India: A Time of Danger and Decision
Plastrik, Stanley
The plight of democratic India has aroused little compassion in America. If it is accurate to say that the Administration has handled the Indian crisis admirably—not too much pressure on the...
...it is the fact that non-alignment was given a deceitful twist by Menon, with Nehru's approv...
...No one can fail to understand or approve of India's desire to remain uncommitted, given its tremendous problems of economic development and security...
...Integration of the nation, greater justice and equality for the peasant and industrial worker, an end to caste and communalism— these are some of the great questions India must grapple with once again and more successfully than before...
...of the total collapse of our defense and foreign policies pursued during the last six years...
...This is not to deny progress since 1947 independence, but to affirm that it has been insufficient, too slow, too patchy...
...partly it is due to lack of knowledge which reflects itself in the mistaken belief that what is involved here is a "border conflict" in a remote region, fought at fantastic heights...
...All political parties are in a state of flux, reexamining their outlook and their future...
...What a price India is paying for allowing one individual to present its worst possible side to the world...
...The whole notion of Chinese domination over this area is intolerable...
...But what should now emerge from the discussion in India is a clearer understanding of what non-alignment in the world power struggle means for a country like India—that, at the very least, it does not mean tacit approval of totalitarian aggressions which happen not to threaten India at the moment...
...While the Chinese spent years planning their blows in the Ladakh and NEFA areas, the best section of the Indian army was tied up in idleness along the Kashmir front facing Pakistan...
...In a country like India, where nerves of social life are, so to speak, painfully exposed, the relationship between domestic policy and the national crisis is especially acute, and the latter cannot begin to be solved without strong measures in regard to the former...
...All of this, of course, was the fruit of the Menon-Nehru policy of conciliation with the Chinese...
...Concerning the motives of the Chinese there have been many speculations, and most of them contain some truth, though none seems entirely satisfactory...
...This political struggle has just begun...
...When the Chinese Communists first seized Tibet (1951), India helped block the Tibetan appeal to the United Nations...
...If it is accurate to say that the Administration has handled the Indian crisis admirably—not too much pressure on the Nehru government, no moralizing, a restrained effort to create a favorable climate for India-Pakistan negotiations — it must also be acknowledged that the American people remain cool and complacent over the issue...
...When the worker strains to increase production and contributes part of his wages to the Defense Fund, highly paid officers remain a paradox in these hard times...
...The blame for this must be placed upon the party that has governed India without challenge for 15 years now: the Congress party...
...al, which in effect encouraged aggression...
...The Praja-Socialists of India, who, behind the leadership of Asoka Mehta, have unconditionally given their support to the government's war efforts, have sounded the right note in insisting that concepts of social justice and equality influence directly the popular response to the present crisis...
...What was basically wrong with this position was that it served to undermine morally the position of India in the world...
...This gross inequality needs correction if the many millions who have risen as one man to resist the enemy are to be sustained in their faith as in their hopes of a better world...
...The present uneasy "truce" provides a convenient respite to facilitate this soulsearching, and although it is too soon for an outside observer to draw binding conclusions, the very line of questioning tells us much There are those in India who demand reappraisal of their country's position with respect to Tibet and have even concluded that liberation of Tibet from Chinese occupation ought to become a goal of Indian policy...
...If we reject out-of-hand efforts by the American Right and cold-war spokesmen to moralize over the Indian crisis and to make the abandonment of non-alignment a condition Ii for American military aid, this does not preclude examining what did happen and why, in the words of the Indian socialist weekly, Janata, India is forced to fight "a cruel and crude war for which this nation was totally unprepared," and why the story is one...
...The Indians hesitate to stress this fact, but fact it nevertheless is...
...In essence the Chinese would hold an indirect veto power and control over the economic and social planning of India and the nations that border India...
...The damage done by Menon can be effaced only by a consistent campaign of truth concerning India's struggle for survival...
...This is quite a reversal from Nehru's acceptance of the Chinese concept of "suzerainty" over Tibet and its one and a half million people...
...This is why the present crisis in leadership is taking place inside the ranks of the Congress party...
...For the blunt truth is that nothing less than survival is at stake...
...There is much truth in the view that the moral corroding of the Indian position began years ago when it tacitly accepted the medieval concept of suzerainty based upon military force, (1954...
...it will be long and complex, with many changes and the emergence of new leaders...
...Perhaps the most essential one is this: the Chinese have unleashed a struggle for the political domination of Asia in which they seek to demoralize the Indian people and disintegrate the Indian state by destroying its prestige and its policies of neutrality, peaceful orderly progress and democracy...
...A Time of Appraisal An "agonizing reappraisal" is now going on in India...
...It is not non-alignment that was mistaken, as so many American critics would have it now...
...The tragic failure of the Indian army is a concentrated expression of the failure to make adequate progress on other fronts: the agricultural, the communal, the industrial...
...The issue of equality of sacrifice in the war effort becomes decisive...
...any effort to bring India into the Western bloc would only be a disaster, allowing the discredited Menon and his allies a chance to recoup their political fortunes...
...History is still alive with choices, and from India's grave danger may yet come the most radical social transformation Asia has yet seen...
...India will never again be the same...
...three years later India made a treaty with China recognizing Chinese sovereignty (a step beyond "suzerainty") and, finally, in the Tibetan revolt of 1959, India was most aloof toward the revolutionaries...
...A speech of Surendranath Dwivedy, parliamentary spokesman of the Socialists, has said: Where the simple village girl surrenders her prized nose-ring and bangles and even wedding ring, the rich and opulent still keep their gold hoarded in the lockers of banks...
...In this respect we are dealing with incompatible ideological opponents and exclusive "ways of life...
...The Choice Ahead Just as the Indian leadership failed to modernize its army and to make it a part of the Indian people representing all sectors and regions of the nation, so may this failure of leadership be extended to virtually all facets and levels of Indian social, economic and political life...
...Every nation within the orbit of Southeast and Southcentral Asia would depend upon Chinese approval for its national survival...
...An examination of the Chinese proposals for "negotiations" indicate that these cannot be accepted by a self-respecting regime...
...while the Chinese built roads and stockpiled materials of war, the pitifully small Indian units facing them lacked modern weapons and even proper equipment for winter...
...Partly this is due to the general tone of the Administration's politics which precludes a passionate campaign in behalf of the Indians, indeed, in behalf of anything except anti-Communism...
...they point a loaded pistol at India's head for as long as the snows remain on the Himalayas...
...What people can permit such a permanent threat to its security and independence...
...Nor should disappointed Indians forget the effect upon the United States of the unctuous and pharisaical Krishna Menon...
Vol. 10 • January 1963 • No. 1
