The sixties have been the most dangerous decade for independent India. It saw two full-scale wars (China 1962, Pakistan 1965), several large skirmishes (including Kutch, with Pakistan, 1965, Nathula, with China, 1967), the peaking of the Naga and Mizo insurgencies to such levels that air power had to be used against both, rise of Tamil separatism, and all this in a period that saw successive droughts, that saw the deaths of Nehru and Shastri and the decline of the Congress. But for most Indians of my generation, who started going to school in that decade, the memory that stays is 1962. More than a memory, it is a scar. 1965 was a much bigger war, but it was an even contest. If it left a feeling of “incompleteness”, 1971 settled it.

The droughts led to the green revolution, the Congress party rose from the ruins again and grew to be more powerful than under Nehru. The two insurgencies retreated to the jungles, with populated regions of both the Naga and Mizo Hills firmly controlled by the army. But there was no real redemption for 1962. That is why that scar refuses to fade away. And that is the reason we over-react so irrationally, stupidly and ignorantly to even a rumour of another Chinese provocation.

We forget how much water has flown through the Indus, Teesta, Kameng and Lohit since 1962. And I mean not just militarily. The change in the larger political, strategic and diplomatic environment is much more significant. In the years leading up to 1962, India and China were “bhai-bhai” in a fake, hypocritical and contrived bonding of an entirely muddled and contradictory ideology.

... contd.