What If India Had Won The 1962 War Against China?

Rajeev Srinivasan August 23, 2004 00:00 IST What If India Had Won The 1962 War Against China? -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

Indians have been conditioned to believe that we had not a ghost of a chance against China in 1962; but that’s simply not true. If the Indian government had not been so blasé; if the military leadership had not been so ineffectual; if the Indian Air Force had not been grounded, ill-advisedly; well, all historic ifs, but the outcome would have been very different. China’s army is a lot less than invincible, as the battle-hardened Vietnamese proved by thrashing it in 1979.

Even the timing was propitious for India, yet we fumbled. In 1962, China had just experienced four years of decreasing foodgrain production and a major famine. Chinese supply lines to the Indo-Tibet border were stretched thin, and could have been disrupted from the air. If only the Indian political and military leadership had not been criminally negligent—which is why the Henderson-Brooks Report on the war has been suppressed, for it would implicate too many in high places—India could have won.

The end results would have been dramatic: Tibet would have been liberated; Indians would not have been...