On 20 October 1962, after months of skirmishes between India and China; and tactical military manoeuvres by both sides along the border and disputed territories, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army launched two massive simultaneous attacks on India, around 1000 km apart, catching the Indian leadership and an under-prepared army largely off-guard. The twin attacks signalled the start of what is known as the Sino-Indian war involving the two Himalayan neighbours.
The war can be seen as an endgame that started with several minor and major disagreements over territory.
For instance, when it came to the Himalayan region, India’s position was that the mountains were natural boundaries of the Indian subcontinent since ancient times and so should continue to be India’s modern boundaries. China, on its part, claimed that the ‘disputed’ Himalayan areas were geographically and culturally part of Tibet.
On 1 July 1954, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated in a note: “All our old maps dealing with the frontier should be carefully examined, and where necessary, withdrawn. New maps should be printed showing our northern and northeastern frontier without any reference to any ‘line’. These new maps should also not state there is any undemarcated territory [...] Both as flowing from our policy and as a consequence of our Agreement with China, this frontier should be considered a firm and definite one which is not open to discussion with anybody.”
In 1956, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai said he had no claims over Indian-controlled territory. But he later stated that Aksai Chin was already under Chinese jurisdiction. With China not recognising the McMahon Line, Chinese maps showed the North East Frontier Area (NEFA) and Aksai Chin as their territory.
India officially claimed Aksai Chin in October 1958. Then, the Dalai Lama escaped to India after a rebellion in Tibet, further straining India-China relations. In 1959 there were major armed clashes between Chinese and Indian troops in August at Longju in the east, and in October at the Kongka Pass in the west.
In 1960, Enlai informally suggested a deal: India would drop its claims to Aksai Chin; in return China would not make claims over the NEFA. But Nehru believed China lacked a legitimate claim over both areas, and was not ready to concede them.
China retorted that India had “grand plans in Tibet”.
India started its so-called ‘Forward Policy’ in 1961, with the aim of creating outposts behind advancing Chinese troops to cut their supplies and force them north of the disputed line. Apparently, the thinking among India’s top military commanders was that China was not in favour of a major escalation. Throughout the first half of 1962, border skirmishes continued.
In June, Indian soldiers set up an outpost in Dhola, which India considered to be its territory. On 8 September, a unit of Chinese army closed in on Dhola. There was a tense standoff, though no exchange of fire took place. Three days later there were stark instructions from the Indian side: all forward posts and patrols were given permission “to fire on any armed Chinese who entered Indian territory”.
In the first week of October, Indian troops were deployed to south of the Thag La Ridge.
On 10 October, an Indian patrol heading to Yumtso La faced mortar fire.
The Indian military leadership was still seemingly confident that China would not launch a full-scale war. Astonishingly, just a month before the war started, Maj Gen J. S. Dhillon said that “a few rounds fired at the Chinese would cause them to run away”.
By attacking India on 20 October 1962, China sought to expel Indian forces from the Chip Chap valley in the western sector, and capture both banks of the Namka Chu river in the eastern sector. By 24 October, with Chinese troops 15 km inside Indian territory, fighting ceased for three weeks. Zhou sent a letter to Nehru in which the Chinese leader proposed a negotiated settlement of the boundary; that both sides should disengage and withdraw 20 km from current lines of actual control; a Chinese withdrawal in the NEFA; and that in Aksai Chin the two countries don’t cross lines that were currently controlled.
Zhou followed it with another letter.
Meanwhile, less than a week after China’s 20 October attack on India, the Soviet Union, neck-deep in the Cuban Missile crisis, revised its earlier pro-India position, adopting a more neutral stance. Spelling out the country’s position, an influential Soviet journal wrote that the McMahon line was “notoriously the result of British imperialism”, and consequently illegal.
In a resolution, the Indian Parliament underlined the country’s intention to “drive out the aggressors from the sacred soil of India”.
With Nehru not accepting the Chinese proposals, fighting resumed on 14 November. China achieved its objectives of conquering Indian territory which it had claimed, and so it declared a unilateral ceasefire on November 21, effectively ending the war.
In recent years, some experts have claimed that besides India’s lack of preparedness, its refusal to use its air force was the deciding factor in the war. “[The] use of combat air power would have turned the tables on the Chinese and the 1962 war could well have been a debacle for China,” a senior air force officer wrote in an article in the Indian Defence Review in 2006.
Perhaps the most significant change after 1962 was that India decided to modernise its armed forces. It can be argued that India was more prepared, militarily, in subsequent conflicts. Many foreign policy observers also look at the Sino-Indian war as a painful moment in India’s history that taught the country’s leaders not to be naïve when it came to matters of national security and international relations.
Also on this day:
1978 — Virender Sehwag, Indian cricketer, was born
1990 — Kona Prabhakara Rao, Governor of Maharashtra, passed away
2010 — Parthasarathy Sharma, Indian cricketer, passed away
