India-China War Report Leak: What to learn

The Henderson Brooks report, a survey of the causes of the India-China conflict of 1962 and the reasons for India’s failure then, has been leaked on the net by Neville Maxwell, a retired journalist. The report had been locked up by the government for 51 years after its submission. In an election season, politics will be attributed to the timing of the leak, but that is irrelevant.

Only three major things matter. First, the government has to set a firm commitment to release classified official documents after a certain number of years. Declassification is useful for a variety of reasons: a better understanding of history is an important one, and learning from past errors is another useful trait for any society. Most democracies declassify files, often redacting some portions that could be especially sensitive even in contemporary times.

Second, it is important for India to understand how badly the military underestimated Chinese capabilities and overestimated its own. This came from a failure of communication between the military establishment and its civilian political masters. This should never happen again.

Three, the report will force both India and China to acknowledge one important historical fact. Both are ancient civilisations but the idea of a nation-state, with defined borders, came to us late. For India, this happened with the advent of the British and consolidation of colonial power. Partition in 1947 created our present borders.

The Chinese nation-state is an outcome of its 1949 communist revolution. Given this historical reality, there are bound to be parts of our border that are open to interpretation and dispute. We must resume the border talks that started during the Rajiv Gandhi era, and settle our borders with a mutually-accepted agreement.