Undoing blunders of 1950: How India can rectify Jawaharlal Nehru's mistakes during Chinese invasion of Tibet

In a text entitled The Hour of God, Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo wrote: “There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result.” Perhaps one of these moments came in October 1950 when Communist China invaded its weak, though non-violent neighbour, Tibet; India had then the choice, unfortunately Delhi did not gather the courage to stand by the truth …and its own interests. At a time when “big insects ate small insects”, as the Tibetan saying goes, India chose not to react to the blatant and immoral aggression and in a process lost a peaceful frontier which for centuries had been opened, without manning, even by police. Sri Aurobindo’s text elaborates: “Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction.” A turning point Look at India’s northern borders today, with lakhs of Indian and Chinese troops confronting each other from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, passing through the Central Sector and Sikkim, the loss of Tibet has indeed been an ‘irreparable loss’ for India. Further, it brought the total destruction of a centuries-old civilisation. At a time when the world witnessed earth-shaking changes: as India became independent, as China went through its own revolution, as African and Asian nations became free from colonisation, de facto independent nations such Tibet, Eastern Turkestan (today Xinjiang) or Inner Mongolia came under the yoke of Communist China; the annexation of Turkestan in December 1949 opened the doors to Western Tibet and the Aksai Chin in Ladakh. For the first time in history, an unprepared and peaceful Land of Snows became part of the Chinese ‘Motherland’. Sardar Patel’s letter At the end of October 1950, as Delhi merely ‘regretted’ the Chinese invasion of Tibet, many of Nehru’s colleagues objected to the prime minister’s weak stance. On 7 November, a month after the entry of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Eastern Tibet, deputy prime minister Sardar Patel wrote to Nehru: “I have carefully gone through the correspondence between the External Affairs Ministry and our Ambassador in Peking [Beijing] and through him the Chinese Government. I have tried to peruse this correspondence as favorably to our Ambassador and the Chinese Government as possible, but I regret to say that neither of them comes out well as a result of this study. The Chinese Government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intention. My own feeling is that at a crucial period they manage to instill into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means.” The following pages of Patel’s missive described the importance of Tibet for India’s northern frontiers. It was ignored by the prime minister with the far-reaching consequence that we can see today. The two camps Historical records showed the emergence of two factions during the tumultuous last six months of 1950: one led by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and KM Panikkar, his ambassador in Beijing, both obsessed by an imaginary friendship with New China and fixated on the ‘larger implications for World Peace’; the other, which immediately saw the strategic implications of the loss of Tibet for India, was led by Sardar Patel, the deputy prime minster with Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, the Secretary General of the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations as his main adviser for foreign affairs. It also comprised president Rajendra Prasad, C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), KM Munshi and others. They were fed by reports ‘from the ground’ by Harishwar Dayal, the political officer in Sikkim and Sumul Sinha, the head of the Indian Mission in Lhasa, two sincere and far-sighted civil servants. At that time, India had a full-fledged mission in Tibet as well as three trade agencies in Gyantse, Yatung and Gartok. This dichotomy between the officers on the ground and the ‘visionaries’ in South Block continued throughout these difficult years. The day after Patel shot his letter, meeting Bajpai in the corridors of South Block, the prime minister told his general secretary: “you are marshalling the big shots”. Bajpai had also written to president Rajendra Prasad, Rajaji and others. In fact, most of the Cabinet, understanding the issues that India would face in the future, was in favour of a strong action to defend Tibet (one possible action was to occupy the Chumbi Valley adjacent to Sikkim). Nehru’s answer A day after receiving Patel’s letter, Nehru dictated a note: “The recent developments in international affairs have to be considered by us carefully with a view to the policy we should pursue in the U.N., in regard to our neighbouring countries, in regard to China, and with reference to our defence problems.” The prime minister elaborated: “Our foreign policy has been based on a desire to help in the maintenance of world peace or, at any rate, in the avoidance of a war on a large scale. Because of this we have avoided any alignment with any particular power or group of powers and have attempted to follow an independent policy, judging each question on its merits and from the point of view of world peace.” Protection of India’s interests was not the objective of Delhi’s Foreign Policy; only the avoidance of conflicts, particularly in the Korean peninsula, was. A vital moment was lost for India. Border defence committee Interestingly, new historical documents show that Patel moved fast. On 12 November, a committee was constituted to examine the possibility of Chinese Communist troops occupying the areas south of the McMahon Line and to consider the feasibility of advancing an outpost of the Assam Rifles towards the border “to forestall such ingress”. According to the historical records: “The committee discussed at great length the advisability of pushing forward a post to Tawang and it was considered that the question of establishing a post at Tawang should be referred to the Government of India for instructions. Pending the receipt of such instructions, it was decided to establish a small post at feet of the Se-La Pass.” This resulted in Maj Bob Khathing taking over Tawang’s administration in February 1951 and this apparently without the knowledge of the prime minister. By that time, the ‘Iron Man of India’ had already left this world (Patel passed away on 15 December, 1950). Less than four years later, the line taken by Nehru landed India in a capitulation during the Panchsheel Agreement negotiations. China was offered all the rights and responsibilities India had in Tibet, without even a confirmation of the boundary; all these for the sake of the new Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai policy. Tibet liberated of what? Throughout 1950, China kept repeating that Tibet was soon going to be ‘liberated’. It is ironical that 73 years later, the Tibetans still do not understand for what (or from whom) they needed to be ‘liberated’. Today China speaks of ‘poverty alleviation’ for the Roof of the World, but what have the Communists done since they entered Lhasa in September 1951, if the Tibetans have remained poor? There is no answer to this question. The truth is that Mao was not just interested in the strategic position of Tibet; China gained not only a huge landmass, also the access to the ‘water tower of Asia’, large mineral resources and a strategic position dominating the subcontinent. The Tibetan uplifting of the masses was nowhere in China’s periscope. India’s immoral position One of the most immoral actions of Delhi was to ignore the existence of the Tibetan government during all its dealing with the new masters in Lhasa, particularly during the talks for the 1954 Tibet Agreement. This continued till 1959 when the Dalai Lama had to take refuge in India. It was indeed wrong from the part of the Indian government to be vociferous about the decolonisation of Africa or Asia, while at the same time, ignore Tibet, the gentle neighbour at its gates. Today the question is: what can be done to undo the blunders of 1950? There is no easy answer, though the recently strong statements of the Minister of External Affairs are perhaps a first step in the right direction. The author is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi). Views are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .