Declassify 1962 India-China war report, reappraise the civil – military relations

The release of a portion of the ‘top secret’ T.B. Henderson Brooks – Premindra Singh Bhagat inquiry report on the 1962 India-China war by an Australian journalist Neville Maxwell has come at a time when the civil – military relations are under the scanner all over again, due in no small part to the allegedly inappropriate conduct of a former Chief of Army Staff who dragged the government to court over his age row and how an otherwise routine movement of troops coinciding with the date of court hearing gave rise to fears in the government of a possible ‘coup’; the unseemly controversy surrounding the frequent crashes by Soviet-era MiG fighter jets; and most recently, a series of naval mishaps that eventually led to the resignation of the Navy chief Admiral DK Joshi.

Let us look at the substantive portions of the 126-page section of the report that was released online by Neville Maxwell, who was the Delhi correspondent of the Times of London during the war. For one, the report squarely attributes the debacle to an unsound military plan. It goes on to blame the then army leadership, the intelligence apparatus, the bureaucrats in the ministries of defence and external affairs, and the political class, not necessarily in that order, for the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese. The army leadership, for overruling the field commanders; the intelligence chief, for assuming, erroneously, that the Chinese would not resort to use of force; and the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership, for pushing for a ‘Forward Policy’ of establishing military outposts in areas claimed by China and launching aggressive patrols without the necessary army wherewithal.

The report notes, among other things, the following:

* The government who politically must have been keen to recover territory advocated a cautious policy whilst Army HQ dictated a policy that was clearly militarily unsound.

* The Chief of Army Staff did not present the correct military assessment to the political leadership on the forward policy in spite of the fact that the military intelligence believed that China would retaliate against any move by India to reclaim territory.

* A meeting was held in the Prime Minister’s Office on 2 November 1961 which was attended among others by the defence minister, the foreign secretary, the Chief of Army Staff and the director Intelligence Bureau (DIB). It appears that the DIB was of the opinion that the Chinese would not react to our establishing new posts and that they were not likely to use force against any of our posts even if they were in a position to do so.

The Ministry of Defence has sought to take refuge under the pretext that the inquiry committee report remains top secret because of the extremely sensitive nature of its contents “which are of current operational value.” Some scholars have debunked the government’s claim, saying that declassification of the report would not hinder or jeopardise in any manner the contemporary political and military attitudes and affairs. On the contrary, they have argued, it was necessary in the interest of generating an open and honest debate in the country about the circumstances leading up to the war so that the right lessons could be drawn. It has been pointed out that the government ought to take the nation into confidence and encourage a critical analysis of what went wrong and how to avoid a repetition in the future. As a newspaper editorial said, “There needs, instead, be a thorough reading of the report and the manner of its eventual public availability for a tutorial on India’s inexplicably ostrich-like approach to archival material. If today we are reacting to the report as if it were still 1963, given the lack of clarity on military assessment of operational details, it reflects the state’s reluctance to allow access to material essential for proper history writing, the kind of history without which there cannot be coherent and informed public debate.”

The release of a section of the report is a wake-up call of sorts for the Indian political and military leadership. To quote a former diplomat Hardeep S Puri, “The contents of the report point to three extremely disturbing trends that were in evidence in the 1960s. Some of these have continuing relevance even 52 years later. These merit a full national debate in order to prevent the recurrence of a 1962-type fiasco. They relate to a continuing civil-military disconnect, serious gaps in training and provisioning of equipment, inadequate or flawed intelligence which contributed to bizarre decision-making at the army headquarters and by the political leadership in the ministries of defence and external affairs, and at the PMO.”

India would do well to reappraise its civil – military relations unless, of course, it wants to go down the path that George Santayana so eloquently warned against: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”