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

Ayub’s proposal was actually under serious consideration within the Army and even at the level of the Prime Minister himself, before it was finally rejected. There are three reasons, the first socio-cultural and unsubstantiable, the other two a matter of record. First, Ayub Khan himself, though of the Sandhurst-commissioned Army officer class so despised by Nehru, inspite of the competition inherent in his also being well-groomed, well-dressed and of impressive bearing, was not an overbearing or unpleasant character, and had not yet at this stage begun to intensely dislike Indian government leaders.

He was certainly not an abrasive person such as President Pervez Musharraf, nor so unpleasant that anyone might have taken an instant dislike to him, and thus disregarded his offer, whatever its merits. That he was a ‘normal’ sort of person was known to most, and his neighbours at Kirby Place in Delhi Cantonment where he lived as an Indian Army officer when posted to Delhi in the early years of the Second World War, friends of this author’s family, remembered him as a pleasant sort.

Second, the arrangement was probably expected by both the Indian and the Pakistani Armies to actually come about. This author has himself been officially shown an Indian Army document of the period which had outlined the plans for the deployment of the Pakistani formations expected to back up Indian defence efforts against any Chinese incursion in the eastern Himalayan regions.

The document was issued by the General Staff Branch of Army Headquarters, and if actually implemented, would have moved away the Pakistani field formations in their Punjab against whom India was obliged to keep forces in readiness in the Indian Punjab. These were the Pakistani formations which were earmarked to move into India’s threatened eastern region, to support the Indian Army’s forward defences
facing Chinese troops in the mountains.

To be continued...