M A I N   N E W S

Forward policy raised chances of conflict
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 18
Military circles in India often debate that the India-China conflict was caused due to wrong forward policy and its wrong implementation by India. The report uploaded by Neville Maxwell narrates how it all started on August 26, 1959, when the Chinese overran an Indian Army post at Longju in North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) in October and in the same year, a post at Kongka la in Eastern Ladakh had been overrun. Both times China claimed the posts were in Chinese territory even though these were inside the Indian territory.

India responded to Chinese actions with a forward policy. The 3,488-km-long boundary is not demarcated and once China invaded Tibet in the late 1950s, a peaceful border had become live. The dispute of boundary demarcation is pending since 1846 when the British signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the Dogra rulers of Jammu and Kashmir and went about demarcating the eastern limits of Ladakh. The Tibetans, who were sometimes backed by the Chinese, stalled the demarcation in five separate attempts made by the British between 1846 and 1914.

India, in 1961, advocated a policy which entailed patrolling as far forward as possible from India’s present positions. This was to be done with a view to establishing additional posts that would then stop the Chinese and dominate the heights. The report raises the question if India was in a position to implement the ‘forward policy’ with the kind of resources and poor logistics it had. The report blames the Army headquarters of ‘deliberately’ carrying out the policy in a wrong manner without the government backing.

The policy did increase the chances of a conflict, says the report. Especially, for the Indians it was an ‘unequal race’ battling against the Chinese. The Army’s annual intelligence review China-Tibet 1959-1960 said Chinese strength grew three times between 1959 and 1961 whereas India’s was negligible due to lack of logistic support. The road between Srinagar and Leh got completed only in 1961. Places like Chusul in Ladakh were air maintained.