were never more chummy and
euphoric than in the 1950s when all the stalwart idealistic leaders of the
emerging post-colonial Asia were alive and zealously pursuing the peace agenda of
a new anti-imperialist, non-aligned
pro-people new world order they had in mind. But we know how the supercilious
conduct of our leaders, especially the Nehru-Krishna Menon-Kaul axis, had spoilt
the ecstatic Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai
climate. The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat duo entrusted by the Indian Army to look
into the causes for the humiliating debacle suffered by us seem to have put the
blame squarely on the aggressive forward policy and the disgusting favoritism
followed by our top political, military authorities of the day. Unfortunately,
this HB/B Report has not been made public even after all these decades, though its
text seems to be readily available to all foreigners to point fingers and
heckle at our incompetent and corrupt top brass. Just to quote the starting
lines of an excellent introduction to the same by the world famous political
analyst Nevill Maxwell, whose historic eye-opener account, “India’s China War” is still banned in
India – “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” – would suffice to highlight
the real problem between the two countries. Needless to stress that without
solving the border dispute with an amicable ‘give and take’ perspective and a
cordial forget-the-colonial-past and look-to-the-bright-future-ahead spirit, no
amount of friendly ‘selfies’ taken or vasudhaiva
kutumbakam (world is one family) exhortations made by our new premier would do to
meaningfully improve the relations between these two Asian giants, especially
in the background of raging international state and religious fundamentalist
terrorism, the dagger of which is being pointed at us through our daayaadi (kinsman) neighbor now in so close
terms with the newly emerging superpower of the world – so aggressively
expansionist now as at no time in recent history. §§§
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