Past by parchment

some are still not accessible to the public. Or, to be more precise, some of the papers pertaining to the period after 1946 can be accessed only at the discretion of the Gandhi family, and scholarly legend has it that only four people have been allowed access so far. Should these papers not belong to the public as much as we think Gandhi’s do? There might be an even greater interest at stake in making all of Nehru’s papers accessible to the public; these papers might contain much more that is of historical and explanatory importance. Yet these are still access controlled.

The Nehru papers come to mind in part because of the papers recently released by the CIA. Whether the reflections contained in these papers are wholly accurate is for historians to ponder. But the ones pertaining to the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 make fascinating reading. The picture of Indian decision-making they present is totally contrary to the simple-minded constructions being extracted from them, which suggest that Nehru was simply naive. It is probably true that Nehru did not leverage recognition of Tibet for any other gains; but, equally, it is unclear that India was in a position to do so. One of the more fascinating questions this account raises is this. Just what was Nehru’s estimate of India’s own military capacity in 1962? Nehru’s forward policy may not have been a consequence of his naivete about the Chinese; it may have been his naivete about Indian strength.

The reports show the extent to which domestic public opinion was constraining Nehru and how little he could do to make this opinion realistic. The picture that emerges is a fatal combination: misapprehension about Chinese intentions, an overestimation of India’s capacities, which in turn produces a public opinion with inflated expectations, and a prickly diplomatic culture on both sides, a classic foreign policy disaster in the making. And you can add to the mix deep and widespread complicity of the communist parties in furthering China’s designs.

What is the truth in these claims? As a nation we need to come to terms with them. But the real shock is that you are unlikely to find out the truth from Indian sources. For all of the CIA’s spectacular faults, at least it can be hoist with its own petard. As these documents were being released, I happened to be reading a wonderfully written, serious history of the Pentagon, James Carrolls’ A House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. The book has a strikingly cautionary tale about US power, but at least it is a tale that can be reconstructed from American sources, including intelligence records.

India’s Official Secrets Act is, on the other hand, appallingly behind best international practice. Commissions such as the ARC have called for repealing it. Even under our current Freedom of Information Act, the state is given very wide latitude to keep papers a secret. Anything which the state determines is prejudicial to its interest, not necessarily even national security, can be withheld. We simply have no process for systematic declassification.

The costs of making these papers the prerogative of the state, rather than a property of the public, are enormous. It is not simply that antiquarian historians are divested of a key resource. It is not simply the fact that these secrecy laws do not reflect well on our democracy. This secrecy has enormous practical consequences. For one thing, it prevents us from learning from the past. What exactly were our mistakes, beyond the general characterisation that we were naive? It impedes a culture of accountability. Perhaps secrets revealed after the fact are secrets still revealed too late. But they at least allow us to construct an informed narrative about the capacities and failures of our key institutions. In international affairs perhaps all accountability is only retrospective, in terms of reputations. But we need the source material to be able to generate informed narratives, rather than allow every speculation plausibility. In terms of releasing official histories of our major wars, for instance, we are far behind perhaps both China and Pakistan.

But perhaps most importantly more access has the potential for upsetting the simple-minded assumptions with which we approach our place in the world. It is desirable India and China reach some dignified and reciprocal rapprochement on the border issue. India may be right in its claims. But it’s difficult to imagine any rapprochement being possible if we are so cagey of confronting what happened in 1962. Neville Maxwell made a career out of relying on the Henderson Brookes report, a report commissioned by our army on 1962, a document that is still classified. Perhaps we rely on the thought that a secret is something you can tell one person. But still this selective leakage distorts. How can we create the groundwork for a settlement if we do not have the confidence to confront our past? Sometimes the amnesia works to our disadvantage, where even MEA officials have little sense of the past.

Before we shed tears over the Mahatma’s manuscript, we ought to be obliged to return to the public what belongs to it: its history. National security arguments are too indiscriminately used in India, and secrecy is disabling genuine political argument. I can imagine the Mahatma shaking his head and saying, “Why are you worrying about the parchment at Christie’s? Why not worry more about your capacity to confront your own past?” But alas, our state still infantilises us by protecting us from the papers relevant to reconstructing our own past.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research