ABSTRACT
Did China betray India as Indian practitioners alleged? Did India become a reactionary country (a change from peace-loving) by joining the camp of Anglo-American imperialists and later Soviet revisionists as Beijing advocates alleged? Was the PRC decision to go to war in 1962 a result of an internal debate between Maoists who thought of Nehru as an enemy, and Zhou-ists, including Chen Yi who wanted to maintain a possibility of a negotiated boundary settlement? (In the former case war was ‘inevitable’; not so in the latter case.) Was the Indian ‘decision’ to create a war-like atmosphere the inevitable result of its ‘forward policy’ and its refusal to negotiate the boundary dispute except on its own terms? Is it the case that Beijing’s decision to go to war was the result of a deliberative process, but India drifted into a war, because it didn’t expect China to undertake a military attack, its military preparations against China were hasty, and occurred after the territorial dispute had become public and Nehru’s China policy came under attack from Indian public opinion, and bureaucratic politics of India? This chapter explains the processes that converted Sino-Indian peaceful
co-existence (1950-54) into a diplomatic re-alignment between India and the major powers. The change reduced the weight of China in Indian foreign affairs by opening up the importance of Russia and America in Indian foreign affairs; and these external changes increased India’s diplomatic space and manoeuvrability in its strategic arena. India’s tilt towards Moscow was not Nehru’s idea – it came from his ambassador to Russia, Dr S. Radhakrishnan. Nehru approved it but it implied an increased weight of Russia given the history of Sino-Soviet polarity and mistrust between Stalin and Mao and later Mao and Khrushchev. The Moscow linkage increased India’s and Nehru’s manoeuvrability in Kashmir and Indo-Pakistan affairs that balanced US-UK interventions on Pakistan’s behalf. It showed to Indians that Russia was a net producer of security for India – in diplomatic, economic and military affairs. Finally, one must consider the effect of bureaucratic politics in India’s
drift towards a conflict with China. Mullik was Nehru’s intelligence chief (1950-65) and his account, read with Neville Maxwell’s book, is useful to my analysis. Mullik should be used with care because his account is mostly un-documented and it is self-serving. Several key points, however, are telling.
1. Nehru authorized the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to monitor China; he authorized the use of patrols in disputed Sino-Indian border areas and the establishment of forward posts.
