Nehru’s Folly and the ‘Loss’ of Tibet continues...

The period 1950-62 was a defeat for India in strategic terms. It led to the loss of Tibet as a buffer between India and the rapidly consolidating Chinese Communists. It was a period of lost opportunities: opportunities that were present, but were lost for ever due to the lack of a strategic culture among India’s leaders, both civilian and military, which led in turn to the lack of a practical form of strategic vision among those who influenced and made the decisions.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the few who actually voiced his concern, putting his thoughts in writing to the Prime Minister in 1950, in a remarkably-prophetic warning.

It is possible that India, had it had the vision and acted resolutely AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME, would have been able to prevent the Chinese take-over of Tibet. Building-up the Indian forces in Tibet to a brigade in Lhasa to start with might well have been a possibility, had both the vision and the determination been present, and it would have stopped the Chinese entry into Lhasa.

The defence of Tibet’s eastern marches, the Amdo region, since incorporated into China ‘proper’ as the Qinghai Province, and not part of today’s Tibet Autonomous Region, was possible with a mobilized Tibetan force armed by the Americans and British, and Mongol support arranged by the Tibetan authorities. Given the British pre-occupation in the 19th Century with trying to create a buffer in Afghanistan between British India and the expanding Russians (the ‘Great Game’ as it has been called), India could have thought in wider strategic terms. But it is not surprising that it did not. Such dramatic steps would have been completely contrary to the image of himself that Pt. Nehru had assiduously been creating on the world stage.

To be continued...