Perspective on 1962 debacle a trail-blazing reference base
Of the many battles fought between the Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), during the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the battles of Walong and Rezang La (la means a mountain pass) — both

Of the many battles fought between the Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), during the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the battles of Walong and Rezang La (la means a mountain pass) — both fought by battalions of the Kumaon Regiment — merit mention here, as in both the Kumaonis fought to the last man and last bullet. While such great valour must be highlighted in motivational lectures, in this case it unfortunately reflects very poorly on the government of that day.
Because not only was the Indian Army pitched into this war under-clad, under-armed, under-equipped and ill-prepared by the then main political players, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon, but they also (a) failed to appreciate the situation — the Chinese threat/intentions, (b) refused to heed the warnings about Chinese movements conveyed to them by senior field commanders, (c) interfered in the military chain of command (d) interfered in tactical decisions and (e) stupidly and stubbornly ordered the Army to undertake tasks for which, apart from deficiencies mentioned, it simply did not have numerical strength of troops. On 12 October 1962, at Palam Airport before departing on a visit to Colombo, Nehru insouciantly revealed to the media that he had ordered the Indian Army “to throw the Chinese out”.
Referring to the report of a study by Lt Gen T.B. Henderson Brooks and Brig (later Lt Gen) P.S. Bhagat, VC, part of which was leaked out in 2014 by Australian journalist Neville Maxwell, Finance minister Arun Jaitley had stated: “What has been made public is Part I of the report. It has been reported in the media that pages 112 to 167 are still not known. Is it because these pages contain material that could be embarrassing to those in power in 1962 The first 111 pages having been made public, it is now necessary that the balance pages also be made public rather than allow public opinion to be influenced by unauthentic sources.
The contents of the report also raise some legitimate questions. The military strategy of the then government has been seriously questioned. The intelligence assessment of the Chinese attitude was a flawed one. The military strategy in creating ‘forward posts’ has been criticised as providing to the Chinese a pretext for invasion. It further appears from the report that the Prime Minister and his favourite set of officials both in the Army and in the Intelligence establishment were wrong in their assessment.
In fact, the opinion of officials close to the Prime Minister had cost this country heavily. The unpreparedness of the armed forces is writ large in the contents of the report. Was a Himalayan blunder of 1962 in fact a Nehruvian blunder The leaked contents of the report serve as a lesson for us today. How prepared are we in our military strategy Contemporary evidence indicates that our defence procurement has suffered.
This adversely hurts our armed forces who are professionally amongst the best in the world. Are we willing to learn the lessons from 1962 However, soon after BJP came to power and Mr Jaitley became the defence minister he stressed that the Henderson-Brooks report “is a top-secret document and has not been declassified so far” and “release of this report, fully or partially, or disclosure of any information related to this report, would not be in national interest.”
Recollections by survivors of some of the 1962 battles have often made many a serving soldier’s or veteran’s blood boil and eyes get moist. Because these recollections only rub in the fact about how clueless and callous leaders like Nehru and Krishna Menon were and how in spite of this, their orders to do the undoable were followed by Indian officers and soldiers with utmost bravery, often knowing that would not survive.
As Major General Ian Cardozo (retd) recounts in Param Vir Chakra: Our Heroes in Battle said: “Every single man of this company was found dead in his trench with several bullet or splinter wounds. The two-inch mortar man died with a bomb still in his hand. The medical orderly had a syringe and a bandage in his hand when a Chinese bullet killed him. A dozen bodies of Ahirs (this was an all Ahir battalion of the Kumaon Regiment — all plainsmen unlike the Kumaonis) were found outside their trenches indicating that they had in turn attacked the attacking Chinese when they were killed.”
Of the 1,000 mortar bombs with them, 993 had been fired. The mortar detachment personnel were readying to fire the other seven when they were killed. Kosli, a small village, then part of undivided post-1947 Punjab, now Haryana, was the only village in the area with a telegraph office. Two hundred telegrams of the 1962 war, all of Ahir soldiers in that area, found their way here. Half of those 200 telegrams related to the martyrs of Rezang La.
The end of this war saw Nehru, who had deceived Parliament and the nation, a “broken man”. Too little, too late, he had to sack Krishna Menon. Time magazine, reporting on that war wrote: “The Indian Army needs almost everything except courage.” Chetan Anand was so moved that he made Haqeeqat (1964), a most authentic and first Indian war film.
Fifty years later in 2012, when much was written and commented in the Indian media and some Chinese declassified records had become available, United Services Institution of India took on the task of researching this war, juxtaposing Chinese and Indian records. A team of officers with a flair for military history headed by Lt Gen Vinay Shankar (retd) attempted to, as he states, “clinically and objectively chronicle the battles and encounters of the 1962 war, based on an official version of the Chinese government and the synthesis of all that has been reported and written in India and abroad and also the leaked portions of the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report.
This book is an important trail-brazing reference base for further research by China watchers and a must read for all government leaders and officials dealing with national security.