“My Dear Jawaharlal” – Sardar Patel on China
Courtesy VigilOnline, these fascinating excerpts from a letter penned by Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel to PM Jawaharlal Nehru (emphasis mine). I wonder the India that might have been had the Sardar lived longer.
*** Excerpts from Sardar Patel’s Letter to Nehru on China dt. 07 Nov, 1950Â ***
My Dear Jawaharlal,
Ever since my return from Ahmedabad and after the Cabinet meeting the same day which I had to attend at practically 15 minutes notice and for which I regret I was not able to read all the papers,I thought I should share with you what is passing through my mind.
I have carefully gone through (all) the correspondence…but I regret to say that neither of them (our Ambassador and the Chinese government) comes out well as a result of this study…The Chinese Government has tried to delude us by professins of peaceful intentions. My own feeling is that at a cruicial period they managed to instil into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means.
There can be no doubt that during the period covered by this correspondence,the Chinese must have been concentrating for an onslaught on Tibet. The final action of the Chinese, in my judgement, is little short of perfidy. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence. From the latest position, it appears that we shall not be able to rescue the Dalai Lama.
Our Ambassador has been at great pains to find an explanation or justification for Chinese policy and actions. As the External Affairs Ministry remarked in one of their telegrams, there was a lack of firmness and unnecessary apology in one or two representations that he made to the Chinese Government on our behalf.
.
…During the last several months, outside the Russian camp, we have been practically alone in championing the cause of Chinese entry into the UNO and in securing from the Americans assurances on the question of Formosa…In spite of this,China is not convinced about our disinterestedness; it continues to regard us with suspicion and the whole psychology is one, at least outwardly, of scepticism,perhaps mixed with a little hostility.
I doubt if we can go any further than we have done already …Their last telegram to us is an act of gross discourtesy not only in the summary way it disposes of our protest against the entry of Chinese forces into Tibet but also in the wild insinuation that our attitude is determined by foreign influences. It looks as though it is not a friend speaking in that language but a potential enemy.
With this background, we have to consider what new situation we are now faced with as a result of the disappearance of Tibet…Throughout history, we have been seldom worried about our North-East frontier. The Himalayas have been regarded as an impregnable barrier against any threat from the North.
…We can therefore, safely assume that very soon they (Chinese government) will disown all the stipulations which Tibet has entered into in the past. That throws all frontier and commercial settlements with Tibet, in accordance with which we had been functioning and acting during the last half a century, into the melting pot.
…Chinese ambitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side but also include important parts of Assam. They have their ambitions in Burma also.
…While our Western and North-Western threat to security is still as prominent as before, a new threat has developed from the North and North-East.
Thus for the first time after centuries, India’s defence has to concentrate on two fronts simultaneously. Our defence measures have so far been based on calculations of superiority over Pakistan. We shall now have to reckon with communist China in the North and North-East, a communist China which has definite ambitions and aims and which does not in any way seem friendly towards us.
Let us also consider the political conditions on this potentially troublesome frontier. Our Northern or Northeastern approaches consist of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Darjeeling and tribal areas in Assam. They are weak from the point of view of communications.Continuous defensive lines do not exist. There is an almost unlimited scope for infiltration. Police protection is limited to a very small number of passes. There, too, our outposts do not seem to be fully manned. Our contact with these areas is by no means close and intimate.
…I am sure the Chinese…would not miss any oppurtunity of exploiting these weak spots, partly in support of their ideology and partly their ambition. In my judgement, therefore,the situation is one in which we cannot afford to be either complacent or vacillating. We must ahve a clear idea of what we wish to acheive and the methods by which we should acheive it. Any lack of decisiveness in formulating our objectives or pursuing our policy to attain them is bound to weaken us and increase the threats.
Along with these external dangers, we shall now have to face serious internal problems as well. Hitherto,the Communist Party of India has found some difficulty in contacting communists abroad, or in getting supplies of arms, literature etc.from them. They had to contend with the difficult Burmese and Pakistan frontiers in the East or with the long seaboard. They shall now have a comparitively easy means of access to Chinese communists, and through them to other foreign communists. Infiltration of spies, fifth columnists and communists would now be easier.
…It is, of course, impossible for me to exhaustively set out all the problems. I have, however, given below some of the problems which,in my opinion, require early solutions, around which we have to build our administrative or military policy measures.
- A military and intelligence appreciation of the Chinese threat to India, both on the frontier and internal security.
- An examination of our military position and such re-disposition of forces as might be necessary,particularly with the idea of guarding important routes or areas which are likely to be the subject of di(s)pute.
- An appraisement of the strength of our forces and, if necessary, reconsideration of our retrenchment plans for the Army in the light of these new threats.
- A long term consideration of our defence needs.
- …
- The political and administrative steps which we should take to strengthen our Northern and Northeastern frontiers.
- Measures of internal security in the border areas,such as U.P, Bihar , Bengal and Assam .
- Improvements of our communications,road,rail,air and wireless in these areas and with the frontier outposts.
- Policing and intelligence of frontier outposts.
- The future of our mission at Lhasa and the trade posts at Gyangtse and Yatung and the forces we have in operation in Tibet to guard the trade routes.
- The policy in regard to the McMohan Line.
*** End of Excerpts ***
* This letter of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel is excerpted from the book:”Makers of India’s Foreign Policy : From Raja Rammohun Roy to Yashwant Sinha” – by J.N. Dixit, published by India Today.
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History proved that Patel was right.Nehru was a visionary without any practical sense.
“Nehru was a visionary” yeah he had wild imagination, does not make him a visionary.
Nehru a visionary? What vision did he have except self-glorification? His vision of India has become eternal nightmare. His foreign policy was slapped back on both cheeks – by China in 1962 and Pakistan ever since he went to the UN over Kashmir (when the Indian Army was about to throw out the infiltrators across the Hindu Kush). And to top it all, the great democrat left behind a dynasty to rule India.
@Babu (#1)
“Nehru was a visionaryâ€, yeah right! More of Blunder of a century: http://satyabhashnam.blogspot.com/2008/08/jawahar-lal-nehru-blunder-of-century.html
@Gypsy (#3)
Hindu Khush was once called Hindu Raaj. Hindu Khush in persian/arabic means Slayer of Hindus. Its a shame we still use and propagate that term, unknowingly.
I am surprised that the GOI debacle over AP in the ADP has not been more seriously aired in these columns. The world trade accords mean that Chinese goods are having to be allowed into Bharat. For a country that has harped on so much Gandhi’s self reliance, there is no better policy to be pursued than for the substitution of Chinese imports by home manufactures and those of friendly countries.
Australia’s blatant championing of China should be paid back by boycotting Australia’s education institutions. There is even less reason for Bharat’s talents to be invested in countries that have aligned themselves with China.
Whatever NEhru was !!! Sardar Patel was definitely a task master and had he being there things would certainly been different… Thanks for putting this up
Courtesy CBCNN, this snippet from today’s Washington Post:
Shantanu,
Can you list all the follies this moron of a prime minister has committed ever since he was installed by the supposed “father of nation”?
@Sid: One blog post may not be enough for that! On a more serious note, for his economic follies, do read Sanjeev Sabhlok’s “Breaking Free of Nehru” (available as a free download)
Shantanu,
I read Sanjeev’s book. Apart from the his view of Indian history (which I strongly disagree with), he has described follies of Nehruvian economics well. But what is more important: someone needs to take out his foreign policy as well as education policy and show the follies in detail.
Fair point Sid…I should look around…There must be something written on this (I hope)
B Shantanu
Are you suggesting that if Nehru accepted that offer made by the US and USSR in 1955, India would have been on the Security Council ever since then? Good god, what kind of politician this guy was?
Nehru was a disater for the country. First he lost UNSC seat for India, lost war with China, made sure tens of millions of Indians go to bed hungry. Made sure Kashmir is a festering wound.
And worst of all he hoisted his useless dynasty on us. And we still celebrate his birthday as childrens Day when millions of kids still don’t have access to basic education and go to bed hungry.
There is way too much needless hero worship in India.
@Malavika,
There is way too much needless hero worship in India.Swapan Dashgupta expressed this in a sentence about Nehru and our worshipping him:
“India has been to kind to Nehru”
Some excerpts from Man who saw the truth by Claude Arpi (emphasis added):
Sydney Wignall is dead. He died on April 4 in the UK. But who is Sydney Wignall? Very few have ever heard of him in India.
His obituary in The Telegraph (London) says: “Sydney Wignall, who has died aged 89, was an adventurer who, in 1955, led the first Welsh Himalayan Expedition with the intention of climbing Gurla Mandhata, at 25,355ft the highest peak in Chinese-occupied Tibet; in his book Spy on the Roof of the World, he recounted how he was captured by the Red Army and held in jail accused of being a CIA spy.â€
He was not a CIA agent; he worked for the Indian Military Intelligence, though.
..Though he died unknown in India, Wignall has done something great for India.
..Already during the mid-fifties, the Indian Army strongly suspected the Chinese of wanting to construct a road linking their new acquired provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang. Was the road crossing Indian territory?
It is in London that Wignall was first contacted by Lt Col HW Tobin, the vice-president of the Himalayan Club and editor of the Himalayan Journal. Tobin asked Wignall if he would “do some friends a favourâ€. He was later introduced to an Intelligence officer, code-named ‘Singh’ from the Indian High Commission in London.
Wignall was briefed by ‘Singh’ about the Chinese presence in Western Tibet and the possibility of the existence of a military road.
Different incidents occurred in the early 50s which should have woken the Government of India out of its soporific Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai dream world.
First, the harassment of the Indian trade agent in Gartok, which was without doubt linked with the work which had started on the Tibet-Xinjiang highway; in 1953, the Chinese even forced Jawaharlal Nehru to close the Indian agency as the presence of an Indian official was embarrassing for the PLA.
Brigadier SS Mallik, then Indian Military Attaché in Beijing, made some references to the Chinese road-building activities in a report to the Government around that time; a year later, the Military Attaché would confirm the construction of the strategic highway through Indian territory in Aksai Chin.
The mission given to Wignall by the soon to-be Indian Army Chief, General KS Thimayya, was to check the information. It was thought that the Chinese would not suspect an innocuous group of foreign mountaineers.
..Unfortunately, Wignall and his companions were captured soon after they crossed the border town of Taglakot (known as Purang in Tibetan).
They, however, had the opportunity to witness the Chinese road-building activities.
Although the Official Report of the 1962 War prepared by the Union Ministry of Defence mentions the famous road, it does not give any detail about Nehru’s biggest blunder: Ignoring for several years that a road being built on Indian territory. The Official Report states: “China started constructing motorable road in summer 1955. …On October 6, 1957, the Sinkiang-Tibet road was formally opened with a ceremony in Gartok and 12 trucks on a trial run from Yarkand reached Gartok.â€
It was Wignall who had informed the Government of India about the Chinese scheme. Wignall was eventually caught by the Chinese Army, interrogated and kept prisoner for several weeks.
He was later released in the midst of winter in a high altitude pass. The Chinese had thought that he would never survive the blizzard or find his way back to India. But, after an incredible journey, he managed to reach India and was able to report to Lt Col ‘Baij’ Mehta, his contact in the Military Intelligence. The Army in turn informed the Prime Minister and VK Krishna Menon, the India’s arrogant Union Defence Minister.
Wignall was later told by his Army contact: “Our illustrious Prime Minister Nehru, who is so busy on the world stage telling the rest of mankind how to live, has too little time to attend to the security of his own country. Your material was shown to Nehru by one of our senior officers, who plugged hard. He was criticised by Krishna Menon in Nehru’s presence for ‘lapping up American CIA agent-provocateur propaganda.’ Menon has completely suppressed your information.â€
“So it was all for nothing?†I [Wignall] asked. “Perhaps notâ€, Singh, Wignall’s contact, responded. “We will keep working away at Nehru. Some day he must see the light, and realise the threat communist Chinese occupation of Tibet poses for India.â€
Nehru saw the Light on October 20, 1962. Unfortunately, it was way too late.
General Thimayya, who became Army Chief in 1957, was forced to retire in 1961. He said in his valedictory address to the Indian Army Officer Corps: “I hope that I am not leaving you as cannon fodder for the Chinese communists.â€
The Government of India did not acknowledge that already in 1955, it had information about the Aksai Chin road. The issue was discussed for the first time in the Lok Sabha in August 1959 only.
***
Also read: Excerpts from “Art of War”
The road mentioned in my comment #15 above is being repaved:
China repaves major road linking Xinjiang, Tibet
English.news.cn 2012-07-11 16:59:22
URUMQI, July 11 (Xinhua) — Repaving work on the Xinjiang section of the Xinjiang-Tibet National Road, the highest traversable road in the world, will be completed next month,
…
The repaving, the first in the road’s 50-year history, involves replacing the road’s gravel surface with asphalt concrete, said Ma Zhixin, deputy head of the road administration bureau of Yecheng county.
..
The 2,143-km Xinjiang-Tibet National Road runs along the southwestern border of China. It starts from Yecheng county in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region and ends in Lhatse in the Tibet autonomous region. The Xinjiang section is 654.8 km in length.
Shantanu-ji,
Thanks for that Sydney Wignall story. I had no idea…. What an amazing story. A movie can be made on that.
Also shows that communist Nehru was such a moron. Its a shame that India has been ruled as his family fiefdom for the most part.
Not at all, RC..This is a story worth sharing…Amazing indeed..
*** COMMENTS COMBINED ***
Dated September 28, 1955: UN seat: Nehru clarifies: Prime Minister Nehru has categorically denied any offer, formal or informal, having been received about a seat for India in the UN Security Council. He made this statement in reply to a short notice question in the Lok Sabha on September 27 by Dr. J.N. Parekh whether India had refused a seat informally offered to her in the Security Council. The Prime Minister said: “There has been no offer, formal or informal, of this kind. Some vague references have appeared in the press about it which have no foundation in fact. The composition of the Security Council is prescribed by the UN Charter, according to which certain specified nations have permanent seats. No change or addition can be made to this without an amendment of the Charter. There is, therefore, no question of a seat being offered and India declining it. Our declared policy is to support the admission of all nations qualified for UN membership.â€
Source: The Hindu : Miscellaneous / This Day That Age : dated September 28, 1955: UN seat: Nehru clarifies.
Sri Bhagwat, You wonder what India would be if Patel lived longer. By November 1950, Nehru had it up to his nose with right-wing coterie of Patel, Rajedra Prasad and PD Tondon. At insitance of Nehru, Congress quickly dumped Tandon since upcoming elections can only be won by Nehru and not Tandon. Nehru almost sacked Patel but dropped the idea when he found out Patel was dying. When he visited Patel in hospital, Patel said “you seem to have lost faith in meâ€. Nehru replied, “I am losing faith in myselfâ€. At 1950 Congress meet in Delhi, Patel looked around at crowds and wispered to Tandon “These people did not come to see us – they came to see Jawaharâ€. If Patel lived longer, right-winger would continue use him against Nehru resulting in one or both quit politics. India would be in worthless political gridlock as it is now.
Sri Bhagwat, I am surpised that even Washington Post is lying of Nehru giving UNSC Seat to China. China was UNSC founding member since 1946 – long before India was even a country. China then split into two in 1949 as RoC and PRoC. Until 1972, world recognined Chiang Kai-shel’s Taiwan based government as legit. At no point was India ever in race. What India DID do was try make PRoC as general member – not give own membership. India also championed entry of several new countries into UN. Some people got confused between the two. That includes many that even worked for UN later like Shashi Tharoor who is now a congressman. That however is STILL A LIE.
Sri Bhagwat, Timmayya was forced to resign in 1961 but what was the cause of conflict between Timmayya and Menon? Timmayya refused Menon orders to deploy soldiers into Aksai Chin which has that road to Tibet. But why did Communist Menon ask Timmayya to send soldiers to Aksai Chin? Because if he didn’t, he would continue to be blamed for dragging feet and trying to give Indian land to china. They had differences over appointments. But if Timmayya was not going to defy him and parliament will not take it as excuse enough, what other option did Menon have other than appointing thise that would follow the plan? Padma Vibhushan VK Krishna Menon – not only a great defense minister but responsible for our freedom from British, annexation of Goa, frustrate Pakistani attempts internationalize Kashmir issue in UN – was stabbed in the back and stomach by politicians and military alike.
From MYTH THAT MUST BE BUSTED AT EARLIEST by Claude Arpi, 10 April 2014:
…It is necessary to come back to the Henderson-Brooks-Bhagat Report and the role played by Neville Maxwell. The Australian journalist, who recently ‘released’ the famous report by posting it on his website, has been propagating a wrong interpretation of history, that India attacked China in 1962. Even presuming that Indian troops may have crossed what the Chinese perceived as the international border, many other factors have to be taken into consideration.
At age 87, why Maxwell remains a great advocate of China’s theory that India was the aggressor, is a mystery to me. It is not that I have any doubt that Nehru committed blunder after blunder, but Maxwell’s version is truly a biased over-simplification of the facts.
…
Reading the HBBR does not show that India forced a war on China, it just proves that India was not prepared to successfully defend some new forward positions ordered by Krishna Menon (and Nehru) in North-East Frontier Agency and Ladakh. It is undoubtedly a Himalayan blunder in itself; it demonstrates the foolishness of the Prime Minister (and his arrogant Defence Minister), but it was certainly not the root-cause of the War. The ‘forward policy’ was, however, the ideal pretext for Mao Tse-tung to show that India could not go unpunished for insulting China by giving refuge to the Dalai Lama and his followers.
…
The question of how India could attack without arms, ammunitions, clothing, food or basic supplies is not explained. The HBBR even says that some Indian troops starved for days.
…
However, many other factors came into play, but first and foremost the flight of the Dalai Lama in March/April 1959 and his subsequent asylum in India, changed the rapport between India and China. This is an aspect that Maxwell has totally ignored. China has been aggressive from the day it entered Tibet in October 1950. Let us not forget that China had no border with India till that time. When Nehru acquiesced to the annexation of Tibet, it was a far more serious blunder than the so-called Forward Policy.
Another blunder of Nehru was to have ‘discovered’ the Aksai Chin road, linking Tibet to Xinjiang, only in 1958 even though it was officially opened to traffic in 1957 and the construction had started several years earlier. Further, Maxwell conveniently forgets that at the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s, Tibet was on the boil, particularly eastern Tibet, north of the McMahon Line. The 70,000 character petition from the Panchen Lama to Zhou on the internal situation in Tibet demonstrates the atrocious suffering of the Tibetan people during the period.
A few weeks back, while working in the National Archives of India, I came across interesting reports from the Indian Trade Agent in Yatung (Tibet). The Chinese authorities were harassing local Tibetans. For example, they were told that, “[They] should offer scarves to the photograph of Mao Tse-tung which will be displayed in the bazaar. It is no use to worship images in the monasteries which are of no use. Some images from the local monastery were thrown in the latrine or trampled down under their feet in the presence of the gathering.†They were also ordered: “From now onwards, nobody should utter any Hindi word and they should not speak of [to] India Office [Trade Agency] in any matter. They should address Indian merchants here as ‘dogs’.’
…
By attacking India, China could effectively and ruthlessly seal the Tibet border and stop the Tibetans taking refuge in India.
Another factor forgotten in Maxwell’s simplistic approach is the internal power struggle in China. The war was a plank for Chairman Mao to return to power. In Volume III of his Origins of the Cultural Revolution, US scholar Roderick MacFarquhar says, “It is not difficult to understand why Mao launched this sudden [internal] counter-attack [during the 10th Plenum in September 1962]. He was faced with what he saw as fundamental and unacceptable changes in key areas of policy: A rolling back of collectivisation in the countryside which would have undermined his whole vision for a socially transformed China; and a détente with the Soviet Union.†But here too, Maxwell only sees the Chinese side of the coin; it explains why he was so lavishly praised by Zhou….