Border Disputes Plague Nehru Government

...After six years of patient negotiations" U Nu has ended a Sino-Burmese border dispute to his satisfaction and has also recently returned from Peking...

...Russia has also offered heavy earth-moving equipment and road-building machinery—on a rupee payment basis—also knowing that it is to be used for a purpose not necessarily helpful to the grand design of its principal ally in the Far East...

...Meanwhile, as the White Paper indicates, the situation between the two countries along the 2,500 miles of Himalayan frontier is anything but peaceful...

...And everywhere in the press there are cartoons and comments indicating dissatisfaction with the Government's handling of the situation...

...based in Bangkok, an explanation which Nehru summarily rejected...

...The Government, eyeing mounting defense expenditure, wonders how it is going to justify ruling out, for purely logistic reasons, a large-scale military operation to recover territory usurped by the Chinese in the Ladakh region of Kashmir...

...On the other hand a straight purchase involving millions of dollars becomes difficult in view of the country's foreign exchange crisis...

...Indians, therefore, are taking keen interest in the pronouncements of leading Americans like Presidentelect John F. Kennedy and Chester Bowles on the subject of India and China...

...This is a question which exercises both the Government and the people...

...It will not accept them as aid, since the country rejects military assistance from anyone...

...A year ago, a comment by Secretary of State Christian Herter, showing impartiality between Chinese and Indian border claims, created consternation in this country...

...The people, soon to be asked to give another vote of confidence to this Government—India will hold its third general elections early in 1962—are wondering how much longer the country can continue negotiations with a proven aggressor...

...One result of this changed view may be that India will be assisted in its search for air-to-air missiles...

...Apart, therefore, from the unnecessary distractions it provides, Chinese aggression in the Himalayas is creating a major difference of opinion between the Government and people...

...During the Rangoon talks, an unexpected visitor to New Delhi was Burmese Premier U Nu, whose visit to Buddhist shrines in India was preceded by a spate of suggestions that he was coming here as a mediator...

...helicopters and flying boxcars) and giving over the border regions to semi-military control in order to prevent Indian Communists from lending succor to their brethren across the borders...

...Strictly neutral and correct to start with, it gradually appears to be leaning to the Indian side, which has resulted most recently in India's $30 million order for aircraft which Moscow knows will be used on the Himalayan border to transport troops and equipment...

...But it appears that things are to be viewed differently in Washington now...

...The ruling Congress party is also increasingly restive under the charge that it appears to have been presiding over the piecemeal liquidation of the Indian Republic...

...To India's repeated protests against air violations, particularly in the northeast, the Chinese have replied that these violations are the result of deliberately provocative activity by American-made Southeast Asia Treaty Organization planes SHAROKH SABAVALA, NEW LEADER correspondent in India, also writes for the Christian Science Monitor...

...India would like to buy these missiles either as part of a barter agreement, or on a deferred payment basis...

...The talks result from Chinese Premier Chou En-lai's otherwise abortive visit to Delhi in April of this year, and it has been apparent all along that neither side expects much to come from a measure calculated merely to keep the pot simmering for just a little longer...

...And when India explained why the agency's license was cancelled, Chinese propaganda switched to veiled military threats against the Indian protectorates of Sikkim and Bhutan, which the country is committed to defend...

...By Sharokh Sabavala BORDER DISPUTES NEW DELHI A HUNDRED AND ONE air violations between March and November 1960, a number of small incursions by land, an unremitting spate of hostile propaganda and continued attempts at surreptitious infiltration across the northern borders —this is the record of the Peoples' Republic of China as revealed by a new Indian White Paper—the fourth of a series—released as the last round of Sino-Indian talks on border problems got under way in neutral Rangoon three weeks ago...

...an unusual move designed to stop Communist propaganda inside the country...

...for Prime Minister Nehru, however, they are revealing the strength of India's case—as will soon be shown when the results of the deliberations are published...

...The Indian Government, for its part, and perhaps in consequence, has striven to maintain the friendliest of relations with the Soviet Union, which currently has stepped up its economic aid for the third Five Year Plan period and is taking a great deal of interest in the Indian oil-exploration and refining—industries...

...The party, split on this issue, recently sent plenipotentiaries to Moscow for a fresh mandate, but one Communist wing still continues to support China and continues to bring discredit—in Indian eyes— on the whole Communist movement...

...For Peking, apparently, the negotiations so far have confirmed the suspicion that it is India's "intransigence" that is blocking a "peaceful" settlement...

...To India's complaints against hostile propaganda, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has pointed to India's "unfriendly act" of refusing to allow the New China News Agency to continue operating in India...

...But where is it to go from here...

...Meanwhile, once again, both press and Parliament are expressing serious misgivings over the White Paper, characterized as "a dreary catalogue of indignities, major and minor, to which this country and its citizens have been exposed by the Chinese Government and its functionaries...

...If so, he is a sadly disillusioned man today, for no one, including Nehru, has been prepared to discuss the Sino-Indian dispute with him, much less ask his advice as to how it should be settled...

...As a friend, follower and admirer of Nehru he may have thought he was in a position to offer his good offices...

...And supporters of Nehru's foreign policy continue to be acutely embarrassed because, though India is a co-signatory to the Panch Shila—the Five Principles of coexistence—that policy is earning few dividends, at least for India...

...It is also legislating against any disRussia's attitude toward the Sino-lndian quarrel tacitly favors India PLAGUE NEHRU GOVERNMENT cussion on the validity of its frontiers...

...Right now India is doing what it should have done years ago—undertaking a massive road-building program in the Himalayas, buying transport aircraft (it has placed a $30 million order in the Soviet Union, apart from buying U.S...

...The Hindustan Times of New Delhi, taking objection to Nehru's dubbing of recent border incursions as "petty," asks if the Government is "sliding" back to the road of appeasement again...

...A really trying time for Nehru appears to lie ahead...

...A curious offshoot of all this is Russia's attitude to the dispute...

...The Russians' attitude, in this particular context, has thrown into disorder the Indian Communist party, whose pro-Chinese orientation now receives an oblique rebuke from headquarters...