Sunday, October 28, 2012

The YB Chavan Speech on 62 War That Everybody Forgot

In all the clamour about the Henderson-Brooks report on the Indian defeat in the 1962 war with China, one detail seems to have gone down the memory hole: then defence minister Y B Chavan had revealed a year after the war that the committee was not tasked to look into the role of the government in the debacle. 

The committee, comprising Lt Gen T Henderson-Brooks and Brigadier P S Bhagat, was set up on December 14, 1962 by then Army Chief General JN Chaudhary for an “Operations Review” of the military humiliation.

According to a statement made by Chavan in the House on September 2, 1963, the committee set up by the then Army Chief was asked to find out what was wrong with “our training, our equipment, our system of command, the physical fitness of our troops and the capacity of our commanders at all levels to influence the men under them”, as only 24,000 Indian soldiers took on far greater number of Chinese troops. 

Despite its circumscribed mandate, the committee reviewed the “higher direction of operations”, Chavan had said, stressing that the report points out  that “the largest and the best equipped of Armies need to be given proper policy guidance and major directives by the government, whose instrument it is”.

Chavan made it amply clear that the report–now in a safe in the defence secretary's office - could not have been released either completely or in parts as it contains “information about the strength and deployment of our forces and their locations would be invaluable use to our enemies”. 

According to Chavan, the report that was submitted on July 2, 1963 to the defence ministry revealed that while the “basic training” of the soldiers was sound, what led to the ignominious defeat was the that “our training of the troops did not have a slant for a war being launched by China”. “Our troops had no knowledge of the Chinese tactics, and ways of war, their weapons, equipment and capabilities,” admitted Chavan, saying that report spoke of “an overall shortage of equipment both for training and during operations”. Chavan added: “This situation was aggravated and made worse because of overall shortage as far as vehicles were concerned and as our fleet was too old and its efficiency not adequate for operating on steep gradients and mountain terrain.”

On the question of the system of command within the armed forces, the report said while the system does not have any problems the departures from accepted chain of command due to “haste and lack of adequate prior planning” and the “higher formations interfering tactical specified tasks” led to a poorly led force. The physical fitness of the soldiers also came under scanner as rapidly inducted troops did not acclimatize adequately to the terrain. “Among some middle-age-group officers, there had been deterioration in standards of physical fitness… The physical fitness among junior officers was good and is now even better,” Chavan told the House.

According to the then defence minister, the report was hard on senior commanders for their inability to influence the men under their command. “The general standard amongst the junior officers was fair. At unit level there were good and mediocre Commanding Officers .... It was at higher levels that shortcomings became more apparent,” said Chavan in his summary of the report. 

The month-long war that erupted on October 20, 1962 cost 4,000 soldiers lost their lives. The 4th Division that earned laurels in World War II had to surrender in the then North Eastern Frontier Agency. China declared a unilateral ceasefire on November 21, 1962.

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