India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru comes across as a man duped by Chinese “guile” over the Sino-Indian border row that led to a war in 1962, according to a three-part working paper prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in mid-1963.
“The Chinese diplomatic effort was a five-year masterpiece of guile, executed and probably planned in large part by (then Chinese premier) Chou En-Lai,” says the CIA paper declassified recently. The Chinese apparently lulled India for nine long years.
The paper says Zhou En-Lai (whose first name was then spelled as Chou) “played” on Nehru’s “Asian, anti-imperialist mental attitude, his proclivity to temporise, and his sincere desire for an amicable Sino-Indian relationship”. The paper points out that even after the Tibet revolt in August and September 1959, “Nehru insisted that war with China was out of the question, and did not think the challenge justified the economic burden of increased military spending”.
Nehru’s answer to Beijing was to call for a strengthening of the Indian economy to provide a national power base capable of  resisting an eventual Chinese military attack, the CIA paper suggests.
“For a while in fall (autumn) 1959 Nehru seemed to be preparing the Indian public for cession of the Aksai Plain (Aksai Chin) to the Chinese in exchange for Indian ownership of the NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh), but this view was opposed by some leaders in the Congress party.” According to the CIA paper, the Chinese leaders could not really believe that Nehru was being swayed by Opposition leaders in parliament or by media reports, though the CIA believed this to be the case.
So when Nehru insisted in 1961 on withdrawal of Chinese troops from Aksai Chin before holding further negotiations, the Chinese misunderstood him, according to the CIA. “They (the Chinese leaders) apparently believed that they had some room for diplomatic manoeuvring with him, when in fact such room no longer existed.”
The CIA paper says the Chinese opened border talks with Pakistan in 1961 because “they were anxious to get Nehru to talk”. But the effect was the opposite because this move “rekindled Indian anger”. The CIA paper says: “Nehru was constantly pulled in two directions. His inclination was to work for a political settlement; however, Chinese adamancy made him vulnerable in Parliament and consequently more susceptible than ever to the argument of army leaders that the Chinese should be pushed back by force”.
Nehru cut to size
The CIA says one major reason for the Chinese attack in late 1962 was “to damage Nehru’s prestige by exposing Indian weakness”. The papers say the Chinese attained “almost unqualified success” with this objective.
The Chinese plan to dupe Nehru had actually been in operation right through the 1950s, the CIA says. “Developments between late 1950 and late 1959 were marked by Chinese military superiority which, combined with cunning diplomatic deceit, contributed for nine years to New Delhi's reluctance to change its policy from friendship to open hostility” toward Beijing.
The paper says: “Chou’s strategy was to avoid making explicit, in conversations and communications with Nehru, any Chinese border claims, while avoiding any retraction of those claims which would require changing Chinese maps.
“Chou took the line with Nehru in Beijing in October 1954 that Communist China had as yet had no time to revise the Kuomintang maps, leaving the implication but not the explicit promise that they would be revised.
“In New Delhi in November-December 1956, Chou sought to create the impression with Nehru that Beijing would accept the McMahon line, but again his language was equivocal, and what he conceded with his left hand, he retrieved with his right.”
The CIA paper says: “In accepting this explanation for conditional recognition of the McMahon line, Nehru in December 1956 appeared to have retained his unquestioning — or rather, unsuspicious — attitude.”
It was basic Chinese policy early in Beijing’s relations with New Delhi not to claim territory in writing or orally, but only on the basis of maps. Thus the Chinese claim to NEFA appeared only as a line on Chinese maps dipping at points about 100 miles south of the McMahon line.
As Beijing and New Delhi were generally cordial to each other in these early years, the Chinese had not wanted to change their policy toward Nehru and thereby lose the benefit of an important champion of Beijing’s cause in international affairs, the CIA paper says.
Whether they foresaw a time when they could persuade Nehru or a successor to accept China’s claims is conjectural, but they seem to have decided at an early date that their short-term policy should be one of not alerting Nehru to the wide gap between Chinese and Indian claims on the border dispute, according to the CIA paper. “In practice, this meant they would have to lie about Chinese maps, and they did.”
‘COMMENTS ARE GROUNDLESS’
Beijing, pti: China on Friday dismissed as “groundless” the contents of the reported declassified CIA documents on events leading up to the 1962 Sino-Indian war and went on to claim that “positive progress” has been made on the vexed boundary negotiations between the two countries.
“The comments are groundless,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a terse one-liner when asked to comment on reports which blamed the 1962 India-China war on Chinese perfidy, especially by the late Premier Zhou en-Lai.
At the same time, the spokesman was eloquent on the current state of bilateral ties, including the border issue. Currently, China-India Strategic Cooperative Partnership enjoys consistent development with fruitful cooperation in various fields, he told PTI here. “The boundary issue negotiations have made positive progress,” Qin said on the 10 rounds of talks held between the Special Representatives of India and China since 2003.
Commenting on the border negotiations, the Deputy Director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Professor Sun Shihai acknowledged that the two sides faced difficulties. “The border issue is a leftover from history and complicated,” he said, adding that it will take time to overcome the problems.
At the same time, Sun said that some progress has been achieved, including the formulation of the political guidelines to resolve the boundary dispute.
He also stressed the need to ignore some minor irritants by both sides. However, he said Beijing and New Delhi should be careful not to go against the strategic interests of each other.
For example, Sun cautioned India against enhancing its contacts with Taiwan, which is viewed by China as a rebel province that must be reunified with the mainland.