Behind the Himalayan War

...This support has been based on the idea that both India and China have a common interest and outlook arising from a common experience of Western imperialism and common aspirations for a new world order...

...To understand why this should be so, it is necessary to look at the contemporary situation in Asia apart from that confrontation of the Soviet Union and the Western democracies which is taken for granted as the overriding theme of world affairs...

...Although the boundary disputes are no doubt real enough in themselves, they appear to have been used also as pretexts for a policy designed to humiliate India and destroy the prestige of the present Indian Government...

...or peopled only by primitive tribes, as in the North East Frontier Agency...

...For Russia, whose primary political concern is with Europe, and whose economic level is far higher than that of any Asian country except Japan, India has never appeared as a rival...

...It was India which in 1950 urged negotiations on the basis of North Korea's occupation of the greater part of South Korea, without any North Korean withdrawal from the territory seized by the invasion...

...But the two regimes have nevertheless differed fundamentally: China has copied the totalitarian political system of the Soviet Union...

...Great trouble has been taken to influence India by persuasion, flattery and economic aid...

...The temptation to use this Army against China's principal Asian rival, and in a direction where nuclear retaliation from the American Seventh Fleet need not be feared (as it would be in any offensive against Formosa), must have been irresistible...

...India, despite very adverse political and social conditions, has so far retained not only in form, but to a remarkable degree also in substance, the institutions of political democracy, personal freedom and the rule of law...

...The outcome will depend also on the national unity and resolution of India, as well as the degree of support it now receives from the West...

...But even with their disastrous record of policies which in domestic affairs have brought grave economic dislocation, and abroad have involved both enmity toward the United States and bitter quarrels with the Soviet Union, the rulers of China have one great assettheir Army...

...Ever since the Chinese Communists came to power, they have benefited from the sympathy and diplomatic support of Prime Minister Nehru's India...

...But how many rounds there will be and how it will end he cannot decide by his own will alone...

...both have raised the banners of national independence, of emancipation from Western tutelage and of "socialism...

...Indian neutralism has been considered an asset to be exploited by Soviet foreign policy, particularly in the United Nations...

...Yet it is all a gamble, for nobody can know for certain how the Himalayan war will turn out...

...This is perhaps the question most often being asked in the West about the Chinese encroachments on what Indians consider to be their rightful national frontier, and about the extreme truculence Peking has shown in its dealings with New Delhi throughout the controversy over China's territorial claims...

...The competition has thus been not merely one of rival states or even of rival personalities, but of two opposed ideologies...

...Yet over the last four years the Chinese Communists have gone out of their way to insult, provoke and estrange India in a manner that the actual frontier questions at issue do not seem adequate to explain...

...In numbers of men under arms, it is the biggest in the world, and though still lacking any nuclear capability, it is well equipped with conventional weapons...

...Moreover, its close association with the West has precluded Japan's having any strong influence in a continent of nationalist and socialist revolutionary ferment...

...They have also declared, however, that the McMahon Line frontier no longer exists, so it must be assumed that they intend to hold on to as much of the territory of the Indian North East Frontier Agency as they can capture...

...And again, it was India which in the same year blocked Tibet's appeal to the UN against Chinese aggression, and three years later concluded a treaty recognizing China's sovereignty in Tibet without extracting in return any recognition of the Indo-Tibetan frontier where New Delhi believed it to be...

...Indeed, for many years now Nehru's Government has been regarded with benevolence by Moscow...

...Obviously it hopes that all these troubles will be aggravated for India by military defeat...

...Here they may well be wrong in their expectation -and every democrat in the Western world must hope that they are...

...Instead the Great Leap's notorious failure has turned the account in favor of India, which has been a great frustration for China...

...Still, there is little doubt that Peking has observed in detail the recent increase of strains and stresses in the Indian body politic, the looming struggle for the succession to Nehru's unique authority, the growth of Tamil separation in the South, the unresolved conflict with Pakistan, the quarrel with Nepal, the wavering attitudes of Bhutan and Sikkim...

...For all the areas in dispute are mountainous tracts: either uninhabited, except for seasonal transhumance like the Aksai Chin...

...We often speak of it as a conflict of East and West, but for Asians, Russia is really a Western power which has been intrusive in Asia no less than the United States, Britain or France...

...It has been India which over the years since 1949 has consistently pressed for the transfer of China's seat in the United Nations from the Nationalist to the Communist Government...

...The Chinese Communists have been wary in stating their war aims...

...Japan aspired to that leadership, but suffered defeat in the last war and, although still far ahead of any other Asian country in industrial development, has not been an effective power factor since 1945...

...An India reduced to chaos and dissolution could no longer be a rival to China, and Mao Tse-tung's Government could console the Chinese people for their disappointments with the glory of a great military and political triumph over a foreign foe...

...They have claimed that their drive across India's northeastern frontier was in response to Indian "aggression...

...It might be thought, therefore, that no nation outside the Communist bloc would be regarded in Peking with so much consideration and gratitude as India...

...And this has not been cancelled out because certain Indian leaders, in their recoil from Western tutelage, have adopted in world affairs a policy of neutralism which has often been slanted toward the Communists...

...If the Great Leap Forward had gone according to plan, Peking would have been able triumphantly to point to the superiority of the Communist system over India's relatively modest program for achieving rapid results in economic progress...

...Anthony's College, Oxford...

...There is, from this angle of vision, a re-emergent Asia which stands in contrast both to Russia and the West, and there is a question of leadership and predominance in the new Asia...

...Every gesture of friendship by the Soviet Union to India has only aggravated Chinese jealousy and resentment...

...The economic setbacks suffered by Communist China over the last three years have made matters even worse...

...For China, whose primary political concern is with Asia and not with Europe, and which is striving to advance from an economic level comparable to India's, New Delhi is indeed a rival...

...None of the areas are known to have any real economic value and they seem to be poor prizes for policies which must incur the national enmity of India and pose the most painful dilemma even for Indian Communists...

...It is the tendency of all Communists, and particularly, it seems, of Chinese Communists, to overdraw on that inevitable march of history which their doctrine leads them to believe in, and to underestimate the resistance which their onslaughts will evoke...

...Both the Chinese Communist and Indian governments have claimed to be the champions of anti-imperialism and of a resurgent Asia...

...Over and above this, it is likely that they hope to inflict on India such blows as will demoralize and disintegrate the Indian State...

...G. F. Hudson is Director of the Center of Far Eastern Studies at St...

...The friendly support India has given Communist China counts for nothing in comparison with what Peking regards as India's excessive influence among the "uncommitted" Afro-Asian countries, and the fact that India can get economic aid from both the West and Russia, while China has cut itself off from all Western aid and has received far less than it expected from her Communist allies...

...Consequently, it has been between Peking and New Delhi that the competition for leadership has come about...

...Since Mao started it, he was bound to win the first round...