The Indians felt that if they acceded to Chinese claims in Ladakh, Beijing would simply be emboldened to press for further concessions in the future. A revealing excerpt from India And The Cold War.
It is well-known, and the Brooks-Bhagat report vouches for it, that the real failure for the 1962 debacle against China was not military, but political, says Ram Madhav.
'Delhi was not concerned.' 'It would continue sleeping for several more years, with the result that Indian territory is still occupied by China today,' says Claude Arpi.
It is a dark legacy bequeathed by Nehru to India. In its DNA lies the subconscious fount of India's schizophrenic geopolitics that forsook in one sweep all its historically-entrenched strategic interests in Tibet in favour of China, says R N Ravi, on the 60th anniversary of the Panchsheel Agreement.
'A participant in many rounds of the border talks with China once told me that China seemed not interested in resolving the border issue as it wanted to keep it as a ready excuse to intervene in the sub-continent,' says Colonel (retd) Anil A Athale.
'She was the only prime minister who won a decisive military victory.' 'She won a real war; she didn't play video games on prime time TV over surgical strikes!' 'She understood power better than any other politician, saw it as her birthright and used it with inborn expertise.' 'Every politician today who tries to be a "supremo" through populism and absolute control over his or her party is referring to the Indira Gandhi playbook!'
'How come with Nehru at the helm, India missed so many buses? He had such unchallenged power that he could have taken the country in any direction he wanted. The sad conclusion is inescapable that Nehru let things drift in true Hamletian ambivalence,' says B S Raghavan.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's sage advice remains as relevant today as it was during his lifetime, says Vivek Gumaste.
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