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

The Panchsheel Treaty, of 28th April 1954, valied for eight years, served mainly China’s interests, as we have seen. It relinquished numerous facilities which India had in Lhasa and en route between Lhasa and Kalimpong since 1904, which included the stationing of a limited number of Indian troops in Tibet, which were at Gyantse and Yatung along the route between Lhasa and India across Jelep La.

AYUB KHAN’S JOINT DEFENCE PROPOSAL

Even more significant, in many ways, was the other possibility which did not materialize due to the ideas and dislikes of one man. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had a visceral dislike of military officers and a distaste for the armed forces as an institution, for a number of reasons.

For one, the Indian political class had a distrust in the military, believing that because it was the guarantor of British rule over the sub-continent, it was not fully loyal to India’s political institutions, forgetting that the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Police were two other services who in fact were much more instrumental in upholding British rule on a
day-to-day basis.

He and other politicians also forgot that it was the mutinies in the Royal Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force which made the British realise that they could not hold India much longer.

For another, he had the Brahmin’s intellectual arrogance that considered itself much superior to anyone else in knowledge, and Pandit Nehru himself was an enormously erudite man. In any case he did not take kindly to suggestions on foreign policy from anyone even within the Indian political and administrative system, let alone a foreigner and a military officer.

To be continued...