• Sixty-one years ago, on November 21, 1962, China declared a ceasefire in its war with India.
• The 1962 conflict was a major humiliation for New Delhi, denting the image of its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, forever.

1962 India China War

• While many factors contributed to active war finally flaring up on a restive border, many have blamed Nehru’s ‘Forward Policy’ for “provoking” China.
• Put very briefly, the Forward Policy involved the Indian Army establishing outposts in territories disputed by China.
• Some have argued that such actions by an ill-prepared and ill-equipped army pushed China to attack, and defeat, India.
• Others have pointed out that the war was triggered by India’s decision of granting sanctuary to the Dalai Lama after he fled Tibet under Chinese oppression, and from China’s desire to be seen as the undisputed Asian leader.
• Also, this was the time when resentment was rising in China against Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward policy to forcibly modernise and industrialise the country, and a successful war was one tactic most guaranteed to restore his popularity.

Why the war ended?

• The 1962 war, which hangs so heavy on the Indian imagination, lasted for barely a month.
• China invaded India from two sides, in the west around the Ladakh region and in the east in the Northeast Frontier Agency (today’s Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Assam).
• On both fronts, its victories were swift and decisive. It managed to capture the strategically crucial Tawang (in the present Arunachal Pradesh), and advanced further.

• The first reason is that through its own rapid advance, China had managed to over-stretch its supply lines. Winter was about to set in.
• The Indian army, despite its many handicaps, had fought valiantly, to the last man and the last bullet, in adverse mountainous terrain.
• With the Chinese soldiers now closer within Indian territory, the Indian Army posed a far more serious challenge.
• Also, the mountain routes would soon be snowed in, and it would be difficult for China to both retreat through the Himalayas, and have supplies and reinforcements sent over.
• Declaring a ceasefire while it was still in a dominant position was a wiser course of action than running these risks.
• The second factor is that Nehru, realising the gravity of the situation, had asked the US and the UK for help, and both had responded.
• President John F Kennedy immediately ordered an airlift of weapons and supplies to India. The Royal Air Force joined in the airlift to rush equipment to India.
• A massive global operation was underway to help India.”
• This would have meant the conflict escalating beyond what China was comfortable with. Also, in the initial period that the war was going on, the US and the USSR had been locked in a tense standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the two teetered on the brink of nuclear warfare for 13 days.
• Once that crisis was resolved, the superpowers could pay more attention to what was happening in the Himalayas.
• When the sound of China’s artillery reached New Delhi, the PLA decisively halted its military operation and pulled back its troops.
• The PLA’s performance in the war shocked Western strategists and did its country proud. Its victory has also brought peace on one of China’s most important borders for half a century.
• War is a negotiating approach, but not a goal. Similarly, China’s decision to fight back against India in the 1962 border war was to strike a peace with its neighbor.