rediff.com
Home | News | Remembering a War
dot
 From Our Archives
 Replay

 Neville Maxwell: 'The
   Chinese were not going to
   wait to be attacked...'

 Specials

 Complete Coverage:
   Jiang Zemin's visit
 The President in China
 The Flight of the Lama
 Fear Over Tibet
 India-China Relations:
   Great Leap Forward?
 True friendship begins...
 India must take
   advantage...
 More

 Interviews

 'I'd like to perform a
   Kalchakra in Tiananmen
   Square'
 'Narayanan can help
   improve ties with Chinese'
 'China is doing its best
   to outnumber the Tibetans'
 More

 Columns

 The Zhu-Musharraf brigade
 The China Syndrome
 Tibet must not affect our
   relations with China
 Himalayan Blunder,
   Reprise
 At long last, containing
   China
 Hindi-Chini Bye Bye
 China doesn't matter
 More

 Document

 Vajpayee's letter to US
  and other world leaders
  after 1998 nuclear
  tests

 

  Forty years ago, the Indian nation was convulsed by fear and eventual humiliation as its army was vanquished by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in a bitter and cold battle in the Northeast.

TODAY
Get out of the shadow
Dr Wang Hongwei
Forty years later, India has repaired its relationship with the Chinese to some extent, but those wounds have not been forgotten.

Excuses have been thrown up for the military debacle. India was ill prepared; it believed in non-violence; it trusted the Chinese and in 'Hindi-Chini bhai bhai'. Fingers have been pointed, most famously at then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, defence minister Krishna Menon, and Lieutenant General B N Kaul, who was in charge of the army on India's eastern frontier.

After the war, India claimed that China was occupying about 33,000 square kilometres of its territory in the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh. China claimed that India was occupying 90,000 square kilometres; Beijing claims the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory.

Forty years later, few know the real story of what happened, what went wrong. Successive governments have refused to release the Henderson-Brooks report that investigated the lapses of 1962.

Though the two Asian giants have tried to mend their relations over the decades, several issues remain unresolved: the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile in India; China's non-recognition of Sikkim's merger with India; the nuclear tests in 1998 by India; and India's allegation that China is arming Pakistan, including the latter's nuclear programme.

rediff.com begins a series that seeks to look at what happened then, and how things have changed since. We will bring you articles and reports offering differing analyses, perspectives, and narratives so that more than a generation later we may learn from our history.

TODAY
Dr Wang Hongwei : Get out of the shadow

line line line
 Opinion

 •  The view from Beijing
 •  'You can scrap the army'
 •  How Nehru let us down
 •  Lest we forget...
 •  A millennia-old tussle
 • Chairman Mao Goes to War
 • The Silver Lining
 • Missed Opportunities
 • Military nonsense
 • Could it happen again?
 • A win-win situation?
 • The Kashmir card
 • India is losing
 • The confiscation of history
 • How Mao cut India to size

 Reporter's Diary

 • Back to the future

 Flashback

 • Fleeing Tezpur
 • A PoW in Tibet
 • A ringside view
 • Ill-armed, ill-clad, ill-trained
 • Eyeball to eyeball...

 
 Search the Internet
         Tips
dot
Channels:

News:
Shopping:
Services:
Astrology | Auto | Contests | Destinations | E-cards | Food | Health | Home & Decor | Jobs/Intl.Jobs | Lifestyle | Matrimonial
Money | Movies | Net Guide | Product Watch | Romance | Tech.Edu | Technology | Teenstation | Women
News | Cricket | Sports | NewsLinks
Shopping | Books | Music
Personal Homepages | Free Email | Free Messenger | Chat
dot
  © 1996 - 2002 rediff.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved.