Incorrect maps given to China led to 1962 war

Incorrect maps given to China led to 1962 war

India presented contradictory maps on the MacMohan Line to China in the fifties and in 1960-61, which ultimately led to the war with China in 1962. This revelation was made by Wajahat Habibullah, former chief information commissioner (CIC), perhaps the only civilian besides defence secretaries to have officially accessed the top secret Henderson Brookes-Bhagat report.

"We had given maps with serious contradictions on the layout of the MacMohan Line to China. This led the Chinese to believe that one of the pickets being controlled by our forces in the Northeast was theirs-according to one of the maps given to them by us," said Habibullah, declining to name the picket along the Arunachal Pradesh border with China.

Accordingly, on October 20, 1962, the Chinese army crossed over to occupy the border picket, leading to open hostilities.The 890-km-long MacMohan Line, laid down by the British in 1914, demarcates the border between Indian and China - although this is still contested by the latter. Lieutenant General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier Prem Bhagat compiled the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report in 28 volumes in 1963, outlining the reasons for the defeat at the hands of the Chinese in 1962.

Stating that he still believes the report should not be declassified, Habibullah said: "From 1962, the deployment of our armed forces has not substantially changed in these areas. So, declassifying will lead to supplying the Chinese with defence information." "Moreover the report on the role of the Indian army is so scathing that it would have a demoralising effect on the forces even now," said Habibullah.

There are only two copies of the report in existence-one with the defence secretary and the other with Chinese top officials. Habibullah got the go-ahead to access to the report after journalist Kuldip Nayar's appeal under the RTI Act in 2005 to get a copy of the report.

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Published in the Hindustan Times

Dated: 22nd October 2012

By Sanjib Kr Baruah

Behind the war, a genesis in Tibet!!

Recently declassified Chinese documents underscore the centrality of the issue to the 1962 conflict and to any future resolution of the boundary question

Vigil against looting in Tezpur, Assam. Photo: The Hindu Photo Archives

Fifty years on, how the events leading up to 1962 were perceived by China remains almost entirely absent in Indian narratives of the war. Unlike the wars with Japan and in Korea that have a central role in Chinese propaganda about a national revival led by the Communist Party ending “a century of humiliation,” the conflicts with India and Vietnam, where China was the aggressor, are largely airbrushed from today’s Chinese history textbooks. Few Chinese students are even aware of 1962.

In marked contrast to the current re-examination of the events of 1962 under way in India on the 50th anniversary, the Chinese State-controlled media is still largely reluctant to discuss a sensitive chapter in bilateral relations, resulting in very limited insights into the war from Chinese perspectives. However, declassified Chinese documents, which include internal memos sent from Chinese officials in New Delhi to Beijing and notes detailing negotiations from 1950 until 1962, provide fresh insights into Chinese perspectives and decision-making in the decade leading up to 1962.

The Chinese documents provide a far from conclusive history of the war, and are only a reflection of Chinese perspectives — some merited and others unfounded — and the costly misperceptions that led to 1962. This series of articles will, drawing from the documents, look to simply present, rather than evaluate, the perspectives in Beijing that led to China’s decision to launch an offensive on October 20, 1962.

As many as 12 years before Chinese forces began their offensive against India on October 20, 1962, Chinese officials, in an internal diplomatic note, expressed concern over the Indian government’s long-term designs on the status of Tibet. The note, dated November 24, 1950, reported on talks between India and China that had discussed the continuation of Indian privileges in Tibet, which had been enshrined in earlier treaties with Britain. “In general,” the note said, “it was exposed that India has interfered in China’s internal affairs and has hindered China from liberating Tibet.” “India pretends not to have any ambition on Tibetan politics or land,” the note concluded, “but desires to maintain the privileges that were written in the treaties signed since 1906.”

The November 1950 note marked the beginning of growing Chinese suspicions — which were, on occasion, based on slight evidence and driven by China’s own internal insecurities — on India’s intentions towards Tibet, resulting in a turbulent decade during which the Tibetan problem emerged as the central issue in ties between the neighbours.

The occupation of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) in 1950 marked a fundamental shift in how the Chinese viewed relations with India. Months after the PLA’s occupation of Tibet, as China began strengthening its grip over the region, Chinese officials began to object more vociferously to Indian activities. Even as India voiced support to China on the Tibetan issue in 1950 by not backing appeals at the United Nations, the Chinese, internally, continued to suspect Indian designs to destabilise Tibet.

On July 28, 1952, an internal note from the Communist Party’s Central Committee instructed authorities in Tibet to crackdown on Indian business delegations, accusing India of “spreading reactionary publications in the Tibetan language.” In a meeting with the then Indian representative in Beijing, R.K. Nehru, on September 6, 1953, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made clear its displeasure with India’s continued case for privileges, even describing the “Indian incumbent government” as holding an “irresponsible” position on Tibet.

Turning point in 1954

In 1954, Jawaharlal Nehru softened India’s stand by recognising the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) as a part of the People’s Republic of China and giving up privileges, in the likely hope that ties would improve. However, that same year, India, for the first time, printed new maps delineating its northern and northeastern frontiers, which Nehru declared was “not open to discussion with anybody” — a development that ultimately sowed the seeds of the boundary dispute. The documents make clear that Tibet, more than the unsettled boundaries, was by far the fundamental issue that concerned China in the 1950s. They do not, however, shed any conclusive light on whether Beijing might have been open to a compromise on the former issue in return for India’s major concession on Tibet — a question ultimately rendered irrelevant by Nehru deciding not to link the two issues.

The centrality of the Tibetan issue for the Chinese was evident in 1956, when armed revolts broke out across Tibetan areas. With rising tensions in Tibet, the Dalai Lama travelled to India that same year, ostensibly to attend a Buddhist conference but also considering seeking asylum. While Nehru persuaded the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, he also arranged for two key meetings between the young Tibetan spiritual leader and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who happened to be on a visit to India at the same time.

The meetings appeared to cement in the Chinese perception the status of India as a major actor in any eventual resolution of the Tibetan problem. In the first meeting, on November 1, 1956, the Dalai Lama told Zhou that there was “no democracy” in the way the Standing Committee of the TAR was operating. “Yesterday, we visited their Parliament and saw many representatives were debating,” the Dalai Lama said. “I think they are doing better than us on this point…Our Standing Committee of the TAR rarely debates and the content of the discussion is only the letter and word problems.”

The situation in Tibet continued to worsen ahead of their second meeting on December 30, 1956. Zhou conveyed that Mao Zedong wanted the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet as soon as possible “because now some people in Lhasa want to rebel there while the Dalai Lama is not in Tibet.” Accepting the root of the problem was in the Chinese-led reforms in Tibet, Zhou said Mao had decided that reforms would be shelved and reconsidered six years later — and only if the Dalai Lama granted his consent.

Zhou also hit out at Tibetan “separatists” who were active across the border in Kalimpong in India, and warned the Dalai Lama that the People’s Liberation Army would suppress any dissident activity: “They want to be independent and separate Tibet from China; it is betrayal of China. We must not allow it to go on and the PLA will always protect its people’s interests and take self-defense measures… ” Zhou added he would “rouse Nehru’s attention” about such activities in India.

On October 8, 1962, 12 days before the Chinese offensive, Zhou Enlai reflected on his 1956 talks with the Dalai Lama in a candid meeting with the Soviet Union’s Ambassador in Beijing, suggesting that it was a turning point in how he viewed India’s role in the Tibetan question and intentions regarding the boundary dispute. According to the minutes of the meeting, he said India had, in 1956, “exposed their desire to collude with the Dalai Lama and attempt to maintain Tibetan serfdom.”

“At that time, I found Nehru inherited British Imperialist thoughts and deeds on the border issue and the Tibet issue,” Zhou said. “However, considering the friendship of China and India, we took a tolerant attitude and did not convey this to Nehru. In 1958, serfs in Tibet, Xikang [Sichuan] and Qinghai rebelled. Nehru could not wait and took advantage of the border issue to interfere with China’s internal affairs. The Dalai Lama rebelled in 1959 and fled to India, and this was caused by Nehru’s inducement.” Zhou’s views largely characterised the thinking in Beijing three years later, when the Tibetan uprising began to unfold in 1959. China’s leaders, internal documents show, became increasingly convinced — on the basis of questionable evidence — India was to blame for their own failings in Tibet and that the resolution of their Tibetan problem was inextricably linked to the boundary dispute — a conviction that would have fateful consequences.

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Published in The Hindu

Date: 20th October 2012

By Ananth Krishnan

Himalayan Blunder-The Indo-Chinese War of 1962

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 self exculpatory 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 non-publication - 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.  

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". 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. 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. 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.

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 lese-majesty 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.)  

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" 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. 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 mid-September 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". 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. 

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Copyright: Economic & Political Weekly April14-20, 2001 (www.epw.org)  

In dubious battle at heaven’s gate

We seem to have learned nothing as a country from the Indian Army’s defeat and dishonour in 1962

On September 8, 1962, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army surrounded a small Indian Army post in Tsenjang to the north of the Namka Chu stream just below the disputed Thagla ridge at the India-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. The Indian post came to be established as a consequence of the asinine “Forward Policy” which was adopted by the Indian government after the Sino-Indian border dispute began hotting up, particularly after the flight of the Dalai Lama to India. The Chinese couldn’t have chosen a better place than Tsenjang to precipitate a military conflict with India. For a start, Tsenjang was to the north of the de factoborder, which at that point ran midstream of the Namka Chu. The PLA also commanded the high ground. By surrounding Tsenjang, the Chinese had flung down the gauntlet at India. India walked right into it, chin extended.

GOVERNMENT WARNED

On September 10, the then Defence Minister, V.K. Krishna Menon, conveyed his decision that the matter must be settled on the field, overruling the vehement objections of the Army Chief, General P.N. Thapar. Gen. Thapar warned that the Chinese had deployed in strength and even larger numbers were concentrated at nearby Le, very clearly determined to attack in strength if need be. He warned that the fighting would break out all along the border and that there would be grave repercussions. But orders are orders and, consequently, the Eastern Command ordered Brigadier J.P. Dalvi commanding 7 Brigade to “move forward within forty eight hours and deal with the Chinese investing Dhola.” Having imposed this order on a reluctant Army, Krishna Menon left for New York on September 18 but not before slyly conveying to the press that the Indian Army had been ordered to evict the Chinese from the Indian territory. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru too was abroad having left India on September 7 only to return on September 30.

The Indian Army was under pressure but Gen. Thapar was still not prepared to bow to sheer stupidity. On September 22, at a meeting presided over by the Deputy Minister, K. Raghuramiah, Gen. Thapar once again warned the government of the possibility of grave repercussions and now demanded written orders. He received the following order signed by H.C. Sarin, then a mere Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Defence: “The decision throughout has been as discussed at previous meetings, that the Army should prepare and throw out the Chinese as soon as possible. The Chief of Army Staff was accordingly directed to take action for the eviction of the Chinese in the Kameng Frontier Division of NEFA [North East Frontier Agency] as soon as he was ready.” It was unambiguous insomuch as it conveyed the government’s determination to evict the Chinese, but by leaving the Army Chief to take action when he was ready for it was seeking to pass the onus on to him. With such waffling skills, it is no small wonder that Sarin rose to great heights in the bureaucracy.

PRESSURE FROM MPS

Under the previous Army Chief, General K.S. Thimayya, the Indian Army had developed a habit of winking at the government’s impossible demands often impelled by its fanciful public posturing. The posturing itself was an outcome of the trenchant attacks on the government in Parliament by a galaxy of MPs. One particular MP, the young Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was particularly eloquent in his quest to put Jawaharlal Nehru on the defensive. He and others like Lohia, Kripalani and Masani would frequently thunder that every inch of sacred Indian territory must be freed from the Chinese and charge the government with a grave dereliction of duty. Nehru finally obliged by initiating the stupid Forward Policy and resorting to the use of more extravagant language to signal his own determination to the Indian public. A general summed this policy succinctly by writing: “we would build a post here and they would build one there and it became a bit of a game, to get there first!”

Nehru returned on September 30 and was furious that the Chinese were still not thrown out from the Thagla ridge. He was tired of the Indian Army’s refrain of grave repercussions. He shouted at the hapless Army Chief: “I don’t care if the Chinese came as far as Delhi, they have to be driven out of Thagla.” Unlike Gen. Thimayya, Gen. Thapar was possibly a more obedient soldier, probably even less understanding of the government’s compulsions and hence took its orders far more literally and seriously than it deserved.

Within the Indian Army, there were serious reservations about the efficacy of the government’s orders. The GOC, Northern Command, Lt. Gen Daulat Singh, warned the government that “it is imperative that political direction be based on military means.” The 33 Corps, which was responsible for the sector, sent its candid opinions on the order. Its Brigadier General Staff, Jagjit Singh Aurora, who later won enduring fame as the liberator of Bangladesh, called up his friend Brigadier D.K. Palit, the then Director of Military Operations, and berated him for issuing such impractical orders. Not only were the Chinese better placed in terms of terrain, men and material, the Indian troops were woefully ill-equipped, ill-clothed and had to be supplied by mule, trains or airdrops. They were acutely short of ammunition. The objective of evicting the Chinese from Thagla itself was of no strategic or tactical consequence. The nation clearly needed a greater objective to go to precipitate an unequal war.

BUREAUCRATIC CHICANERY

The government’s reaction was a typical instance of political and bureaucratic chicanery and cunning. It ordered the establishment of the 4 Corps culled out from 33 Corps and appointed Maj. Gen. B.M. Kaul, a Nehru kinsman and armchair general who had never commanded a fighting unit earlier. Gen. Kaul was from the Army Supply Corps and earned his spurs by building barracks near Ambala in record time. He was a creature peculiar to Delhi’s political hothouse and adept in all the bureaucratic skills that are still in demand there. He had the Prime Minister’s ear and that’s all that mattered. And so off he went, a dubious soldier seeking dubious battle and dubious glory that might even propel him to much higher office. Welles Hangen in his book After Nehru Who?profiled B.M. Kaul as a possible successor. The rest is history, a tale of dishonour, defeat and more duplicity about which much has been written.

Fifty years is a long time ago and the memory of 1962 is now faint. But what should cause the nation concern is that the lessons of 1962 still do not seem to have been learnt. If at all anything, the Indian Army is now an even greater and much more misused instrument of public policy. If in 1962, it was a relatively small army with 1930s equipment, it is a million man army in 2012 with 1960s equipment. Let alone the Chinese PLA, almost every terrorist and insurgent in Jammu and Kashmir has better arms and communication gear than our soldiers. Even the Border Security Force has superior logistics, vestments and small arms. We persist in benchmarking against the Pakistanis when we should be bench-marking against the Chinese, if not the Russians and Americans.

GRANDSTANDING

Governmental decision-making is still characterised by ad hocism and a tendency to grandstand. It was this tendency that cost us so many lives in Kargil when we went into quick battle mostly to assuage public opinion and for domestic political gain, without thinking through the tactics. It is only the unquestioning soldiers of the Indian Army who will still charge like the Light Brigade.

But does anyone of consequence in India, including in the Indian Army, commiserate these days over the futile and quite unnecessary loss of over 7,000 lives, so much of humiliation as a consequence of so much of foolishness by men holding high offices? In 1962, lyricist Pradeep wrote the now famous song whose first line runs “aye mere watan ke logon, zara aankh mey bhar lo paani, jo shaheed hue hain unki, zara yaad karo qurbani.” When Lata Mangeshkar sang this to an audience that included Jawaharlal Nehru, it is said that tears flowed from every pair of eyes. The song still has that magical quality, but few now seem to know what train of events caused those poignant words to be written and what emotions put that enduring magic in Lata’s voice.

If politicians cannot find the time or the attention span to read some of the numerous books and articles written on the subject, they should at least listen to the song and shed a tear for our fallen warriors. We owe them that much for they have, as Kaifi Azmi wrote in 1964: kar chale hum fida jaan aur tan sathiyon, ab tumhare hawale watan sathiyon!

(Mohan Guruswamy is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. mohanguru@gmail.com)

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Published in The Hindu

Date: 13th Oct. 2012

Written by: Mohan Guruswamy

Strains from the Past

Kashmiri folk music which communicated events and emotions is fast moving out of public memory with the onslaught of Bollywood culture

In the year 2000, songs from the movie Mission Kashmir, Rinda poshamal gindi-ney dra-yi lo-lo and Bumbro Bumbro introduced Kashmiri lyrics to the rest of the nation. A love poem, the original Rind Posh Maal was knitted by the late 18 century Kashmiri Poet, Rasul Mir. The fact that the Kashmiris are still singing it occasionally reflects on the continuing popularity of this poem. Unfortunately, this has not been the fate of the rest of the traditional Kashmiri folk songs, music and dance forms. They have been overshadowed by cinematic glitz, with the younger generation shaking a leg to the tune of the latest chartbusters.

Kashmir is the proud possessor of a unique cultural heritage -- be it language, music, performing arts, handicraft, or any other art form. “The heart and soul of our culture were Kashmiri folk songs but as Bollywood songs made their entry into our markets, Kashmiris, particularly youngsters, developed a keen liking and interest in them,” said Former Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages (JKAACL), renowned critic and poet, Mohammad Yousuf Taing.

Veteran singer Abdul Gaffar Kanihami recounts, “Lol-gevun (love songs), popularised by Habba Khatoon, were a rage during our times as youth expressed their love by singing couplets filled with messages of love and affection. The foray of Bollywood and western songs gave local music a run for its money.”

Similarly, ‘Rouf songs’ or Wanwun were very popular in marriages and festivals, remembers Kanimahi. These songs were so enthralling, that no girl or woman, or even an old age woman would miss participating in them.

According to Zahid Mukhtayar, parents too share the responsibility for the loss. “As parents, we have failed to inculcate in our children the significance of our culture. We encourage them to speak in every other language except Kashmiri, dress up in non-traditional outfits and bring them in close sync with outside musical beats.”

Feroz Fayaz, 55, remembers rustic songs like Nendi Ba’eth which are sung during the weeding season. “I still remember that during weeding of paddy fields, men would sing in chorus. The effect of the songs was so embalming that hardly anyone noticed the passing of time,” Tariballi adds that Sont Gevun(spring songs) were also a sensation as the coming of spring was welcomed with it.

Fayaz laments that Kashmiri culture has plummeted to its lowest ebb; gone are the days when boys, girls, men and women would assemble in hordes and take part in cultural functions. “Our half-hearted approach and arrival of non-Kashmiri songs took away the sheen of folk songs. Nowadays, it is rare to see someone boasting or claiming to know anything about Kashmiri folk songs,” he rues.

One of the reasons for the neglect of traditional songs singers of the Valley feel is due to lack of patronage by the government. “Instead of encouraging us, the government is discouraging us. We are struggling to feed our families and keep Kashmiri Sufiana music alive,” laments well known Muneer Mir.

Mir points out institutions like the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages (JKAACL), Doordarshan, and Radio Kashmir are not helping veteran singers. Instead of providing artists with monetary help and support, they invite artists to perform just once a year, only to please government dignitaries.

Veteran singers, after rendering years of services, have been knocking at the government’s door for redressal of their grievances. “On JKAACL’s recommendation, the Central government in 2009 had decided to financially help impoverished Kashmiri veteran singers. After registering for it, we were informed that under a Special Pension Scheme, Rs 4,000 will be paid to each on a monthly basis. But till date, not a single penny has reached our pockets,” laments Abdul Ahad Parray, a Sufiana expert.

Voicing similar concerns, singer Abdul Gaffar Kanihami predicts a dark future for Sufiana singing in Kashmir. “If the government continues to treat us with this indifference, in the near future this richest form of Kashmiri culture will be confined to books only. We defied all odds and have somehow managed to keep at least a section of people in touch with our art. But we don’t think the younger generation will show such resilience.” (Charkha Features)

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Published in The Hindu

Date: 8th Oct. 2012

By Zeenat Zeeshan Fazil and Mukhtar Ahmad 

Indian and Danish govts to revive Serampore heritage

Bengal Heritage

A slew of restoration activities is in store for the decaying colonial heritage of Serampore. Not only has the Union ministry of culture sanctioned funds for the Danish Governor's House, the Danish government has taken up preservation of the south and north gates of the complex. The Mamata Banerjee government is trying to include the erstwhile Fredriksnagore (christened after King Frederick VI who ruled from 1746 to 1799) with its eventful history and the physical remains on the list of World Heritage Sites. As the Danish administration functioned from Serampore, about 25 km north of river Hooghly, between 1755 and 1845, Kolkata and the adjoining areas were controlled by Denmark as a trading port. The Governor's House in the subdivisional court was their epicentre. The restoration, too, will begin with this building. 

Serampore College

Serampore College Crest (Coat of Arms)

The efforts to revive the remnants of the Danish buildings of Serampore have resulted in the 'Europe-on-Ganga' project, conceived by the West Bengal Heritage Commission (WBHC). "The collaboration between the Centre, the commission and the Danish government is sure to give a fresh lease of life to the heritage of Serampore," said Shuvaprasanna, chairman, WBHC. 

The Main Building of Serampore College

Danish conservation architect Flemming Aalund, historian Simon Rasten and ethnographer Bente Wolff will be here in November to execute the Serampore Initiative taken up by the National Museum of Denmark. NMD has raised private and public funds for Serampore, which still shows off an intricate tapestry of European and indigenous architecture dating back to 18th Century. 

The culture ministry is expected to finalize the quantum of funds to be disbursed this month, but the commission is gearing up for a post-Puja date. Their focus - the derelict, single-storied Governor House - has already undergone piecemeal preservation. "During the first phase, which began in 2009, only a small part of the mammoth restoration project could be completed. Now, we are starting all over again," said Partha Ranjan Das, member, WBHC. 

The second phase of restoration promises to be more extensive. It will include repair of the wooden staircase, the wooden skylights and the walls and replacement of doors and windows. Steps will be taken to prevent further deterioration. The building that used to be a mud-and-wattle construction with a thatched roof has survived for over 200 years. No wonder, it shows different characteristics reflecting Serampore's history through Danish, British and Indian periods. Much of it had collapsed during a dinner party on December 2, 1770. The rest was demolished in 1771 until Johan Leonard Fix, the new Danish head, reconstructed it. The British inherited the building in 1845. Finally, it was abandoned after a roof collapse in 1999. 

The Serampore Initiative was conceived in 2008 by NMD's ethnographic department to supplement the Governor House project, but it hit a roadblock of rules prohibiting direct foreign funding of government projects. "Now an arrangement has been worked out. Intach, an NGO working on heritage conservation, has tied up with NMD. We are supporting them," said Shuvaprasanna. 

St. Olav's Church

William Carey's Tomb

Also on NMD's cards is the restoration of St Olav's Church and the old Danish cemetery, upgrade of the square in front and setting up a museum with the Danish history of Serampore. The cemetery is under the Archaeological Survey of India, but the headstones are crumbling. "The restoration project will be backed by seminars, meetings and archival activity since the initiative aims at promoting knowledge of the cultural heritage related to Serampore," said Shuvaprasanna.

Map of Hooghly

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Published in The Times of India

Date: 10th Oct. 2012

By Ajanta Chakraborty

History and Images of Leh & Laddakh

Leh Palace

Leh, capital of Ladakh 1857

Thiksey (Gompa) Monastery

Leh Palace

Leh Palace

Laddakhi women in traditional dress 

Mask dance at Hemis Monastery

Leh

Prayer Flags

Leh Palace at night

Hemis Monastery in Leh, Laddakh

Laddakh Landsacpe

HISTORY

Leh (Ladakh) was known in the past by different names. It was called Maryul or low land by some Kha- chumpa by others. FaHein referred to it as Kia-Chha and Hiuen Tsang as Ma-Lo-Pho. It is said that the first  Immigrants to this land appears to have been  the  Brokpas  from  Dadarstan  who  inhabited  the  lower reaches of the Indus Valley popularly known as Sham. Another wave of  Immigrants who came from Karja (Kulu) were the Mons, an Aryan type who first settled  in Gya and spread to Rong, Shayok,  Sakti  Tangtse  and  Durbuk,  the  area  extending  from Martselang to Khaltsi. Gia was the seat of government of the first Mon ruler having been elected by the whole tribe. His kingdom included  the  villages  mentioned  above,  all  of  which  was inhabited  by  the  Mons  people  He  was  known  by  the  title Gyapacho, derived from his being the master of Gia.

The ancient inhabitants of Ladakh were Dards, an Indo- Aryan race. Immigrants of Tibet, Skardo and nearby parts like Purang, Guge  settled  in Ladakh,  whose  racial  characters  and  cultures were in consonance with early settlers. Buddhism traveled from central India to Tibet via Ladakh leaving its imprint in Ladakh. Islamic missionaries also made a peaceful penetration of Islam in the early 16th century. German Moravian Missionaries  having cognizance of East India Company also made inroads towards conversion but with little success.

In the 10th century AD, Skit Lde Nemagon, the ruler of Tibet, invaded Ladakh where there was no central authority. The lands divided  in  small  principalities  were  at  war  with  each  other. Nemagon defeated them one by one and established a strong kingdom at Shey, 15 kms from Leh, as its capital. Ladakh was an independent country since the middle of the 10th century. 

King Singge Namgyal had consolidated the Ladakhi Empire into a strong kingdom. He was not only a strong monarch but a statesman, a diplomat and a builder. He built the historic 9 storeyed  Leh  palace  and  made  the  other  neighboring countries  envy of such an elegant palace.  He also promoted horse polo in Ladakh. In the ancient times the present Leh district was a part of Greater Ladakh  spread  over  from  Kailash  Mansarover  to  Swaat (Dardistan). The Greater ladakh was neither under the Domain of Tibet or  its  influence.  Not  much  information  is  available about the ancient History of Ladakh. However, reference about the  place  and  its  neighbourhood  in  Arab,  Chinese  and Mongolian histories gives an idea that in the 7th Century A.D fierce wars were fought by Tibet and China in Baltistan area of the Greater Ladakh in which deserts and barren mountains of Ladakh was turned into battle fields for the warring armies.

In the 8th century A.D Arabs also jumped into these wars and changed  their  sides  between  China  and  Tibet.  Around  this period, the ruler of Kashmir, Laltadita conquered Ladakh. In the 8th  Century  A.D  itself,  The  Arabs  conquered  Kashghar  and established their control over Central asia which embraced Islam in the 9th century A.D and thus a buffer state came into being between Tibet and China, terminating the hostilities between the two warring countries. The greater Ladakh also fell into peices. A thousand years ago before the contol  of Tibets  rule, king Skitde  Nemagon,  ruled  over  Ladakh  which  was  known  as Muryul (Red Country), as most of the mountains and the soil in Ladakh wears a red tinge. In the 10th Century A.D Skitday Nemagon, along with a couple of hundred men, invaded Ladakh where there was no central authority. The Land was divided in small  principalities,  which  were  at  war  with  each  other. Nemagon defeated all of them and established a strong central authority. Those days Shey, was the capital of Ladakh became to be known as Nariskorsoom, a country of three provinces. The present Ladakh was divided into two provinces while the third comprised  western  Tibet.  The  area  of  western  Tibet slipped away from the kingdom but was reunited in 16th Century A.D. by the famous Ladakhi ruler Sengge Namgyal. Ladakh was an independent country since the middle of 10th century.

In  the  post-partition  scenario,  Pakistan  and  China  illegally occupied  78,114  sq.  km  and  37,555  sq.km  of  the  state, respectively while the remaining part of the state acceded to India. Pakistan also illegally gifted 5180 sq.kms of this area to China. Ladakh, comprising the areas of present Leh and Kargil districts, became one of the seven districts of the State. In 1979 when  the  reorganization  of the  districts  was  carried  out,  the Ladakh district was divided into two full fledged district of Leh and Kargil.

GEOGRAPHICAL  :-

District Leh is situated roughly between 32 to 36 degree north latitude and 75 to 80 degree East longitude and altitude ranging from 2300 mtrs to 5000 mtrs above sea level. District Leh with an area of 45100 Sqs Kms makes it 2nd largest district in the country after Kutch (Gujrat) with an area 45652 Sqs Kms in terms  of  area.  the  district  is  bounded  by  Pakistan  occupied Kashmir in the west and china in the north and eastern part and Lahul Spiti of Himachal Pardesh in the south east. It is at a distance of 434 Kms from State capital (Summer) Srinager and 474 Kms from Manali(HP).

Topographically, the whole of the district is mountainous with three parallel ranges of the Himalayas, the Zanskar, the Ladakh and the Karakoram. Between these ranges, the Shayok, Indus and Zanskar rivers flow and most of the population lives  in valleys of these rivers. According to the provisional geographical area figures supplied by Surveyor General of India, the total area of Leh district is 82,665sq. Kms. Out of the total area of 37,555 sq.kms is under the  illegal  occupation  of  China  leaving  45110  sq.  kms  with India. As per the village Papers, the area under the occupation of India is 44,000 sq. Kms only. The district is divided into 9 CD Blocks namely Leh, Khaltsi, Nyoma, Durbuk, Kharu, Nubra, Saspol, Panamic and Chuchot and divided into 3 tehsils namely Leh, Sumoor and Khaltsi. Leh is the district headquarter and the only township in the district. There are 93 panchayat halqa in the district. Whole district has been declared as a tribal district.

APPROACH ROADS

Ladakh is called the Hermit Kingdom due to its remoteness and in accessibility. Ladakh is connected to the main land through two  roads  namely  Leh-Srinagar  national  highway  and  LehManali road. These two roads remains open only during summer months and during the winter it remains closed for more than 7 months  due  to  closure  of  the  passes  (Zojila,  Rotang  Pass, Baralacha, Changla) . Leh District is connected to the Block Headquarter by roads, through a network of roads. The average distance of the block headquarter from Leh is 180 Kms. Bus services  and  other  means  of  communication  is  very  poor.

Border  roads  organization  maintains  most  of  the  highway connecting the block head quarter and PWD maintains a road length of 1060 Kms. As some of the roads to the block head quarter passes through the world highest motorable roads, it is frequently  closed  due  to  the  avalanches  and  snowfall  in  the passes. Durbuk block and Nubra Block remains closed in winter months due to closure of Khardongla and the Changla Pass. The transport service comprises of roads, motor vehicles, civil aviation, railways, and water transport. . All this constituents form  the  base  of  economic  infrastructure.  The  adequate availability  of  this  infrastructure  leads  to  rapid  economic development, though the railways and water transport does not

exist in the district.

The road transport is the major and principle mode of mobility of men and material in the district. Roads are thus considered as arteries of our economy, which plays crucial role in sustaining economic  growth  and  is  vital  for  the  development  of  all segments of the society. Due to difficult terrain of the district, it is very difficult to provide road facilities, however Public Works Department  has  constructed  and  maintained  substantial  road network in the district. Out of 113 villages of the district, 97 stands  connected  with  the  motorable  road  by  ending  March 2009. The  Border  Road  Organization  (Project  Himank)  is  also contributing a lot in the economic development of the district by constructing/maintaining  a  huge  chunk  of  road  network, connecting the border areas. 

AIR SERVICES

Then the only route accessible to Ladakh during the winter is air, Indian Air Lines operates daily flight services form Leh to Delhi  and  return  besides  Jet  airway  and  airgo.  Moreover  in winter months the air services is not frequent as there are too many cancellations of flights due to fog in Delhi and snowfalls in Leh. Life in Ladakh comes to a stand still in winter months and remains cut off from the rest of the world. There  are  two  Airports  in  the  district  namely  K.G  Bakula Airport at Leh and army Airport at Thoise Nubra. Leh airport connects  the  national  capital  of  Delhi  and  state  capital  of Srinagar and Jammu.

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Taken from the website of LAHDC Leh

The Official Website of Laddakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Leh)