The 75th year of India’s independence is as good a time as any to reflect on the challenges faced by it – thanks to its aggressive neighbours – China and Pakistan – even as India insists on the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes.
These are the lines that divide the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir -the CFL (now the LOC) the AGPL near Siachen glacier- and the LAC that runs through Ladakh. These are also the most likely areas, where tensions could escalate easily, and push us into a war. Each of them has a history, and none can be ignored. But how the boundaries of India were challenged by its neighbours since 1947, is worth a recall, as it is part of the legacy of India’s independence.
Pakistan’s invasion of Jammu and Kashmir and what it meant for India
Even as the people of India and Pakistan were to come to terms with the bloodshed and bitterness that marked the partition of India, and as India’s leaders were engaged in the integration of the 583 odd principalities into the Indian union, Pandit Nehru and his cabinet were shocked to learn that an invasion of Kashmir had unfolded with Pakistan army backed irregulars racing to capture the Valley. But a new book by Iqbal Malhotra: ‘Dark Secrets: Politics, Intrigue and Proxy Wars in Kashmir’ (Bloomsbury, 2022), claims that it was the British deep-state in India, that had prodded the political elite of the newly created Pakistan to launch an invasion of Kashmir in October 1947.
Malhotra’s book explains in well-researched details, that the British establishment – which was in control of the military in India and Pakistan – had planned the invasion of Kashmir in two parts: Op-Gulmarg to capture the Valley and Op-Dutta Khel to take over Gilgit Baltistan. This information accidentally became known to Major (later Major General) Onkar Singh Kalkat, who risked his life to reach Delhi and tell India’s military brass that an invasion was shortly due.
A prolonged military campaign – from October 1947 into the summer of 1948 – to ‘save Kashmir’ for India, followed. It saw many exceptional acts of valour and immense resolve by Indian soldiers.
Kalkat’s warnings were ignored until the Pakistani invasion became a reality. Nehru was livid and rumour has it that he threw a paperweight in anger on his defence minister, Sardar Baldev Singh! Soon, the incompetent Maharaja of J&K abandoned the Valley in October 1947 and sought help. This came in the form of a military airlift after he acceded to the Indian union, as the Indian army and the IAF went out to save the Valley in the least, and at most to push out the ‘raiders’ from Kashmir.
A prolonged military campaign – from October 1947 into the summer of 1948 – to ‘save Kashmir’ for India, followed. It saw many exceptional acts of valour and immense resolve by Indian soldiers.
But just as the Indian army readied with its summer offensive to take back the areas of J&K (now known as POK), the British feared that their designs to keep a toe hold in J&K – with listening stations to monitor Russia’s plans for a nuclear bomb north of J&K – Mountbatten suggested a cease-fire. Sheikh Abdullah, a confidant of Nehru then, encouraged the idea, suggesting that as the Kashmir valley was what both sides wanted, and as the Valley was with him, and that he was with Nehru, why continue the war any further?
Thus, on the advice of Lord Mountbatten and Sheikh Abdullah, Pandit Nehru opted for a cease-fire and to have the matter of Kashmir debated at the UN. The debates were long and acrimonious and the subject of Kashmir became one of India and Pakistan. Eventually, it led to a three-part UN resolution (of 13 August 1948).
And months of deliberations thereafter led to the Karachi Agreement of January 1st, 1949 after which the Cease Fire Line (CFL) became the de-facto Indo-Pak boundary in Jammu & Kashmir. But as stated above, the British had planned a two-part operation over Kashmir, and with the Indian army having stalled the chaotic Pakistan Army-led hordes in the Valley, the second part of the operation began to unfold in the Gilgit area.
A British officer Captain William Brown, of the Gilgit Scouts, decided to hoist Pakistan’s flag on 1st November 1947 along with a Pakistani army contingent, in Gilgit. So, part-II of the British operation (Op-Dutta Khel) had succeeded – and that region remains with Pakistan even now – though the British effort to beat Russia in the race for a nuclear had failed, with the Russians testing their N-bomb in 1949.
Chinese intrusions in Ladakh and territorial challenges
On the Himalayan front, however, the boundaries inherited by India were from those of the British Empire, and one that was opposed by China, leading to the conflicting boundary claims along the Himalayas, which in turn led to India’s second major conflict, after its independence.
Though the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict was the outcome of many factors – from the Chinese aversion to the increasing US footprint in India to assist the Tibetan cause, even though Pandit Nehru made every effort to appease Communist China, to India’s publication of maps in 1954 that showed Aksai Chin as a part of Ladakh (and therefore India).
Furthermore, Pandit Nehru’s stand that ‘map or no map’ the McMahon Line – marked by Sir Henry McMahon in the Simla conference in 1914 – was India’s border in India’s northeast with China. This angered the Chinese enough that Mao decided to teach him a lesson.
However, what isn’t known is that the Chinese were armed an encouraged by Moscow – first for the Korean war against the US in the 1950s – and then, since India was seen to be in the US camp, Peking (now Beijing) received a signal from the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to attack India just as the world got busy with the Cuban missile crisis, from 20th October to 19th November in 1962. So, when China did finally attack India, the world had bigger problems at hand!
Worse still, India’s military commanders completely surrendered to the will of India’s civilian leadership – Nehru, Krishna Menon and BN Mullick- who had ignored all the signs of China’s aggressive intent, and then refused to let the military fight back, for fear of upsetting the Chinese!
Though 1962 was called a national defeat, the reality is that the bulk of the Indian army wasn’t used and nor was the IAF, for fear of further escalating the conflict! Had they been used the story would’ve been different.
As newspaper headlines announced a Chinese invasion, they pushed India’s ill-equipped and ill-armed troops into those high Himalayas to fight the Chinese hordes. However, despite the massive odds, Indian troops put up an impressive fight, both in Ladakh and in the NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) as was argued by this writer in his book ‘Contested Lands: India, China and the Boundary Dispute’ (Westland, 2021).
And though 1962 was called a national defeat, the reality is that the bulk of the Indian army wasn’t used and nor was the IAF, for fear of further escalating the conflict! Had they been used the story would’ve been different. The Chinese invasion that followed destroyed the illusions that Nehru held about his role as a global statesman and India’s standing in Asia. And though he died in 1964, he was, practically half dead, after this Chinese military defeat. And this impacted any plans and initiatives that he had for the growth of independent India. That contestation still remains a major security challenge to date.
The Siachen Saga and India’s gains
On the Indo-Pak front, the CFL, a de-facto Indo-Pak boundary until 1971, was replaced by the LOC, after the 1971 war and the Shimla Accord. The aim of converting the CFL (Cease Fire Line) into the LoC was to attain a permanent settlement over the differing Indo-Pak claims over Kashmir. That’s history now, as Pakistan had got back their 93,000 PoWs of the 1971 war, resiled over their commitments, and India’s maps of 2020 now lay claim over the entire erstwhile kingdom of J&K.
However, as LoC (earlier the CFL) starts north of Jammu and ends abruptly at a mountain trig-height called NJ 9842 north of Leh and south of Siachen glacier, the dispute over the Siachen glacier arose in the 1980s from the question about whom the territory north of NJ 9842, belongs to, as explained in detail by Nitin Gokhale in his book: ‘Beyond NJ 9842: The Siachen Saga’ (Bloomsbury, 2014).
India’s public assertion of its claim lines along the Siachen glacier, the AGPL (Actual Ground Position Lines) would put an end to the false claims and bravado of Pakistan’s army brass. Also, India’s military gains along the Siachen glacier are its biggest, since the victory in East Pakistan in 1971.
Pakistan’s plans to capture the glacier were rebuffed by a swift Indian military operation in 1984, and since 1987 India has been in control of all the heights atop the Saltoro ridge which runs along the Siachen glacier on its east and denies Pakistan any toe-hold on this important glacier.
India’s public assertion of its claim lines along the Siachen glacier, the AGPL (Actual Ground Position Lines) would put an end to the false claims and bravado of Pakistan’s army brass. Also, India’s military gains along the Siachen glacier are its biggest, since the victory in East Pakistan in 1971.
It can be used to seek a settlement over LOC. Sadly though, India’s diplomats have shied away from publicly embarrassing the Pakistan army about their losses near Siachen, and that has given that they are there too! Moreover, India’s control of the Siachen glacier denies China a link up from Aksai Chin with Pakistan’s forces in the northern parts of POK
. Standing between the ever-growing Pakistan-China nexus is the ever-vigilant Indian soldier, who remains committed to guarding India’s independence and its territorial integrity, as his predecessors have done since 1947. Our hats off to them.
-This story earlier appeared on www.timesnownews.com
India@75: India’s unsettled boundaries and how they came to be (timesnownews.com)