Maxwell released report to expose Nehru’s mistakes that forced war on China
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Classified 1962 war report revealed for first time
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BJP, Congress spar over 1962 report ,Congress compromised on national security, must declassify report: BJP
Veteran Australian journalist Neville Maxwell has said
he chose to make public the classified 1962 Sino-Indian war report to
“rid Indian opinion of the delusion” that the war had been the result of
“an unprovoked Chinese aggression” and to expose mistakes made by
Jawaharlal Nehru that “forced the war on China.”
In
his first comments following his decision to make public last month the
still classified Henderson Brooks war report, the release of which was
first reported by The Hindu and subsequently triggered wide debate on the legacy of the war, Mr. Maxwell told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post
that by doing so he had “deprive[d] the Government of India the excuse
they’ve used to keep it secret, the false claim that it was to preserve
national security”.
He said: “I hope to achieve what I
have been trying to do for nearly 50 years! To rid Indian opinion of
the induced delusion that in 1962 India was the victim of an unprovoked
surprise Chinese aggression, to make people in India see that the truth
was that it was mistakes by the Indian government, specifically Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, that forced the war on China.”
Mr.
Maxwell said in the interview he had been trying “for years” to make
the report public, including by making it available to several
newspapers in India in 2012. The newspapers chose not to publish. His
website has, however, been inaccessible in India after The Hindu
reported that the war report had been made public. He said the website
“collapsed under its own weight” and “not because of government
censorship” as some Indian media reports suggested.
Mr.
Maxwell repeated his long-held view that “all that talk about China’s
‘unprovoked aggression’ is utterly false, the truth is that India was
the aggressor in 1962” — views he expressed in his 1970 book India’s China War.
Mr.
Maxwell’s conclusions that China was all the while focussed on peaceful
settlement and that India was to blame entirely for the war have,
however, been questioned by other scholars, including John W. Garver.
Even
in China, many scholars today see many factors, beyond Nehru’s mistaken
“forward policy,” at play in China’s decision to launch an attack, from
domestic turbulence in the wake of the 1958 Great Leap Forward famine
to unrest in Tibet.
Classified 1962 war report revealed for first time
The Hindu Archives
A wounded Indian soldier being evacuated to hospital during the 1962 war with China.
For the first time, a large section of the still classified Henderson
Brooks Report, which details a comprehensive operational review of
India’s military debacle in 1962, has been made public.
A more than 100-page section of the first volume of the report, which
includes an exhaustive operational review of the India-China war over
both western and eastern sectors, has been published by Australian
journalist Neville Maxwell on his website.
The now retired Mr. Maxwell was a former correspondent of The Times of
London who reported on the war from New Delhi. He authored in 1970
‘India’s China War’ — a path-breaking, yet controversial, account of the
conflict which angered the Indian establishment by drawing upon
classified information to highlight the flawed decision-making that led
to defeat at the hands of the Chinese.
Explaining his decision to release, for the first time, four chapters of
the still classified report, Mr. Maxwell said he believed he was
“complicit in a continuing cover-up” by keeping the report to himself.
“The reasons for the long-term withholding of the report must be
political, indeed probably partisan, perhaps even familial,” he wrote in
an explanatory note on his website.
The report indicts the highest levels of the government — from the then
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's own office and the Defence Ministry —
particularly for its Forward Policy, which was enforced, the report
reveals, despite considerable concerns and objections from on-the-ground
military commands that lacked resources.
It underlines the deep disconnect between Delhi and Army commands on assessing how China would react to the Forward Policy.
BJP, Congress spar over 1962 report
Congress compromised on national security, must declassify report: BJP
In a battle of sorts over a war, the Congress and the
Bharatiya Janata Party traded charges on Tuesday after the release of a
classified report on the Sino-Indian War by an Australian journalist, as
exclusively reported by The Hindu on Tuesday.
While
the BJP attacked the Congress saying it had compromised national
security and demanded that the report be made public, the Congress
accused the BJP of trying to play “cheap politics” on the eve of the Lok
Sabha elections.
The main Opposition party
questioned the UPA government’s reluctance, even after so many years, to
declassify the secret report, which reportedly blamed the Nehru
government.
Journalist Neville Maxwell, quoting from
the Henderson Brooks report, said it blamed Nehru’s “Forward Policy” for
the 1962 debacle.
Reacting to the BJP criticism,
Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said: “I don’t think such cheap
allegations deserve a response. Everybody knows that what happened in
1962 was a product of a complex multitude of diverse factors.”
Those
who say that “a unilateral factor” had caused the debacle are trying to
“miniaturise” things that were very complex, he said. If the BJP wanted
to politicise the 1962 war with China, “much more” politics could be
played over the Kargil War which took place during NDA rule, the
Congress leader said. “But I am not going to do it because on such
matters the nation stands together.”
BJP
spokesperson Prakash Javadekar claimed the report had shown the
Congress’s approach towards national security and defence preparedness.
“The
government then was of the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, it
is the Congress government led by Manmohan Singh. Both governments are
guilty of not giving enough attention to the very important issue of
national security,” Mr. Javadekar said.
Keywords: 1962 war report, classified 1962 war report, Henderson Brooks Report, India’s military debacle, Indo-China war
Keywords: 1962 war report, classified 1962 war report, Henderson Brooks Report, India’s military debacle, Indo-China war
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