The Myth of India

...Even today, he insists that the invasion is a purely Chinese phenomenon, implying that China will cease to be a threat when its present primitive Communism becomes more civilized...

...To this day, threats of withdrawal of Government advertising and discreet phone calls from the ministries keep the press from going too far...

...He smiled a smile of surpassing and genuine sweetness, and replied: "Just as long as we can possibly get away with it...

...He is just as ruthless in pursuing that illusory purpose as was any of the great conquerors in pursuing his purpose...

...It is almost inconceivable that the press of any other "democratic" country would accept without question the unsubstantiated reports of the magnitude of the Chinese armies which Indian newspapers have published...

...The Chinese were undoubtedly far ahead of the Indians in 1958, when they decided that they were ready to proceed by Great Leaps...

...The move was perfectly consistent with the basic principle of traditional Chinese tactics, hallowed by success over more than 2,000 years...

...He can be found on the Communist side in the majority of international issues, apparently following the valid principle that, since he has nothing to fear from the West, it is essential for him to placate the Communists...

...Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, now India's President, reported that caste was still "the greatest single factor" in Indian life...

...Robert S. Elegant, Newsweek's Central European Bureau Chief, recently completed 11 years as that magazine's Asian correspondent...

...I do not have the figures at hand, but India has certainly already received a minimum of $4 bilhon in foreign aid, and it is now in line for continuing assistance at the rate of $1 billion a year...

...Americans, of course, are addicted to simple answers...

...Consistent with its usual, barely concealed authoritarianism, New Delhi has prevented the press from getting anywhere near the fighting...

...Those of us who lived in India from 195658, experiencing the reality rather than the myth, consoled ourselves with the belief that the Army represented a strong and efficient unifying force-beneficial because it was educated in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the military's subordination to civilian authority-amid the welter of injustice, hypocrisy, inefficiency and self-delusion which was India...

...t'an, t'an...

...If we were right, the opprobrium of having permitted Krishna Menon to destroy that force must rest even more heavily upon Nehru's shoulders...

...Thus, the constant Indian pressure for yielding to the Chinese...

...After the Communist conquest of China, we needed a simple formula which we could believe would redeem Asiaand, incidentally, lighten our burden of guilt for the Chinese debacle...

...When I last spoke with Nehru in 1960, he absolutely refused to consider the true magnitude of the Chinese threat, insisting that the changes occurring in the Soviet Union upheld his thesis that Communism would soon present no threat to other nations...

...Most distressing has been the Chinese attack's revelation of the manner in which the Indians have frittered away time bought with other men's lives and land...

...The sad truth is that India's basic problems are not really economic at all, but spiritual...

...and thus the consistent assistance given to the Communists in Indochina by Indian diplomats serving either on the International Control Commissions or in embassies and legations...

...It is neither the fault of the few dedicated men at the top nor the fault of the masses that they are as they are...

...Despite the liberal conviction that an inordinate quantity of aid, lavishly applied, will work miracles in any economy, it has signally failed to do so in India...

...The simple and shocking fact is that Nehru, hailed as the great ideologue of non-alignment, is almost incapable of abstract thinking on foreign affairs...

...If, on the other hand, U.S...

...Having adopted Communism as a means of restoring their country's ancient glory, the Chinese found themselves frustrated by their own grandiose plans...

...They have been so thoroughly disillusioned by inevitably broken promises it is now difficult for them to expect more of the future than that the sun will rise tomorrow morning...

...More likely, however, we were wrong, and Menon merely undermined a force already close to impotence...

...But the more industrialized Japan becomes, the further it moves from influence in Asia...

...The Government of India, of course, is trying to break the bonds of caste which inhibit either moral or material progress...

...With amiable cynicism, India has sacrificed Israel, the one Middle Eastern nation with which it should have felt an instinctive sympathy, in order to retain the dubious friendship of the Arab world...

...As long as events do not touch India-i.e., actually impinge on its borders-Nehru is content to follow the most transitory expediency...

...Once they succeeded in puncturing Nehru's annoying pretension of being the leader of the Afro-Asian world, and attained their chief geographical objectives, the Chinese offered a cease-fire...

...But we should proceed from a frank appraisal of India's present state and capacities...

...If the industrious, ingenious and, above all, modern Chinese had wanted to compete economically with the Indians, the only factor which would have prevented them from triumphing is their own fanaticism...

...Though we do not really know the number of Chinese troops which have wreaked such havoc upon the Indians, there is good reason to believe it is far less than the hundreds of thousands Indian propagandists have reported...

...At present, it is still impossible to assess the precise quality of the Indian forces engaged in the Himalayas...

...The charming, sophisticated and sympathetic men and women one meets in the ministries in Delhi or in embassies abroad actually constitute the thinnest icing on a nation which has generations to go before it can even produce an adequate number of competent motor mechanics...

...True, the country's light industry has prospered, but the benefits have reached only a minuscule fraction of the Indian people...

...The reason is not hard to find: India is not only burdened by one of the most onerous climates in the world, it is composed of a great uneducated mass whose diverse and primitive religious beliefs act as a positive bar to material progress...

...So far, the results have been somewhat disappointing...

...They continue to live in a world where China can "leap" into modern industrialization in half a decade, simultaneously stirring all the world's oppressed into glorious revolutionif only nature smiles upon them briefly and error, enthroned in the Kremlin, can be dispossessed...

...His snub of Israel, for example, is determined by a desire to prevent the Moslem world's uniting behind Pakistan...

...As more candid Indian diplomats and politicians have occasionally admitted to me, New Delhi wished to trade other people's territory for time...

...But though it still sustains the greatest and most systematic political myth of modern times, the Chinese hierarchy has proved it is at least capable of puncturing the second greatest: Driven to their invasion of Himalayan India by overwhelming psychological compulsions, the Chinese have at the same time destroyed the myth that India under Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is a major force in international affairs or even a nation in the modern sense...

...The Chinese say, "Ta, ta...

...And this despite the fact that pacific India has spent at least 30 per cent of its budget on the military establishment...

...Nonetheless, it would seem desirable to examine more closely the nature of the friend who has been prodded into our arms by Chinese bayonets...

...He graciously permitted the Chinese to take Tibet, the keystone of Indian security...

...and he countenanced Nikita Khrushchev's intervention in Hungary, while vigorously condemning the British and French action at Suez...

...That figure, one of the lowest in the world, has not changed significantly since 1946...

...In 11 years in Asia, I heard not one Asian allude to such competition-either as a fact or as a matter bearing upon his own future...

...As for New Delhi's effect on the neutral nations, their abandonment of India in its hour of need has demonstrated how little influence Nehru actually has over the complex, feuding world called Afro-Asia...

...Nehru himself has confessed that he was living in an unreal world, a state in which he apparently continues to reside...

...The reason for the invasion is at once much more complex and much less abstruse...

...It has endeavored, also, to educate the people out of their unquestioning acceptance of authority...

...He prefers to ride a few favorite theories...

...Only a few years ago, a commission of inquiry under Dr...

...ta, ta...

...t'an, t'an...

...No one can avoid a rush of sympathy for a people brutally invaded...

...As a result, much of the foreign aid New Delhi receives must go for immediate subsistence and emergency purposes, rather than long-term development...

...That is what Peking wishes to do at present...

...Among all the other disillusionments, certainly the greatest shock to world opinion has been the abject weakness of the Indian Army...

...Certainly, China never intended to waste its strength on the plains of India...

...they are generations from reality...

...I remember asking one of the senior spokesmen of the Ministry of External Affairs how long he felt India would continue to harass Israel and refuse to recognize it...

...By the same token, it serves no purpose to pretend that they are otherwise...

...And although it is true that New Delhi has tried to progress economically without resorting to the viollence and coercion Peking employs, it is also true that India has not done very well...

...Their leaders, however, remain isolated by their own physical comfort and by their unique capacity for grandiose self-delusion...

...If we expect miracles of performance, we are bound to be disappointed...

...nor should we flout the principle, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend...

...He has reserved his passionate decisions for Goa and Kashmir-both border issues-and now the Chinese...

...aid is based upon a realistic appraisal, then at least we shall not be excessively surprised if India suddenly reverses its posture-as our quondam ally, Pakistan, seems to be doing at the moment...

...In many respects, the Indian nation is attractive and meritorious...

...Moreover, for all his Socialist convictions, Nehru himself remains the typical autocrat...

...Despite the grip Nehru's Congress party retains through its historical prestige-and through its alliances with local vested intereststhe Government has always tried to conduct democratic elections...

...But the results have been so slow as to be imperceptible...

...But India did possess sufficient influence over the Western powers to deter them from the strong measures necessary to protect Southeast Asia, the area which was-and is-under the immediate threat...

...It was only in 1959, with the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet, that the Indian press first dared criticize any of the major tenets of Nehru's foreign policy...

...Yet the myth is tenacious...

...But nature, assisted by human frailty, has dealt ruthlessly with the pretensions of the Peking regime, and the Chinese masses exist today in a state of skepticism as profound as their earlier belief...

...Peking is now determined to prove that Communism is indeed the proper instrument for their purposes, and to rebuild its damaged self-esteem by becoming the leader of the revolution in the underdeveloped world and by restoring China's "rightful" frontiers...

...which means: "Fight a while, then talk a while, then repeat the process...

...The United States has every reason for assisting it against the common enemy...

...he sought to block military opposition to their incursions into Indochina...

...And Indian influence has in fact helped rather than hindered the Chinese advance into other parts of Asia...

...Many Indians draw comfort from the belief that Peking attacked to prevent India's continuing to surpass China in the economic competition which theyand many Westerners-think will determine the future allegiance of the underdeveloped world...

...A multitude of voices must cry, "See, the Brahmin is clothed neither in the trappings of power nor in the vestments of logic nor even in the simple shawl of morality," before the world outside Asia can appreciate the scope of the revelation...

...But these are still only laudable goals...

...We convinced ourselves that industrial Japan and democratic India constituted the counter-force which would prevent additional Asian victories for Communism...

...And the Prime Minister's self-deception has been matched by the beliefs of a host of foreign sympathizers-including many in the United States-who, seeking either personal comfort or personal advancement, have proclaimed his greatness and the greatness of his India...

...What greater conservatism exists in the world than the idea that a man and his children are forever condemned to five as cleaners of latrines or professional thieves because that is the state (read: caste) to which it has pleased fate to call them...

...Since he has neither armies like Caesar and Napoleon, nor an overwhelming doctrine like Buddha, Christ or Lenin, he has decided to create an empire of neutralism...

...But the nature of Indian requests for assistance has made it clear that their forces, whose chief purpose previously was to contain Pakistan, did not even possess adequate small arms, not to speak of more sophisticated weapons and equipment...

...NEHRU'S UNREAL WORLD The Myth of India By Robert S. Elegant During the middle years of the Communist era, the Chinese nation represented one of history's most consistent examples of mass mythomania...

...The key figure in appraising India's development remains the average agricultural yield per acre...

...This competition is actually an illusion, since the newly independent countries are much too busy with their own affairs to worry about international contests...

...It is difficult not to concur in the judgment offered by a former premier of Pakistan: "Nehru wants to be remembered as one of the greatest men who ever lived...