In China-India Border Battle, Some Echos of Run-Up to 1962 War

Courtesy of C.I.A. A part of a 1988 map showing the disputed area along the McMahon line, colored in red, on the eastern sector of the China-India border.

The latest alleged Chinese military incursion into Indian territory, in the form of dozens of soldiers who Indian officials say are camped six miles over the border in the Himalayas, has caused turmoil within India about the proper response.

The tensions harken back to the 1962 border war fought between India and China over an area hundreds of miles away. Then, as now, the Congress Party maintained a low-key response in the face of Chinese incursions over the border, and was roundly criticized for it.

“As the dispute enters its third week, alarm in the Indian capital is growing,” Gardiner Harris and Edward Wong wrote in The New York Times Friday.

India’s governing Congress Party’s response has been, so far, a model of restraint:

“I think talks are going on,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday, referring to the incursion as a “localized” problem. India’s foreign minister, Salman Kurshid, likened the incursions to “acne” that can be cured by “applying an ointment.” He will travel to China on May 9 to address the issue, he said last week.

But as the governing Congress Party’s political opponents, and a growing number of commentators and analysts, have been pushing for a more muscular response, Friday’s article notes:

“This government is cowardly, incompetent and good for nothing,” said Mulayam Singh Yadav, an important regional leader allied with the governing coalition. Arun Jaitley, a leading opposition politician, said in Parliament on Thursday, “You may have some security options, you may have some diplomatic options, but being clueless is not an option.”

In the run-up to the 1962 border war, China’s incursions, and stated ambition in the area was much more pronounced:

“Chinese Communists have been sending leaflets across their southern borders, stating that Tibet was the palm of China’s hand, and that all that remains to be done is win back the fingers: Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, the Northeast Frontier Agency and Ladakh,” Dana Adams Schmidt wrote in The New York Times on August 27, 1959, citing U.S. State Department reports. “Since the Chinese campaign in Tibet this summer Chinese troops have been reported to have penetrated into these areas,” she wrote. (Read the full article).

The damage to relations between the two countries was swift. “India’s Relations With China Cool,” a comprehensive analysis of friction between the countries, appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 29, 1959. “From protestations of never-ending mutual respect and assurances of permanent non-aggression, the two nations have moved to postures of hostility,” Richard J. H. Johnston wrote. (Read the full article).

By September of 1959, the Chinese “had infiltrated three areas of Ladakh,” Reuters reported.

But the Congress Party’s response was restrained:

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru “said he was prepared for arbitration by any party,” the Reuters report said, but that the McMahon line, the boundary between India and Tibet established in 1914, “has to be accepted.”

On Oct. 24, 1959, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru “firmly warned” China that India would “not bow down to threats or a show of force,” after 17 Indian border patrol troops were killed in a clash with Chinese troops in southern Ladakh, “forty miles inside Indian territory as India defines the border,” an article in The New York Times said. “There is growing apprehension in Indian political circles that unless New Delhi takes a much stronger attitude, the Chinese will be encouraged to push farther into Indian territory” before agreeing to negotiate, the article said. (Read the full article).

Courtesy of C.I.A. A part of a 2001 map showing the disputed area of Jammu and Kashmir claimed by India and the Chinese line of control.

That more muscular attitude, though, did not immediately emerge. By May 6, 1962, China had seized “most of 12,000 square miles that India says is hers” near the Chip Chap River, The New York Times reported. At that point, Mr. Nehru pledged to go to war if necessary, the article said. Again, “the government has been criticized by opposition parties, except the Communists, and the press, for having failed until now to meet force with force.” (Read the full article).

Three weeks later, a “cold war” between China and India had “brought trade between to two countries through Tibet to a virtual end,” A.M. Rosenthal reported for The New York Times. (Read the full article from May 29).

By Oct. 29, 1962, the Chinese had seized another 5,000 square miles of disputed territory in just over a month, David Binder wrote.

Some of India’s reluctance to go to war in 1962 has been attributed to a complete unpreparedness for battle in the area. By late October, the Indian Army had lost “thousands of men in the mountain clashes with the better-supplied Chinese,” Mr. Binder wrote, far more than the official Indian casualty figures of 2,500. “The high losses were attributed in part to unsuitable equipment,” he wrote, including “summer uniforms, knives and single shot rifles” for fighting at 10,000 feet and above. (Read the full article).

United Press International. Then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru speaking in New Delhi about the conflict with China in northern India on Nov. 13, 1962.

Despite their territorial gains, China declared a ceasefire on Nov. 2, 1962, and said it would withdraw “to positions 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) behind the line of actual control which existed between China and India on Nov. 7, 1959,” Reuters reported that day. The cease-fire was announced though an editorial in China’s state press that also deemed China’s actions “necessary,” as well as “just and entirely correct.”

The drive into Indian territory was to “repel the frenzied attacks of Indian troops,” Reuters reported the editorial as stating. Chinese forces “do not look upon themselves as victors,” the report quoted the editorial as saying, despite, in Reuters’ words, the “routing of the Indian troops.”