HENDERSON BROOKS REPORT: AN INTRODUCTION

Neville Maxwell
April14-20, 2001
A Defence Ministry Committee is reported to have recommended
releasing into the public domain, the official reports on India's wars
against Pakistan 1947, 1965 and 1971. Also the 1962 border war
against China, India's intervention in Sri Lanka and others. Reproduced
here is British author Neville Maxwell's summary of what he believes the
Henderson Brooks Report contains. This article first appeared in the
Economic & Political Weekly. Neville Maxwell is the author of India's
China War.
WHEN THE Army's report into its debacle in the border war was
completed in 1963, the Indian government had good reason to keep it
Top Secret and give only the vaguest, and largely misleading,
indications of its contents. At that time the government's effort, ultimately
successful, to convince the political public that the Chinese, with a
sudden 'unprovoked aggression', had caught India unawares in a sort of
Himalayan Pearl Harbour was in its early stages and the report's cool
and detailed analysis, if made public, would have shown that to be
selfexculpatory mendacity.
But a series of studies, beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into
the 1990s, 1 revealed to any serious enquirer the full story of how the
Indian Army was ordered to challenge the Chinese military to a conflict it
could only lose. So by now only bureaucratic inertia, combined with the
natural fading of any public interest, can explain the continued nonpublication - the report includes no surprises and its publication would be
of little significance but for the fact that so many in India still cling to the
soothing fantasy of a 1962 Chinese 'aggression'.
It seems likely now that the report will never be released. Furthermore, if
one day a stable, confident and relaxed government in New Delhi
should, miraculously, appear and decide to clear out the cupboard and
publish it, the text would be largely incomprehensible, the context, well
known to the authors and therefore not spelled out, being now forgotten.
The report would need an introduction and gloss - a first draft of which

this paper attempts to provide, drawing upon the writer's research in

India in the 1960s and material published later.
Two preambles are required, one briefly recalling the cause and course
of the border war, the second to describe the fault-line, which the border
dispute turned into a schism, within the Army's officer corps, which was
a key factor in the disaster - and of which the Henderson Brooks Report
can be seen as an expression.
Origins of Border Conflict: India at the time of independence can be said
have faced no external threats. True, it was born into a relationship of
permanent belligerency with its weaker Siamese twin Pakistan, left by
the British inseparably conjoined to India by the member of Kashmir,
vital to both new national organisms; but that may be seen as essentially
an internal dispute, an untreatable complication left by the crude, cruel
surgery of partition.
In 1947 China, wracked by civil war, was in what appeared to be death
throes and no conceivable threat to anyone. That changed with
astonishing speed and by 1950, when the newborn People's Republic
re-established in Tibet the central authority which had lapsed in 1911,
the Indian Government will have made its initial assessment of the
possibility and potential of a threat from China and found those to be
minimal, if not non-extent.
First, there were geographic and topographical factors, the great
mountain chains which lay between the two neighbours and appeared to
make large-scale troop movements impractical. More important, the
leadership of the Indian Government - which is to say, Jawaharlal Nehru
- had for years proclaimed that the unshakable friendship between India
and China would be the key to both their futures and therefore Asia's,
even the world's. The new leaders in Beijing were more chary, viewing
India through their Marxist prism as a potentially hostile bourgeois state.
But in the Indian political perspective war with China was deemed
unthinkable and through the 1950s New Delhi's defence planning and
expenditure expressed that confidence.
By the early 1950s, however, the Indian government, which is to say
Nehru and his acolyte officials, had shaped and adopted a policy whose
implementation would make armed conflict with China not only

'thinkable' but inevitable. From the first days of India's independence, it

was appreciated that the Sino-Indian borders had been left undefined by
the departing British and that territorial disputes with China were part of
India's inheritance. China's other neighbours faced similar problems and
over the succeeding decades of the century, almost all of those were to
settle their borders satisfactorily through the normal process of
diplomatic negotiation with Beijing.
The Nehru government decided upon the opposite approach. India
would through its own research determine the appropriate alignments of
the Sino-Indian borders, extend its administration to make those good on
the ground and then refuse to negotiate the result. Barring the
inconceivable - that Beijing would allow India to impose China's borders
unilaterally and annex territory at will - Nehru's policy thus willed conflict
without foreseeing it. Through the 1950s, that policy generated friction
along the borders and so bred and steadily increased distrust, growing
into hostility, between the neighbours. By 1958 Beijing was urgently
calling for a stand-still agreement to prevent patrol clashes and
negotiations to agree boundary alignments. India refused any standstill
agreement, since such would be an impediment to intended advances
and insisted that there was nothing to negotiate, the Sino-Indian borders
being already settled on the alignments claimed by India, through blind
historical process.
Then it began accusing China of committing 'aggression' by refusing to
surrender to Indian claims. From 1961 the Indian attempt to establish an
armed presence in all the territory it claimed and then extrude the
Chinese was being exerted by the Army and Beijing was warning that if
India did not desist from its expansionist thrust, Chinese forces would
have to hit back. On October 12, 1962 Nehru proclaimed India's
intention to drive the Chinese out of areas India claimed. That bravado
had by then been forced upon him by the public expectations which his
charges of 'Chinese aggression' had aroused, but Beijing took it as in
effect a declaration of war.
1.
The unfortunate Indian troops on the front line, under orders to
sweep superior Chinese forces out of their impregnable, dominating
positions, instantly appreciated the implications: "If Nehru had declared

his intention to attack, then the Chinese were not going to wait to be
attacked".
2.
On October 20 the Chinese launched a pre-emptive offensive all
along the borders, overwhelming the feeble - but in this first instance
determined - resistance of the Indian troops and advancing some
distance in the eastern sector. On October 24 Beijing offered a ceasefire
and Chinese withdrawal on condition India agreed to open negotiations:
Nehru refused the offer even before the text was officially received. Both
sides built up over the next three weeks and the Indians launched a local
counterattack on November 15, arousing in India fresh expectations of
total victory.
3.
The Chinese then renewed their offensive. Now many units of the
once crack Indian 4th Division dissolved into rout without giving battle
and by November 20 there was no organised Indian resistance
anywhere in the disputed territories. On that day Beijing announced a
unilateral ceasefire and intention to withdraw its forces: Nehru this time
tacitly accepted.
4.
Naturally the Indian political public demanded to know what had
brought about the shameful debacle suffered by their Army and on
December 14 a new Army Commander, Lt General J N Chaudhuri,
instituted an Operations Review for that purpose, assigning the task of
enquiry to Lt General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P S Bhagat.
Factionalisation of the Army: All colonial armies are liable to suffer from
the tugs of contradictory allegience and in the case of India's that fissure
was opened in the second world war by Japan's recruitment from
prisoners of war of the 'Indian National Army' to fight against their former
fellows. By the beginning of the 1950s two factions were emerging in the
officer corps, one patriotic but above all professional and apolitical and
orthodox in adherence to the regimental traditions established in the
century of the Raj; the other nationalist, ready to respond
unquestioningly to the political requirements of their civilian masters and
scorning their rivals as fuddy-duddies still aping the departed rulers and
suspected as being of doubtful loyalty to the new ones. The latter faction
soon took on eponymous identification from its leader, B M Kaul. At the

time of independence Kaul appeared to be a failed officer, if not

disgraced.
Although Sandhurst-trained for infantry service he had eased through
the war without serving on any front line and ended it in a humble and
obscure post in public relations. But his courtier wiles, irrelevant or
damning until then, were to serve him brilliantly in the new order that
independence brought, after he came to the notice of Nehru, a fellow
Kashmiri brahmin and indeed distant kinsman.
Boosted by the prime minister's steady favouritism, Kaul rocketed up
through the army structure to emerge in 1961 at the very summit of
Army HQ. Not only did he hold the key appointment of chief of the
general staff (CGS) but the Army Commander, Thapar, was in effect his
client.
Kaul had of course by then acquired a significant following, disparaged
by the other side as 'Kaul boys' ('call girls' had just entered usage) and
his appointment as CGS opened a putsch in HQ, an eviction of the old
guard, with his rivals, until then his superiors, being not only pushed out,
but often hounded thereafter with charges of disloyalty. The struggle
between those factions both fed on and fed into the strains placed on the
Army by the government's contradictory and hypocritical policies - on the
one hand proclaiming China an eternal friend against whom it was
unnecessary to arm, on the other using armed force to seize territory it
knew China regarded as its own.
Through the early 1950s, Nehru's covertly expansionist policy had been
implemented by armed border police under the Intelligence Bureau (IB),
whose director, N B Mullik, was another favourite and confidant of the
prime minister.

The Army high command, knowing its forces to be too weak to risk
conflict with China, would have nothing to do with it. Indeed when the
potential for SinoIndian conflict inherent in Mullik's aggressive forward
patrolling was demonstrated in the serious clash at the Kongka Pass in
October 1959, Army HQ and the Ministry of External Affairs united to
denounce him as a provocateur, insist that control over all activities on

the border be assumed by the Army, which thus could insulate China
from Mullik's jabs.
5 The takeover by Kaul and his 'boys' at Army HQ in 1961 reversed
that. Now regular infantry would takeover from Mullik's border police in
implementing what was formally designated a 'forward policy', one
conceived to extrude the Chinese presence from all territory claimed by
India. Field commanders receiving orders to move troops forward into
territory the Chinese both held and regarded as their own, warned that
they had no resources or reserves to meet the forceful reaction they
knew must be the ultimate outcome: They were told to keep quiet and
obey orders. That may suggest that those driving the forward policy saw
it in kamikaze terms and were reconciled to its ending in gunfire and
blood - but the opposite was true. They were totally and unshakably
convinced that it would end not with a bang but a whimper - from Beijing.
The psychological bedrock upon which the forward policy rested was the
belief that in the last resort the Chinese military, snuffling from a bloody
nose, would pack up and quit the territory India claimed.
The source of that faith was Mullik, who from beginning to end
proclaimed as oracular truth that, whatever the Indians did, there need
be no fear of a violent Chinese reaction. The record shows no one
squarely challenging that mantra, at higher levels than the field
commanders who throughout knew it to be dangerous nonsense: There
were civilian 'Kaul boys' in External Affairs and the Defence Ministry too,
and they basked happily in Mullik's fantasy. Perhaps the explanation for
the credulousness lay in Nehru's dependent relationship with his IB
chief: Since the prime minister placed such faith in Mullik, it would be at
the least lesemajesty and even heresy, to deny him a kind of papal
infallibility. If it be taken that Mullik was not just deluded, what other
explanation could there be for the unwavering consistency with which he
urged his country forward on a course which in rational perception could
lead only to war with a greatly superior military power and therefore
defeat?
Another question arises: Who, in those years, would most have
welcomed the great falling-out which saw India shift in a few years from
strong international support for the People's Republic of China to enmity
and armed conflict with it? From founding and leading the non-aligned

movement to tacit enlistment in the hostile encirclement of China which

was Washington's aim? Mullik maintained close links with the CIA
station head in New Delhi, Harry Rossitsky. Answers may lie in the
agency's archives. China's stunning and humiliating victory brought
about an immediate reversal of fortune between the Army factions. Out
went Kaul, out went Thapar, out went many of their adherents - but by
no means all. General Chaudhuri, appointed to replace Thapar as Army
Chief, chose not to launch a counter-putsch. He and his colleagues of
the restored old guard knew full well what had caused the debacle:
Political interference in promotions and appointments by the prime
minister and Krishna Menon, defence minister, followed by clownish
ineptitude in Army HQ as the 'Kaul boys' scurried to force the troops to
carry out the mad tactics and strategy laid down by the government. It
was clear that the trail back from the broken remnants of 4 Division
limping onto the plains in the north-east, up through intermediate
commands to Army HQ in New Delhi and then on to the source of
political direction, would have ended at the prime minister's door - a
destination which, understandably, Chaudhuri had no desire to reach.
(Mullik was anyway to tarnish him with the charge that he was plotting to
overthrow the discredited civil order but in fact Chaudhuri was a
dedicated constitutionalist - ironically, Kaul was the only one of the
generals who harboured Caesarist ambitions.

6)
The Investigation: While the outraged humiliation of the political
class left Chaudhuri with no choice but to order an enquiry into the
Army's collapse, it was up to him to decide its range and focus, indeed
its temper. The choice of Lt General Henderson Brooks to run an
Operations Review (rather than a broader and more searching board of
enquiry) was indicative of a wish not to reheat the already bubbling stew
of recriminations. Henderson Brooks (until then in command of a corps
facing Pakistan) was a steady, competent but not outstanding officer,
whose appointments and personality had kept him entirely outside the
broils stirred up by Kaul's rise and fall. That could be said too of the
officer Chaudhuri appointed to assist Henderson Brooks, Brigadier P S
Baghat (holder of a WWII Victoria Cross and commandant of the military
academy). But the latter complemented his senior by being a no-

nonsense, fighting soldier, widely respected in the Army and the taut,
unforgiving analysis in the report bespeaks the asperity of his approach.
There is further evidence that Chaudhuri did not wish the enquiry to dig
too deep, range too widely, or excoriate those it faulted. These were the
terms of reference he set:
* Training
* Equipment
* System of command
* Physical fitness of troops
* Capacity of commanders at all levels to influence the men under
their command
The first four of those smacked of an enquiry into the sinking of the
Titanic looking into the management of the shipyard where it was built
and the health of the deck crew; only the last term has any immediacy
and there the wording was distinctly odd - commanders do not usually
'influence' those they command, they issue orders and expect instant
obedience. But Henderson Brooks and Baghat (henceforth HB/B) in
effect ignored the constraints of their terms of reference and kicked
against other limits Chaudhuri had laid upon their investigation,
especially his ruling that the functioning of Army HQ during the crisis lay
outside their purview.
"It would have been convenient and logical", they note, "to trace the
events [beginning with] Army HQ, and then move down to Commands
for more details, ...ending up with field formations for the battle itself ".
Forbidden that approach, they would, nevertheless, try to discern what
had happened at Army HQ from documents found at lower levels,
although those could not throw any light on one crucial aspect of the
story - the political directions given to the Army by the civil authorities.
As HB/B began their enquiry they immediately discovered that the short
rein kept upon them by the Army Chief was by no means their least
handicap. They found themselves facing determined obstruction in Army
HQ, where one of the leading lights of the Kaul faction had survived in
the key post of Director of Military Operations (DMO) - Brigadier D K

Palit. Kaul had exerted his powers to have Palit made DMO in 1961
although others senior to him were listed for the post and Palit, as he
was himself to admit, was "one of the least qualified among [his]
contemporaries for this crucial General Staff appointment"7 Palit had
thereafter acted as enforcer for Kaul and the civilian protagonists of the
'forward policy', Mullik foremost among the latter, issuing the orders and
deflecting or overruling the protests of field commanders who reported
up their strategic imbecility or operational impossibility.
Why Chaudhuri left Palit in this post is puzzling: The Henderson Brooks
Report was to make quite clear what a prominent and destructive role he
had played throughout the Army high command's politicisation and
through inappropriate meddling in command decisions, even in bringing
about the debacle in the Northeast. Palit, though, would immediately
have recognised that the HB/B enquiry posed a grave threat to his
career, and so did all that he could undermine and obstruct it. After
consultation with Mullik, Palit took it upon himself to rule that HB/B
should not have access to any documents emanating from the civil side in other words, he blindfolded the enquiry, as far as he could, as to the
nexus between the civil and military.
As Palit smugly recounts his story, in an autobiography published in
1991, he personally faced down both Henderson Brooks and Baghat,
rode out their formal complaints about his obstructionism and prevented
them from prying into the "high level policies and decsions" which he
maintained were none of their business.8 In fact, however, the last word
lies with HB/B - or will do if their report is ever published. In spite of
Palit's efforts, they discovered a great deal that the Kaul camp and the
government would have preferred to keep hidden and their report shows
that Palit's self-admiring and mock-modest autobiography grossly
misrepresents the role he played. The Henderson Brooks Report is long
(its main section, excluding recommendations and many annexures,
covers nearly 200 foolscap pages), detailed and far-ranging. This
introduction will touch only upon some salient points, to give the flavour
of the whole (a full account of the subject they covered is in the writer's
1970 study, India's China War).
The Forward Policy: This was born and named at a meeting chaired by
Nehru on November 2, 1961, but had been alive and kicking in the

womb for years before that - indeed its conception dated back to 1954,
when Nehru issued an instruction for posts to be set up all along India's
claim lines, "especially in such places as might be disputed". What
happened at this 1961 meeting was that the freeze on provocative
forward patrolling, instituted at the Army's insistence after Mullik had
engineered the Kongka Pass clash, was ended - with the Army, now
under the courtier leadership of Thapar and Kaul, eagerly assuming the
task which Mullik's armed border police had carried out until the Army
stopped them. HB/B note that no minutes of this meeting had been
obtained, but were able to quote Mullik as saying that "the Chinese
would not react to our establishing new posts and that they were not
likely to use force against any of our posts even if they were in a position
to do so" (HB/B's emphasis).
That opinion contradicted the conclusion Army Intelligence had reached
12 months before: That the Chinese would resist by force any attempts
to take back territory held by them. HB/B then trace a contradictory duet
between Army HQ and Western Army Command, with HQ ordering the
establishment of 'pennypacket' forward posts in Ladakh, specifying their
location and strength and Western Command protesting that it lacked
the forces to carry out the allotted task, still less to face the grimly
foreseeable consequences. Kaul and Palit "time and again ordered in
furtherance of the 'forward policy' the establishment of individual posts,
overruling protests made by Western Command". By August 1962 about
60 posts had been set up, most manned with less than a dozen soldiers,
all under close threat by overwhelmingly superior Chinese forces.
Western Command submitted another request for heavy reinforcements,
accompanying it with this admonition: [I]t is imperative that political
direction is based on military means. If the two are not co-related there is
a danger of creating a situation where we may lose both in the material
and moral sense much more than we already have. Thus, there is no
short cut to military preparedness to enable us to pursue effectively our
present policy...
That warning was ignored, reinforcements were denied, orders were
affirmed and although the Chinese were making every effort, diplomatic,
political and military, to prove their determination to resist by force, again
it was asserted that no forceful reaction by the Chinese was to be

expected. HB/B quote Field Marshall Roberts: "The art of war teaches us
to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but in our own
readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but
rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable".
But in this instance troops were being put in dire jeopardy in pursuit of a
strategy based upon an assumption - that the Chinese would not resist
with force - which the strategy would itself inevitably prove wrong.
HB/B note that from the beginning of 1961, when the Kaulist putsch
reshaped Army HQ, crucial professional military practice was
abandoned: This lapse in Staff Duties on the part of the CGS [Kaul], his
deputy, the DMO [Palit] and other Staff Directors is inexcusable. From
this stemmed the unpreparedness and the unbalance of our forces.
These appointments in General Staff are key appointments and officers
were hand-picked by General Kaul to fill them. There was therefore no
question of clash of personalities. General Staff appointments are
stepping stones to high command and correspondingly carry heavy
responsibility. When, however, these appointments are looked upon as
adjuncts to a successful career and the responsibility is not taken
seriously, the results, as is only too clear, are disastrous. This should
never be allowed to be repeated and the Staff as of old must be made to
bear the consequences of their lapses and mistakes.
Comparatively, the mistakes and lapses of the Staff sitting in Delhi
without the stress and strain of battle are more heinous than the errors
made by commanders in the field of battle. War and Debacle: While the
main thrust of the Forward Policy was exerted in the western sector it
was applied also in the east from December 1961. There the Army was
ordered to set up new posts along the McMahon Line (which China
treated - and treats - as the de facto boundary) and, in some sectors,
beyond it.
One of these trans-Line posts named Dhola Post, was invested by a
superior Chinese force on September 8, 1962, the Chinese thus reacting
there exactly as they had been doing for a year in the western sector. In
this instance, however, and although Dhola Post was known to be north
of the McMahon Line, the Indian Government reacted aggressively,

deciding that the Chinese force threatening Dhola must be attacked

forthwith and thrown back.

Now again the duet of contradiction began, Army HQ and, in this case,
Eastern Command (headed by Lt General L P Sen) united against the
commands below: XXXIII Corps (Lt General Umrao Singh), 4 Division
(Major General Niranjan Prasad) and 7 Brigade (Brigadier John Dalvi).
The latter three stood together in reporting that the 'attack and evict'
order was militarily impossible to execute.
The point of confrontation, below Thagla Ridge at the western extremity
of the McMahon Line, presented immense logistical difficulties to the
Indian side and none to the Chinese, so whatever concentration of
troops could painfully be mustered by the Indians could instantly be
outnumbered and outweighed in weaponry. Tacticly, again the
irreversible advantage lay with the Chinese, who held well-supplied,
fortified positions on a commanding ridge feature. The demand for
military action, and victory, was political, generated at top level meetings
in Delhi. "The Defence Minister [Krishna Menon] categorically stated that
in view of the top secret nature of conferences no minutes would be kept
[and] this practice was followed at all the conferences that were held by
the defence minister in connection with these operations". HB/B
commented: "This is a surprising decision and one which could and did
lead to grave consequences. It absolved in the ultimate analysis anyone
of the responsibility for any major decision. Thus it could and did lead to
decisions being taken without careful and considered thought on the
consequences of those decisions".
Army HQ by no means restricted itself to the big picture. In midSeptember it issued an order to troops beneath Thagla Ridge to "(a)
capture a Chinese post 1,000 yards north-east of Dhola Post; (b) contain
the Chinese concentration south of Thagla." HB/B comment: "The
General Staff, sitting in Delhi, ordering an action against a position 1,000
yards north-east of Dhola Post is astounding. The country was not
known, the enemy situation vague and for all that there may have been
a ravine in between [the troops and their objective], but yet the order
was given. This order could go down in the annals of history as being as

incredible as the order for 'the Charge of the Light Brigade' ". Worse
was to follow. Underlying all the meetings in Delhi was still the
conviction, or by now perhaps prayer, that even when frontally attacked
the Chinese would put up no serious resistance, still less react
aggressively elsewhere. Thus it came to be believed that the problem
lay in weakness, even cowardice, at lower levels of command.
General Umrao Singh (XXXIII Corps) was seen as the nub of the
problem, since he was backing his divisional and brigade commanders
in their insistence that the eviction operation was impossible. "It was
obvious that Lt General Umrao Singh would not be hustled into an
operation, without proper planning and logistical support. The defence
ministry and, for that matter, the general staff and Eastern Command
were prepared for a gamble on the basis of the Chinese not reacting to
any great extent". So the political leadership and Army HQ decided that
if Umrao Singh could be replaced by a commander with fire in his belly,
all would come right and victory be assured. Such a commander was
available - General Kaul. A straight switch, Kaul relinquishing the CGS
post to takeover from Umrao Singh would have raised too many
questions, so it was decided instead that Umrao Singh would simply be
moved aside, retaining his corps command but no longer having
anything to do with the eviction operation. That would become the
responsibility of a new formation, IV Corps, whose sole task would be to
attack and drive the Chinese off Thagla Ridge. General Kaul would
command the new corps.
HB/B noted how even the most secret of government's decisions were
swiftly reported in the press and called for a thorough probe into the
sources of the leaks. Many years later Palit, in his autobiography,
described the transmission procedure. Palit had hurried to see Kaul on
learning of the latter's appointment to command the notional new corps:
"I found him in the little bedsitter den where he usually worked when at
home. I was startled to see, sitting beside him on the divan, Prem Bhatia
editor of The Times of India, looking like the proverbial cat who has just
swallowed a large yellow songbird. He got up as I arrived, wished [Kaul]
good luck and left, still with a greatly pleased smirk on his face".9
Bhatia's scoop led his paper next morning. The 'spin' therein was the
suggestion that whereas in the western sector Indian troops faced

extreme logistical problems, in the east that situation was reversed and
therefore, with the dashing Kaul in command of a fresh 'task force',
victory was imminent.
The truth was exactly the contrary, those in the North-East Frontier
Agency (NEFA) faced even worse difficulties than their fellows in the
west and victory was a chimera. Those difficulties were compounded by
persistent interference from Army HQ. On orders from Delhi, "troops of
[the entire 7 Brigade] were dispersed to outposts that were militarily
unsound and logistically unsupportable". Once Kaul took over as corps
commander the troops were driven forward to their fate in what HB/B
called "wanton disregard of the elementary principles of war". Even in
the dry, numbered paragraphs of their report, HB/B's account of the
moves that preceded the final Chinese assault is dramatic and riveting,
with the scene of action shifting from the banks of the Namka Chu,
beneath the menacing loom of Thagla Ridge, to Nehru's house in Delhi whither Kaul rushed back to report when a rash foray he had ordered
was crushed by a fierce Chinese reaction on October 10.
To follow those events, and on into the greater drama of the ensuing
debacle is tempting, but would add only greater detail to the account
already published. Given the nature of the dramatic events they were
investigating, it is not surprising that HB/B's cast of characters consisted
in the main of fools and/or knaves on the one hand, their victims on the
other. But they singled out a few heroes too, especially the jawans, who
fought whenever their senior commanders gave them the necessary
leadership, and suffered miserably from the latter's often gross
incompetence. As for the debacle itself, "Efforts of a few officers,
particularly those of Capt N N Rawat" to organise a fighting retreat,
"could not replace a disintegrated command", nor could the cool-headed
Brigadier Gurbax Singh do more than keep his 48 Brigade in action as a
cohesive combat unit until it was liquidated by the joint efforts of higher
command and the Chinese. HB/B place the immediate cause of the
collapse of resistance in NEFA in the panicky, fumbling and
contradictory orders issued from corps HQ in Tezpur by a 'triumvirate' of
officers they judge to be grossly culpable: General Sen, General Kaul
and Brigadier Palit. Those were, however, only the immediate agents of
disaster: Its responsible planners and architects were another

triumvirate, comprised of Nehru, Mullik and again, Kaul, together with all
those who confronted and overcome through guile and puny force.
Notes:
1 The series began with Himalayan Blunder, Brigadier John Dalvi's
account of the sacrifice of his 7 Brigade on the Namka Chu, a classic of
military literature, continuing with the relatively worthless Untold Story by
General Kaul. In 1970 this writer's India's China War told the full military
story in political and diplomatic context. In 1979 Colonel Saigal
published a well-researched account of the collapse of 4 Division in the
North-East Frontier Agency. Two years later General Niranjan Prasad
complemented Dalvi's study with his own fine account of The Fall of
Towang 1962 and In 1991 General Palit, who as a brigadier had been
director of military operations in 1962, followed up with War in High
Himalaya - like Kaul's book self-exculpatory, but much more successfully
so because by then very few were left with the knowledge that could
challenge Palit's version of events and his role in them.
2. Major General Niranjan Prasad, The Fall of Towang, Palit and Palit,
New Delhi, 1981, p 69
3. With near-criminal disregard for military considerations, this attack
was launched, near Walong in the eastern sector, to obtain a 'birthday'
victory for Nehru! It failed.
4. He might well have aspired to another act of Churchillian defiance but
the American ambassador, J K Galbraith, up betimes, got to the prime
minister in time to persuade him that discretion would serve India better
than a hollow show of valour. Thirty years later the Chinese expressed
their appreciation with a banquet in Galbraith's honour in Beijing.
5. The government misrepresented the Army's takeover as evidence of
the seriousness of the 'Chinese threat'. In fact it was a measure to try to
insulate China from the steady pinprick provocations Mullik had been
organising. The truth emerged only years later, in Mullik's autobiography,
My Years with Nehru: The Chinese Betrayal, Allied Publishers, New
Delhi, 1971, pp 243-45.
6. Welles Hangen, After Nehru, Who?, Harte-Davis, London, 1963, p
272.

7. D K Palit, War in High Himalaya: The Indian Army in Crisis,1962,

Hurst and Co, London, 1991, p 71.
8. Ibid, pp 390-92.
9. Ibid, p 220.
Copyright: Economic & Political Weekly April14-20, 2001 (www.epw.org)

Your last couple of sentences "Did India provoke China by trying to

nibble at a few odd bare hills here and there? Why did China withdraw
after the war?" indicate that you are fully aware of the background
behind the 1962 war. Have you read Neville Maxwell's China's India
War? While he looks at the war from a Chinese perspective, it is also
widely believed that he had access to the Henderson Brooks report and
that he had widely used it for background information.
The report (assuming that Neville Maxwell indeed had access to it) is not
pretty reading and paints Jawaharlal Nehru as a dilettante in
International Affairs. He had no concept of strategic thinking and realpolitic. He believed in his own propaganda and was overly concerned
about his image in the west. He wasn't aware that his grandiose
gestures like introducing Chou En Lai to the Asian and African Leaders
in Bandung, proposing and supporting China's entry to the United
Nations etc and making uplifting statements about Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai
were no substitute for a fully fleshed out strategy to deal with a new and
powerful neighbour in the north. I wonder if he ever thought how the
Communist Party in China become the overlord of a fifth of humanity.
Surely not by being shrinking violets and being grateful for social
acceptance?
Now, after eons of separation via a wide and impassable border
marches, technology had brought our two large civilisations next to each
other. I am not aware whether the Indian State has a strategic vision
about how to handle this proximity and to tackle the border disputes. If
there is a grand plan, you might be better placed to see it for I only see

more the the Narasimha Rao / Manmohan Singh tactic; keep quiet,
ignore it and maybe the problem will go away.
There was an articulation about a grand plan during the BJP government
when Brajesh Misra dealt with some of these thorny issues. I thought the
position of letting settled populations stay as they are had promise, as it
implied some give and take. But with Tibet now heating up, China wants
a symbolic victory with Tawang, so that formulation atleast does not
seem to find favour with China now.
Anyway, I attach a 2011 article by Neville Maxwell about the 1962 war.
As again, this gives the Chinese perspective, so it is very illuminating on
how the leadership from across the border saw it.

CHINAS INDIA WAR

How the Chinese Saw the Conflict

By Neville Maxwell (May 2011)
The Chinese leadership was slow to recognise the seriousness of the
problems presented to it by the Nehru governments border policy. Soon
after the establishment of the Peoples Republic in 1949 its government
had recognised border settlement as a problem involving all its
numerous neighbours, and had evolved a strategy to deal with it:
forswearing irredentist attempts to regain lost lands, China would
accept the border alignments with which history had left it, and negotiate
where necessary to formalise and confirm them, in the spirit of Mutual
understanding and mutual accommodation. In the case of India, this
meant that India should retain the territory, up to what they called the
McMahon Line, which the British imperialists had seized in their final
expansionist foray. Zhou Enlai gave assurances to that effect in his
several meetings and exchanges with Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s,
and Beijing foresaw no territorial dispute with India.
Their first inkling of troubles ahead came in 1958 when Beijing found
itself accused of aggression (an extreme and loaded term in diplomatic
parlance) when Indian border guards found a Tibetan/Chinese presence
in small tracts claimed by India in what became known as the middle
sector of the border. Then an Indian patrol was detected and detained
in Chinese-claimed and -occupied territory in the western sector. And in
August 1959 an armed clash at a point called Longju on the cMahon
Line, in which an Indian border guard was killed, set off an outburst of
public and official suspicion and anger against China, not only in India
but in the West generally and, critically, in Moscow. So in October that
year the Chinese leadership found itself being reprimanded over the
Longju incident by the visiting Nikita Krushchev.

1 Why did you have to kill people on your border with India? he
demanded to know. Mao Zedung replied, defensively, They attacked
us first, crossed the border and continued firing for twelve hours.

Krushchev retorted, Nobody was killed among the Chinese, only among
the Indians. Zhou Enlai came in: What are we supposed to do if they
attack us first? We cannot [just] fire in the air! The Indians even
crossed the McMahon Line. Besides, very soon Vice President
Radhakrishnan is coming to China that shows that we are undertaking
measures to resolve the issues peacefully by negotiations. Mao
summed up the Chinese position: The border conflict with India is only a
marginal issue, not a clash between the two governments. Nehru
himself is not aware of what happened [at Longju]. As we found out,
their patrols crossed the McMahon Line. We learned about it much later,
after the incident took place. All this was known neither to Nehru nor
even to our military district in Tibet. When Nehru learned that their
patrols had crossed the McMahon Line he issued orders for them to
withdraw. We also worked towards peaceful restoration of the issue.
Neville Maxwell Zhou continued with those reassurances: You will see
for yourself later that the McMahon Line with India will be maintained
and the border conflict will end. Mao underlined that prediction: The
border issue with India will be decided through negotiations. So it can
be seen that at that stage the Chinese had failed to grasp the truth
behind the border friction and beneath the careful wording in the Indian
governments diplomatic communications. Nehru had decided, well
before this and irrevocably as it turned out, that India would never agree
to negotiate its borders. And the Longju clash was not accidental but
reflected the Indian approach to borders that was later to be named,
from the British imperial vocabulary, the forward policy, involving here
the unilateral amendment of McMahons alignment in accordance with
Indian convenience. India was treating the territory it claimed as ipso
facto (by reason of that claim) Indian territory. The more serious clash in
October 1959 at the Kongka Pass on the Kashmir/ Xiangkiang border,
with killed on both sides, had a galvanic effect on Indian public opinion
and jolted the Chinese leadership into alarmed attention. Convening
again to discuss the border with India, with Army commanders in
attendance, they learned that Chinese border guards were experiencing
frequent challenges from Indian patrols, and were chafing at orders that
denied them the right to rebuff them. Mao, perhaps rankling still from
Krushchevs dressing down and certainly recognising that further
clashes resulting in Indian casualties would add to the international

opprobrium on China, decided that only disengagement of the two sides

forces would prevent them. He ordered a 20 kilometre withdrawal of
Chinese guards all along the border, with a request to be made to India
for reciprocation. That request was refused but the proposed withdrawal
was implemented by Chinese forces.

2. Still, and for at least a year thereafter, the Chinese leadership failed to
appreciate the severity of the problem with which Indias assertive and
unyielding approach to the border dispute confronted them, apparently
expecting that their repeated diplomatic calls for negotiation, and for
agreed short-term measures to tranquillise the borders, would ultimately
be accepted. By mid-1961, however, the newly named forward policy of
using force, non-violently, to extrude the Chinese from the tracts of
territory claimed by India, was beginning to bite in the Western border
sector. Indian patrols, conducted now by the Army rather than armed
police, were challenging Chinese posts and probing for positions from
which to dominate and sever their lines of communication. The
unyielding granite in Indias diplomatic refusal to negotiate had been
personally felt by Zhou in his abortive summit meeting with Nehru in
April 1960. It now began to occur to the Chinese leadership that India
might deliberately be making itself an enemy of China and even be
bent on provoking hostilities.

Neville Maxwell While noting Nehrus long-standing declarations of

friendship towards China and welcoming his support for their claims to
UN representation, as Marxists the Chinese had always harboured a
reserve of distrust of Nehru as a national bourgeois politician. As such
he was unreliable, and might at any time, for domestic political reasons
or to curry favour with Chinas implacable counter-revolutionary foe, the
USA, turn towards enmity. To the Chinese, that seemed to be the only
possible explanation for Indias aggressive policy and Nehrus bellicose
utterances, since conflict with China could not be seen as being of
benefit for India.
Toward the end of 1961 a meeting of the Central Military Commission
(CMC) was convened to consider the response to Indias forward

probing. Mao, in the chair, compared those to chess moves. What

should we do?, he asked. We can also set out a few pawns. If they
then [stop advancing] thats great. If they dont, well eat them up. Of
course we cant just blindly eat them. Lack of forbearance in small
matters upsets great plans [as the saying goes]. We must pay attention
to the situation. Orders were issued for Chinese forces to reverse their
previous unilateral withdrawal, and for road construction to forward
areas all along the border to be accelerated. Mao took the struggle with
India under his personal control, ordering that no shot be fired from the
Chinese side without his prior approval.In March 1962 the CMC met
again to reconsider the border situation. Indian troops were continuing
to press forward in the Western sector, attempting to cut off Chinese
posts and sometimes opening harassing fire upon them. On the
diplomatic front India was meeting every Chinese appeal for a mutual
military standstill and negotiations with demands for unilateral Chinese
withdrawal from all territory claimed by India. It was decided there
should be no retreat under Indian pressure. When Indian troops
established positions threatening Chinese posts in the western sector,
additional Chinese forces should simply use their great advantage in
manoeuvrability and numbers to outflank and dominate them in turn.
Thus the two sides would be confronting each other in interlocking,
mutually threatening positions. Chinese forces would still be forbidden
to fire without permission from the central political authority. Since India
was rejecting Chinas calls for peaceful coexistence, Mao quipped, it
should be confronted with armed coexistence.
The summer of 1962 saw only intensification of that situation. Beijing
increased the minatory tone and heat of its diplomatic warnings and
made its threats of counterforce more open. Delhis replies continued to
be insouciant and intransigent, Nehru being confident in the assurances
from his Intelligence chief and courtier generals that the Chinese were
bluffing and would never dare hit back at India. For their part too the
Chinese were uncertain about Indias motives and ultimate intention.
Could it really be true that India, so obviously weaker militarily and at
every logistical and tactical disadvantage along the border, would press
on to the point of war?

Zhou Enlai directed Chen Yi, now foreign minister, to meet privately with
the Indian defence minister, Krishna Menon, when they were in Geneva
at an international conference, and sound him out about Indias real
intentions. Chen reported that Neville Maxwell Menon had simply restated his governments position: Beijings complaints were groundless
since Indian troops were doing nothing more than advancing into their
own territory; the international borders were clearly marked on Indias
maps and were fixed and final therefore there was nothing to
negotiate. Menons tone was arrogant, Chen added. Zhou concluded,
It seems as though Nehru truly wants a war with us.
Meanwhile the forward policy had begun to be implemented in miniature
in the northeast, with Indian forces advancing across the McMahon Line
in such places as the Indians thought it necessary to correct McMahons
cartographic deficiencies.
Their reoccupation of Longju in May
prompted Beijing to warn that it would not stand idly by under such
provocation only to see another Indian post established across the
McMahon Line near the trijunction with Bhutan. The Indians named it
Dhola post, But Mao was still not ready to admit that his policy of armed
coexistence was failing to deter India. In July the CMC reasserted his
orders: the Chinese Army must absolutely not give ground, strive
resolutely to avoid bloodshed, interlock [with Indian positions] in a zigzag
pattern, and undertake a long period of armed coexistence. That
cautious patience was understandable. Chinas international position
was parlous: the Americans were warring in Vietnam, Chiang Kai-shek
was threatening to invade the mainland from Taiwan, the Soviet Union
was turning hostile. All rational considerations pointed to avoidance of
hostilities with India if possible.
On 8 September the Chinese extended their tactic of containment
through armed coexistence to the recently established Dhola post
north of the McMahon Line at its western extremity. An outnumbering
force (about 60 troops) was ordered to invest the little Indian post, use
threats to induce its withdrawal if possible, and anyway to block further
advance. This move was likely to have been made by the sectoral
command without consultation with Beijing since it did no more than
implement the orders already in effect.

Misreading that move as a deliberate incursion into Indian territory

(although the Indian government was aware, of course, that the
threatened Indian post was well to the north of the map-marked
McMahon Line), Nehru gave orders that the Chinese must be repelled.
The Indian Army was given orders to attack the Chinese
troopsthreatening Dhola post and drive them off all the territory there
claimed by India.
Moreover Nehru publicly proclaimed his order as soon as he issued it,
The Chinese would have recognised instantly that Nehrus announced
order meant a radical escalation in the Indian policy which they had
been passively containing. Although the Chinese had begun to suffer
casualties in clashes in the Western sector there had been no Indian
attacks on Chinese positions there; but now Nehru had declared that a
determined assault in force was to be launched on Chinese troops
positioned on their own side of the McMahon Line. There was no doubt
that any such attack could be thrown back, even wiped out. Controlling
the high ground on Thagla Ridge, dominating Dhola post, the Chinese
troops could swiftly fortify their Neville Maxwell position to make it
impregnable. However many troops India put into their attack the
Chinese could effortlessly outnumber them. But would such a local
victory do China any good?
International public sympathy was with India, whose charge that it was
China which had embarked on a program of aggressive expansion and
was refusing to negotiate its territorial claims was almost universally
accepted -- Standing truth on its head as
Beijing ruefully described it. A local Indian defeat, with many casualties
suffered, would be taken as another demonstration of brutal Chinese
aggressiveness; and the Indians, with plentiful American and British
support, would only build up for a much stronger attack and a wider war.
On 3 October Beijing sent its final diplomatic warning and plea for
immediate, unconditional negotiations: India instantly rejected it. After
listening to a situation report of intensifying skirmishing in the west and
Indian troop concentrations around Dhola post Mao conceded: It seems
armed coexistence wont work. Nehru really wants to use force: he

has always wanted to seize Aksai Chin [in the western sector] and
Thagla Ridge. He thinks he can get anything he desires.
Like a war-horse hearing bugles, he reminisced: We fought a war with
old Chiang Kai-shek. We fought a war with Japan, and with America.
With none of those did we fear. And in each case we won. Now the
Indians want to fight a war with us.
Naturally we dont have to fear. We cannot give ground, once we give
ground it would be tantamount to letting them seize a big piece of land
equivalent to Fujian province. Since Nehru sticks his head out and
insists on us fighting him, for us not to fight with him would be unfriendly
courtesy emphasises reciprocity.
Zhou Enlai followed up: We dont want a war with India. We have
always striven to avoid war. We wanted India to be like Nepal, Burma or
Mongolia, and solve [border] problems with us in a friendly fashion. But
Nehru has closed all roads. This leaves us only with war. As I see it, to
fight a bit would have advantages. It would make some people
understand us better.
Right, Mao concluded: If someone doesnt attack me, I wont attack
him. If someone attacks me, I will certainly attack him! Thus the
Chinese leadership decided to take up Indias challenge to war. But how
to fight and win that war?
What should be our method? What should the war look like?, Mao
asked at a subsequent meeting.

What China needed was not a local victory but to inflict a defeat so
crushing that India might be knocked back to the negotiating table,
Mao said, or at least taught a lesson that might last thirty years. To that
end, China must keep the initiative throughout, deciding when to
terminate hostilities as well as when to open them.
Crack troops of the Peoples Liberation Army should be deployed, with
orders to achieve swift victory regardless of casualties, keeping always
within the disputed areas. When all Indian forces in the disputed areas
had been destroyed a unilateral Neville Maxwell ceasefire would be

declared and then PLA forces would withdraw from all territory occupied
in the campaign. On 18 October an expanded Politburo meeting
approved the PLAs operational plans and set 20 October as the day for
action. In terms of international law Beijing could argue that in the
circumstances, with Nehru having declared his belligerent intentions and
the Indian army having, on 10 October, made its first offensive move in
the Dhola area and being steadily reinforced there, China was fully
justified in acting in anticipatory self-defence.
The Chinese campaign went precisely as planned. Mao had overestimated the prowess of the Indians when he warned the PLA to expect
strong resistance from experienced Indian troops.
In the event
incompetent commanders on the Indian side, obeying politically
motivated and tactically foolish directives from Delhi, quickly brought
their own troops to defeat and rout. Having achieved total victory in a
twophase campaign Beijing declared its pre-planned ceasefire on 21
November and all Chinese forces withdrew a few weeks later..
The political aims of the counter-attack in self-defence were not
fulfilled, however. There was no change in the Indian approach, and
nearly 50 years later India still refuses to negotiate, while Maos
expectation of a 30 year lull on the borders fell short by five years: in
1987 after a minor confrontation at Sumdurong Chu, not far from Dhola,
India again moved troops across the McMahon Line in calculated
challenge, and war was narrowly averted. Still today there is no agreed
line of actual control, friction on the borders is constant, the danger of
renewed conflict ever-present. Indias refusal to negotiate has left it
isolated in this regard; every one of Chinas other contiguous neighbours
(except Bhutan) has amicably negotiated a boundary settlement.

Neville Maxwell Neville Maxwell

1 The Minutes of that meeting are in Cold War International History

Project Vol. 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001), pp 264-267.

2 The Chinas government has been far more liberal than Indias in
releasing documentation about the diplomatic and military events
around 1962.. The account of the Chinese leaderships thinking and
comments here is drawn from John Garver Chinas Decision for War
with India in 1962 in Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross, editors,
New Directions in the Study of Chinas Foreign Policy, Stanford
University Press, 2006, pp 86-130. The writer has drawn on this
material previously in his fuller paper, Forty Years of Folly: What
Caused the Sino-Indian Border War and Why the Dispute is
Unresolved in Critical Asian Studies 35:I (2003), pp 99-112.
Very Positive development: Finally, a time-bound committee to look into,
and implement the resolution of anomalies affecting defence personnel
and veterans The defence community would be pleased to know that the
Prime Ministers office has directed the constitution of an anomalies
committee to look into many vital anomalies affecting serving and retired
personnel and also their families. The best part of the directions signed
this week is that the committee is to submit its recommendations within a
month and the implementation of the accepted recommendations may
also be announced on 15 August 2012, thereby marking a radical signal
of positivity.
Though a chunk of the bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence was not
inclined to let any such committee come through, this has been possible
due to multiple channels of Track-II diplomacy and the stellar efforts of
the Chairman COSC and the Pay Cells of the three services which
evoked direct response from the Raksha Mantri who then took it upon
himself to get this committee approved from the Prime Minister
personally and directly without being blinded by comments of lower
bureaucracy of the MoD.
The only negative offshoot is that the committee does not have any
serving or retired military member and that a proper consultative process

was not initiated before identifying the anomalies which required

immediate examination. Ideally, the stake-holders should have been a
part of the process.
Howsoever we may view the development, many important issues such
as Non-Functional Upgradation, enhancement of pensions of widows,
One Rank One Pension, enhancement of Grade Pay of Lt Cols / Cols /
Brigs, universalisation of scales, grant of HAG+ to all Lt Gens, removal
of pay anomalies of other ranks etc have been listed in the charter of the
committee.
It is however surprising that while the PM had directed that the
constitution of the committee may be publically announced, the same
has not been done by the staff at MoD till date despite the fact that the
directions were conveyed by special courier (by hand) to the MoD for
immediate action by the PMO.
ADOPT A TERRORIST!!
A Canadian female libertarian wrote a lot of letters to the Canadian
government, complaining about the treatment of captive insurgents
(terrorists) being held in Afghanistan National Correctional System
facilities. She demanded a response to her letter. She received back the
following reply:
National Defense Headquarters
Major General Gen George R. Pearkes Bldg., 15 NT
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa , ON K1A 0K2
Canada

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Thank you for your recent letter expressing your profound concern of
treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists captured by Canadian

Forces, who were subsequently transferred to the Afghanistan

Government and are currently being held by Afghan officials in
Afghanistan National Correctional System facilities.
Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinions
were heard loud and clear here in Ottawa. You will be pleased to learn,
thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating a new
department here at the Department of National Defense, to be called
'Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers' program, or L.A.R.K. for short.
In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have
decided, on a trial basis, to divert several terrorists and place them in
homes of concerned citizens such as yourself, around the country, under
those citizens personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected
and is scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your
residence in Toronto next Monday.

Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud is your detainee, and is to be cared

for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of
complaint. You will be pleased to know that we will conduct weekly
inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are
commensurate with your recommendations.
Although Ahmed is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that
your sensitivity to what you described as his 'attitudinal problem' will help
him overcome those character flaws. Perhaps you are correct in
describing these problems as mere cultural differences. We understand
that you plan to offer counselling and home schooling, however, we
strongly recommend that you hire some assistant caretakers.
Please advise any Jewish friends, neighbours or relatives about your
house guest, as he might get agitated or even violent, but we are sure
you can reason with him. He is also expert at making a wide variety of
explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish
to keep those items locked up, unless in your opinion, this might offend
him. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand
combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil
or nail clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these

skills either in your home or wherever you choose to take him while
helping him adjust to life in our country.
Ahmed will not wish to interact with you or your daughters except
sexually, since he views females as a form of property, thereby having
no rights, including refusal of his sexual demands. This is a particularly
sensitive subject for him.
You also should know that he has shown violent tendencies around
women who fail to comply with the dress code that he will recommend
as more appropriate attire. I'm sure you will come to enjoy the anonymity
offered by the burka over time. Just remember that it is all part of
'respecting his culture and religious beliefs' as described in your letter.
You take good care of Ahmed and remember that we will try to have a
counsellor available to help you over any difficulties you encounter while
Ahmed is adjusting to Canadian culture.
Thanks again for your concern. We truly appreciate it when folks like
you keep us informed of the proper way to do our job and care for our
fellow man. Good luck and God bless you.

Cordially,
Gordon O'Connor
Minister of National Defense

Keynote address by Chetan Bhagat at FICCI Frames 2012 - a

conference organised by FICCI on entertainment and the film industry
FICCI Frames 2012Keynote Address
Chetan Bhagat
First of all Id like to thank theFICCI frames organizers for giving me and
other writers a chance to talk in aconference on the entertainment and
film industry.

Writers are not supposed to talk. Traditionally,writers in the film industry

work silently, even though they pretty much decideevery word that is
spoken on screen. Every film tells a story. Without a story,you cannot
make a film. You can replace actors with animations, you can skip
themusic, you may not erect huge sets but you must have a story. For
somethingso critical, it is befuddling why the role of writers here has
been less thanmany other departments.
Of course, it is a star drivenindustry. I dont believe for a second when
people say that the story is thestar in the movie, even as a writer. No, I
am saying that stars are important,directors are important, marketing is
important, the producer is important but the story and screenplay, and
thus the creator of the story are importantpeople too. I am no activist, but
more as someone who likes to analyze things Ihave tried to understand
the problem. Why dont writers get visibility,compensation and the same
attention as say music directors, who are known andrightly so. But why
not also writers?
I see two main reasons for the same.
One, the single biggest reason, is theaudience pardoning bad stories.
Our Indian audiences love our films. They arecrazy about Bollywood and
their stars. And in this allure, they pardon a lot ofsins. This isnt very
different from how Indians looked at their politicians.Charisma was
everything. Of course, a certain minimum was expected, but thatwas
quite a low standard. As long as the stars looked good, could create a
fewlaughs or thrills, the songs and dance were nice to listen to and
watch people would give a thumbs up to a movie. In fact, the Bollywood
story becamenothing to write home about it was not meant to touch
people, just keep themhooked or engaged for the duration of the movie.
The movie ends, and as trainpassengers, the audience would simply say
goodbye and leave the charactersbehind.
Fully filmy story man, is how peopledescribe our films. Every now and
then, a movie would come that would touch thecore of our being.
Something that made us think and feel even after the endcredits rolled.
We enjoyed that experience, but that was so rare that itcouldnt be
expected in every movie. Keep your brains at home, Its a Hindimovie,
what else do you expect?, just time pass are all phrases we

haveheard. When the audience cared about the heroines figure and the
heros punchmore than the narrative, the makers cared little about
writers. A story andscreenwriter were engaged like a bare minimum and
thus few shined in thedepartment.
The second reason is a unique aspectof Indian culture, which is the
exploitation and abuse of power, by those whocan. It is considered
acceptable in our value system that the more powerfulwill get a bigger
share, irrespective of whether they deserve it or not. From atraffic cop to
a minister, we have seen examples of people exploiting theirposition to
gain an unfair advantage. So if a writer deserved a slice of thepizza, but
the producer distributed it, the writer had to do with scraps. Thisis how it
happens in Bollywood, was drilled down peoples throats. Writers
became used to less money. However, the few times their work was
noted,producers and directors pounced on another thing credit.
Whatever was good inthe story, the producers and directors thumped
their chests and took credit forit. Why? Because they could. They had
power and thus they did it. In the end,the film writer could never make a
brand for himself,. He had no one to appealto and had no choice but to
lump it.
Hence, a manifestation of sometypically Indian habits, audience
indifference and power exploitation, foundits way in Bollywood, and hurt
the writers. But we know all this. The question is how do we changeit.
How do we change audience preferences, and the power order
established overgenerations. Well, I have always believed, people
change when they want tochange. People change when they believe
change will do them some good, makethem a better person or give them
a better life. Well, good stories doenrich our lives. Stories that touch us
do make us feel happy and alive. Andslowly, the audience is realizing
this.
The audience today is cluttered withcontent. 200 TV channels, noisy
social networks, the Internet, smartphones,print media, radio everyone
is being bombarded in every direction by content.It is natural that people
will develop a certain numbness to it. A fashionableactress was a big
draw earlier, but if I see pictures of ten of them in a day,it is difficult to be
so excited about it. More than anything, so much contentmeans the
content isnt created with much thought. Recycling, clichs, formulasare

being tried everywhere from fashion weeks to reality TVs to even

movies.The audience is in stupor. The easy ways to catch attention a
strikingvisual, a catchy beat doesnt seem to work as well. People now
want more.They want entertainers to touch their core one of the few
things that cantouch your core is a good story. Films that have worked
Zindagi NaMilegi Dobara, Dirty Picture, and currently Kahani show that
the audience likescontent too. Yes they were star vehicles, but content
is inching ahead. LSD, Shor in the city, Stanley ka Dabba are some
recent pure contentsuccesses. The day is not far where people wont
pay for movies withoutcontent. Just as more and more Indians are
asking for more accountablepoliticians, similarly, we are going to see a
demand for content. This meanswriters will have to be brought on the
boardroom table.

The second part, changing the powerequation is a little harder. Of

course, as a few writers deliver consistenthits, their power will rise. Then
they too can demand their fair share. This isthe argument many would
make. However, this is not how a fair community isorganized. Whether a
writer is powerful or not, he or she should get his or herdue. In fact,
everyone in the unit should. A set of values, ethics has to cometo our
film industry. If it doesnt, a lot of talent will shy away. Onlyestablished
guys and their protgs will function, and while they may grow the
industry as a whole will grow much slower than it could in a true and
fairmeritocracy. In Hollywood, they faced this same problem in the
1950s, issue ofcredit used to cause a lot of concern there. Soon,
norms were set. For example,they would stipulate, credit number 4 will
belong to the writer, in the samefont and size as that of the director. It
isnt up to the whim of the producer.The author of the story cannot be
changed it is the fundamental copyrightlaw. You can buy a painting.
You cannot say you painted it. The produceror director cannot put their
name on a story they havent written, even if theyhave paid for it. Such
norms have helped reduce conflict in Hollywood, ensuredfair play and
brought them a whole bunch of content.

Literature and Bollywood complementeach other. Literature can use the

fame provided by Bollywood. Bollywood canuse the content created by
Literature. The audience is starting to demand it.Bollywood needs to
adapt it to grow to its potential not just to make money but to be a
great industry where there is both commercial and creative growth.
I hope, the changes I talk about comesoon, for they have to come
eventually anyway. Let us all in our capacity, actas catalysts and support
this change, rather than resist or thwart it. For life and films should not
be justmeasured in how much money they made, but how many people
they touched.
Itisnt about money, it is about being great. And trust me, writers will help
youget there.

Thank you
F-INSAS Update Part II: Lethality
Richard de Silva
In Aug 2011, the MoD rel a statement in resp to a public query, admitting
that INSAS (Indian small arms sys), the Armys std assault rifle, was
prone to op failings and had been under deep consideration since 2009
to be replaced with urgency.

The rel reported on a rising accident and defect record for the rifle
over the past three yrs, from 68 incidents in 2009, 69 in 2010, and 41 at
the time of writing, with 9 pers suffering minor injuries in total.
While some of the accidents have been blamed on improper handling,
other issues have been linked to improper heat treatment and mtrl at
the manufacturing ph.
Prior to 2003, a serious defect in the rifles mechanisms had been
occasionally causing oil to spray directly into the eyes of the user and
reqd immediate mod, alongside other concerns over amn and storage.

When initial calls for the overhaul of INSAS emerged two yrs ago,
some senior offrs criticised the decision to issue a global tender for its
replacement, claiming that mods had already transformed it into a good
wpn.
However, there have also been criticisms of the rifles apparent lack of
stopping power, with one reported def of the sys attempting to explain
instant lethality as a less preferable option to serious injury. In this
scenario, it was theorised that more tps are forced to leave the battlefield
in their efforts to evac the injured.
On top of this, use of the wpn during the 1999 Kargil conflict
revealed other early-ph manufacturing flaws, such as the polymer mags
cracking and jamming in cold weather, and accts of the three-round
burst function not working. Reportedly, the rifle was so unreliable that
the Army imported 100,000 AK-47s to cope under high altitude
conditions.
Detls of the rifles record may come as a frustration to the Royal
Army of Oman, who confirmed orders for the INSAS last yr as part of the
India-Oman 2003 def agreement. The exact No of wpns on order has
not been revealed, but Bhutan and Nepal both use the wpn, the latter
holding 23,000 in its stks.
So, Whats New?
Failings of the INSAS wpns will be remedied within the Futuristic
Indian Soldier as a System (F-INSAS) pgme, and given its status as the
first obj of the entire modernisation effort, will begin to see real prog in
2012.
The aim is to acquire modular, multi-calibre wpns, consisting of a
rifle able to fire 5.56mm, 7.62mm and 6.8mm rounds, with potential for
an Underbarrel Gren Lr (UGBL).
It had been thought by some analysts that the Indian Govts
reluctance to offer pvt tender and instead rely on its own DRDO had
slowed the process for modernisation considerably, and fears of losing
local industry opportunities have arguably hampered innovative
competition.

There has been conflicting opinion since the end of 2011 on

whether the indigenous apch will still be undertaken, as it had been
reported in Indias national press that the govt had issued global tenders
for its F-INSAS rifles and CQB carbs, while previous reports had already
suggested that the DRDO had devp a new carbine called Milap set to
begin fd trials and presumably intended for Indian inf.
That which is known for certain is what India believes its rifles
should exhibit as future weaponry given the publically accessible RFI
docus released in the past few yrs.
Among these were the hopes to entice bidders to devp a
multipurpose and rugged gen purpose machine gun for Indian SF, as
well as a rifle with the capb to shoot around corners. Def IQ confirmed in
an interview with Amos Golan, the inventor of the Israeli CornerShot
rifle, that the co is indeed providing this capb to Indian Forces and holds
the international patent on the core concept. CornerShot has already
been supplied to Indias NSG.
Both the new 7.62mm and assault rifle are planned to incl thermal
imaging and digital video relay, with the assault rifle also exhibiting a
Passive Ni Sight (PNS). Desired op temps sit between -10C to +45C,
while every new wpn is expected to be lighter than previous versions,
and with longer rg.
It has been estimated that each advanced INSAS rifle will cost
approx 50,000 INR (570 640) per unit.
Beyond std soldier rifles, a new RFI has been rel for devp of a
Sniper Rifle under the F-INSAS designation, but within its gen
specifications does not reveal much in the way of special
advancements.
In further intriguing devps, Indias inf and WE dtes have issued far
more specific call outs for inf on recoverable tp-launched Mini UAVs, for
use in real-time svl and recce, detection of en mov, tgt detection,
recognition, identification and acqn, and PSDA.
Learning from Allies

While most nations with the scope to undertake a wpns

modernisation pgme will be looking to enhance the obvious attributes
lighter load, incr rg, higher stopper power, etc the most interesting
devps being looked into by other powers are in evolving inf small arms
into multi-capb sys.
Having been working with Israel on small arms R&D, it is thought
that India may piece together lessons from the Israel Wpns Industries
(IWI) devp of the Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle, which underwent three yrs
of testing with the IDF before its contract agreement in 2003, and was
designed to be an organic and lt wt extn of the warfighter. The wpn is
currently in the stks of Indias SF.
The method of devp the Tavor was to ensure that it can adapt with
time to the changing reqmts of comb and, as well as being compact and
mob, also accommodates user-friendly features such as a sight that
does not require the shooter to close their eyes, and the cap to integrate
with a variety of advanced accessories. Crucially, it s interchangeable for
both right- and left-handed users, overcoming a traditional shortfall of
many wpns. Also worth noting is that the Tavor can accommodate a
gren lr kit, which Indian pgme developers wish to incl on its own
upgrades.
The US has seen several contenders in recent yrs to succeed its
current inf and SF weaponry, incl ongoing efforts to replace the M249
LMG and the M4 Carb through open competition.
American devps, however, have focused on enhancing usability
such as reduced cleaning and interval stoppage times rather than
striving for revolutionary advancements into digitization or guided
munitions.
Meanwhile, Russia which has benefited from India being its sec
largest market for def eqpt is currently plg deep modernisation of the
iconic and hugely influential Kalashnikov, and will incl an optical sight
and a flashlight.