Opinion Defeated,not destroyed

Without any loss of temper,Nehru explained at some length why the policy of peaceful settlement of disputes was in the best interest of the country. However,“if this House thinks that the way our government has carried out this work in not satisfactory,it is open to this House to choose more competent men…”.

When the full-blown Chinese attack began and overran everything in its way,Nehru did admit that he and the country had been “out of touch with the reality in the modern world” and “living in an artificial atmosphere of our own our own creation”. This was as close as he could come to confessing that the fundamental flaw in his China policy was his conviction that there would be border skirmishes and patrol-level clashes but the Chinese would do “nothing big”.

This,according to Nehru’s critics,was because of his naivety,but that is far from,being the case. Dangerously wrong he certainly was,but naïve he wasn’t even though the republic’s then-president and his friend,S. Radhkrishnan,accused his government of “credulity and negligence”. Evidence to the contrary is compelling. As early 1954,briefing a goodwill delegation to China,Nehru had told them that India’s problems with China would be all along the “spine of Asia”. Two eminent editors,Frank Moraes and M. Chalapathi Rao,who were members of the delegation,put this in the public domain.

More importantly,in March 1958,on the night G. Parthasarthi was to leave for Beijing to take over as ambassador,Nehru advised him not to believe whatever the foreign office might have told him about the state of India-China relations. Then he gave him what was unquestionably the most forthright appraisal of the Chinese whom,he added,he “didn’t trust one bit”. “They are arrogant,deceitful,hegemonist,and a thoroughly unreliable lot. We just cannot trust them at all. They are totally inimical to us…” Nehru also told the ambassador-designate to be “extremely vigilant” in Beijing and not “fall for any blandishment the Chinese might offer. It is all deceit”. He then gave GP the rather unusual directive to send all his dispatches from China “marked only to me”.

In view of this the question is: why then did he err so grievously? Clearly,he was not a victim of naivety but had fallen between two stools: his knowledge that China was trouble all the way,and his belief that India was “too big a prize” and therefore neither China nor any other country could invade it without risking a wider war. It didn’t occur to him that China could launch a short,calibrated punitive strike. According to the British historian of the Himalayan frontiers,Dorothy Woodman,another reason for Nehru’s misreading of the situation was “an element of deceit” in all of Zhou Enlai’s negotiations with him.

Against this backdrop,the surprise is not that Nehru’s towering stature slipped but that the slippage was so limited and so short-lived. Soon enough,he had recovered his enviable hold on the Indian masses. Several historians have testified that no other leader in any country could have survived politically under similar circumstances. But in post-1962 India,according to Steven A. Hoffmann,an American analyst of the India-China crisis,Nehru remained “in command of the Indian political system and the national decision-making process… as always during the time of his prime ministership,he remained a legitimising symbol and,to many,the embodiment of the nation. The war with China had curtailed his role as an international statesman and champion of peace,but he had become the focal point of national and international sympathy”.

Almost immediately,Nehru buckled down to the onerous task of revitalising both the Congress and his administration. He was more active now than before the war. By August 1963,he had had two remarkable achievements to his credit. Through what is known as the Kamaraj Plan (named after the chief minister of Madras (now Tamil Nadu),K. Kamaraj) he cleared the way for Lal Bahadur Shastri’s succession to him,eliminating Morarji Desai. And he defeated,spectacularly,the first and only no-confidence motion against his government.

However,at no time is the Indian scene uni-dimensional or free from complexities. Around the same time,Nehru’s party badly lost three key parliamentary byelections in quick succession. These brought or brought back into the Lok Sabha three of his inveterate and eloquent critics — Acharya Kripalani,Minoo Masani and Ram Manohar Lohia. The victors and the opposition in general were jubilant.

C. Rajagopalachari,better known as Rajaji,a one-time close associate of Nehru turned bitter critic,immediately declared that the mandate the prime minister had won in February 1962 had been exhausted,and therefore he must resign and hold fresh elections. Other opposition leaders joined the chorus. Nehru hit back equally hard. He denounced them as “inept,irresponsible,lately becoming positively indecent”,and said that they were “reviving memories of fascism and Nazism”. Masani commented bitingly,if also helplessly: “Defeat seems to have gone to his head”.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator