Page 111 - EW April 2023

Books

Sino-India INDIA’S CHINA WAR the Sino-Indian border
For telling the story of
border blunder Neville Maxwell dispute like it was, this

NATRAJ PUBLISHING book first published in
Rs.595 1970 was banned in India
LTHOUGH by Indira Gandhi and the
liberals put up a Pages 510 dynasty for over 40 years,
Astout defence, no and this new updated
politician’s star has fallen version under review was
from the zenith of his and government clerks. reprinted in 2015.
glory to near rock-bottom Unsurprisingly, Central This book first pub- It’s a mystery why
as of Jawaharlal Nehru, PSEs whose number has lished in 1970 was Nehru insisted that China
independent India’s first multiplied to 256, never banned in India by should respect British
prime minister who passed made a half decent profit Indira Gandhi and the drawn maps which showed
away in 1964. Undoubt- and dragged down the dynasty for 40 years. the entire Aksai Chin as
edly there were some fine economy. For over 50 An updated version British Raj territory, when
elements mixed in him. years, post-independence was reprinted in 2015 it was well- documented
He united the country India’s GDP grew at an that Tibet and Aksai Chin
after Partition — the average 3.5 percent per were part and parcel of
parting kick of the British year, while GDP growth in V.K. Kaul — an officer of China for centuries before
Raj — led by example in our neighbour nations of no combat experience — as 1911, when China became
transcending caste and South-east Asia including Chief of Defence Staff dur- a weak republic and was
religion, and ensured free China, grew at two and ing the Sino-Indian border subjected to “unequal
India remained a function- three multiples thereof. war of 1962, in which treaties” by European
al democracy by according Nehru’s second abid- India suffered a humiliat- colonial powers, the Brits
high respect and account- ing sin was dynasticism ing defeat. in particular.
ability to Parliament. and nepotism. Himself Nehru’s third egregious Not only that, when
Yet this great man parachuted into the top error for which the coun- the Chinese fed up with
who strode not only the echelon of the Congress try has paid a huge price his “talk but not negoti-
Indian, but world stage party by his father Motilal — and continues to do so ate” policy began to assert
like a colossus, burdened whom he succeeded as — was neglect and failure control over what they
the nation with three toxic president of the party in to negotiate a clearly claimed as their territory,
legacies which makes it 1929 when he was only demarcated boundary be- Nehru directed the Indian
impossible for an objective 29 years of age, Nehru tween China and India. As Army to implement a “for-
historian to forgive him. signalled preference for a result, a hazy boundary ward” policy under which
First, despite his claim his daughter Indira Nehru which divides the world’s patrols were sent deep into
to being a historian — he Gandhi as his successor, two most populous nations Chinese claimed terri-
wrote Discovery of India when he appointed her as stretches over 4,000 km tory to plant the Indian
(1946) — he ignored In- president of the Congress from the Aksai Chin pla- flag. Most of these patrols
dia’s several millennia tra- in 1957. In turn, she teau in the north-west to airlifted from the plains
dition of private enterprise anointed her totally inex- Arunachal Pradesh in the were ill-equipped for the
and imposed the socialist perienced and unqualified north-east. Himalayan heights and
economic model of devel- sons Sanjay and later Rajiv As Neville Maxwell, a were quickly surrounded
opment upon the newly as her heirs. former Delhi-based cor- and decimated by the Chi-
independent nation under Moreover, Nehru saw respondent of the pres- nese army. Maxwell says
which the State would nothing wrong in ap- tigious Times, London, that hundreds of jawans
“dominate the command- pointing his sister as recounts in this diligently of the Indian Army lost
ing heights of the Indian ambassador to the United researched book, Nehru their lives because of the
economy”. Private enter- Nations, nephew R.K. had numerous opportuni- forward policy.
prise was strangulated Nehru ambassador to the ties to negotiate a settled As Maxwell recounts,
and national savings and United States, and several border with China, but in 1960 Chinese prime
huge foreign loans were Kashmiri pandit kith and for mysterious reasons minster Zhou-en-Lai vis-
canalised into giant public kin to highest offices in- stubbornly declined olive ited India with a detailed
sector enterprises (PSEs) cluding head of RAW, and branches offered by the proposal under which the
managed by bureaucrats most disastrously Gen. Chinese government. Chinese would accept the

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