 1970 election results, and a major crisis was at hand. Pakistani establishment began to crack down with unprecedented cruelty. Ten million refugees fled to India. While the real toll of the brutal crackdown could not be ascertained as yet, speculation is that it took millions of human lives. Indira Gandhi wrote to Nixon about the 'carnage in East Bengal' and the flood of refugees burdening India. When US Secretary of State Will Rogers received this 'miserable' cable, he informed President Nixon that the 'Dacca consulate is in open rebellion.' This did not change Nixon's opinion: 'The people who bitch about Vietnam bitch about it because we intervened in what they say is a civil war. Now some of the same bastards...want us to intervene here -- both civil wars.' In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief of “The Atlantic”, Kissinger reported that after the opening of China via Pakistan, America engaged in increasingly urging Pakistan to grant autonomy/ independence for Bangladesh. The Indian Prime minister decided to tour Western capitals to explain the Indian stand. But it did not cut much ice. India failed to elicit support from the US, which mattered the most. During the following months, the situation deteriorated, and many more refugees came to India. As the much more powerful Pakistan army pushed the ill-equipped Bengali regular units back towards the Indian borders. The CIA had reported that 'India would foster and support Bengali insurgency and contribute to the likelihood that an independent Bangladesh would emerge from the developing conflict.' India helped East Pakistan become Bangladesh in the last few months of 1971, but was not responsible for the conditions between 1947 and 1970 which led to the breakup of Pakistan. India remained steadfast in its support and resolve to facilitate the formation of an independent Bangladesh. Radical nationalist Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was no Nehru or Mahatma. An increasingly assertive Indian government wanted to make full use of Bengali discontent, as a riposte to Pakistan’s, decades long, meddling in J&K. In her patriotism, she used India's secret intelligence agency (that's modelled on Israel's external intelligence agency) to run a proxy war (since in July, General Manekshaw told Indira that the army would not be ready till December) by equipping & training the West Pakistan rebels (Mukti Bahini) during a time when the West Pakistan was using its own army to crush the mass agitations taking place in East Pakistan (India accepted one of the largest number of refugees) and the brutality made Bangladeshis bring intelligence to the Indian side without Indian planning to do so (it is said that the Indian officials thought of it as dream situation that presented itself and had to be taken advantage of). Nixon's administration kept arming Pakistan despite having imposed an embargo on providing both Islamabad and New Delhi military hardware and support. Who initiated the war hardly mattered to the world, since if the "Responsibility to Protect" argument was put forward rather effectively by India. Pakistan retaliated by attacking in the West frontier. The Pakistani attack came as good news to India, too. The Indian Army had not yet made any major attacks in the western sector, but a CIA mole in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cabinet had leaked her plan to bomb Pakistani military capability into the Stone Age. Nixon – who was working to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough in China, with Pakistan acting as the middleman – asked Beijing to mobilise troops on the Indian border. But as Moscow had moved its crack army divisions to the Chinese border, and due to the snowy winter season, China decided it was not going to sacrifice itself at Nixon’s bidding. The US had mobilized their 7th Fleet to the Bay of Bengal, ostensibly to evacuate US nationals, is public knowledge. But the declassified papers show Washington had planned to use US Navy’s Task Group 74 of Seventh Fleet for a joint attack by the US and the UK against the Indian Army. The Indian AirForce having wiped out the Pakistani AirForce within the first week of the war, was on alert to fend off any possible intervention by aircrafts from U.S.S Enterprise (was with Task Group 74) of US Navy’s Seventh Fleet. The Soviets dispatched a powerful nuclear-armed Flotilla, the 10th Operative Battle Group of Red Banner Pacific Fleet from its headquarters in Vladivostok in the Far East, under the Command of Admiral Vladimir Kruglyakov. Soviets deployed two task groups; 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 6 submarines, and support vessels. However, since the Soviet missiles were of limited range (300 km) so, the Soviets commanders had to take the risk to be within range of Seventh Fleet of United States Navy. The Chief Commander order to surface the nuclear submarines when near the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet. It was done to demonstrate, that the Red Banner Pacific Fleet were in the Indian Ocean, with their nuclear submarines. Soviets intercepted the American communication. The commander of the British fleet, Admiral Gordon, told the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet Commander: 'Sir, we are too late. There are the Russian atomic submarines here, and a big collection of battleships'. This last supposed signal had no confirmation from the American side. Since the U.S. was already locked in a bitter fight in Vietnam, it too didn't want to get involved. "The Soviet Union has a treaty with India; we have one with Pakistan." Pakistan was the broker between the United States and People's Republic of China. The regional situation was already complex, the two superpowers, Soviet Union and USA were supporting India and Pakistan respectively. The war ended with Pakistan's defeat at the hand of India's now well-equipped armed forces in the familiar terrain of Punjab and with the creation of Bangladesh in the East. Indira is credited to have given a land known for hundreds of years as suffers from invasion (most recently by the Chinese) got the taste of victory and gave the nation and its armed forces a sense of pride. Within 13 days, the Indian army routed Pakistan in one of the swiftest campaigns of the 20th century. A Charismatic brass, led by the legendary Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, made sure that the Armed Forces decimated Pakistan’s resistance and forced them to an unconditional surrender. A thousand paratroopers of the 50 Independent Parachute Brigade of the 2 Para Battalion were airdropped in broad daylight by 50 aircrafts of the Indian Air Force. The result was that the Pakistanis were caught completely by surprise and an entire Pakistani Brigade was decimated at Tangail between 11 and 13 December. History remembers Capt TK Ghosh who spent ten days hiding behind enemy lines to prepare the DZ (dropping Zone) for what was to become the largest airborne operation since the Second World War. Commander Vijai Prakash Kapil, Vir Chakra (retired) and Petty Officer Chiman Singh, Maha Vir Chakra (retired) were part of the secret Naval Intelligence unit had trained Mukti Bahini naval commandos for one of the largest covert maritime warfare operations since the Second World War. Despite the fact that West Pakistanis were told as late as Dec 14 and 15 that they were winning the war, on Dec 16, 1971, Gen A.A.K. 'Tiger' Niazi, GOC, surrendered to the Indian troops led by Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora in Dhaka. India took approximately 90,000 prisoners of war, including Pakistani soldiers and their East Pakistani civilian supporters. 79,676 prisoners were uniformed personnel, of which 55,692 were Army, 16,354 Paramilitary, 5,296 Police, 1,000 Navy and 800 PAF. The remaining prisoners were civilians – either family members of the military personnel or collaborators. A total of 1,313 Indian soldiers won gallantry awards in the 1971 war. These included 959 from the Army, 171 from the Navy and 183 Air Force personnel. Four of these were Param Vir Chakra winners - three going to the Army and one to the Indian Air Force (IAF). However, Assam is dealing with the consequences and thought tactically the creation of Bangladesh has been good for the nation (because now the politicians could return to social development... which resulted in the ugly "Emergency" where Indira virtually turned into the World's first female dictator) remains to be seen. Can the paranoid Pakistan ever forget their defeat and, ironically, Bangladesh has not become a stable nation and is crippled by extreme challenges of poverty, over population, etc making it a safe heaven for some of India's north-eastern insurgencies. In a dogfight, anything can happen, depending upon the tactics used by the two sides. For example, who can forget the IAF hero Sqn Ldr AK Devayya who during the 1965 Indo-Pak war shot down an F-104 Starfighter deep inside Pakistan over Peshawar before being fatally downed by another PAF jet. The Chinese knew that the control of Chushul and surrounding areas would give them unhindered access to Ladakh roads and valleys leading to Leh. Chushul is located in southeastern Ladakh, south of the famous Pangong Lake. Chushul airfield is important because the lack of road connectivity to Ladakh necessitated the movement of supplies to the area by air. Low operating pressure and ratified air created problems in the cooling systems of the tanks and the freezing temperature affected the efficiency of their engines. Muhammad Ali Jinnah had assured all the atypical sects that Pakistan will be a non-sectarian modern Muslim nation. Pakistan’s constitution was first approved in 1956, under Prime Minister Muhammad Ali, but stood abrogated in 1958 after a military coup d’état. The country’s second constitution, under General Ayub Khan, was approved in 1962. The revised document institutionalised the intervention of the military in domestic politics, for example, the president or his defence minister of Pakistan must be from Pakistani army. The 1962 constitution was suspended in 1969 when Gen Yahya Khan was appointed as the chief martial law administrator. The 1969 constitution was abrogated in 1972. The 1973 constitution was the first in Pakistan to be framed by elected representatives under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In 1977, a military coup d’état was conducted by Chief of Army Staff General Zia-ul-Haq, which deposed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and imposed martial law. Zia’s emphasis on Islam, in an already conservative society, encouraged Islamic zealotry in the army. The Shia-Sunni conflict emerged in the wake of Gen Zia ul-Haq (Sunni) capturing power in Pakistan, the Ayatollahs in Iran (Shia) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni) challenging the Iranian bid to capture the leadership of the Muslim world. What followed was sectarian radicalisation of Shias and Sunnis. Zia’s second major contribution was the revival of covert warfare using irregulars. Then again, in 1999, General Pervez Musharraf arrested Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and imposed martial law till the time he appointed himself as the president of Pakistan. Amid this continued struggle for power, violence has been a stark reality in the politics of Pakistan. The country’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was shot dead, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged, his daughter Benazir was shot dead, Zia-ul-Haq died under mysterious circumstances, and General Pervez Musharraf survived two assignation attempts. However, if you establish a country for Muslims, the question of who is a true Muslim emerges, because of long sectarian animosities, should not be surprising. The “Agartala Conspiracy and Sedition” case of 1968, against Mujib and 34 others, brought out in the open, the intense craving for a separate national identity for East Bengalis. India had intervened in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) to stop the genocide perpetrated by Pakistani Army and consequently helped it to liberate from West Pakistan. An independent Khalistan would end India's land access to Kashmir to the north, another key interest of the Pakistan Army since 1947. Indian Prime minister Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards because they believed she was responsible for the massacre at the Golden Temple. “For Pakistan, the Khalistan movement is an affordable way to bleed India, and that won’t change under Prime Minister Imran Khan. For the Khalistanis, I think the referendum (a campaign by a UK-based organisation to vote for a separate Sikh State) is a strategic blunder which will only expose how feeble the support for Khalistan is. The Khalistanis are shooting themselves in the foot by destroying their bogus claims to speak for all Sikhs. They’ll say they got low numbers because of Indian repression.” The pro-Khalistan elements believed to have reached out to illegal Sikh immigrants and offered them immigration support and money to participate in a referendum in Westminster. There was no verification if the persons arriving for the referendum were Sikhs, Pakistanis or Afghans. The offer to ferry the prospective voters on a bus was criticised by the Gurudwaras. Few Sikhs who say India's "occupation" of Indian Punjab, but they never ask Pakistan to end its occupation of the much larger Pakistani Punjab. Majority of Sikhs, the report points out, are happy with India and those who live in Indian Punjab even cheer for their regional government headed by Captain Amarinder Singh. Real Sikhs in real Pakistan still suffer from conversion and attack on Gurudwaras. This is why their population is rapidly declining in Pakistan. An ambitious Khalistani map includes many parts of India outside Punjab but does not claim a single inch of Pakistani territory. Why did it miss Lahore in Pakistani, where Guru Nanak Dev Ji was born, and Ranjit Singh ran an empire? Being a developing nation, India did not want or afford to become the hegemon or wear the mantle of "policeman". P.N. Haksar, the top adviser to former prime minister Indira Gandhi, ensured that the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan did not repeat the errors of the Treaty of Versailles. From his study of history, Haksar had concluded that “if those who sat around the table at Versailles to conclude a peace with Germany defeated during the First World War had acted with wisdom and not imposed upon Germany humiliating terms of peace, not only the rise of Nazism would have been avoided, but also the seeds of the Second World War would not have been sown.” Haksar had, it seems, learnt the same lesson as Truman. He would convince the Indian prime minister—notes historian Srinath Raghavan—“that a punitive settlement would only prepare the ground for further conflict in South Asia”. This explains why India did not leverage a stupendous military victory and the capture of 93,000 prisoners of war to settle the Kashmir dispute once and for all in its favour. Even if India, learning from history, did not unilaterally impose the terms of the Simla Agreement, the leadership in Pakistan did not draw the lessons from the war which could lead to cessation of hostilities. In fact, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took over power after the war, was actually interested in initiating a “1,000-year war” against India. He would commit Pakistan to the acquisition of nuclear weapons so as to prevent a repeat of the 1971 humiliation. This acquisition was supported actively by China and passively by the US. In a famous 1999 essay titled “Give War A Chance” for the Foreign Affairs journal, Edward N. Luttwak had said: “…although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace.” For all its decisive ending with the dismemberment of the state of Pakistan, the 1971 war could not bring peace. The nuclear parity that the war led to has allowed Pakistan to engage in low-cost asymmetrical warfare while keeping another full-scale war at bay—many scholars don’t treat Kargil (1999) as a full-scale war. Ayub Khan spelt out 'his plan' that revolved around the SSG (Special Services Group) boys training a group of 'mujahideen' that would comprise regular army soldiers and volunteers, which would infiltrate Kashmir and create a general uprising that would bring India to the conference table, to accept Pakistan's terms, and without provoking a full-scale war. Such an artificial freezing of conflict—to use the words of Luttwak in a somewhat different context—“[perpetuates] a state of war indefinitely by shielding the weaker side from the consequences of refusing to make concessions for peace”. "Prime Minister Nehru made an unequivocal request for US military assistance. For the tired, beaten leader, it was a humbling overture. It was an admission not only that his central belief in peaceful coexistence with the PRC was irrevocably shattered but also that his cordial relationship with the Soviet Union had proved hollow." McNamara urged that the first move be to find out what the real situation was. If we were to put our prestige and resources at risk, we must find out the score. He proposed sending a small high-level military mission immediately to India. The McNamara's delegation quickly arrived in India. After years of attempting to court the Indian leadership, who were often sympathetic but never committal, Gyalo Thondup (the second-eldest brother of the Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama) relished the moment as he sat in front of a select group of senior intelligence and military officials. By early 1971, the SFF also called Vikas Regiment or Establishment 22 (Two-Two), had grown to 64 Tibetan Companies and direct CIA contact with the SFF was almost non-existent. Taking temporary leave of his Tibetans, he was placed in charge of a guerrilla training programme for 10,000 East Pakistani — soon to be called Bangladeshi insurgents, Mukti Bahini. Despite this increase, the force had not seen any serious combat since its inception. Worse, 7 companies were being misused for traffic control in Ladakh. Protesting this abuse of an elite unit, the head lobbied to incorporate his men into contingencies against East Pakistan. Quietly, Dharamsala offered its approval. Until that point, there had been an unwritten rule that the SFF would not be used for anything other than its intended purpose against China. Some were sent to Tibet but they were betrayed by their Tibetians themselves for money and ended up rotting in chinese gulag. The SFF owes its allegiance to the Dalai Lama, the flag of Tibet and the flag of India. It was decided that the SFF would be charged with staging guerrilla raids across the Chittagong Hill tracts, known for their thick jungles, humid weather, and leech-infested marshes. The SFF used 19 canoes to shuttle across the Karnaphuli River. Coming upon an outpost that night, the Tibetans overran the position while the Pakistanis were eating. The SFF split into small teams and curled behind the Pakistanis in classic guerrilla fashion. Using both their Bulgarian AK-47 assault rifles and native knives, they smashed through the outpost. By the time all-out war was officially declared early the following month, the SFF had been inside East Pakistan for three weeks. At the time of the ceasefire, the Tibetans were within 40km of Chittagong port. A total of 23 Indians and 45 Tibetans of the SFF would be awarded for their gallantry; 580 Tibetans received cash bonuses. Their victory had had a cost, however. Forty-nine Tibetans had paid with their lives for the birth of a nation not their own. These combatants are Not part of the War memorial since they are not technically part of India’s armed forces. They are refugees given sanctuary by India, however, since most of them serving were born in India, they can be given Indian citizenship on a retrospective basis and only after this is done can they become Indian martyrs. The fallout from the Bangladeshi operation was swift. The CIA lodged a protest against RAW over the use of Tibetans in Operation Mountain Eagle. RAW chief hardly lost any sleep over the matter; with US financial and advisory support to the SFF all but evaporated. Dharamsala that was under fire, as serious protests against Operation Mountain Eagle were from within the Tibetan refugee community. The rehabilitation funds were handover to designated Tibetans in Nepal. The money was well-spent. The ex-guerrillas formally opened their Pokhara hotel, the Annapurna Guest House. Another carpet-weaving factory was operating in Kathmandu, as was a taxi and trucking company. Operating under the RAW chief, Special Group or SG (from Special Frontier Force) of Indians (not Tibetians) was created in 1981. Till then, the Army had shown little interest in raising a specialised anti-terrorist force. In 1982, the directorate launched Project Sunray. It tasked a colonel of the Army's 10th Para Forces to set up an Indian unit of 250 officers and men. Officers just had to ask for equipment and it would be given. A request for over 100 bulletproof vests and tactical helmets was met almost overnight and the gear flown in from Israel. Special Group was prepared for Operation Sundown which was aborted. Two officers were at the Golden Temple during Bluestar. Following Indira's assassination, Special Group men protected Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his family until the government raised the Special Protection Group (SPG) in 1985. Soon after, nearly 200 Special Group (SG) personnel were deputed to a new anti-terrorist force under the Union home ministry, the National Security Guard (NSG). The Special Group remains RAW's military unit for clandestine intelligence missions, the equivalent of CIA's Special Activities Division. Written by Sandeep Unnithan: The daylight murder of dig A.S. Atwal inside the Golden Temple in April 1983 had paralysed Punjab Police into inaction. Major General Shabeg Singh was a war hero who had trained Bangladeshi insurgents called Mukti Bahini fighters in 1971 but was stripped of his rank and court-martialled on charges of corruption just before he was to retire in 1976. Now, as the military adviser of Bhindranwale, he oversaw conversion of the five-storeyed Akal Takht into a fortress. He knew Indian Army weakness was that it was never trained for fights in built-up areas within a city. Operation Bluestar inflamed Sikh sentiments and triggered a mutiny in certain Indian Army units. It also led to the death of Mrs Gandhi: Her two Sikh bodyguards gunned her down on October 31 that year. The communal holocaust in which over 8,000 Sikhs were murdered by mobs around the country-including 3,000 in Delhi-fanned another decade of insurgency in Punjab.
In 2014, United Kingdom was shocked by declassified letters dating to February 1984 that revealed that Margaret Thatcher's government had helped India on "a plan to remove Sikh extremists". This plan, according to a top-secret letter from the principal private secretary of then British foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe to the then home secretary Leon Brittan, was drawn up by an officer of the Special Air Services (SAS), UK's elite commando force. The letter, written four months before Indira Gandhi ordered the Army to flush militants out of the temple. The SAS assistance was not for Bluestar, but for Operation Sundown, which was aborted. Some of the commandos had trained to spearheaded a near-suicidal frontal assault on the heavily fortified Akal Takht. Special Group was prepared for Operation Sundown. Some commandos had stayed around the temple and rehearsed. Some of them still sported the beards they had grown for their undercover work as volunteers in the Golden Temple's langar. When the plan was called off, they returned to their base in Sarsawa. Mark Tully and Satish Jacob wrote in their 1985 book Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle, "Mrs Gandhi was not a decisive woman, she was very reluctant to act, and she only fought back when she was firmly pinned against the ropes." The Army was her last resort. She green-lit Operation Bluestar. Dhawan says two "extra-constitutional authorities" in Rajiv Gandhi's inner circle, who would later become key figures in his Cabinet, were responsible for her change of mind. "They told her the military option was the only solution" he says. The mantle fell on the Western Army commander, the flamboyant Lt-Gen Krishnaswamy Sundarji. He had briefly considered a plan to starve out the defenders but junked it fearing an uprising in the countryside. "There must be no damage to the Akal Takht". The three battalions that Lt-Gen Brar's 9th Infantry Division sent into the Golden Temple that night were trained to fight a conventional combat on the plains of Punjab and in the deserts of Rajasthan. Two Special Group officers were also at the Golden Temple during Bluestar. 83 armymen and 492 civilians died in Operation Bluestar, the single bloodiest confrontation in independent India's history of civil strife. The Army had clearly underestimated the defences. As soon as they entered the temple, a sniper shot the unit's radio operator clean through his helmet. The rest took cover in the long gallery of pillars that led to the Akal Takht. Light machine guns and carbines crackled from behind impregnable walls of the temple, their multiple gun flashes blinding the commandos' night-vision devices, forcing them to take them off. An armoured personnel carrier bringing in troops was immobilised by a rocket-propelled grenade. The area between the Akal Takht and the Darshani Deori that led to the Golden Temple had turned into a killing zone, covered by Shabeg's light machine guns. Attempts by the para-commandos to storm the defences were repeatedly beaten back. Indian Army would overwhelm the enemy by sheer force of numbers. Around 7.30 a.m. on June 5th 1984, three Vickers-Vijayanta tanks were deployed. They fired 105 mm shells and knocked down the walls of the Akal Takht. The temple premises resembled a medieval battlefield. Machine guns, light artillery, rockets and, eventually, battle tanks were used to overwhelm Bhindranwale and his mini army and the Akal Takht, the highest seat of temporal authority of the Sikhs, was reduced to a smoking ruin. The Army recovered 51 light machine guns (normally, 51 light machine guns are given to Army unit with 800 soldiers). The operation was a success, he said, but there were heavy casualties-both armymen and civilians. Mrs Gandhi's first reaction was anguish. "Oh my God,? she told Dhawan. "They told me there would be no casualties." It took the Army 2 more days to clear Bhindranwale's men from the temple's labyrinthine corridors. The commanding officer of the Special Group (SG) contingent, a lieutenant-colonel, was seriously wounded by a sniper as he escorted the President around the temple. Following Indira's assassination, Special Group men protected Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his family until the government raised the Special Protection Group (SPG) in 1985.
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"Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning" ~ Mao's Red Book PLA non-kinetic capability is psychological and other technical capabilities to independently paralyse and sabotage enemy’s communication & intelligence systems. PLA’s kinetic capabilities increase the speed of conventional operations to ensure the enemy remains defensive & unbalanced in war. In NEFA, the PLA had an excellent network of informants/spies in Kolkata & in the tea estates of Darjeeling & Assam & hence knew about the IA’s rear-area logistics footprints. "At the time when rest of the world was exhausted from the Second World War and attention was focused on the Cold war, Chinese supremo Mao Tse-Tung (Mao Zedong) pulled off one of the greatest real estate coups of all time" Indian Army has still not declassified the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report on the reasons for its defeat. A 'surprising' decision by V. K. Krishna Menon, the defence minister, was not to keep minutes to be taken of all the meetings he had with the military leadership ahead of the 1962 War, to absolved anyone in the ultimate analysis of the responsibility of any major decision. It lead to decisions being taken without careful and considered thought on the consequences of those decisions.' The Indian military leadership — from the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) to brigade commanders — failed to appreciate the terrain and weather factor. Isolated troops fighting from non-tactical defences without adequate logistics put up a heroic fight, but were defeated in a matter of a few hours of actual fighting. Logistics and the troop built up for Phase 2 of the war were completed only by mid-November, leaving only 15 days for effective military operations. All sectors were prepared for 7 to 10 days of battle. Yet, this formidable force was routed within 2 days of actual fighting. Only 11 Infantry Brigade at Walong fought a cohesive battle for 48 hours before withdrawing. At Sela-Dirang-Bomdila, was attacked from all directions with one division. 4 Infantry Division did not appreciate the fact that the PLA could build up to three divisions for the offensive, which was a remarkable feat as it was operating over the same area where we could barely commit one brigade. Consequently, the simultaneous envelopment, isolation and attack on all three brigades led to the collapse of 4 Infantry Division without a fight. PLA was a seasoned army that had won a prolonged civil war lasting for two decades. It also fought the Japanese from 1937 to 1945 on the mainland and in erstwhile Burma. In Korea, from 1950 to 1953, it evicted the US and UN forces from North Korea to ensure a stalemate along the 38th parallel. It had mastered the art of manoeuvre. Infiltration, outflanking, and isolation tactics to envelope enemy defences were its forte. At Chushul, the two flank companies were captured to make the rest of the Kailash Range tactically untenable and also threatened the only road axis, from Rechin La. At Walong, the PLA preemptively outflanked the defences to secure the higher features in the west to attack from a position of advantage and also threatened the rear of the brigade, making the defences tactically untenable to force a withdrawal. "The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy halts, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue." ~ Mao's Red Book Sino-Indian Border War (Chinese: Zhong-Yìn Bianjìng Zhànzheng)Exactly after 5 years after the 1962 war, the Indian army hit back at the PLA's attempt to disturb the status quo in Sikkim, with a ferocious artillery bombardment at Nathu La on September 11 and Cho La on October 1, where over 300 PLA soldiers were reportedly killed. The two sides have made along the 4,057-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) has essentially been posturing, each side manoeuvring to prevent the other from altering the status quo on the ground. The closest India and China came to another war was in June 1986 when General K. Sundarji heli-lifted a mountain brigade to face off against a PLA incursion which had built a road into Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese troops did not withdraw until 1993 when Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao visited Beijing. The 1962 war was triggered by a dispute over the Himalayan border in Aksai Chin between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of India. An important legal element needs to be noted; there was no formal declaration of war between China and India. Hence, the Chinese described the 3,000 captured Indian Army troops with the euphemism ‘captives’ and refused to officially acknowledge the Geneva Convention of 1949 on PoWs. Nehru operated in a period when India was just coming out of centuries of colonial rule. "Although this was a period marked by weaknesses in policy oversight and in policy-making, we have to understand the circumstances in which Nehru made those decisions". His dedication to the national cause could not be suspected or questioned. In 1962 the equation changed drastically sowing seeds of suspicion and mistrust. Fifty years after their border war, China and India remain locked in their dispute. Without warning, in October 1950, Communist China invaded Tibet, in violation of "Convention Between Great Britain, China, and Tibet, Simla (1914)" treaty. The Chinese wanted a route to Tibet through Aksai Chin and were not interested in whether the facts of history. The Chinese claims in NEFA were merely a ploy to justify the seizure of Aksai Chin. In the remote border area of Aksai Chin the Chinese engineers built a 300-mile modern road for military use, which had great strategic value in allowing China quickly to readily move troops about in the area. India was silent when US was willing to help in a covert operation. B.N. Mullik, the then head of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), had suggested armed intervention. The Americans had promised air support and were willing to airlift an Indian brigade to Chamdo in Eastern Tibet. The army chief, General (later Field Marshal) K.M. Cariappa, however turned it down. Nehru claimed the Aksai Chin as Indian territory and refused to negotiate unless China first withdrew. In winter, it took three weeks to get supplies to the Indian front line, whereas the Chinese could complete the same task in 3 hours. The Chinese have better land access, as they have been building frontier roads and airfields since they annexed Tibet. In the vicinity of the Tibetan Frontier of NEFA, there are passes up to 16,000 feet. On the Indian side, the precipitation is great. The mountains are covered with dense forest and thick snow in winter. Land communications with the area from India are exceptionally difficult. On the Tibetan side, the high plateau, over which the Chinese have built approach roads and airfields, is extremely cold, but snowfall is light. Latterly, China has gone further. It wants Tawang, which India has administered since 1951. Two generations have grown up there speaking Hindi. China knows India cannot cede Tawang. The question is, what does it want in return for abandoning this impossible demand? China’s hostility came even though India helped China sustain its occupation of Tibet. India was fooled into believing that Communist China wanted a ‘negotiated’ settlement with the Tibetans, but that was never the case. Marshal Liu Bosheng in a message in August 1950 made it clear that he was going to ‘liberate’ Tibet. “In the early 1950s, China needed India’s help to send supplies into Tibet, so that the PLA could consolidate the occupation. India was quite generous in providing this help. In 1952, Beijing “used diplomatic channels” to ship 2,500 tons of rice from Guangdong province to Calcutta, and transport it up to Tibet through Yadong (Dromo). By April 1953, all the rice had arrived. This basically solved the food supply problem for PLA troops, and enabled them to establish a preliminary footing in Tibet”, according to a book, “Remembering Tibet – Collected Recollections of Advancing and Liberating Tibet”. After discovering the existence of the border dispute in 1952, when the Chinese Foreign Ministry “absorbed the former foreign office of the Kashag (Tibetan government) and acquired its archival documents”, Zhou Enlai sought to buy time. In 1959, a fleeing Dalai Lama crossed the border at Khenzimane, north of Tawang to take refuge in India. The events around Nam Ka Chu sum up India's failure at planning in the war. Starting in 1959, India created 77 observation posts along Indo-Tibetian border, even after the Indian Army had officially stated that these posts could not be defended and can easily be overrun. Indian Army was asking for 4 normal Brigades (atleast 3 battalions under them, each with around 900 to 1,100 fighting men) for the defence of Ladakh but had eventually ended up deploying only 1 Brigade (only 2 divisions) of troops in the region of the conflict while the Chinese troops had 3 Regiments positioned. So the Chinese had almost 10:1 superiority. 10,000-20,000 Indian troops against 80,000 Chinese troops. PLA platoons overwhelmed Indian Army spread across the frontline by attacking simultaneously from the front and rear. In the war in these treacherous terrains, 722 PLA soldiers were killed and around 1,400 wounded, while the Indian death toll stood at 1,383, and 1,047 were wounded. Besides, 1,696 Indians went missing and over 400 taken as prisoners of war. China did not want the USA to physically intervene to assist India. China had successfully occupied Aksai Chin – a strategic corridor linking Tibet to western China – the NEFA area, and had almost reached the plains of Assam. Army Chief General P.N. General Thapar resigned as army chief on November 22, 1962, a day after the Chinese announced a ceasefire. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/175922 The British had striven to bolster Tibetan autonomy to reinforce the buffer with China. On November 07, 1950, Sardar Patel warned Nehru about China’s inimical intentions, barely a month after she had invaded Tibet. Ignoring Patel, Nehru conceded China’s suzerainty over Tibet. Two months later, a dying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel got the ball rolling to protect India’s borders. Located south of the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh, Tawang is one of the most strategic districts in the country. The experience of Kashmir, where India reacted too late, was not to be repeated. In January 1951, the Assam government received reports about Chinese armed incursions across the Tibetan border and requested the C-in-C, General Cariappa to staunch the threat. But Nehru chided him, “It is not the business of the C-in-C to tell the PM who is going to attack us where. Visiting China in 1954, Nehru drew Chinese Premier Chou En-lai’s attention to the new political map of India, which defined the McMahon Line and the J&K Johnson Line as firm borders (and not in dotted lines or vague colourwash as previously depicted) and expressed concern over corresponding Chinese maps that he found erroneous. The original McMohan Line was drawn on a scale of 1 inch = 80 miles and was about 1/4 inch thick, which transposed on the ground could mean several kilometres North or South. Chou En-lai replied that the Chinese had not yet found time to correct their old maps, but that this would be done “when the time is ripe”. This could be because either they were satisfied with the Indian position or did not want clarity, as they wanted to use the border tension for their aggressive designs at a future date. Nehru assumed this implied tacit Chinese acceptance of India’s map alignments, but referred to the same matter once again during Chou’s 1956 visit to India. Chinese Premier Chou En-lai informed Nehru that throughout most of the 19th century when British and Russian were expanding their empires, Britain decided to hand over Aksai Chin to the Chinese administration as a buffer against a Russian invasion and this newly created border was known as the MacCartney-MacDonald Line, and both British-controlled India and China had shown Aksai Chin as Chinese. Nehru knew but didn't speak out that by 1911 the Xinhai Revolution resulted in power shifts in China, and by 1918 (in the wake of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution) the British no longer saw merit in China's continuing possession of the region. On British maps, the border was redrawn as the original Johnson Line, but despite this reversion, the new border was left unmanned and undemarcated. Nehru knew that the British had used as many as 11 different boundary lines in the region, as their claims shifted with the political situation. The boundaries at its two extremities, Pangong Lake and Karakoram Pass, were well-defined, but the Aksai Chin area in between lay undefined. The Aksai Chin road had been constructed by China by 1956-57, but only came to notice in 1958 when somebody saw it depicted on a small map in a Chinese magazine. India protested. The very first note in the Sino-Indian White Papers, published later, declared Aksai Chin to be “indisputably” Indian territory and, thereafter, incredibly lamented the fact that Chinese personnel had wilfully trespassed into that area “without proper visas”. Since August 1959, the Chinese authorities had been complaining that the Indian forces crossed the McMahon line. No clarification was given to the Chinese authorities on this matter. Chinese incursions at Longju and Khizemane in Arunachal Pradesh and the Kongka Pass, Galwan and Chip Chap Valleys in Ladakh followed through 1959. The Dalai Lama had been given refugee in India. The Chinese suspicions about India’s intentions were not quelled by Delhi’s connivance in facilitating American-trained Tibetan refugee guerrillas to operate in Tibet and further permitting an American listening facility to be planted on the heights of Nanda Devi to monitor Chinese signals in Tibet. China had by now commenced its westward cartographic-cum-military creep in Ladakh and southward creep in Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese military intelligence had gathered that Indian forces were planning an attack on Thagla Ridge on 10 October. This information was absolutely correct, the Corps IV Commander, Lt Gen BM Kaul had planned to attack in Dhola post area on that day. Lt-Gen B M Kaul, with his proximity to Nehru, had superseded the army's command, the HBR blogpost exempts Gen Thapar, and the eastern army commander, Lt-Gen L P Sen, from his sharpest criticisms. To prove Nehru’s stubborn and hegemonic attitude, NEFA was ideal as Nehru would then be compelled to agree the McMahon Line was not an ‘established fact’, but a disputed border and only negotiations could achieve a lasting peace and the settlement of the border issue. The Chinese have a fundamental national interest in retaining Tibet, because Tibet is the Chinese anchor in the Himalayas. If that were open, or if Xinjiang became independent, the vast buffers between China and the rest of Eurasia would break down. If China were to withdraw from Tibet, and there were no military hindrance to population movement, Beijing fears this population could migrate into Tibet. If there were such a migration, Tibet could turn into an extension of India and, over time, become a potential beachhead for Indian power. If that were to happen, India’s strategic frontier would directly abut Sichuan and Yunnan — the Chinese heartland. Secret records of the talks which show Chou stating, fairly clearly, that China would give up claims to Nefa (Arunachal Pradesh) in exchange for Aksai Chin. The tripartite Simla Convention of 1914 to which the Government of India, Tibet and China were party and drew the McMahon Line. The Chinese representative initialled the agreement but did not sign it on account of differences over the definitions of Inner and Outer Tibet. But Nehru insisted on defending the details of history, like the McMahon Line and historical texts that referred to the area. The original McMohan Line was drawn on a scale of 1 inch = 80 miles and was about 1/4 inch thick, which transposed on the ground could mean several kilometres either way. The only sure reference method was to have troops on distinct geographical features. In order to eliminate any confusion or misunderstanding, the Indian government wanted a "Forward Policy", under which Nehru had issued instructions for the military to continue building military posts right up to the perceived Indian side of the McMohan line, even if those areas were claimed by the Chinese; and left its implementation to the generals. A supine Army Headquarters (AHQ), under a weak army chief, General Thapar, and pressured by a gung-ho General Kaul, overruled valid cautions presented by HQ Western Command (HQ WC), which insisted that a forward move must have adequate troop numbers, combat support and logistics. The then director of Intelligence Bureau, B.N. Mullick, keep giving assurances that there would be no reaction from the Chinese. “The Chinese would like to come right up to their claim of 1960 wherever we ourselves were not in occupation,” the Intelligence Bureau blithely recorded in 1961. “But where even a dozen men of ours are present, the Chinese have kept away. The belief that pushing forward would not encounter Chinese resistance came from the Intelligence Bureau, but was accepted by AHQ. The AHQ operated in the lead up to war on a flawed army assessment of Chinese strength - an outdated 1960 operational instruction, never updated, that said the Chinese could scrape together a "regiment plus" (about 4,000-5,000 soldiers) against Ladakh. The Army Headquarters (AHQ) concurred: “The Chinese will not attack any of our positions even if they are relatively weaker than theirs,” the chief of general staff told the Defence Ministry on the eve of war. Yet Lt-Gen Daulet Singh, who headed WC, was far more realistic. On August 17, 1962, he wrote to AHQ that the Chinese had a "well-equipped division (15,000 soldiers) with supporting arms deployed against Ladakh. Further, the Chinese had developed roads to all the important areas they held, and thus could concentrate large forces at any given place. In an article in Asian Survey (October 1963), Prof. Klaus H. Pringsheim called China’s response “carefully planned”. India’s predictable moves for eviction led China to mount “a massive counter-attack, which they had planned from the outset”. It was an “elaborate trap” into which India walked. In the summer of 1962, China's People’s Liberation Army (PLA) patrol through the Galwan valley discovered the Indian Army had beaten them to it: Some 30 troops of the 1st Battalion of the 8 Gurkha Regiment were already there. Even as a diplomatic protest note made its way to New Delhi, 350 PLA troops surrounded the post on 10 June 1962. Then, on the morning of 20 October, PLA troops attacked across the entire Ladakh sector. Faced with intense artillery and mortar bombardment that levelled their ramshackle shelters within minutes, the troops in Galwan fought to the last bullet, losing 36 of their number before they were overrun. In spite of heroic resistance from other posts, too, the Indian Army was steam-rolled. By early September 1962, China had warned that if India played “with fire, they would be consumed by fire.” In that same month, MJ Desai, the Indian Foreign Secretary said that the Chinese would not react to the Indian forward policy but would perhaps, capture 'one or two posts.' India must be taught to respect China’s power, Chen Yi told Hong Kong’s Communist journalists on October 6, 1962, and Liu Shaoqi confirmed to the Swedish Ambassador in February 1962. Mao said that the Indians had been pressing the Chinese along the border for three years: “if they try it a fourth year then China will strike back,” he warned. At the October 6 meeting, Lou Ruiqing, the Chinese Chief of General Staff was authorized by Mao to start ‘a fierce and painful attack on Indian forces. If Indian forces attack us, you should hit back fiercely. …[you should] not only repel them, but hit them fiercely and make them hurt”. Even as preparations for war were going on in Beijing, the Indian leaders were not too worried. They continued issuing orders to throw the Chinese out of the Indian territory. Wu Lengxi, who headed Xinhua and People’s Daily at that time, describes Mao fuming in a Party Central Committee meeting in Shanghai: “Let the Indian government commit all the wrongs for now. When the time comes, we will settle accounts with them”. Mao carefully lulled India into complacency, ordering the inclusion of a paragraph into a May 15, 1959 letter from Beijing to New Delhi: “China’s main attention and principle of struggle is focused on the east, the West Pacific region, on the ferocious American imperialism, not on India, the southeast or south Asian countries at all. …China will not be so stupid as to make enemies with the US in the east, and make enemies with India in the west. Pacification of rebellion and implementing democratic reform in Tibet would pose no threat to India whatsoever.” Unfortunately, the Indian Army was not physically equipped to implement the politicians’ order. The Indian soldiers were, at one time, surviving on water and salt. Even today the Indian Army are not familiar with the terrain of Arunachal. lt took four days, in a joint operation by the army and the locals, to recover the body of the state’s chief minister Dorjee Khandu after his chopper crashed near Tawang. Politically Mao could not afford to have a semi-victory, a total triumph was necessary to assert his newly recovered position at the head of the Communist State since his temporary retirement after the great man-made famine in China. His ideological high stand on the agriculture policy had to be backed by a resounding victory against the ‘arrogant’ Prime Minister of India and the insult inflicted by the Dalai Lama when he took refuge in India three years earlier. The affront had to be avenged. Beijing anticipated some negative reactions from Washington and the Western world in general (and perhaps even from Moscow) since Nehru enjoyed great international status and was a leader of the non-aligned movement, but the long-terms benefits of a severe, but limited blow, would compensate and ultimately bring peace for several years between the neighbours. Mullick and Menon sowed in Nehru’s mind the notion that a powerful chief might stage a coup (as Ayub Khan had done in Pakistan). The Thorat plan, “The China Threat and How to Meet It”, got short shrift. This was when U.S. and the Soviets were preoccupied wth the 'Cuban missile crisis'. Having secured the U.S.’ disengagement in June 1962, China also secured the Soviet Union’s prior approval to the attack on India on October 20. The Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev personally gave it to China’s Ambassador Liu Hsiao on October 13 and 14. Khruschev was in the throes of the Cuban missile crisis and needed China’s support. Aksai Chin has been occupied by the Chinese and was a vital link to Tibet. The Chinese Military Command appreciated that the Indian Army’s main defences lay at Se La and Bomdi La. The concept of operations that was evolved by the Tibetan Military District Command was to advance along different routes, encircle these two positions and reduce them subsequently. The plan was approved by Marshal Liu Bocheng, Head of a Core Group of the Central Military Affairs Commission. He outlined the strategy of concerted attacks by converging columns. Under this strategy, Indian positions were to be split into numerous segments and these were to be destroyed piecemeal. However “even as the PLA moved toward war with India, Mao continued to mull over vexing problems. Should China permit Indian forces to advance a bit farther into Chinese territory under the forward policy, thereby making clearer to international opinion that China was acting in self-defence? What should be the focus of the PLA attack? The major piece of territory in dispute between China and India was Aksai Chin in the west.” Militarily this area posed problems. The east was easier and it would send a stronger message. On September 8, 1962, a 60-strong (misreported as 600) Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) unit surrounded one of the Indian forward posts at Dhola on the Thagla Ridge, three kilometers north of the McMahon Line. On October 9, India’s offensive began in the Thagla Ridge area. Nehru had gone to London to attend a Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference. His directives to Defense Minister V.K. Krishna Menon (a pro-communist believed Pakistan was India's biggest threat) remained unclear, and the response, codenamed Operation LEGHORN, got underway only slowly. (just before the war started our General was taken ill and India's armed forces were badly equipped, confused, fighting in an unfamiliar terrain) The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) came in on two separate flanks – in the west in Ladakh, and in the east across the McMahon Line in the then North-East Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh). Neither side opened fire for 12 days but, by their sheer numbers, the Chinese clearly displayed their strength and intent to act. Following Nehru’s “throw them out” order, and against saner military advice and an assessment of ground realities, a brigade under John Dalvi was positioned on the Namka Chu River below the Thagla Ridge that the Chinese claimed lay even beyond the McMohan Line. It was a self-made trap. On September 18, the Indian spokesperson announced the government’s intention of driving the Chinese forces from Dhola. It was the last straw. While an inexperienced IA had deployed in the river-valleys, the PLA had outflanked them by crisscrossing mountain ridges on foot and establishing themselves at dominating heights, which in turn enabled the PLAGF to both destroy Indian Army's logistics supply lines and attack Indian Army units from the rear. By the time an Indian battalion reached the Thagla Ridge on September 16, Chinese units controlled both banks of the Namka Chu River. The day after, India's Chief of the Army Staff Kaul (who had earlier almost resigned because of his difference with the Defense Minister) ordered his men to re-take the Thagla Ridge. The brigade retreated in disorder after a gallant action, while the Chinese rolled down to Tawang where they reached on 25 October. Brigadier Thompson’s observation was on the dot. Some of the worst fighting in the Indo-Chinese war took place in Arunachal’s Kameng sector. In 1962, there were just two routes from the plains of Misamari to Tawang. One was a mule track from Udalguri-Kalaktang-Morshing-Phudung-Mandala to Dirang, ahead of Bomdila. The other route used was from Misamari, onwards to Foothills, Chaku to Tenga and then to Bomdila. From Bomdila it took the soldiers two days of force march to reach Sela. It was from this formidable height of 12,000 feet, in 1962, that troops walked for five days to reach the operational areas, in the present day Tawang district. The two important sub- sectors where the 1962 war took place were Zimithang (Namka Chu valley) and Bumla (north of Tawang), while Tawang was the most important religious and political town. Combat aircraft were not used during the 1962 War despite the fact that India enjoyed superior advantages in terms of air power vis-a-vis China. Chain had no air power to speak do PLAAF could not operate from Tibet, of where as India had De Havilland Vampires, Dassault Ouragans (Toofanis), Dassault Mysteres, Hawker Hunters, Folland Gnats, English Electric Canberra and B-24 Liberators. However, no one had ever tried out more than once the bombing, rocket or front gun attacks in the hills / mountains. The type of training that is truly required for quality CAS in the mountains was not even thought of in July 1962 . Quality cooperation with the Army was non-existent. By Oct 1962 no fighter had even landed in Srinagar. There were fighters in the "East", but they did not do range practice in NEFA, or Sikkim, they did it at Dudhkundi or Dulanmukh ranges both in the plains. Hill flying was done to give pilots exposure in handling the ac in valleys. Knowledge of every valley, entry / exit points, how to distinguish the "ridge" and be guided to the target, was never taught to fighter pilots. One needs special ‘engineers maps’ and meteorological conditions which IAF didn't have. IAF did not know the endurance of their fighters at those hight and distances. The Army was in retreat, front lines were unknown, maps were poor, hill / valley flying along the Towang-Bomdi La- Sela axis had never been done by fighter pilots. Even today there is no practice of how to do CAS around the line of control. India instead asked U.S. to join the war against China by partnering in an air war to defeat China. The U.S. told Pakistan that the Chinese attack was the most dangerous move made by Mao since 1950 and that they intended to respond decisively. On 24 October, Chou En-lai proposed a 20 km withdrawal by either side. Three days later, Nehru sought the enlargement of this buffer to 40-60 km. On 4 November, Chou offered to accept the McMahon Line provided India accepted the Macdonald Line in Ladakh approximating the Chinese claim line (giving up the more northerly Johnson Line favoured by Delhi). Earlier, the Sino-Indian Treaty on Relations between India and the Tibet Region of China was signed in 1954. India gave up its rights in Tibet without seeking a quid pro quo and the Panch Shila was enunciated. Even as battle was joined, Kaul disappeared from Tezpur to be with his men, throwing the chain of command into disarray. The saving grace was the valiant action fought by Brigadier Navin Rawley at Walong in the Luhit Valley before making an orderly retreat, holding back the enemy wherever possible. Much gallantry was also displayed in Ladakh against heavy odds. The use of the Air Force had been considered. However, the decision was to prevent escalation. The PoWs from the Ladakh front confirmed that they too had observed the same state of meticulous preparation. I can give you a few other examples: one day, much to our delight, a Chinese woman came and recited some of Bahadur Shah Zafar's poems to us. The Chinese had certainly prepared for this war most diligently because they had interpreters for every Indian language right in the front lines. This Urdu-speaking woman must have lived in Lucknow for a long time. Same thing for one of our guards; though he had not said a single word for five months (we used to call him Poker Face), we discovered that he could speak perfect Punjabi when he left us in Kunming. Driving through the tiny village of Chako, the jeep driver suddenly stopped. Lakshman thought that the engine needed a bit of rest after the first hours of steep climb. Two young good-looking girls appeared on the scene: “Sir, would you like a good tea”. Lakshman still remembers the “two pretty girls of indeterminate race.” Today he admits: “It was later discovered that they were Chinese spies, complete with a wireless transmitter; the antenna was cunningly hidden and well camouflaged in the tall bamboo, replete with the ubiquitous prayer flags fluttering gently in the cold mountain breeze spreading the message of peace around.” This incident resumes the state of intelligence and counter-intelligence of the Indian side on the eve of the Chinese attack. Unfortunately it was not only him; every officer remembers the ‘chai’ with the sweet girls. The teashop was located at a very strategic location ‘with the girls in attendance’, explains Lakshman: “it was the proverbial magnet which worked like a dream. The chitchats by the girls with the soldiers, hungry for and denied of female company for long, only too willing to open up during the halts, provided them with all the intelligence they required on the movement and deployment of troops.” This explains how Mao Zedong had the intelligence required to prepare his attack on the Indian positions on October 20. There was enough reason to suspect that the primitive communication set-up of the Indian Army in NEFA was also compromised and not only were the Chinese listening in, but they also were inserting bogus messages at key moments into the chain of command, which helped further unnerve and confuse the Indian commanders. The concentration of troops for the offensive took place from 10-15 Nov 1962. The Chinese troops advanced on four different routes. The Chinese troops had strict instructions not to violate the sovereignty of Bhutan. The PLA's Tibet Military Command constituted the “Advance Command Post for China-India Border Self-Defence Counter-attack” code-named Z419 (where “Z” stands for “Xizang” aka Tibet). Chinese soldiers were placed under Z419 Command Post, charged with attacking India in Kejielang (Nyamjang Chu valley) and Tawang, according to a PLA “Studies on Battle Examples”. CCP documents indicate that PLA’s 11 Infantry Division prepared by fighting 12 major battels in Central Tibet (Chamdo) – from March 1959 to March 1962 (3 years) – by battling Chushi Gangdruk, the Tibetan guerrilla resistance, which Beijing termed as “for work with the masses”. Mao Zedong regarded operations against the Tibetan resistance as an opportunity to train the PLA. Intensive military training began, including individual training, unit training and battle exercises at regimental level. Based on the experience of fighting the Chushi Gangdruk, Z419 replaced physically unfit officers and soldiers. Well-trained rocket launcher operators were dispatched to Tibet from Wuhan, and artillery personnel were sent from several military commands. Beijing Military Command sent communications equipment and operators. Over 100 English, Hindi and Tibetan interpreters from different areas were sent to Tibet for the coming “self-defence counter-attack”. Besides the PLA’s overwhelming advantage in combat soldiers numbers, Li’s research reveals the CCP’s Tibet Work Committee supported the frontline with a major logistic effort. Beijing took the final decision to go to war in 2 meetings. The first was on October 8, between Mao Zedong and China’s top leadership – Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, He Long, Nie Rongzheng and Luo Ruiqing. The second meeting, at which the final go-ahead was given, the Central Military Commission and Mao himself approved General Zhang Guohua’s battle plan. Four days earlier, PLA General Tan Guansan, who had brutally put down the Lhasa revolt in March 1959, relayed orders from the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and Central Military Commission to prepare to fight the Indian army. A “Frontline Command Post”, positioned at Tsona, replaced Z419 for the battle. PLA battle-hardened division presented a formidable contrast to the poorly equipped and poorly acclimatised Indian troops. Its not surprising that, on October 20, Indian defences in the Tawang sector crumbled in hours. “Besides that, they had also acquired rich combat experience in high and cold mountain regions in the five years from the Khampa rebellion in 1956 to the end of the suppression of Tibetan rebellion in 1961.” In Ladakh the Chinese attacked south of the Karakoram Pass at the northwest end of the Aksai Chin Plateau and in the Pangong Lake area about 160 kilometers to the southeast. The defending Indian forces were easily ejected from their posts in the area of the Karakoram Pass and from most posts near Pangong Lake. However, they put up spirited resistance at the key posts of Daulat Beg Oldi (near the entrance to the pass) and Chushul (located immediately south of Pangong Lake and at the head of the vital supply road to Leh, a major town and location of an air force base in Ladakh). Other Chinese forces attacked near Demchok (about 160 kilometers southeast of Chusul) and rapidly overran the Demchok and the Jara La posts. In the eastern sector, in Assam, the Chinese forces advanced easily despite Indian efforts at resistance. On the first day of the fighting, Indian forces stationed at the Tsang Le post on the northern side of the Namka Chu, the Khinzemane post, and near Dhola were overrun. They would later realize that the Chinese always attacked on Saturday, when Indian senior officers would have a well-deserved beer in the mess or were attending an important dancing party at an Army’s club of Delhi, Lucknow (Command HQ) or Tezpur (Corps HQ). On the western side of the North-East Frontier Agency, Tsang Dar fell on October 22, Bum La on October 23, and Tawang, the headquarters of the Seventh Infantry Brigade, on October 24. Namka Chu a name seared in Indian memory, a place where the decisions made by a pacifist Prime Minister, an arrogant Defence Minister and a politically connected General caused the rout of a proud Brigade with many of its men dying like animals in a cage. The dispute in this area revolved around Thagla Ridge. The Chinese claimed it was on the Tibetan side and India claimed it was on its side of the McMahon line. Accordingly in 1959 an Assam Rifles post was established at Khinzemane. The Chinese disputed it and a force of 200 Chinese pushed back the weak Indian force towards the bridge on the Nyamjang Chu at Drokung Samba which they claimed was the McMahon line. After the Chinese retired the Indians again reoccupied the post. There was no airfield and all maintenance was by air drops. Raw and un-acclimatised troops with cotton uniforms and canvas shoes were sent into the mountains. Instead of snow clothes & ammo they got tent pegs, kerosene was dropped in 200L barrels. Many rolled down slopes and although some could be retrieved, many were given up. Especially high were losses from drops by C119s due to the higher speed of the aircraft. The units had marched through severe cold, with groups of 3 men sharing 2 sheets. As mentioned they were in cotton uniforms resulting in a good deal of sick casualties; frostbite and pulmonary disorders. October 10th dawned without a hint of what was to come. At first light, Lt. Gen. Kaul was shaving while his batman was preparing tea. Suddenly the calm of the morning was shattered by the incessant fire of small arms fire and the thumps of mortars. The Tseung Jong position had come under fire and was retaliating. Around 8:00 a.m., 600 Chinese troops attacked the post. The Indians totaled 56 men with only pouch ammunition. Still they beat back the first assault. Around 9:30 a.m. the Chinese attacked a second time. By now the section at Karpo La II had moved to the flank of the Chinese. When the Chinese emerged, it opened up on them inflicting heavy casualties. The Chinese retaliated by bringing down mortar fire. As the first fire rang out the Rajputs were strung on the Southern bank of the Namka Chu. The Chinese attacked a third time from three directions and at this time Major Chaudhary asked the unit to withdraw. By that time the Chinese were on Major Chaudhary's position, hand-to-hand combat was in process. Somehow he withdrew what was left of his two platoons. Sepoy Kanshi Ram brought back a AK-47 snatched from a Chinese soldier. The withdrawal was made possible by the gallantry of Naik Chain Singh. Asking his men to fall back, Naik Singh covered their withdrawal with an LMG, till he was gunned down by a machine gun burst. Major Chaudhary, Sepoy Ram and Naik Singh were awarded the Maha Vir Chakra. The Punjabis outnumbered 20 to 1 lost 6 dead, 11 wounded and 5 missing. Peking Radio admitted to a 100 casualties. Later that day the Chinese buried our men with full military honours in view of our men. Meanwhile the Chinese started reinforcing their positions with more troops and heavy mortars. A long line of mules and porters were seen carrying equipment. Firing lines were cleared with mechanical saws, and barbed wire & punji sticks used to defend their positions. A company of the 1/9 Gorkha Rifles was ordered to be deployed at Tsangle. Brigadier Dalvi protested at this piece meal deployment but was threatened with a court martial. The next day the Chinese activities climaxed. The Rajputs counted 2000 men with stores in the area between Tseng-Jong and Temporary Bridge. Mules and porters came across Thag La. Men were laying tape markers for night assaults. Brigadier Dalvi protested again asking to withdraw his men from this deathtrap. He offered to resign, rather than watch his men get massacred. Brigadier Dalvi thought the attack was going to come the next day and in three days his brigade would be wiped out. Major General Prasad promised he will be there the next day to share the fate of the brigade. To Major Gurdial, the 2-in-C of the 2 Rajputs, the idea of his under strength battalion fighting the hardened veterans of the Korean war seemed suicidal. He looked around at his isolated weak companies, un-acclimatised & weak, 150 rds/rifleman, 17 magazines (28 rounds) per LMG and 2 grenades per soldier. The battalion's 3" mortars had 60 rounds of ammo, equal to five minutes firing time. Thousands of yards that separated the posts, with visibility under 20 yards, Chinese infantry columns were infiltrating through the large gaps. Fording the river was easy. To avoid slipping they removed their shoes and walked barefoot across. Once across they dried and wore warm socks. They quickly moved past the link roads where Indian patrols might operate. The overhead communication wires were left alone to be cut just before the attack so that the Indians may not be alerted. Once in the dark shadows of the coniferous forests the noises were muffled by the thick moss on rocks. At 5:14 a.m. 150 guns and mortars opened upon all the localities at Namka Chu and Tsangdhar. The 82mm and 120mm rounds crashed into trees & rocks, forcing the men in the open to take refuge in the bunkers whose firing bays faced forwards. It continued for an hour, as the Indians helplessly watched unable to counter it with any weapon. The Indian 3" mortars made an futile attempt to fire back. Even as they tried to get the range right, the Chinese ranged in on them and blew them away. The signals bunker was zeroed in quickly using 75mm recoilless guns, and blown up, killing all in it including Captain Mangat - the Signals Officer. At Temporary Bridge, Subedar Dashrath Singh realised what was happening and moved Naik Roshan Singh's section to a bump 150 yards upslope. Barely had Roshan's men taken position when the Chinese came into view. With AK-47s opening up, they charged. Roshan and his men poured fire into the bunched up Chinese cutting down many. 2nd Lt Onkar Dubey with 7th platoon along with Subedar Janam Singh rushed with 15 LMG clips and 2 men to support Roshan. From the flanks he and his men poured fire on the Chinese breaking up two attacks. Firing the last 2 clips at the enemy he was severely wounded in the stomach & chest and fell down unconscious. He was later taken prisoner. Meanwhile Subedar Dashrath Singh's men turned uphill and opened fire on the advancing Chinese. The Chinese rushed down using cover from tree to tree. Dashrath and his men repulsed 3 attacks. On the fourth they came in to hand-to-hand combat losing four more men. Subedar Dashrath fell unconscious and was taken POW. Roshan's unit was finally overcome with every man killed. The attention now turned to Jemadar Bose's platoon. After three waves of assault there were only 10 men surviving. The gallant Bengali led the remaining men into a bayonet charge. Most of the men were killed. The Chinese attacked a third time from the south and south west. With Major Gurdial rallying them, they desperately tried to fight back but succumbed to the inevitable. Major Gurdial was overpowered and captured.The fourth and last locality, Bridge 3, was held by A company with a platoon of Assam Rifles holding the Che Dong are. The Assam Rifles held the top of the spur while 2 platoons No.1 and No.2, held the lower slopes 600 hundred feet below. A 3rd platoon held a position another 800 feet lower overlooking Bridge 3. The initial hour long shelling drove the Assam Rifles unit from the post. As the shelling lifted Captain Ravi Eipe began to move towards the Assam Rifles post to get a better view. Soon he saw some figures in khaki and realised the Chinese had already taken over the post. He alerted Company Havildar Major Saudagar Singh's men to reposition themselves just as the attack began. The Chinese then attacked from the top and the West. Facing them were the 2 platoons of CHM Singh and Subedar Basdeo Singh. CHM Saudagar's men had reorganised and took a heavy toll on the attacking Chinese. By 0700 hours the platoons were being swarmed by Chinese troops. 1 platoon got cut off and fought to the death. The remnants of the battered 2 and 3rd platoons were asked to withdraw. With this the last Rajput position was overrun. Temporary and Log Bridge were overpowered and the systematic mopping up began. The attack had begun at 5:14 a.m. with the shelling lasting till 6:30 a.m. By 9:30 a.m. mopping operations were in full swing till it ended at 11:30 a.m. The main positions of 1/9 Gorkha Rifles were above Che Dong on a track from the Assam Rifles post. 'D' Coy held the central location with 'A' and 'C' Coy on either side. The fourth company was above bridge II protecting the Brigade HQ. As the officers scrambled to figure the situations they found the telephone lines were dead. Now the Chinese who had infiltrated past them in the last 2 nights launched their attack. The Gorkhas fought back. By 7:15 a.m. 2nd Lt. Dogra's platoon was overrun. Wounded, he continued to fight with an LMG allowing the remnants of his platoon to fall back. Subedar Dhan Bahadur Chand also covered with an LMG. By 7:30 a.m., A Coy was under attack from rear as well as the front. Lt. Col. Ahluwalia was wounded in the shoulder as hand-to-hand fighting began. With no hope, the CO ordered a withdrawal towards Tsangdhar. Small parties of men however did make it across the Chinese encirclement and reached Bhutan. Many others perished due to the cold & starvation as they tried to make their way in the cold, hostile and desolate mountains with no blankets or winter clothing. The Sikh Para Gunners also displayed an astonishing defiance. With no ammo they took up LMGs & rifles and fought the Chinese after the Gorkha platoons were overrun. The Chinese encircled them and called them to surrender. They refused and continued fighting till they ran out of ammo. One third were killed and the rest were wounded and captured. 7th Brigade had lost all cohesion within the first hour of the battle. By 8 a.m. the first stragglers of the 1/9 Gorkha's came back to HQs with news that the Btn was overrun. This meant his middle & left defences were already broken. Brigadier Dalvi now got Div HQ's permission to leave Rong La and fall back to Tsangdhar hoping to reform and fight. The Rajputs and Gorkhas were expected to fall back to Tsangdhar. However they soon found that Tsangdhar was already breached and changed directions to Serkhim. The group wandered around for days avoiding Chinese patrols. At one point they had been without food for 66 hours. Sometime on the morning of October 22nd they ran into a Chinese Company and were captured. At Bridge II, the 9 Punjab had not been shelled. After communications with Brigade HQ was cut off, they remained in touch with Div HQ. At 11 a.m. on October 20th, Major General Prasad ordered them to withdraw to Hathung La. The withdrawal attracted heavy Chinese mortar fire. This was followed by an attack on the positions of 'D' Coy under Major Chaudhary. Once again repeated attacks collapsed the defence and all the men went down fighting. Another group of 20 men under Havildar Malkiat Singh were on their way to reinforce the Tsangla defences. They stumbled into a large Chinese force. In the unequal encounter, the Punjabis inflicted heavy casualties before going down. Havildar Singh was amongst those who were killed. With the Chinese reaching Hathung La before the Punjabis, they too had to take the route through Bhutan. At Drokung Samba, C Coy of Grenadiers came under attack from three sides by a battalion of the Chinese. Soon the bridge was blown up cutting off any withdrawal. With no hopes, the men under 2nd Lt. Rao fought wave after wave of attacks. Most including the 2nd Lt. Rao were killed. The rest of the Grenadiers at Bridge I received orders to pull out and managed to escape through Bhutan. It took them 17 days. Thus ended the Battle of Namka Chu. The word 'battle' is grossly misleading, for what was essentially a massacre. Rezang La was attacked on November 18th in the morning. At 0500 hours when the visibility improved both platoons opened up on the advancing enemy with rifles, light machine guns, grenades and mortars. The survivors took position behind boulders and the dead bodies. The enemy subjected Indian positions to intense artillery and mortar fire. Soon about 350 Chinese troops commenced advance. This time, No.9 Platoon, which held fire till the enemy was within 90 meters opened up with all weapons in their possession. Within minutes, the enemy was reduced to a number of dead bodies. Unsuccessful in frontal attack, the enemy comprising about 400 soldiers, attacked from the rear of the company position. They simultaneously opened intense MMG (medium machine gun) fire on the No.8 Platoon. This attack was restricted. The enemy then resorted to heavy artillery and mortar shelling. An assault group of 120 Chinese then charged the No.7 Platoon position from the rear. However 3 inch Indian mortar killed many of them. When 20 survivors charged the post, about a dozen Kumaonis rushed out of their trenches to engage them in a hand-to-hand combat. Meanwhile, the enemy brought up fresh reinforcements. The encirclement of the No.7 Platoon was now complete. The platoon, however, fought valiantly till there was no survivor. No.8 Platoon also fought bravely to the last man and last round. The Chinese brought heavy machine gun fire on them. Major Shaitan Singh sensed danger to lives of his jawans and ordered them to leave him. They placed him behind a boulder on the slopes of a hill, where he breathed his last. In this action, 109 Kumaonis were killed. The Chinese suffered much greater losses. Major Shaitan and jawans succeeded in blunting the Chinese attack killing about 1000 Chinese. Thereafter, the Chinese did not push further towards Chushul. Among those who managed to escape and tell the tale was (then) Sepoy Ramchander Yadav, the major’s batman and radio operator, who was charged with concealing his valiant officer’s body so the Chinese wouldn’t find it, which he did successfully. He led a joint International Red Cross and Indian army expedition the following February to the exact spot where Shaitan Singh (awarded the Param Vir Chakra) lay between two boulders, buried by him under snow, a patch of frozen blood and a white mitten kept as a marker. It wasn’t until Indian patrols returned the following spring that they found evidence that confirmed the stories of the three immediate survivors: almost all the bodies (103 in the first instance), frozen weapons in hand, all ammunition clips empty, some inside their trenches and many outside, cut down by multiple bullets and bayonets in hand-to-hand combat with the attackers. The reinforcements and redeployments in Ladakh proved sufficient to defend the Chushul perimeter despite repeated Chinese attacks. However, the more remote posts at Rezang La and Gurung Hill and the four posts at Spanggur Lake area fell to the Chinese. In the North-East Frontier Agency, the situation proved to be quite different. Indian forces counterattacked on November 13 and captured a hill northwest of the town of Walong. Concerted Chinese attacks dislodged them from this hard-won position, and the nearby garrison had to retreat down the Lohit Valley. In the eastern sector, the Kameng Frontier Division, six Chinese brigades attacked across the Tawang Chu near Jang and advanced some sixteen kilometers to the southeast to attack Indian positions at Nurang, near Se La, on November 17. Despite the Indian attempt to regroup their forces at Se La, the Chinese continued their onslaught, wiping out virtually all Indian resistance in Kameng. It is also no surprise that while most generals involved in the east faded away in ignominy and disgrace, Brigadier T.N. Raina (Tappy), who so resolutely led 114 Brigade in Chushul (including 13 Kumaon), went on to become one of our most decorated soldiers (Maha Vir Chakra) and army chief. Even now, at most parades, you might hear a stirring composition from the army bands called General Tappy. And the decrepit, rotting memorial at Rewari may see better days still. After all, 13 Kumaon is now posted at Kota, not far away, and has decided to help the local citizens committee spruce it up and start a proper memorial ceremony. By November 18 the PLA had penetrated close to the outskirts of Tezpur, Assam, a major frontier town nearly fifty kilometers from the Assam-North-East Frontier Agency border. The Commander Signals of the 4th (Red Eagle) Division Infantry Division located at Ambala were immediately ordered to move to Tezpur in Assam. At that time, there were hardly any roads existing in any of the five frontier divisions (FD) of Arunachal Pradesh.This Division, trained and equipped for fighting in the plains, had suddenly to be deployed to guard these high mountain regions. While a normal division occupies an area frontage of 30 to 40 km in the plains, we were assigned a front spreading on more than 1800 kilometers of mountainous terrain. Before the Division could take its operational responsibilities to defend the border with Tibet, orders for the execution of an Operation Amar 2 were received from Lt Gen BM Kaul, then Quarter Master General in the Army HQ. We were suddenly supposed to build temporary (basha) straw house as accommodations for the Division. Due to either logistical problems (according to Indian accounts) or for political reasons (according to Chinese accounts) the PLA did not advance farther, and on November 21 it declared a unilateral cease-fire. The difference in the approach between Ladakh and NEFA was due to the logistics problems faced by the PLA in Ladakh, and the destruction of only one brigade that India deployed was not considered a worthwhile objective. Moreover, China had already secured the territory it had claimed. The ideal time for the campaign in the high-altitude areas of Ladakh and NEFA is from June to October. Due to the initial policy of restraint followed until the Dhola incident, the decision-making for the war had got delayed and the final decision was taken only in the first week of October. This effectively gave the PLA only one month to achieve its military objectives. This delay also led China to unilaterally withdraw upon completion of the achievement of other objectives. It would have been extremely difficult to maintain the PLA forces via the snowbound passes over very poor motorable tracks. The forces would also have been vulnerable to counter attack in the lower reaches. Having brought India to its knees, Beijing declared a unilateral ceasefire on November 21, and the PLA withdrew to its pre-war positions. It acquired 2,500 square miles more in Ladakh. According to the China’s official military history, the war achieved China’s policy objectives of securing borders in its western sector. As per the Chinese estimates, the Indian Army lost about 5100 all ranks killed / wounded and captured. The Chinese suffered 225 killed (27 officers and 198 men) and 477 wounded (46 officers and 431 men). It is now known that, when Indian morale stood at its lowest ebb, on November 19th, 1962, Nehru wrote two letters to Kennedy, describing India’s situation as ‘desperate’ and asking for comprehensive military aid, specifically ‘immediate support to strengthen our air arm sufficiently to stem the tide of the Chinese advance’. Nehru requested for ‘a minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all-weather fighters’, and two squadrons of B-47 bombers manned by U.S. personnel to attack positions in China, plus American help in constructing a radar shield for India’s cities. ‘Any delay in this assistance,’ Nehru warned, ‘will result in nothing short of a catastrophe for our country.’ But the Americans refused to supply India what it wanted, especially the F-104 jet which had already been sold to Pakistan. Satu Limaye writes in ‘US-India Relations’ that “the US refused to sell India any weaponry, offensive or otherwise, that was not directly applicable to mountain warfare”. After being spurned by the U.S., Nehru also wrote to Khrushchev and to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to enlist support. The Russians supplied the entire production facility for manufacturing MiG-21s. The engine plant was established in Koraput and the fuselage in Kanpur. Nehru’s assiduously crafted policy of Non-Alignment now lay in shambles. The Chinese, he said, were massing troops in the Chumbi Valley and he apprehended another “invasion” from there. If Chushul was overrun, there was nothing to stop the Chinese before Leh. The United States Air Force flew in massed supplies to India in November, 1962, but neither side wished to continue hostilities. The war ended with the Chinese unilaterally declaring a ceasefire on November 21, 1962 after defeating India in Aksai Chin. The disputed area was claim to be strategic for the PRC, as it enabled a western connection (China National Highway G219) between the Chinese territories of Tibet and Xinjiang. To add to India’s lasting shame, neither the Prime Minister nor the Indian Army was even aware that the ‘war’ had ended until they read about it in the newspapers—despite the Indian Embassy informed two days earlier. Only one commentator, the late NJ Nanporia, editor of The Times of India, got it right. In a closely reasoned edit page article, he argued that the Chinese favoured negotiation and a peaceful settlement, not invasion, and that India must talk. At worst, the Chinese would teach India a lesson and go back. Critics scoffed at Nanporia. A week or 10 days later, in response to his critics, he reprinted the very same article down to the last comma and full-stop. Kennedy offered India $500 million as military assistance, but was assassinated before it could go through. Pakistan had been urged by Iran and the US not to use India’s predicament to further its own cause and kept its word. But it developed a new relationship with China thereafter. Nehru had meanwhile broadcast to the nation, and more particularly to “the people of Assam” to whom his “heart went out” at this terrible hour of trial. He promised the struggle would continue and none should doubt its outcome. Hearing the broadcast in Tezpur, however, it did not sound like a Churchillian trumpet of defiance. Rather, it provided cold comfort to the Assamese, many of whom hold it against the Indian state to this day that Nehru had bidden them “farewell”. Assam, very fertile, rich in tea and rice, was also the home of the Burma Oil Company, with rich resources of heavy crude oil. Apparently, the Chinese army had reached north of the Brahmaputra River, which was only 20 odd miles away. The Indian Army was in full retreat. The estimation was that the Chinese army would cross the river, and be with us within the next few days. There were about 1,000 Europeans and other nationalities, including women and children, in north east India, employed either by the oil company or by the tea plantations. The United Kingdom Citizens Association played an active part in evacuating large numbers of Anglo Indians. The Assam Branch Indian Tea Association grouped tea gardens into ‘escape teams' with a Group Leader, who was required to maintain communication, hold meetings, and organise their group to get out of Assam as soon as possible. Most people opted to exit into East Pakistan by road via Badarpur Ghat. Some opted to cross the border from Shillong. One group, having assisted the Oxford and Cambridge University overland expedition into Burma in 1961, planned to walk out down Stilwell's Ledo Road. Others planned to boat out down the Brahmaputra. Of all the memorials, the one at Nyukmadong on the Sela-Bomdila axis near Dirang is the most picturesque. Designed in the Buddhist Chorten style, the flat land of the memorial was where the Chinese laid out the Indian soldiers they had killed in an ambush. Lobsang, a gaon bura and an office bearer at Dirang headquarters, recalls seeing hundreds of bodies in Nyukmadong. “It was a terrible sight. After the Chinese left, following the unilateral ceasefire, the villagers got together and cremated them.” The plaque on the black granite memorial at the Tezpur Circuit House declares that the ashes of unknown soldiers from the 1962 war were immersed in the Brahmaputra a year later, on November 18, 1963, in Tezpur. The winding road from the plains of Assam that makes its way from Tezpur to the forest-rich Bhalukpong — past the swift brown waters of the Jaibharoli and climbs to Tenga, Bomdila and onwards to Sela pass and Tawang — is dotted with reminders of the 1962 war. The memorials are halt points for the men who continue to guard the frontiers. Of all the memorials, the one at Nyukmadong on the Sela-Bomdila axis near Dirang is the most picturesque. Designed in the Buddhist Chorten style, the flat land of the memorial was where the Chinese laid out the Indian soldiers they had killed in an ambush. Lobsang, a gaon bura and an office bearer at Dirang headquarters, recalls seeing hundreds of bodies in Nyukmadong. “It was a terrible sight. After the Chinese left, following the unilateral ceasefire, the villagers got together and cremated them.” The plaque on the black granite memorial at the Tezpur Circuit House declares that the ashes of unknown soldiers from the 1962 war were immersed in the Brahmaputra a year later, on November 18, 1963, in Tezpur. The winding road from the plains of Assam that makes its way from Tezpur to the forest-rich Bhalukpong — past the swift brown waters of the Jaibharoli and climbs to Tenga, Bomdila and onwards to Sela pass and Tawang — is dotted with reminders of the 1962 war. The memorials are halt points for the men who continue to guard the frontiers. Sikkim: In 1947, a popular vote in Sikkim actually rejected merger with India and relations continued with Delhi much as they had under the British Raj. Sikkim was a protectorate of India, with Delhi handling Gangtok’s defence and foreign affairs – an arrangement quite similar to Bhutan today. After the 1962 Indo-China war, though, things changed – made worse in the 1970s by the Sikkimese king, the Chogyal making moves to free his country from Indian control. Indira Gandhi, though, was having none of that. In April, 1975, with intrigue lashing the tiny kingdom, the Indian Army took control of the Chogyal’s palace. A highly controversial referendum was then held on the question of the abolishment of the monarchy and, practically, merger with India. After this India's external intelligence agency, technically only a cabinet secretariat wing, started taking shape and was functional under the PM Indira Gandhi. Until then there was the intelligence bureau, responsible to the Home Ministry, was established by the British to check a Russian invasion through Afghanistan and later its responsibilities included India's internal security. It is said to be the world's oldest intelligence agency and was later modelled after UK's counter-intelligence and internal security agency. After Mumbai attacks and rise of naxal movement, it has recently added a nerve centre for multiple intelligence agencies, where each security agency has to according to the law, share all vital security info with each other) (Currently after the proxy war of Kargil, we have added a common armed-force defence intelligence agency, an advance technical and cyber counter-intelligence agency. All the agencies now come under an all powerful coordinating group which reports to the super-agency which is a national security advising council and is helped by the secretariat. Henderson Brooks-Bhagat 190-page report written by two Indian Army officers, Lieutenant General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier General Premindra Singh Bhagat, remains the subject of much curiosity within India’s strategic community and historians for what many expect to be a scathing indictment of the intelligence failures and political miscalculations of India’s Congress-led government leading up to the war. Incumbent defense minister A.K. Antony once told Parliament that the report could not be declassified because its contents are “not only extremely sensitive but are of current operational value.” Indian news outlets have responded with calls for greater transparency on the part of the government, arguing that declassifying the report will allow for a review of past mistakes. Australian author and journalist Neville Maxwell uploaded a portion of the Henderson Brooks report on the internet. The second half of the report remains unavailable currently. The Indian Ministry of Defense still maintains that the report is classified top secret. Successive governments stubbornly refused to release it. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/53-years-of-indo-china-war-indian-chinese-prisoners-recount-horror-behind-barbed-wires/1/503696.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/24/china-tibetans-mass-protests-monks-villages-monasteries/ It is not the work of Tibet itself, but it is largely the result of unbridled Chinese ambitions to bring weaker nations on its periphery under its active rule. As a people faithful to the principles of Buddhism, the Tibetans have long abandoned the art of war, practising peace and tolerance, and trusting in the defense of their country to its geographical configuration and their attitude not to interfere affairs of other nations. There were times when Tibet sought, but rarely received, the protection of the Chinese Emperor. However, in their natural need for expansion, the Chinese have totally misinterpreted the meaning of the relations of friendship and interdependence between China and Tibet as neighbours.
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