Australian journalist Neville Maxwell originally sought to tell Indians a different version of the Indo-China war of 1962 than the emotional one that they were used to - ahead of the general elections in 1967. This time, ahead of another crucial election, he has outed the Henderson Brooks report that the government of India deems as a classified document - a report once termed “Top Secret” and had been seen by only a handful of people.
It’s been always known that Maxwell had access to the report, because one of the three angles that his 1970 book, curiously titled “India’s China War” (and not the other way) took details from the Henderson Brooks report.
While releasing part of the report this week, Maxwell repeated his his long-held twist to the story that our emotional version of the war is not all that true and that’s why the Brooks report is still kept a secret:"The reasons for long-term withholding of 1962 war report must be political, probably partisan & perhaps familial."
A war memorial for Indian soldiers killed during the 1962 war. AFP
In his book, he had noted that then prime minister and the defence minister had meddled with the military and the North-East Frontier Agency debacle was because of men and material. The Brooks report noted that Nehru’s ill-conceived “Forward Policy,” initiated a year earlier, was the reason for the war rather than China’s aggression.
The BJP lost no time in seizing the opportunity to take the matter to the election-wary Congress camp and make it a Patel vs Nehru battle. The Congress had no explanation to offer as to why it’s still clinging to the secrecy of the document, given that all the people involved are long dead and gone.
The possible explanation, going by whatever Maxwell has said, including his “India’s China War”, is the certainty that if the China story is retold, it will hurt the image of Nehru, expose the weakness of the “Forward policy” and possibly make him responsible for forever hurting the India-China relations. However, what the BJP doesn't realise is that it would also mean recalibrating its China approach.
So, the story Maxwell has told earlier, and what he repeats now, calls for a new reading of the Chinese betrayal of a country that once chanted Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai. In a nutshell, it’s something India invited upon itself and mismanaged. How far is it true? We don’t know until we see the Brooks report.If the government is resistant to declassifying the document, it is only natural that we believe Maxwell, although he was once accused of Chinese bias by the former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew.
The demand for making the report public is not new. Reviewing Maxwell’s “India’s China War,” well-known national security expert K Subramanyam wrote in 1970: “It’s high time the country was told the full truth. It cannot do any harm but only do good to the country.”
He went on to add: “Contrary to the popular belief it will not show up our political executive in any bad light, but will explode a number of myths sedulously cultivated in this country through half-truths and malicious distortions about lack of intelligence, unwillingness of political executive to equip the country’s armed forces, existence or otherwise of plans of various persons who claim authorship to them without being precise about them and functionality of our decision-making system. It will tell us what really went wrong and whether the deficiencies have really been made up since 1962. Instead of affecting the morale of people and the armed forces, it will boost it considerably.”
In the geopolitical context, the report perhaps can generate a new friendly interest among Indians for the Chinese. And it’s such a pity that the country, including BJP governments, have been sitting on a possible myth-breaking, confidence-building truth.
It will be great to sing Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai once again. And finally, it will also redeem VK Krishna Menon, the fall guy, and force Indian memoir writers to change their chapters on China.
