While the world held it's breath watching the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold, China used the distraction to invade India in a series of very bloody engagements.The Chinese claim 2 areas that India deems its own territory. One in the western sector, on Aksai Chin in the northeastern section of Ladakh District in Jammu and Kashmir. The other in the eastern sector over a region included in the British-designated North-East Frontier Agency, the disputed part of which India renamed Arunachal Pradesh and made a state. In the fight over these areas, the well-trained and well-armed troops of the Chinese People's Liberation Army overpowered the ill-equipped Indian troops, who had not been properly acclimatized to fighting at high altitudes.
After its independence in 1947, India not only inherited Britain's occupation of parts of Chinese territories, but also further encroached northward and pushed its borderline to the McMahon Line in 1953, as a result, invaded and occupied 90,000 square kms of Chinese territory. In 1959, India voiced its claim to the Aksai Chin areas, counted 33,000 s.kms, of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. In April 1960, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai went to New Delhi to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Nehru, no agreements were reached and ensuing meetings between the officials of the two countries also produced no results.
Unable to reach political accommodation on disputed territory along the 3,225-kilometer-long Himalayan border, the Chinese attacked India on October 20, 1962. At the time, nine divisions from the eastern and western commands were deployed along the Himalayan border with China. None of these divisions was up to its full troop strength, and all were short of artillery, tanks, equipment, and even adequate articles of clothing.
Indian decisions taken at that time were not grounded in adequate, up-to-date, knowledge of what was transpiring within China or the motivations of China’s then key decision-makers. Stated briefly, New Delhi failed to decipher the “Chinese calculus of deterrence” and India suffered disproportionately.
In Ladakh the Chinese attacked south of the Karakoram Pass at the northwest end of the Aksai Chin Plateau and in the Pangong Lake area
about 160 kilometers to the southeast. The defending Indian forces were easily ejected from their posts in the area of the Karakoram Pass and from most posts near Pangong Lake. However, they put up spirited resistance at the key posts of Daulat Beg Oldi (near the entrance to the pass) and Chushul (located immediately south of Pangong Lake and at the head of the vital supply road to Leh, a major town and location of an air force base in Ladakh). Other Chinese forces attacked near Demchok (about 160 kilometers southeast of Chusul) and rapidly overran the Demchok and the Jara La posts.In the eastern sector, in Assam, the Chinese forces advanced easily despite Indian efforts at resistance. On the first day of the fighting, Indian forces stationed at the Tsang Le post on the northern side of the Namka Chu, the Khinzemane post, and near Dhola were overrun. On the western side of the North-East Frontier Agency, Tsang Dar fell on October 22, Bum La on October 23, and Tawang, the headquarters of the Seventh Infantry Brigade, on October 24. The Chinese made an offer to negotiate on October 24. The Indian government promptly rejected this offer.
With a lull in the fighting, the Indian military desperately sought to regroup its forces. Specifically, the army attempted to strengthen its defensive positions in the North-East Frontier Agency and Ladakh and to prepare against possible Chinese attacks through Sikkim and Bhutan. Army units were moved from Calcutta, Bihar, Nagaland, and Punjab to guard the northern frontiers of West Bengal and Assam. Three brigades were hastily positioned in the western part of the North-East Frontier Agency, and two other brigades were moved into Sikkim and near the West Bengal border with Bhutan to face the Chinese. Light Stuart tanks were drawn from the Eastern Command headquarters at Calcutta to bolster these deployments.
In the western sector, a divisional organization was established in Leh; several battalions of infantry, a battery of twenty-five-pounder guns, and two troops of AMX light tanks were airlifted into the Chushul area from Punjab. On November 4, the Indian military decided that the post at Daulat Beg Oldi was untenable, and its defenders were withdrawn over the 5,300-meter-high Sasar Brangsa Pass to a more defensible position.
The reinforcements and redeployments in Ladakh proved sufficient to defend the Chushul perimeter despite repeated Chinese attacks. However, the more remote posts at Rezang La and Gurung Hill and the four posts at Spanggur Lake area fell to the Chinese.
In the North-East Frontier Agency, the situation proved to be quite different. Indian forces counterattacked on November 13 and captured a hill northwest of the town of Walong. Concerted Chinese attacks dislodged them from this hard-won position, and the nearby garrison had to retreat down the Lohit Valley.
In another important section of the eastern sector, the Kameng Frontier Division, six Chinese brigades attacked across the Tawang Chu near Jang and advanced some sixteen kilometers to the southeast to attack Indian positions at Nurang, near Se La, on November 17. Despite the Indian attempt to regroup their forces at Se La, the Chinese continued their onslaught, wiping out virtually all Indian resistance in Kameng. By November 18, the Chinese had penetrated close to the outskirts of Tezpur, Assam, a major frontier town nearly fifty kilometers from the Assam-North-East Frontier Agency border.
The Chinese did not advance farther and on November 21 declared a unilateral cease-fire. They had accomplished all of their territorial objectives, and any attempt to press farther into the plains of Assam would have stretched their logistical capabilities and their lines of communication to a breaking point. By the time the fighting stopped, each side had lost 500 troops.
After administering a blistering defeat in 1962, the Chinese forces withdrew 20 km behind the McMahon Line, which China called “the 1959 line of actual control” in the Eastern Sector, and 20 km behind the line of its latest position in Ladakh, which was further identified with the “1959 line of actual control” in the Western Sector.
3 comments:
Gary
Excellent post. The first thing that strikes me is that it is not the only time that opportunist people have seized the moment when the worlds attention was distracted. The Soviets invaded Hungry during the 1956 Suez Crisis. And during the 1967 six day war the Greek military seized the opportunity to launch a coup.
Regarding this conflict itself. I am somewhat surprised that there were not even more casualties. I assume the Indians an the Chinese did and still do have the largest armies in the world. I expected that the Chinese in particular would have fought as they did in Korea, using wave after wave of troops as cannon fodder. It appears their incursion was more disciplined than that. I am also surprised at the poor if brave performance of the Indian military. Given that they were battle hardened from their wars with Pakistan I would have thought they would be more organised.
Thanks much...
With regard to the Indian Army, on a one-on-one basis they are as brave and capable as any in the world, but the army has always suffered from organizational problems and an unfortunate tendency to hesitate when action is required.
The problem seems to be institutional, that is, it seems to be in all of their government organizations. It was plainly visable in their response to the recent Mumbai attacks.
I don't know but what it may be some legacy of British Colonial influence simply keeping them from achieving the necessary self confidence.
Hi Gary, just passing by...
(looking for US airlift details of this conflict. My dad was in this war, and is still around)
From 1948 to 1962 till this war, India was thinking of disbanding the Army 'as it did not have natural enemies' over the objections of the Army. Call it kind of misplaced pacifism it you will.
1962 knocked some sense into the civilian leadership.
[Look up videos of 'Yudh Abhyas 2010' Indo-US exercise in Alsaka]
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