The lessons of 1962

The 1962 war with China — 50 years ago this month — was a watershed in many ways for India. While the loss of the war was such a humiliating defeat that the scars on the national psyche still persist in some ways, there were other consequences for India at many levels as well.

The first was a rethink about its own foreign policy strategy that had been based until then on a sense of anti-colonial and Asian solidarity against the West. Indian and Chinese intellectuals involved with the freedom movement in both countries had supported each other during the course of their historical struggle against Eng-lish and Japanese imperialism.

During the 1950s, India was one of China's greatest champions, arguing constantly for a seat in the UN for China. India also refused to align with the West in any anti-communist alliance, something that Pakistan did by joining the US-led SEATO. It also supported and encouraged Chinese participation in international events, and during the Bandung conference of 1955, signed the Panchsheel declaration with it.

But 1962 was to change any sense of solidarity into one of great mistrust and force India to rethink its own strategic security. It moved immediately to secure its alliance with the Soviet Union while still maintaining non-alignment as its key foreign policy goal. China moved closer to Pakistan and still calls Pakistan its "all weather friend", supporting its anti-Indian positions in every international forum.

Today, as bilateral ties bet-ween the two countries have rapidly normalised and trade between them stands at more than $60 billion annually, they need to revisit the 1962 war to ensure that any repeat is avoided. For this to happen, they need to re-examine the circumstances that led to war in the first place.

Here, Indian researchers are handicapped in their analysis because the expert committee report — the Brooks Henderson Report — has been kept secret. We have heard that the report castigates the political and military leadership of that period rather than merely citing the lack of equipment and overall unpreparedness on the part of India. In public discourse, India continues to see China as the aggressor and an ally that stabbed India in the back, while the Chinese blame Jawaharlal Nehru's Forward Policy for the debacle.

Two factors speak of Chinese pre-emption where 1962 is concerned. First, their prepared-ness for the war shown by their capacity to move in major battalions on both the western and eastern front. The Chinese withdrew from the eastern sector even though they still continue to claim Tawang but did not withdraw from Aksai Chin, an area that they originally needed to ensure a link between their two provinces of Xinjiang and Tibet.

However, another reason can be attributed to this muscle flexing by China. This was an inevitable rivalry for status as leaders in the region. These were two countries that gained independent nationhood status at the same time, were both champions of the anti-colonial struggle and yet both advocated entirely different political systems. China was a communist party-led single-party system while India was a fledgling but strong parliamentary democracy.

While both professed solidarity, both also saw their own system and ideas of social development as superior. Mao wanted to lead a third world revolution and Nehru had assumed the mantle of an international statesman in support of democratic politics. Both countries were proud and nationalist.

It is these two tendencies that may once again force a confrontation. China has already made aggressive territorial claims against Japan and other East Asian countries and continues to use every occasion to remind India of its territorial claims by denying visas to people from Arunachal Pradesh. In many ways, the Communist Party in China today uses nationalism as its main discourse for the aim of turning the country into a great power. It can no longer fall back on Maoist egalitarianism since it is now the second-largest capitalist economy in the world. China's blogosphere is replete with constant exhortations to defend Chinese national interest by regaining all its territories, including and especially Taiwan.

India too has its own nationalists who see China as the main threat to India and want to see India as a rising power. While discourses of nationalism are understandable, they are also dangerous and can lead to unwarranted xenophobia, forcing governments to take positions that are not necessarily pragmatic.

Both countries have changed enormously since 1962. They are both rising economies — and here again it is assumed that an inevitable rivalry will rise, especially for resources and markets. But both have a lot to gain from changing mutual perceptions of each other. While each remains prepared militarily — and here India is well behind China in its military modernisation and border area infrastructure development — investing in a sound mutually beneficial economic relationship and increased people-to-people contact is the best way forward.

Recent confidence-building measures amongst the two, inclu-ding more than 15 rounds of border talks and increased multilateral cooperation, have helped curtail the post-1962 trust deficit. Both countries now need to concentrate on their internal deve-lopment issues and ensure that they keep all channels of communication open between them.

We may not become best friends again but we can certainly ensure that we become cooperative neighbours and neither harms the other directly or indirectly. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said, "There is enough space for India and China both to grow."

Source: The TIMES OF INDIA