The Chinese aggression 1962: Attempt to discredit Nehru

 

 

The Chinese aggression 1962: Attempt to discredit Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru, who tried to build a bridge between democracy and communism and mediated in many world crises at the height of the Cold War between the two rival blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union, stood demoralized after the 1962 Chinese aggression on India. He never recovered from that shock, and eventually died on May 27, 1964 as a broken-hearted man.

During the Korean War 1950, China depended on Nehru to mediate to resolve the crisis. The Indian ambassador to Mao’s China K.M.Panikkar was the only link between the Chinese authorities and the Government of India, on the one hand, and China and the Western block, on the other. Indian efforts succeeded in resolving the crisis and averted the Korean War turning into a nuclear war. Nehru resisted the temptation of India replacing Mao's Communist China as the permanent member of the UN Security Council, when America offered the membership. Being an idealist and visionary, he knew the brinkmanship could not be a substitute for statesmanship. He did not want to isolate an antagonise China. His priority was peace and security to consolidate in building new India that just secured the independence after 200 years of colonial rule

Nehru’s 35 days good-will tour of the Soviet Union and other European countries in June-July 1955 was an epoch in world history. He succeeded in bringing the understanding between the two warring blocs. The Soviet Union was going through the de-Stalinization process under Marshall Bulganin and Premier Khrushchev.   It attached great importance to Nehru’s visit and wanted to show to the world that it was genuinely interested in ending the East-West tension. Khrushchev accorded the unprecedented reception to Nehru during his 15 days stay in the Soviet Union. The crowds swelled everywhere to receive him. At many places public holidays were declared to enable the people to turn up in large numbers to greet the apostle of peace on a mission.  No leader before him and since was ever accorded such warm exception by the Soviet Union. As the Manchester Guardian reported,"The warmth of reception to Mr. Nehru in Moscow is evidence of the deep and wide spread respect and admiration for what Mr. Nehru stands for in the present critical world situation, recognition of his efforts to secure improvement in international relations.” And “Nehru’s visit became the most popular public festival of the world.” 

Nehru was conditioned to think in terms of peace, and assumed his peace-loving country wouldn’t be a victim of aggression for “there are not many instances in history where one country, that is India, has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the Chinese government and people, and to plead their cause in the councils of the world”, as Nehru said in his broadcast to the nation, after the Chinese attack, on October 22, 1962. There is no parallel in history of such a trusted and reliable friend being stabbed in the back.

He was not ignorant about the Chinese designs. His nonalignment policy was meant to extend the area of peace and defuse war-like situations. The Panchsheel — the five principles of peaceful coexistence — that was signed on April 29, 1954 between India and China, was a corollary of the nonalignment policy he pursued. It was adopted by the Afro-Asian bloc at the 1955 Bandung Conference and subsequently by the United Nations as a code of international conduct among nations. Incidentally, it was Prime Minister Nehru who introduced Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to the world at the Bandung Conference.

His policy of befriending China was deliberate, as he felt there was no alternative to it. In his July 1, 1954 letter to chief ministers, Nehru wrote: “The uncommon factor is that China had adopted very largely the communist way and India the parliamentary democratic way... Another and major uncommonness in the two... was India’s stress on peaceful progress and China having followed a harsher and more violent course.” He realised this soon after the Communist revolution in China on October 1, 1949, with India one of the first countries to recognise the regime of Mao Zedong.

In another letter to chief ministers on December 22, 1962, Nehru wrote: “China has repudiated the doctrine of peaceful coexistence... It believes in the inevitability of war and, therefore, does not want tensions in the world to lessen. It dislikes nonalignment... It is not afraid even of a nuclear war...” because it could afford to lose a few hundred million people and yet survive as the most populated country. China did not like India and the Soviet Union befriending each other. It was on the invitation of Nikita Khrushchev that Nehru had launched the “greatest peace mission” of his life to rescue the UN in 1960, after the Congo crisis, when the Soviet Union threatened to withdraw from the world body and demanded the shifting of its headquarters from New York.

In spite of being no match for the major powers in military and economic power, China could not accept the growing stature of India internationally. Nehru represented India’s best traditions — a true Buddhist and Gandhian at that — of exercising moral authority. Addressing the Non Aligned Conference in Belgrade, September 1961, Nehru spoke of the objectives of the movement: “At the present juncture one has to see how to lessen international tensions, how at least to remove some of the obstructions to peace, how at least to prevent war coming.”The nonaligned movement had become the world’s largest peace movement, and ultimately contributed to the detente and ending of the cold war

Nehru’s prestige and position internationally reached new heights. India came to be regarded with respect in the community of nations. His non-alignment policy was showing results in defusing international crises — like the Korean war, the Indochina conflict, the Suez crisis and the Congo crisis — and bringing rapprochement between the two warring blocs. What prompted China to attack India in 1962? V.K. Krishna Menon, in an interview with Nehru’s biographer Michael Brecher, said the main aim of the Chinese attack was to discredit Nehru.

The success of India’s parliamentary democracy and its nonalignment policy was a serious challenge to China’s hegemony. As Bertrand Russell said in his Unarmed Victory, Nehru was more willing to negotiate the dispute than Mao’s China. He accepted the Colombo proposals to end the India-China conflict, but China did not accept them. The expansionist China was never interested in settling the border dispute with India, as it suits her to keep it in perpetuity.

According to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s biographer, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the Chinese attack was rooted in something bigger than a border dispute:“The Chinese had thought that non-alignment was just a passing phase... but when they discovered it was growing in strength and that the Soviet Union, with whom they were quarrelling, was strongly supporting the nonaligned countries, felt nonalignment had become a force to reckon with...the Chinese attacked India in the hope that Nehru’s socialist and nonaligned polices would be discredited, the right wing would take over and political feelings in India would get polarised between Right and Left.”

The New York Times, October 22, 1962, echoed that the Chinese attack was meant to discredit Nehru as he wanted “to establish an Indian sphere of influence in Asia that would far surpass that of the colonialist system formally set up by the British Empire”. Nehru’s position was too envious for the Chinese to bear it. However, if anything, the Chinese aggression had vindicated the success of Nehru’s policy of nonalignment. When he appealed for military aid, following the Chinese aggression, some 80 heads of states, including Pakistan, Israel, France, Britain, the United States and the USSR, had pledged support to India, even Pope XXVIII openly expressing his sympathy and support for India.

The fact that both the Western and the Communist blocs were willing to give military aid was an indication of the strength of Nehru’s India. This had in fact isolated China all the more from the community of nations. The strong expression of indignation by several countries, cutting across political systems, against the Chinese aggression forced China to retreat unilaterally from Indian territory much before the arrival of arms supplies in India from foreign nations.

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