"Where is the bloody border?" The arrogant men of 1962

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-where-is-the-bloody-border-the-arrogant-men-of-1962-1752462

Rashmun wrote:http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-where-is-the-bloody-border-the-arrogant-men-of-1962-1752462

Rash
Thanks for posting the article. That clearly establishes that Nehru ran an incompetent pompous govt machinary that led the nation into the worst possible crisis.

truthbetold wrote:

Rashmun wrote:http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-where-is-the-bloody-border-the-arrogant-men-of-1962-1752462

Rash
Thanks for posting the article. That clearly establishes that Nehru ran an incompetent pompous govt machinary that led the nation into the worst possible crisis.

Nehru made a mistake on the 1962 issue because he listened to and followed the advice given by Krishna Menon and his Generals. But this does not mean we can turn a blind eye to the good that Nehru did for India. Even his worst enemies do not accuse Nehru of corruption for example. And Nehru ensured that India remained secular despite intense pressure from the right wingers to make India have a state religion. Nehru also helped develop heavy industry in India and established topnotch institutes of science and technology. He did his best to spread science in India.

rash
can we focus on china war?

So all these leaders like Nehru, Krishna menon ran their mouths and got a lot of soldiers killed. Most of these jawans were from poor families.

Btw I have a distant relative whose brother was in the Army at that time. He did not come back. His family did not even see his body.

Rishi wrote:So all these leaders like Nehru, Krishna menon ran their mouths and got a lot of soldiers killed. Most of these jawans were from poor families.

Btw I have a distant relative whose brother was in the Army at that time. He did not come back. His family did not even see his body.

Govt was too busy taking care of shattered nehru who ordered ill equipped poor soldiers into a war.  Without proper arms and winter clothes, these soldiers were sent to slaughter house.

truthbetold wrote:

Rishi wrote:So all these leaders like Nehru, Krishna menon ran their mouths and got a lot of soldiers killed. Most of these jawans were from poor families.

Btw I have a distant relative whose brother was in the Army at that time. He did not come back. His family did not even see his body.

Govt was too busy taking care of shattered nehru who ordered ill equipped poor soldiers into a war.  Without proper arms and winter clothes, these soldiers were sent to slaughter house.

>>>In fairness to Nehru, he was an idealist which led to a naïve trust of the Chinese. Yes, he can be faulted for it, but we also have the benefit of hindsight now to see that. One thing that puzzles me (if true) was Menon's opposition to deploying India's air power in which it has superiority.

truthbetold wrote:rash
can we focus on china war?

Hahahaha... Exactly..... but then we know how rashmunllah is.

Kris wrote:

truthbetold wrote:

Rishi wrote:So all these leaders like Nehru, Krishna menon ran their mouths and got a lot of soldiers killed. Most of these jawans were from poor families.

Btw I have a distant relative whose brother was in the Army at that time. He did not come back. His family did not even see his body.

Govt was too busy taking care of shattered nehru who ordered ill equipped poor soldiers into a war.  Without proper arms and winter clothes, these soldiers were sent to slaughter house.

>>>In fairness to Nehru, he was an idealist which led to a naïve trust of the Chinese. Yes, he can be faulted for it, but we also have the benefit of hindsight now to see that. One thing that puzzles me (if true) was Menon's opposition to deploying India's air power in which it has superiority.

Kris,

As the chief operational executive of the nation the elected prime minister is where the buck stops. War is the biggest decision the PM can make.  People put the responsibility of the nation's defense in his hands. It was his responsibility to pick and monitor his advisers on an important issue like this.  He also had the responsibility to cross verify his inner circle advise.  Failing to do so leads to tragic mistakes. That was what Nehru did. Why did it he do it? - that is explanation for what happened. But  Nehru bears responsibility to provide the correct decisions at this most critical and tragic decision. He failed. He failed India. And India paid a huge price. It is still paying the price through China's encouragement of Pakistan to create constant turmoil inside India and at its external borders.

truthbetold wrote:

Kris wrote:

truthbetold wrote:

Rishi wrote:So all these leaders like Nehru, Krishna menon ran their mouths and got a lot of soldiers killed. Most of these jawans were from poor families.

Btw I have a distant relative whose brother was in the Army at that time. He did not come back. His family did not even see his body.

Govt was too busy taking care of shattered nehru who ordered ill equipped poor soldiers into a war.  Without proper arms and winter clothes, these soldiers were sent to slaughter house.

>>>In fairness to Nehru, he was an idealist which led to a naïve trust of the Chinese. Yes, he can be faulted for it, but we also have the benefit of hindsight now to see that. One thing that puzzles me (if true) was Menon's opposition to deploying India's air power in which it has superiority.

Kris,

As the chief operational executive of the nation the elected prime minister is where the buck stops. War is the biggest decision the PM can make.  People put the responsibility of the nation's defense in his hands. It was his responsibility to pick and monitor his advisers on an important issue like this.  He also had the responsibility to cross verify his inner circle advise.  Failing to do so leads to tragic mistakes. That was what Nehru did. Why did it he do it? - that is explanation for what happened. But  Nehru bears responsibility to provide the correct decisions at this most critical and tragic decision. He failed. He failed India. And India paid a huge price. It is still paying the price through China's encouragement of Pakistan to create constant turmoil inside India and at its external borders.

>>>TBT,

I am not absolving Nehru and it was a costly blunder. I was merely trying to deconstruct the situation. The naivete also informed many other foreign policy stances, which continued after him.

In 1950 China had invaded Tibet and annexed it. In 1954, India recognized Tibet to be an inseparable part of China long before almost anybody else in the world. This despite the fact that India too had some claim over Tibet. Now the mistake India made was that there should have been a comprehensive negotiation of all border issues in 1954 itself. Recognizing Tibet to be an inseparable part of China should have been used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations.

Rash
Tibet is the primary cause indo China conflict. Nehru was right in recognizing Tibet and providing dalai lama a place to live and reorganize. That was a major problem for China.
But in 1950s both sides were not ready for dialogue. That was not a real option.
India was very aware of China's displeasure and willingness to punish India. That war was the most predictable event in 1960s except in nehru's mind.

truthbetold wrote:Rash
Tibet is the primary cause indo  China conflict. Nehru was right in recognizing Tibet and providing dalai lama a place to live and reorganize. That was a major problem for China.
But in 1950s both sides were not ready for dialogue. That was not a real option.
India was very aware of China's displeasure and willingness to punish India. That war was the most predictable event in 1960s except in nehru's mind.

>>> He got suckered into all that hindi-cheeni bhai-bhai nonsense ( see my comment on his idealism above). I also don't think it was just a matter of Tibet and revenge for it. It may have been the first steps in China's long term plans of dominating the neighborhood. That outlook has only gotten more focused with time, despite the moving away from hard core communism. It is not so much an economic philosophy thing, as it is an ethnic han thing to establish a prominent place in global politics and aspiration for super-powerdom.

Kris wrote:

truthbetold wrote:Rash
Tibet is the primary cause indo  China conflict. Nehru was right in recognizing Tibet and providing dalai lama a place to live and reorganize. That was a major problem for China.
But in 1950s both sides were not ready for dialogue. That was not a real option.
India was very aware of China's displeasure and willingness to punish India. That war was the most predictable event in 1960s except in nehru's mind.

>>> He got suckered into all that hindi-cheeni bhai-bhai nonsense ( see my comment on his idealism above). I also don't think it was just a matter of Tibet and revenge for it. It may have been the first steps in China's long term plans of dominating the neighborhood. That outlook has only gotten more focused with time, despite the moving away from hard core communism. It is not so much an economic philosophy thing, as it is an ethnic han thing to establish a prominent place in global politics and aspiration for super-powerdom.

A different perspective on this issue:

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282579

Rashmun wrote:

Kris wrote:

truthbetold wrote:Rash
Tibet is the primary cause indo  China conflict. Nehru was right in recognizing Tibet and providing dalai lama a place to live and reorganize. That was a major problem for China.
But in 1950s both sides were not ready for dialogue. That was not a real option.
India was very aware of China's displeasure and willingness to punish India. That war was the most predictable event in 1960s except in nehru's mind.

>>> He got suckered into all that hindi-cheeni bhai-bhai nonsense ( see my comment on his idealism above). I also don't think it was just a matter of Tibet and revenge for it. It may have been the first steps in China's long term plans of dominating the neighborhood. That outlook has only gotten more focused with time, despite the moving away from hard core communism. It is not so much an economic philosophy thing, as it is an ethnic han thing to establish a prominent place in global politics and aspiration for super-powerdom.

A different perspective on this issue:

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282579

The other point is Maxwell's interpretation of Nehru's motives. He knows the Indian scene better than I do, but there is much evidence that Nehru up till 1959 genuinely favoured Chou En-lai's compromise proposal for an Aksai Chin/NEFA exchange and was trying to prepare Indian public opinion. Why else would he have publicly cast doubt on India'sAksai Chin claim, as he did in the Lok Sabha during 1959? Alter the Tibetan fighting and subsequent border clashes, however, he seems to have lost control of the situation and allowed himself to be swept along by the intense and irrational nationalistic passions generated throughout the country. Maxwell's dissection of these passions is the major contribution of his book.

http://gregoryclark.net/bookrev.html

Rashmun wrote:

Kris wrote:

truthbetold wrote:Rash
Tibet is the primary cause indo  China conflict. Nehru was right in recognizing Tibet and providing dalai lama a place to live and reorganize. That was a major problem for China.
But in 1950s both sides were not ready for dialogue. That was not a real option.
India was very aware of China's displeasure and willingness to punish India. That war was the most predictable event in 1960s except in nehru's mind.

>>> He got suckered into all that hindi-cheeni bhai-bhai nonsense ( see my comment on his idealism above). I also don't think it was just a matter of Tibet and revenge for it. It may have been the first steps in China's long term plans of dominating the neighborhood. That outlook has only gotten more focused with time, despite the moving away from hard core communism. It is not so much an economic philosophy thing, as it is an ethnic han thing to establish a prominent place in global politics and aspiration for super-powerdom.

A different perspective on this issue:

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282579

>>>I read the whole interview and it is likely that we may never know the full story. Here are some questions that jump out though: what were the compulsions that drove India's actions?  The story about Nehru going along with national passions seems a big stretch, considering he had popular backing and this was not something he had to do. Maxwell is also breezily dismissive of Tibet's plight with the people being miserable etc. as though that justifies Chinese annexation. While at first blush that seems tangential to the 1962 conflict, if we take that into consideration along with the numerous disputes China has had with its neighbors,  it casts a huge shadow over Maxwell's thesis of China being a babe- in- the- woods in these matters. The one thing in Maxwell's thesis that deserves some thought is whether Nehru passed up on an expedient solution with the NEFA exchange (if there was such a serious proposal on the table). If Nehru underestimated the Chinese military prowess, that makes for a second mistake.  His failure was then two-fold, one at the negotiating table at which he did not show up and another on the battlefront. However, the Chinese being an aggrieved party is Maxwell's bias, which is not supported by history or subsequent behavior.

Kris,
My opinion of western observers interpretation of eastern conflicts is generally unreliable.  I usually limit my self to gather facts from their books as they are pretty good about that and in most cases very objective.  

The facts can be used to tell different stories either because they are motivated by a source or author's own prejudice.  We must also remember that in this case it is single individual opinion.  

A good case of how poorly western mind understands eastern conflict can be seen in US state departments understanding of SHia sunni conflict in IRAQ.  They got all the facts any one can get after occupying iraq for several years but they could not find a form of govt that can give confidence to both sides.  The problem is the us decision maker's refusal to make accommodations for the Iraqi reality.

However when Narasimha Rao was PM with his very sharp Foreign Secretary, Dixit, he had the wisdom—unique—he is the only PM who’s ever tried to move towards settlement—to negotiate with China to achieve peace and tranquillity along the boundary.

>>>PVN Rao a deliberate, cool and sensible man. Unlike the emotional Nehru.

Kris wrote:

Rashmun wrote:

Kris wrote:

truthbetold wrote:Rash
Tibet is the primary cause indo  China conflict. Nehru was right in recognizing Tibet and providing dalai lama a place to live and reorganize. That was a major problem for China.
But in 1950s both sides were not ready for dialogue. That was not a real option.
India was very aware of China's displeasure and willingness to punish India. That war was the most predictable event in 1960s except in nehru's mind.

>>> He got suckered into all that hindi-cheeni bhai-bhai nonsense ( see my comment on his idealism above). I also don't think it was just a matter of Tibet and revenge for it. It may have been the first steps in China's long term plans of dominating the neighborhood. That outlook has only gotten more focused with time, despite the moving away from hard core communism. It is not so much an economic philosophy thing, as it is an ethnic han thing to establish a prominent place in global politics and aspiration for super-powerdom.

A different perspective on this issue:

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282579

>>>I read the whole interview and it is likely that we may never know the full story. Here are some questions that jump out though: what were the compulsions that drove India's actions?  The story about Nehru going along with national passions seems a big stretch, considering he had popular backing and this was not something he had to do. Maxwell is also breezily dismissive of Tibet's plight with the people being miserable etc. as though that justifies Chinese annexation. While at first blush that seems tangential to the 1962 conflict, if we take that into consideration along with the numerous disputes China has had with its neighbors,  it casts a huge shadow over Maxwell's thesis of China being a babe- in- the- woods in these matters. The one thing in Maxwell's thesis that deserves some thought is whether Nehru passed up on an expedient solution with the NEFA exchange (if there was such a serious proposal on the table). If Nehru underestimated the Chinese military prowess, that makes for a second mistake.  His failure was then two-fold, one at the negotiating table at which he did not show up and another on the battlefront. However, the Chinese being an aggrieved party is Maxwell's bias, which is not supported by history or subsequent behavior.

Some other mistakes made by the Indian political leadership which are related to your second point ( these mistakes were made before the Chinese attack):

1. Establishing Indian outposts well within Chinese territory.

2. Attacking Chinese bunkers in an attempt to destroy them.

3. Nehru declaring publicly  that he had ordered the Indian army to attack Thagla Ridge which was at that time in Chinese control.

The above facts or mistakes are acknowledged by an Indian army officer who fought in the war. The reference is:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-10-21/special-report/34627411_1_indian-posts-chinese-people-s-liberation-army-indian-army

Extract:

"I was a Second Lieutenant with sixteen months of service and chosen by the Chief of General Staff, Lt Gen BM Kaul along with 79 other officers to promulgate India's forward policy. Translated on the ground, it meant establishing 80 posts to assert our claim lines. One of these posts was Dhola which turned out to be located five km inside Chinese territory at Chedong. This fact was communicated to Head Quarters who ordered the post to stay put. On September 9, the Chinese surrounded Chedong, taking away the post commander, Capt Mahavir Prasad's map which confirmed the transgression . The Chinese asked him to vacate. This was the first provocation. The second was a probing attack against Chinese bunkers ordered personally by Gen Kaul which he witnessed and left in a huff when it failed. The pompous declaration by Nehru on October 12 that he had ordered the Indian Army to evict the Chinese from Thagla Ridge overlooking Namkachu was the third provocation. Gen Kaul had moved 7 Infantry Brigade from Tawang down to Namkachu uncovering Tawang to evict the Chinese. All this while, we were told that the Chinese will never attack. But they did, launching a preemptive on October 20, rolling down from Sangdhar heights behind us. We were sitting ducks as we had been told we were not to fight the Chinese but to defend the area to assert our claim lines. We had no grenades. There were only 100 rounds of ammunition and twelve 3-inch mortar bombs with the whole brigade. After our ammunition ran out, I was captured."

“The dawn of 20 November 1962 was the blackest in the military history of independent India,” says the unpublished official history of the 1962 war. “Yesterday (November 20) was the day of ultimate panic in Delhi,” wrote the then US Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith in his India memoir.  According to Galbraith, the “wildest rumours” went around — that 500 Chinese paratroopers were about to land in Delhi, that Tezpur was about to fall to the Chinese. Of the rumour that Lt Gen B.M. Kaul, the hapless Corps Commander of the now disintegrated Indian army in the Northeast Frontier Agency was taken prisoner, Galbraith cited President S. Radhakrishnan’s tart retort, “It is, unfortunately, untrue.”

http://mjoshi.blogspot.com/2010/11/worst-day-of-our-times-noveber-20-1962.html

This was in the aftermath of the Chinese attack:

"Nehru was by now convinced that the Chinese were determined to sweep down to the plains. The national mood was one of despondency, anger and foreboding. Only one commentator, the late NJ Nanporia, editor of The Times of India, got it right. In a closely reasoned edit page article, he argued that the Chinese favoured negotiation and a peaceful settlement, not invasion, and that India must talk. At worst, the Chinese would teach India a lesson and go back. Critics scoffed at Nanporia. I too thought he was being simplistic. A week or 10 days later, in response to his critics, he reprinted the very same article down to the last comma and full-stop. Events proved him absolutely right.

On 24 October, Chou En-lai proposed a 20 km withdrawal by either side. Three days later, Nehru sought the enlargement of this buffer to 40-60 km. On 4 November, Chou offered to accept the McMahon Line provided India accepted the Macdonald Line in Ladakh approximating the Chinese claim line (giving up the more northerly Johnson Line favoured by Delhi)."

http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main54.asp?filename=Ne131012Coverstory.asp

Nehru was the ultimate bar chart pm

Rashmun wrote:This was in the aftermath of the Chinese attack:

"Nehru was by now convinced that the Chinese were determined to sweep down to the plains. The national mood was one of despondency, anger and foreboding. Only one commentator, the late NJ Nanporia, editor of The Times of India, got it right. In a closely reasoned edit page article, he argued that the Chinese favoured negotiation and a peaceful settlement, not invasion, and that India must talk. At worst, the Chinese would teach India a lesson and go back. Critics scoffed at Nanporia. I too thought he was being simplistic. A week or 10 days later, in response to his critics, he reprinted the very same article down to the last comma and full-stop. Events proved him absolutely right.

On 24 October, Chou En-lai proposed a 20 km withdrawal by either side. Three days later, Nehru sought the enlargement of this buffer to 40-60 km. On 4 November, Chou offered to accept the McMahon Line provided India accepted the Macdonald Line in Ladakh approximating the Chinese claim line (giving up the more northerly Johnson Line favoured by Delhi)."

http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main54.asp?filename=Ne131012Coverstory.asp

>>>One of the other dynamics here could have been the US stance on this. Kennedy was President and with the Cuban missile crisis happening at the same time, there would have been a sense of urgency about Communist China's maneuvers. The USSR's position was anti India (based on my limited reading). Was there American encouragement of India to stand up to China? Was there a motivation to see how far China would go? Nehru was evidently not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it still seems a strange theory that the Indian public was whipped up into a frenzy which is why Nehru wanted to take on China. Maxwell's stance on Tibet and insistence on China's good faith  in settlement of border disputes with multiple neighbors makes you wonder about his credibility as an objective observer. That insistence almost makes him look like a useful idiot who was played by the Chinese.

Kris wrote:

Rashmun wrote:This was in the aftermath of the Chinese attack:

"Nehru was by now convinced that the Chinese were determined to sweep down to the plains. The national mood was one of despondency, anger and foreboding. Only one commentator, the late NJ Nanporia, editor of The Times of India, got it right. In a closely reasoned edit page article, he argued that the Chinese favoured negotiation and a peaceful settlement, not invasion, and that India must talk. At worst, the Chinese would teach India a lesson and go back. Critics scoffed at Nanporia. I too thought he was being simplistic. A week or 10 days later, in response to his critics, he reprinted the very same article down to the last comma and full-stop. Events proved him absolutely right.

On 24 October, Chou En-lai proposed a 20 km withdrawal by either side. Three days later, Nehru sought the enlargement of this buffer to 40-60 km. On 4 November, Chou offered to accept the McMahon Line provided India accepted the Macdonald Line in Ladakh approximating the Chinese claim line (giving up the more northerly Johnson Line favoured by Delhi)."

http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main54.asp?filename=Ne131012Coverstory.asp

>>>One of the other dynamics here could have been the US stance on this. Kennedy was President and with the Cuban missile crisis happening at the same time, there would have been a sense of urgency about Communist China's maneuvers. The USSR's position was anti India (based on my limited reading). Was there American encouragement of India to stand up to China? Was there a motivation to see how far China would go? Nehru was evidently not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it still seems a strange theory that the Indian public was whipped up into a frenzy which is why Nehru wanted to take on China. Maxwell's stance on Tibet and insistence on China's good faith  in settlement of border disputes with multiple neighbors makes you wonder about his credibility as an objective observer. That insistence almost makes him look like a useful idiot who was played by the Chinese.

I think this answers your query at least partially:

"But he[Nehru] said the situation had now changed and that unless India was given massive assistance, there will be “nothing short of catastrophe for our country.” To this end he declared that India wanted assistance of 12 squadrons (roughly 200-240) of supersonic fighters, 2 squadrons of B-47 bombers and modern radar cover. Indian personnel would man the aircraft for missions over Chinese territory, while he wanted American personnel to “protect our cities and installations from Chinese air attacks.”

According to Nehru’s biographer S. Gopal, Nehru took this decision to seek a military alliance with the United States without consulting any of his Cabinet colleagues or officials except foreign secretary M.J. Desai. The US was not entirely enthusiastic about this proposal. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, noted in a telegram to Galbraith on November 20, Nehru not only proposed “a military alliance between India and the United States but complete commitment by us to fighting a war.” The US which was aware of the Sino-Soviet split, was worried that an open commitment to India “might force Moscow to support Peiping.”
But on the morning of November 21, these considerations seemed to vanish into thin air. As Galbraith put it, “like a thief in the night, peace arrived.”
According to B.N. Mullik, the powerful Intelligence Bureau chief, he learnt of the Chinese ceasefire offer at 3 am from the monitoring station run by the agency which had recorded an announcement of Peking radio saying that the Chinese would ceasefire from the midnight of November 21. According to Neville Maxwell, Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri learnt of the ceasefire from the newspapers at the Delhi airport at 6 am, where he was waiting for a flight to take him to Guwahati.


http://mjoshi.blogspot.com/2010/11/worst-day-of-our-times-noveber-20-1962.html

The Sino-Soviet Split had taken place in 1960. See here for more on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split

So there was not much chance of the Soviet Union supporting China on this issue.

Rashmun wrote:The Sino-Soviet Split had taken place in 1960. See here for more on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split

So there was not much chance of the Soviet Union supporting China on this issue.

>>>Nevertheless, there  was an American worry that they could patch up. Pravda apparently editorialized an anti indian position on the border dispute citing the MacMahon line as an imperialist legacy and being illegal . Kennedy did offer help to India, although a full scale joint effort would have been out of the question, for fear of a China/Russia rapprochement as the passage you cited says. In the end China's ceasefire may have been less due to noble intent than pragmatism. They could not know how far Kennedy would go in his aid to India and could not have been sure of the extent of tangible Soviet support (if any), considering their recent history.

Kris wrote:

Rashmun wrote:The Sino-Soviet Split had taken place in 1960. See here for more on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split

So there was not much chance of the Soviet Union supporting China on this issue.

>>>Nevertheless, there  was an American worry that they could patch up. Pravda apparently editorialized an anti indian position on the border dispute citing the MacMahon line as an imperialist legacy and being illegal . Kennedy did offer help to India, although a full scale joint effort would have been out of the question, for fear of a China/Russia rapprochement as the passage you cited says. In the end China's ceasefire may have been less due to noble intent than pragmatism. They could not know how far Kennedy would go in his aid to India and could not have been sure of the extent of tangible Soviet support (if any), considering their recent history.

Some journalist or editor in Pravda may have adopted an anti-India line but the official Russian line seems to have been pro-India in practice as per the following:

"The Soviet Union's strong relations with India had a negative impact upon both Soviet relations with the People's Republic of China, and Indian relations with the PRC, during the Khrushchev period. The Soviet Union declared its neutrality during the 1959 border dispute and the Sino-Indian war of October 1962, although the Chinese strongly objected. The Soviet Union gave India substantial economic and military assistance during the Khrushchev period, and by 1960 India had received more Soviet assistance than China had.[13] This disparity became another point of contention in Sino-Soviet relations. In 1962 the Soviet Union agreed to transfer technology to co-produce the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 jet fighter in India, which the Soviet Union had earlier denied to China.[13][14]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–Russia_relations

The fact that both Russia and the U.S. apparently had a pro India tilt at this time may help explain the over-confidence of Nehru and Krishna Menon on this issue. (They probably did not expect such a sudden and swift collapse on the field of battle. ) It may also explain the Chinese pragmatism which Kris refers to.

Rashmun wrote:

Kris wrote:

Rashmun wrote:The Sino-Soviet Split had taken place in 1960. See here for more on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split

So there was not much chance of the Soviet Union supporting China on this issue.

>>>Nevertheless, there  was an American worry that they could patch up. Pravda apparently editorialized an anti indian position on the border dispute citing the MacMahon line as an imperialist legacy and being illegal . Kennedy did offer help to India, although a full scale joint effort would have been out of the question, for fear of a China/Russia rapprochement as the passage you cited says. In the end China's ceasefire may have been less due to noble intent than pragmatism. They could not know how far Kennedy would go in his aid to India and could not have been sure of the extent of tangible Soviet support (if any), considering their recent history.

Some journalist or editor in Pravda may have adopted an anti-India line but the official Russian line seems to have been pro-India in practice as per the following:

"The Soviet Union's strong relations with India had a negative impact upon both Soviet relations with the People's Republic of China, and Indian relations with the PRC, during the Khrushchev period. The Soviet Union declared its neutrality during the 1959 border dispute and the Sino-Indian war of October 1962, although the Chinese strongly objected. The Soviet Union gave India substantial economic and military assistance during the Khrushchev period, and by 1960 India had received more Soviet assistance than China had.[13] This disparity became another point of contention in Sino-Soviet relations. In 1962 the Soviet Union agreed to transfer technology to co-produce the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 jet fighter in India, which the Soviet Union had earlier denied to China.[13][14]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–Russia_relations

It would be interesting to know whether the Russians gave India the technology to make the MIG fighters just before the 1962 war or just after the 1962 war.

Rashmun wrote:The fact that both Russia and the U.S. apparently had a pro India tilt at this time may help explain the over-confidence of Nehru and Krishna Menon on this issue. (They probably did not expect such a sudden and swift collapse on the field of battle. ) It may also explain the Chinese pragmatism which Kris refers to.

>>>Yeah, I think the fight was on to bring India into the fold by both sides. There must have been some insecurity on Russia's part given Nehru's friendship with Kennedy. The Pravda editorial may have been a signal to the US that if it were to get involved, Russia would not sit aside. It is questionable whether there was serious intent. Pretty intriguing geopolitics..