The irony of human existence demonstrates that even chaos may beget permanence. And so it was in the Age of Zhou, the ill-fated dynasty whose writ ran for a few brief years over the North China Plain, that a nation’s geographical and civilizational coordinates were identified, fixed, and transmitted indelibly into the consciousness of a people.
Dear reader, we have permitted ourselves a glimpse into the resolute and complex character of the Chinese nation, a character constructed on the presumed superiority of blood and material and cultural splendour. Perhaps, then, it was inevitable that the rebirth of the country in the 20th century, forged through the suffering and sacrifice of millions, should herald a new chapter of their history under the aegis of the “religion of the godless” as preached by Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
How, then, would this manifest?
The “sinification” of the Tibetan plateau after 1950 was undertaken with a zeal associated with a nation supremely united in thought and action. The foundation of this mission relied on the collectivization of agriculture, the inflow of material goods into a society whose economic bedrock was founded on a subsistence economy, the infusion of a competing propaganda of trenchant atheism to counter the unique Buddhism of Tibetan culture and society, and the migration in droves of Han Chinese who, reminiscent of the pioneering spirit of the American West, moved home and hearth to forge a new life in the arid altitude of the Tibetan Plateau. An ancient society watched the Han invasion with dismay as their culture and way of life were systematically eroded and destroyed by Communist determination and enterprise.
And, then again, perhaps the historical process also demanded that there should be a clash of titans. Prime Minister Nehru evicted the British, in turn triggering political movements around the globe, eager to take advantage of the sympathy of the post-war milieu to bring an end to the largest seafaring empire known. Nehru’s stature on the world stage was unparalleled, his personality the focal point of nations seeking an alternative to the American and Russian blocs around which much of the world already clustered.
Chairman Mao, on the other hand, emerged from the trenches, battle-hardened, a veteran of two wars and the supreme leader seeking an enhanced role in the comity of nations for a transformed and aggressive China over whose destiny he presided.
For all the international success and political capital enjoyed by these two third-world giants, the nineteen fifties were a tragic study of prejudices, ignorance, and arrogance as the political leadership of India and China staggered and stumbled inexorably towards the disaster of 1962. Whereas Nehru consistently supported the principle of Tibetan autonomy under the aegis of Chinese sovereignty and greater Indo-Chinese co-operation as enshrined in the Sino-Indian Agreement of 1954, Mao harboured a preconceived notion of what the first prime minister of India stood for.
In the familiar vocabulary of the Marxist lexicon, Nehru was bourgeois, representative only of the interest of the reactionary elites, the natural inheritor of British imperialist ambitions, and most crucially an imperialist who wished to annex Tibet to the union of India. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Through the fog of misunderstanding and resentment, there were still opportunities for the two nations to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. Even in the wake of the Lhasa uprising in 1959, India and China had not reached the point of no return. However, it was probably India’s hardheadedness in the face of the practical reality of disputed borders and arrogance from November 1961 in doggedly following a “forward policy” that finally put the nations on the road to war.
Communist logic offered a permanent solution to the “war of the maps” by willing to accept the McMahon Line, the border between India and Tibet in the east, as de jure, in return for India relinquishing any rights it may have thought to have exercised over Aksai Chin, a veritable wind- and snow-swept “no man’s land” bordering Ladakh, and critical to China’s logistical infrastructure and abilities.
Democratic socialist rhetoric in response conveyed a hardening of attitude based on the principle that Aksai Chin was already within the territory of India, as demonstrated by maps sanctified by agreement and convention, and the consistently reiterated demand on Mao was to recognize the border in the east as well as vacate the territory in the west.
This shortsightedness was combined with the equally inexplicable belief held by the Indian military and political leadership of the notion of India’s military superiority and conviction that the People’s Liberation Army would turn tail and flee at the sound of a discharged rifle. Nothing could have been more myopic and untenable.
The “self-defensive counterattack war” was launched on October 20, 1962. At the vanguard of the offensive were crack regiments of the PLA tasked to inflict a quick and painful defeat on the Indian army. The campaign was designed to be swift and effective. Hostilities ceased exactly one week later.
On November 14, after a lull of three weeks, in reply to an Indian attack on Walong, Arunachal Pradesh, the might of the PLA, was brought to bear along a line running hundreds of kilometres from west to east. A unilateral ceasefire was declared by Chou En Lai on November 19 only after his advance formations gazed on the wide expanse of the Brahmaputra Valley.
Prime Minister Nehru did appear to blunder from one crisis to another in the years leading up to 1962. And yes, the cynosure of the world of the fifties may at times have displayed a certain naive optimism, but the experienced politician in him was all too aware of India’s inability to stand up militarily to the monolith of the People’s Republic of China. It was the reality of public opinion at the plight of the Tibetans which forced Nehru’s hand and compelled him to tread the path to armed conflict.
China was now flush with victory in the Himalayas. They had consigned the Generalissimo to the island of Taiwan and fought the Americans to a standstill in the Korean War. War as an integral instrument of foreign policy and international relations had been applied with spectacular results.
But could China’s forward policy be prosecuted in each instance in the same vein? Are the mechanics of war necessary to the program of neo-imperialism that Chairman Mao and his leadership had embarked on? How has the art of domination evolved over the decades? What is the “belt and road initiative” that appears to be at the vanguard of an imperialism that is so uniquely Chinese?
Join me in exploring, dear reader.
Sumit Basu is a freelance contributor based in India.
