In the aftermath of the Himalayan adventure there occurred significant changes in different spheres of Indian life – political, economic, military, etc. Here we shall only touch on them briefly.
‘India’s China war’ tightened more firmly than before the noose of US imperialism and Soviet rulers round the neck of the Indian people. In the wake of the war there was greater political and economic dependence on them. Spurious non-alignment yielded to open bi-aligmnent, which amounted to greater subservience to them. As Selig Harrison wrote, “Instead of striking an elusive, equidistant pose midway between the extremes of commitment, the object now [after the adventure] is to remain as near as possible to both of her patrons while displeasing neither.” [220] All the old euphoria vanished. The Indian state of our ruling classes appeared in all its nakedness – a client state “in its dealings with the superpowers”.
When people starved, military expenditure went on multiplying. While India’s military expenditure amounted to Rs 2,809 million in 1960-1, it rose to Rs 8,161 million in 1963-4. [221] Much of it went to purchase military hardware, the market for which was not internal but external – the erstwhile Soviet Union and the USA. This added substantially to the drain of wealth from an already impoverished India.
While the “process of internal political deterioration” continued, the chronic economic crisis of this semi-colonial country was accentuated under the impact of the Himalayan adventure. Dependence on the USA and the USSR for economic ‘aid’ (including food) and direct capital investment increased steeply. The balance of payments deficit rose; inflation spiralled higher and higher; the value of the rupee deteriorated; imports cost more while exports became much cheaper; long-neglected agriculture faced a crisis; the market for industrial goods shrank; internal investment declined; the burden on the people became heavier and heavier. Nehru’s strategy of building socialism peacefully, without tears, without demolishing the semi-feudal structure of society, without even confiscating imperialist capital – instead, strengthening its hold on Indian economy – was exposed as bankrupt. ‘The socialist pattern of society’ was in tatters. In 1963, according to rough estimates of the Indian planning commission, two-thirds of the population earned an average of 7.5 annas (about 47 paise) a day, [222] which could not assure them even one full meal a day, what to speak of other necessities of life. All these contributed to the maturing of a sharp political and economic crisis.
The Himalayan debacle cut Nehru down to size. The inflated self-image of India and of her self-righteous prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru – ‘an intrepid fighter for the establishment of peace and justice on earth’, ‘the architect of non-alignment’, a “peace-maker and go-between in the company of the superpowers” [223] – was shattered. It was the imperialist powers as well as the Soviet Union that had helped and encouraged Nehru to project and nurture carefully this image in view of India’s huge population (millions of whom could be used as cannon-fodder in their wars, as they had been used in the past by the British imperialists), her large market and the role of the Indian ruling classes in the wars against Socialism and national liberation struggles in Asia. India’s political elite, so self-confident and so full of self-esteem before, became after the painful experience utterly confused, bewildered and dejected. To quote Harrison again, “Nehru had little leadership to give in his period of decline, for he was the most demoralized of all by the Himalayan debacle....” [224] Even before the adventure was over, even when the Chinese had reached only Towang and halted, Nehru appeared to the US ambassador as “frail, brittle....small and old”. [225] Nehru’s leadership in formulating both internal and external policies was challenged even from within the Congress party. Though he tried to assert his supremacy, he was not his old self again. He did not survive long the shock. He had a heart-attack in January 1964 and passed away in May.
The long-simmering discontent among the people broke out into spontaneous revolts of the workers, peasants and other oppressed sections of the people in different places. The Himalayan debacle also led to revolt within the Communist Party of India, the leadership of which was enamoured of Nehru’s foreign policy and of his ‘socialist pattern of society’ and had been trailing behind the Indian ruling classes.
In a long article “India-China Relations” in New Age (then the monthly organ of the CPI) of December 1959 (that is, after the Longju and Kongka Pass incidents), B.T. Ranadive, its editor and a long-time top leader of the CPI and, later, of the CPI(Marxist), wrote that the CPI “had consistently supported the basic principles of our foreign policy – in fact more consistently than the Congress followers themselves”. Yet, it was “most shocking” to Ranadive and the CPI that the Congress president and general secretary demanded a ban on the party, that the home minister threatened it with legal action and “Nehru himself” spoke of the possibility of a ban or curbs on it. The article clarified that in a resolution the National Council of the CPI had held “that whatever the origin of the McMahon line may be, the fact cannot be ignored that for several years this has been the frontier of India and the area south of this line has been under Indian administration. It, therefore, held that the area south of the McMahon line was a part of India and should remain in India.” The article stated: “As regards the Western border, the National Council held that the government [of India] was correct in basing itself on the traditional border.” The CPI upheld the demand of the Nehru government that China “should withdraw their personnel 20 kilometres to the east of the international boundary which has been described by the Government of India in their earlier notes”.... [226]
As we have seen, the “international boundary” described by the Nehru government (and upheld by the Ranadives) to serve its expansionist aims, to embarrass socialist China and to serve the interests of U.S.-Soviet rulers was a wholly fictitious one. The concrete import of Nehru’s counter-proposals (to China’s proposals for maintenance of the status quo pending settlement and withdrawal of the military personnel 20 kilometres to avoid clashes) as explained by B.G. Verghese in The Times of India of 25 November 1959, was that virtually “India has only to withdraw on the map but does not physically withdraw anywhere on the ground. The Chinese, however, will have to vacate an area of up to 6,000 square miles” including the road that linked Sinkiang with Tibet in the Aksai Chin area. In his article Ranadive lauded Nehru’s counter-proposals “as another step in the direction of negotiations, peaceful settlement”. And S.A. Dange, chairman of the party, extended support to them in the Lok Sabha.
Ranadive’s article makes it explicit that the CPI leadership was quite conscious that “the issue is not just differences over the border but something basic”. [227] The Ranadives knew that the conflict was not actually over some desolate wastes but something “basic”. The article quotes from some of Nehru’s speeches which breathed fear of and hostility towards resurgent, socialist China and talked of the possibility of war against her. [228] And Ranadive and his comrades shared some “basic” affinity with the Nehrus.
In November 1959, another top leader of the CPI and, later, of the CPI(M), Namboodiripad, declared: “In case of aggression we are one with the government. It is for the government of the day to decide whether aggression has been committed or not.” The CPI delegation to the conference of the 81 Communist and Workers’ Parties, held in Moscow in November-December 1960, stated in its report to the conference that the delegation unanimously supported the Soviet position on the China-India border dispute and opposed the Chinese stand on it. The delegation included Namboodiripad and Ramamurti, who too became afterwards a top leader of the CPI(M).
After China’s unilateral ceasefire and withdrawal, there was an uproar in India condemning China, in which all parties – right, centre and ‘left’ – joined. The CPI leadership too did not lag behind. [229] As chairman of the CPI, Dange wrote to Nehru:
“In the post-independence period you have laid the policies of planned development, democracy, socialism, peace, non-alignment and anti-colonialism.
“Today, in this hour of grave crisis created by the Chinese aggression, the nation has mustered around you as a man to safeguard its honour, integrity and sovereignty.
“The Communist Party of India pledges its unqualified support to your policies of national defence and national unity” (Emphasis added).
Jyoti Basu, who also became a top leader of the CPI(M), declared: “the Chinese should withdraw to the point where the [Indian] Union Government wants them to.” In reply to a question of a journalist, he said: “Our stand is clear. I think India’s border defences should be strengthened and my party will not hesitate to put in all its efforts for the defence of India’s freedom, irrespective of the political character of the attacking country.” [230]
Evidently, what the CPI leadership practised in the name of communism was actually national chauvinism of the worst sort and unashamed class collaboration. It joined the camp of the Indian ruling classes, the US imperialists and the Soviet rulers – the Soviet rulers who were travelling along the capitalist-imperialist road.
Neville Maxwell observed: “The [Communist] party leadership’s action in condemning China for the border fighting and pledging the party’s unqualified support to Nehru can be seen in retrospect as making the final, open split into two parties unavoidable.” [231] This view is shared by many, but it is not wholly correct. Among those who engineered the split and became members of the highest body – the political bureau – of the new party, the CPI (Marxist), were Ranadive, Namboodiripad, Jyoti Basu, Ramamurti and their ilk, who had pledged unqualified support to the Indian government as the other section of the CPI leadership had done. At one phase some of them called for talks and negotiations instead of preaching a belligerent policy which Dange and his associates did throughout. The real issue on which the Ranadives broke away from the parent organization was not ideological or political. The split was brought about not on the basis of ideology but through the instrumentality of Dange letters. These letters, written by S.A.Dange in 1924 after his conviction in the Kanpur Conspiracy case, were found in the National Archives of India, New Delhi, in 1964, when Dange was chairman of the CPI. There were, among them, two letters addressed to the governor-general in council, in which Dange, while praying for his release, expressed his willingness to serve as a police-agent. [232]
Maxwell was partially correct. A large number of communists, who were thoroughly disillusioned about the leadership, were full of deep resentment and hated its policy of betrayal of Socialism and the peoples of the world, including the Indian people, rallied – some of them very reluctantly – within the CPI(M); many of them were deluded into believing that the new party would emerge as a centre of revolutionaries. They were deceived by the cleverly-crafted revolutionary verbiage of many of the leaders who initiated the split for their factional interests. The fault was not in their stars but in themselves. They were deceived mainly because of their theoretical weakness – an old, chronic disease yet to be cured.
To add a few words about myself: I had left the CPI after the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956. But the Himalayan war made me feel that I should take active part in politics again and I told my wife that the future would be uncertain. After some initial refusals, I was persuaded to join the CPI(M) when its leadership decided to bring out its central organ People’s Democracy from Calcutta. By the middle of 1966, I thought that ‘enough was enough’ and left the ‘Marxists’. When the peasant uprising in Naxalbari in 1967 was led by some communists of the Siliguri area after their release from prison, many communists all over India including myself hailed it. The Himalayan adventure of the Nehrus marked a watershed in my life as in the lives of many other Indian communists.
[1.] Cited in T.V. Kunhi Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade, Bombay, 1971, p. 71.
[2.] N. Mansergh (editor-in-chief), Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power 1942-7 (Documents released by the British Government), Vols. I-XII, London, 1971-1983 (hereinafter cited as TOP); Vol X, p. 430.
[3.] See Neville Maxwell, India’s China War, Bombay, 1971, p. 68.
[4.] S. Gopal (chief editor), Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 1st Series (Vols. I-XV), 2nd Series (Vols. I-III), New Delhi, 1972-1985 (hereafter cited as SWJN); Vol. XIV, p. 325.
[5.] Ibid., 2nd Series, Vol. I, p. 311.
[6.] Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, London, 1956 edn., p. 550.
[7.] SWJN, 2nd Series, Vol. I, p. 19; see also Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 545, 549; SWJN, Vol. XII, pp. 134, 174; Vol. XIV, p. 160, 187, 440, 441; Vol. XV, p. 123, 566; Ibid., 2nd Series, Vol. I, p. 439; Vol. II, pp. 89, 181 – passim.
[8.] TOP, XI, pp. 446-8.
[9.] Nehru, Independence and After, Delhi, 1949, p. 57; see also p. 59.
[10.] Ibid., pp. 65, 89; Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches 1949-53, Delhi, 1957, pp. 152, 341-2, 345, 352 – passim.
[11.] See Ibid., p. 361 and S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. II, Delhi, 1979, p. 122.
[12.] Durga Das (ed), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945-1950, (Vols. I-X, Ahmedabad, 1971-4); Vol. X, pp. 336-40.
[13.] Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 67-8.
[14.] SWJN, Vol. XV, p. 458; Ibid., 2nd Series, Vol. II, p. 470; Nehru to Macmanage, 1 Nov. 1945, Jawaharlal Nehru Papers, cited in B.N. Pandey, Nehru, London, 1977, p. 25O; Bowles, Ambassador’s Report, London, 1954, p. 280.
[15.] Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, The Great Conspiracy (previously named The Great Conspiracy Against Russia), London, 1975 reprint, pp. 429-30.
[16.] David Horowitz, From Yalta to Vietnam, Penguin, 1971 reprint, p.108; see also Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, Vol. IV, Peking, 1969, p. 101, note 1.
[17.] See L. Natarajan, American Shadow Over India, Bombay, 1952, pp. 179-81.
[18.] Ibid., p. 181.
[19.] Ibid., p. 186.
[20.] Ibid., p. 168.
[21.] Ibid., pp. 186-7. Natarajan refers to a report in the New York Herald Tribune, 17 Oct. 1949.
[22.] Natarajan, op. cit., p. 187.
[23.] Ibid., p. 187. Natarajan refers to Manchester Guardian, 23 Nov. 1949.
[24.] New York Times, 28 July 1949, cited in Natarajan, op. cit., p. 189.
[25.] Quoted in Ibid., pp. 187-8 – emphasis added.
[26.] Ibid., p. 188.
[27.] Ibid.
[28.] Ibid.
[29.] Ibid., P. 189.
[30.] Ibid., pp. 189-90.
[31.] Ibid., p. 189 and note 36, p. 284.
[32.] Quoted in Ibid., p. 190 – emphasis added.
[33.] Ibid.
[34.] Maxwell, op. cit., p. 70.
[35.] Ibid.
[36.] Natarajan, op cit. p. 191.
[37.] Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 71 and 72, fn.
[38.] Natarajan, op. cit., p. 191 and note 40, p. 284.
[39.] Ibid., p. 193.
[40.] Durga Das (ed.), SardarPatel’s Correspondence 1945-5O, Vol. X, pp. 336-40 – emphasis added.
[41.] Ibid., p. 346.
[42.] See Suniti Kumar Ghosh, The Indian Constitution and Its Review, Bombay, 2001.
[43.] TOP, Vol. X, p. 157 – emphasis added; see also p. 430.
[44.] Quoted in S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. II, Delhi, 1979, p. 176 – emphasis added.
[45.] Karunakar Gupta, “The McMahon Line, 1914-45: The British Legacy”, China Quarterly (London), July-Sep. 1971.
[46.] Maxwell, op. cit., p. 56.
[46a.] Kuldip Nayar, India: The Critical Years, Revised and Enlarged Edition, Delhi, 1971, p 160.
[47.] Karunakar Gupta, Spotlight on Sino-Indian Frontiers, Calcutta, 1982, p. 18; see also p. 26; also Neville Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 19-64 – emphasis added.
[48.] Sourin Roy, “Sino-Indian Frontiers”, Frontier (a Calcutta weekly), 7 February 1981.
[49.] Quoted in Gupta, Spotlight on Sino-Indian Frontiers, p. 27.
[50.] Arnold Toynbee, Between Oxus and Jumna, London, 1961, p. 190; quoted in Maxwell, op. cit., p.65.
[51.] D.R. Mankekar, Guilty Men of 1962, Bombay, 1968, p.138 quoted in Gupta, Spotlight on Sino-Indian Frontiers, p. 28; Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 79, 80 – emphasis added.
[52.] T.N. Kaul’s letter in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 15 June 1986; quoted in Dwijendra Nandi, Sino-Indian Border Dispute, Uttarpara, Hooghly, 1988, p. 28 – emphasis added.
[53.] See T. V. Kunhi Krishnan, op cit. pp. 63, 64, 67, 68-9; Maxwell, op. cit., p. 311.
[53a.] Kuldip Nayar, op. cit., p. 161.
[54.] Frank Moraes, Witness to an Era, London, 1973, pp. 220-1 – emphasis added.
[55.] George Patterson, Tibet in Revolt, London, 1961, pp. 152ff. – emphasis added.
[56.] Dilip Hiro, Inside India Today, London and Henley, pp.248-9 – emphasis added. Hiro has quoted from B.N.Malik, The Betrayal, Bombay, 1971, p. 183.
[57.] See Hiro, op. cit., 249, 309 emphasis added.
[58.] This quote by Maxwell is from George Patterson, Tibet in Revolt, pp. 152-3.
[59.] Maxwell, op. cit., p. 104.
[60.] See Ibid., p. 105 and footnotes.
[61.] Ibid., pp. 105-6 and 106fn. – emphasis added.
[62.] Ibid., p. 106.
[63.] “CIA helped Tibetan exiles: report”, Statesman, 7 Feb. 1997. See also Wilfred Burchett and Rewi Alley, China: The Quality of Life, Middlesex, 1976, pp. 271-2.
[63a.] “Para-Commando Battalions in process of being revamped”, Economic Times, 15.8.1994.
[64.] Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 310-1; see also pp. 221, 391.
[65.] Ibid., p. 202.
[66.] Ibid., pp. 107-10.
[67.] Ibid.,p. 110.
[68.] “India in the Sino-Soviet Dispute”, Frontier, 17.11.1973.
[69.] Maxwell, op. cit., p.150; see also pp. 151-69.
[70.] Ibid., pp. 26-7, 87.
[71.] Ibid., pp. 88-9.
[72.] Ibid., pp. 158-69.
[73.] Quoted in Dwijendra Nandi, op cit. pp. 19-20.
[74.] K.C. Praval, Indian Army after Independence, New Delhi; quoted in Dwijendra Nandi, op. cit., p. 63.
[75.] Krishnan, op. cit., p. 69fn. He quotes from Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, p. 72.
[76.] See Krishnan, op. cit., p. 70 – emphasis added.
[77.] See Maxwell, op cit. pp. 344-5.
[78.] Quoted in D. Nandi, op. cit., pp. 24, 63; the source is Major General Niranjan Prasad, The Fall of Towang, New Delhi, p. 163. Prasad was the commander of the 4 Division which was operating in the eastern sector.
[79.] Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 412-3.
[80.] Ibid., p. 359.
[81.] Krishnan, op. cit., 78.
[82.] The Times of India, 21.10.62 ; quoted in Maxwell, op. cit., p. 361 – emphasis added.
[83.] J.K. Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, London, 1969, p. 435 – emphasis added.
[84.] Ibid., pp. 442, 443 – emphasis added.
[85.] Ibid., p. 445 – emphasis added.
[86.] Ibid., p. 475 – brackets in the original. Emphasis added.
[87.] Ibid., p. 479.
[88.] Ibid., p. 481.
[89.] Ibid., p. 486 – emphasis added.
[90.] Sudhir Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, London, 1967, pp. 312-3; Krishnan, op. cit., 80-1.
[91.] Galbraith, op. cit., p. 489 – emphasis added.
[92.] Kunhi Krishnan, op. cit., p. 81 – emphasis added.
[93.] Ibid., p. 83 – emphasis added.
[94.] Bertrand Russell, Unarmed Victory, Penguin, 1963, p. 84.
[95.] Gaibraith, op. cit., p. 501.
[96.] Ibid., pp. 504, 523, 525-6 – emphasis added.
[97.] Durga Das, From Curzon to Nehru and After, London, 1969, p. 361. See also Kuldip Nayar, op. cit., pp. 163-4.
[98.] Durga Das, op. cit., p. 361. Durga Das served as editor of the Associated Press of India – the forerunner of the Press Trust of India – in New Delhi and Simla and, later, as chief editor of the Hindustan Times. In his foreword to Durga Das’s book Zakir Hussain, then president of India, wrote: “Scarcely anything of political importance took place in Delhi or Simla, the twin seats of the British Raj, and later in Nehru’s Delhi without his being a close and discerning observer, reporter and interpreter of them.”
[99.] Neville Maxwell in The Sunday Times, London, 5 Dec. 1971, cited in S. Nihal Singh, The Yogi and the Bear, New Delhi, 1966, pp. 259-60; also Neville Maxwell in The Times, London, 24 Aug. 1972, cited in Hiro, op. cit., pp. 249-50.
[100.] Mao Tsetung, “Remarks at the Spring Festival” (13 February 1964 ) in Stuart Schram (ed), Mao Tsetung Unrehearsed – Talks and Letters: 1956-71, Penguin, 1974, p. 198.
[101.] Statesman, 18.2.1963 – emphasis added.
[102.] John G. Gurley, China’s Economy and the Maoist Strategy, New York and London, 1976, pp. 238, 240.
[103.] Burchett and Alley, op. cit., p. 33.
[104.] Ibid., p. 34.
[105.] Gurley, op. cit., p. 15.
[106.] quoted in Gurley, op. cit., p. 146.
[107.] Cited in Horowitz, op. cit., p. 418.
[108.] Gurley, op. cit., p. 13.
[109.] Cited in Horowitz, op. cit., p. 413 – emphasis added.
[110.] Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder out of China, 1946, pp. 318-9; cited in Horowitz, op. cit., p. 414.
[111.] Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, Vol. IV, Peking, 1969, p. 97.
[112.] Horowitz, op. cit., pp. 414-5 – emphasis in the original.
[113.] Geoffrey Warner, “Escalation in Vietnam: The Precedents of 1954,” International Affairs (organ of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London), April 1965, pp. 273-4.
[114.] Selig S. Harrison, “Troubled India and her Neighbours,” Foreign Affairs, January 1965, pp. 328-9.
[115.] Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, op. cit., p. 436.
[116.] Horowitz, op. cit., p. 423.
[117.] Felix Greene, The Enemy, Indian edn., Calcutta, 1974, p. 199.
[118.] Horowitz, op. cit., p. 425.
[119.] Quoted in Natarajan, op. cit., p. 126.
[120.] Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, London, 1951, pp. 110, 114.
[121.] New York Times, 28.4.1949; quoted in S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 54 – emphasis added.
[122.] Quoted in Natarajan, op. cit., p. 120.
[123.] Quoted in R.P. Dutt, India Today and Tomorrow, Delhi, 1955, p. 275 – emphasis added.
[124.] Jawarharlal Nehru, Inside America (A Voyage of Discovery), Delhi, n.d., p. 71.
[125.] Quoted in R.P. Dutt, op cit. p. 275 – emphasis added.
[126.] Reprinted in the Free Press Journal (Bombay); see Natarajan, op cit. p. 255.
[127.] Selig S. Harrison, “Troubled India and her Neighbours”, op. cit., p. 328.
[128.] SWJN, Vol. XII, p. 169.
[129.] Ibid., Vol. XI, pp. 24, 141-2; Vol. XII. pp. 131, 169, 176-7, passim.
[130.] Ibid., Vol. XII, pp. 194-5; TOP, Vol. 1, pp. 665-6.
[131.] See K.M. Panikkar, The Basis of an Indo-British Treaty, Delhi, 1946; Krishna Menon to Mountbatten, 13.3.1947, TOP, Vol. IX, p. 951; Nehru to Mountbatten, 24.3.1947, TOP~ Vol. X, p. 13; Nehru, Independence and After, Delhi, 1949, p. 275; G.D. Birla, In the Shadow of the Mahatma, Bombay, 1968, p. 298; K.M. Munshi, quoted in Modern Review (a monthly from Calcutta, now extinct), Feb. 1946, p. 144; Report of the Fiscal Commission 1949-50, Vol. III, Written Evidence, Delhi, 1950, p. 80; see also Suniti Kumar Ghosh, India’s Nationality Problem and Ruling Classes, Calcutta, 1996, pp. 36-7.
[132.] Chester Bowles, Ambassador’s Report, London, 1954, pp. 199-200 – emphasis added.
[133.] See Natarajan, op. cit., p. 214.
[134.] Bowles, op. cit., p. 94.
[135.] Ibid., p. 107.
[136.] Ibid., pp. 126-7, 155.
[137.] See Jane Degras, The Communist International: Documents, 1919-1943, Vol. I, London, 1956, pp. 286, 383.
[138.] See Horowitz, op. cit., “Containment into Liberation: Korea”, chap. 8 (for the quote, see p. 126); Martin Hart-Landsberg, “Setting the Record Straight on the Korean War”, Monthly Review, Oct. 2000, pp. 44-7.
[139.] A.G. Noorani, “A Diplomat’s Legacy.” Frontline, 25 March 1994, pp. 90-2 – emphasis added.
[140.] George Rosen, Western Economists and Eastern Societies, Delhi, 1985. p. 12.
[141.] Amrita Bazar Patrika, 9.l.l9S2 quoted in Natarajan, op cit. p. 139.
[142.] Ibid., p. 160: see also R.P. Dutt. op cit. p. 290.
[143.] Nehru, Independence and After, Delhi. 1949, p. 201.
[144.] See Natarajan, op. cit., p. 147.
[145.] See Ghosh, The Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 2nd edn., Calcutta, 2000, pp. 237-49.
[146.] See Ibid., pp. 260-70.
[147.] Suniti Kumar Ghosh, “Imperialist Agencies and India’s Plans”, Aspects of India’s Economy (Bombay), No. 18, pp. 12-33.
[148.] Natarajan, op. cit., pp. 60, 98.
[149.] Ibid., pp.60-67.
[150.] Ibid., pp. 92-3.
[151.] For the text of the agreement, see Ibid., pp. 299-304, and for the critique, see Ibid., pp. 309-14.
[152.] Michael Kidron, Foreign Investments in India, London, 1965, pp. 100, 102.
[153.] Natarajan, op. cit., pp. 103-11.
[154.] Ibid., p. 150; see also pp. 147-51.
[155.] Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20.1.1952; cited in Natarajan, op. cit., p. 111.
[156.] Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, New Delhi, Second Indian reprint, 1979, p. 41.
[157.] Ibid., pp. 40-1.
[158.] Ibid., p. 41 and Mohan Ram, “Indo-US Spying Venture: Unanswered Questions”, Economic and Political Weekly, 29 April 1978, p. 720.
[159.] Bowles, op. cit., p. 229 – emphasis added.
[160.] Francine R. Frankel, India’s Political Economy 1947-1977, Delhi, 1984, p. 120.
[161.] D.D.Kosambi, Exasperating Essays, Pune, 1957, pp. 32, 33, 41, 42 – emphasis added.
[162.] S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 236. Gopal refers to Churchill’s letters of 21.2.1955 and 30.6.1955.
[163.] M.O. Mathai, Reminiscences of the Nehru Age, New Delhi, 1978, p. 55. A few words about M.O. Mathai: A stenographer, he served the American Red Cross on the Assam-Burma border and left this job to work as special assistant to Nehru in early 1946. In August 1947 he became the head of Nehru’s personal secretariat. And, as he wrote, “no file or paper reached the Prime Minister except through me – and with rare exceptions, in which case they would come to me from him. Nothing went out except through me.” He was addressed by Vijayalakshmi Pandit as ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ and was “encouraged ... beyond normal limits” by Indira Gandhi. Even senior central ministers sought his favours and he decided which papers to send to Nehru and which papers he would dispose of himself. Communists brought charges of corruption and carrying on espionage for the USA against him in parliament. No police investigation or judicial inquiry or even a departmental inquiry was held. The cabinet secretary who was asked informally to ascertain the facts exonerated him publicly, “but Nehru was informed that Mathai could not account for his great wealth and without doubt had received money from the C.I.A. as well as from businessmen in India” (S.Gopal, op cit. Vol. III, p. 122. Gopal cites as his source “Record of later conversation of V. Sahay, Cabinet Secretary, with S. Radhakrishnan [President of India], 17 Feb. and 31 Oct. 1966, Radhakrishnan Papers. See also S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 311-2; Mathai, op. cit., pp. 1-2, 9, 16). To quote S. Gopal, “It can be safely assumed that, from 1946 to 1959 [when Mathai’s resignation was accepted], the CIA had access to every paper passing through Nehru’s secretariat” (S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 122 – emphasis added).
[164.] S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 45 – emphasis added. The offer of help, particularly in respect of Hyderabad and Kashmir, is significant. In Telengana – several districts of the Hyderabad state – a heroic peasant uprising under Communist leadership had been going on; it had freed a wide area from the rule of the Nizam and landlords and distributed land among the tillers of the soil. (We have quoted before some lines from Chester Bowles on this struggle.) It was not merely to force the Nizam to accede to the Indian Union but, mainly to crush the peasant rebellion which threatened to engulf the whole of the Hyderabad state that Nehru’s army marched into the state in the same month of September 1948 and unleashed a reign of fascist terror. According to instructions, the army went on committing indiscriminate murder, pillage, rape, etc., etc. And Kashmir’s maharaja had acceded to India in October 1947 but the accession was provisional, temporary. Nehru and his government made many commitments to the Kashmir people as well as to the United Nations that the people of Kashmir would ultimately be the arbiters of their own destiny, that they would be free to decide through a fair plebiscite whether to accede to India or to Pakistan or to remain independent. But Nehru was actually seeking to annex Kashmir. By early 1948 the dispute over Kashmir was referred to the United Nations.
[165.] S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 45.
[166.] Ibid., p. 156.
[167.] Durga Das (ed.), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. X, pp. 342-7 – emphasis added.
[168.] S. Gopal, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 249.
[169.] Quoted in Ibid., – emphasis added.
[170.] Ibid., pp. 254-5 – emphasis added.
[171.] T.N. Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, New Delhi, 1979, p. 132.
[172.] Chester Bowles, “America and Russia in India”, Foreign Affairs, July 1971, p. 649. Bowles was US ambassador to India in the early fifties and again in the sixties; besides, he held important positions in the US government at different times.
[173.] Bowles, A View from New Delhi, New Delhi, 1969, p. 196 – emphasis added.
[174.] Ibid., p. 199 – emphasis added.
[175.] W. W. Rostow, The Difusion of Power, New York, 1972, p. 34.
[176.] Reproduced in Indian Express, 28 June 1968 from American Forces Management, June 1968 – emphasis added.
[177.] Hubert Humphrey, television interview with American correspondents, 16 January 1966; cited in Commentator of Hongqi (Red Flag), Confessions Concerning the Line of Soviet-U S. Collaboration pursued by the New Leaders of the CPSU, Peking, 1966, pp. 23-4.
[178.] Quoted in Ibid., p.26 – emphasis added.
[179.] Quoted in Ibid., p.26.
[180.] Lyndon Johnson, The United States and the Soviet Union (a USIS pamphlet), New Delhi, n.d., p. 15.
[181.] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, New York, 1990 edn., pp. 466-7; Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, New York, 1988, pp. 182, 206-10.
[182.] Johnson, op. cit., pp. 5-6, 9, 11.
[183.] Frederic F. Clairmont, “The Market Gulag”, Monthly Review, June 1988, p. 55.
[184.] Commentator of Hongqi (Red Flag), op. cit., p. 6.
[185.] See Central Committee, Communist Party of China, The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Peking, 1965, p. 296.
[186.] Broadsheet, organ of the China Policy Study Group (sponsored by Joseph Needham, Joan Robinson, George Thomson and others), July-August 1966, p. 5.
[187.] Charles J. Coe, “Victoty in Vietnam?”, Monthly Review, March 1967, pp. 44-5.
[188.] Ibid., p. 45.
[189.] Economic Times, 18.2.1978.
[190.] Alsop, “Peking’s Awesome Underground City”, San Francisco Chronicle, 1 Dec. 1972; reprinted in David Milton, Nancy Milton and Franz Schurmann (eds.), People’s China, Middlesex, 1977, 609-10; see also Alsop, “The Soviet Build-up on China’s Frontier”, Ibid., 608.
[191.] “Leninism or Social-Imperialism?”, translated version in Peking Review, no. 17, 1970 – emphasis added.
[192.] Statesman, 24 Jan. 1970.
[193.] Ibid., 5 Feb. 1970.
[194.] Quoted in Broadsheet, June 1969.
[195.] Stuart Schram (ed.), op. cit., pp. 190-1.
[196.] Maxwell, op. cit., p. 275.
[197.] Quoted in “Holy War against China?”, Broadsheet, November 1966, p. 2 – emphasis added.
[198.] Morarji Desai, The Story of My Life, Vol. II, p. 156; cited in S. Nihal Singh, The Yogi and the Bear, New Delhi, 1986, p. 18.
[199.] Quoted in Central Committee, Communist Party of China, “Apologists of Neo-Colonialism”, The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, p. 195.
[200.] Andre Gunder Frank, Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment, New York and London, 1974 edn., p. 130.
[201.] Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 285-6.
[202.] Nihal Singh, op. cit., pp. 29-30.
[203.] Statesman, 5.12.1962.
[204.] Ibid., 9.12.1962 – emphasis added.
[205.] Selig S. Harrison (ed.), India and the United States (record of the proceedings of the conference with an introduction by the editor), New York, 1961, pp. 144, 146.
[206.] Ibid., pp. 63, 64. See also W.W. Rostow, op. cit., p. 106.
[207.] Ibid., p. 115.
[208.] Ibid., pp. 8-9.
[209.] See Max Millikan and W.W. Rostow A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy, New York, 1957, pp. 2, 33, 142.
[210.] Maxwell, op. cit., p. 146.
[211.] Ibid., p. 378.
[212.] Ibid., p. 410 and footnote.
[213.] Ibid., pp. 434-5.
[214.] S. Nihal Singh, op. cit., p.30.
[215.] R.H. Donaldson, Soviet Policy toward India, Harvard, Cambridge, 1974, p. 163; cited in Nihal Singh, op. cit., p. 258.
[216.] Sudhir Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, p. 323 – emphasis added.
[217.] Ibid., p. 312 – emphasis added.
[218.] Smart Schram (ed), Mao Tsetung Unrehearsed, p. 189.
[219.] Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung, Peking, 1971, p. 503.
[220.] Selig S. Harrison, “Troubled India and her Neighbours”, op. cit., p. 326 – emphasis added
[221.] Maxwell, op. cit., p.439fn.
[222.] Francine Frankel, op. cit., p. 223fn. 45.
[223.] Harrison, “Troubled India and her Neighbours”, op. cit., p. 312.
[224.] Ibid., p. 313.
[225.] John Gaibraith, op. cit., p. 435.
[226.] B.T. Ranadive, “India-China Relations”, New Age (New Delhi), Dec. 1959, 45-64 – emphasis added.
[227.] Ibid., p. 62.
[228.] Ibid., pp. 62-3.
[229.] Maxwell, op. cit., 380.
[230.] Statesman, 31 Oct. 1962 – emphasis added.
[231.] Maxwell, op. cit., p. 380fn.
[232.] See Dwijendra Nandi, Some Documents relating to Early Indian Communists and Controversies around Them, New Delhi, 1971, pp. 109-13; see also Ibid., pp. 37-8 and Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, 1920-1929, Calcutta, 1970, p. 344.
Last updated on 26 January 2021