The guilty men of 1999

Let me take you back to October 1962. On October 20, waves of Chinese descended from the Thag La ridge, crossed the Namka Chu and captured Brig. Dalvi’s outpost at Dhola. By October 24, they had stormed and taken Tawang. Two days later, October 26, with the Chinese threatening all of NEFA, right across to Walong and right down to Foothills, and the Chinese sweeping through Ladakh, menacing even Leh, a Jan Sangh delegation called on Prime Minister JawaharlalNehru. Notwithstanding the grave peril faced by the country, the Jan Sangh demanded the dismissal of Defence Minister Krishna Me-non. "If reinforcements had been sent on time," they said, "the Chinese advance could have been halted." Criticising the armed forces for being "passive", the Jan Sangh advised the army to "concentrate on a few points" and "take the initiative to attack Chinese positions and supply lines". Concerned at the poor quality of the army leadership, the delegation further demanded that retired generals be recalled and put in "overall charge of strategy". They concluded with the demand that an emergency session of Parliament be immediately convened. The delegation was led by one Atal Behari Vajpayee. My source is The Hindustan Times of October 27, 1962.

The parallel to the present is instructive. Menon’s resignation was demanded then; George Fernandes’ is being demanded now. Nehru obliged; Vajpayee now believes the only one worthy of reshuffling in the middle of a war is hisCommunications Minister! The opposition in 1999 has wholly backed and supported the armed forces, with not a word of condemnation or criticism of its tactics or strategy – in striking contrast to the military expertise put on display by the Jan Sangh when the armed forces were fighting with their backs to the wall.

Nehru had the grace to induct retired generals Thimayya and Himmatsinhji into the National Defence Council. In 1999, any opposition suggestion falls on deaf ears. In 1962, the Rajya Sabha was convened on November 8, within a fortnight of Vajpayee asking for it; in 1999, the same Vajpayee who insisted in 1962 on a Rajya Sabha session in the middle of a war has refused a Rajya Sabha session to deal with armed incursions across the Line of Control.The star speaker for the Jan Sangh in the Rajya Sabha was, of course, the self-same Vajpayee. In his opening phrases he delivered himself of a thought that he seems to have since forgotten. "The first condition of victory," he said, "is that we introspect,that we examine ourselves (atmanirikshan)." He went on, "In assessing China’s intentions, its military preparations, and its intrusions and violations (atikramanon), we have grievously erred in understanding their true implications." That is exactly what critics of government inaction have been saying in 1999: that Vajpayee’s government grievously erred in assessing Pakistan’s intentions, Pakistan’s military preparations, and Pakistan’s intrusions and violations.

Vajpayee 1962 then thundered, "In neglecting the nation’s security, we committed a crime against the country, leaving the country’s frontiers insecure was a great sin on our part." Harsh words. Much harsher than the questions that have been raised in 1999 about his government neglecting the security of the LoC, failing to detect over months and months the build up on the other side, not acting immediately on first intelligence about the incursions, and then finding excuses for the Pakistani authorities, not to mention the notoriousoffer of "safe passage" for the intruders when Indian jawans and officers were being captured, mutilated and shot in cold blood by the enemy.

The key question Vajpayee posed to the government in 1962 deserves to be posed in much the same words to his government in 1999: "My request is that the matter be inquired into and investigated as to how it is that when we were told that all steps have been taken to ensure the security of our borders, why were soldiers in adequate number not posted there?" Followed by the sting in the tail: "I would like to know whether the Prime Minister was informed whether in NEFA we were fully prepared or not?" He then added: "And if we are told that the Prime Minister was not in the know, the next question will have to be answered as to who it was who kept him in the dark?" That, precisely, is what the country needs to know in 1999. Did Prime Minister Vajpayee know that we were under-prepared in Kargil? And, if not, who kept him in the dark? The Raksha Mantri?

Vajpayee circa1962 was not willing to put off till after the war was over the points that he stressed: what, he asked, did we do when we learned what the Chinese were up to, beyond putting up a few posts and not even building roads to connect them? What happened, he asked, to the Border Defence Committee established ten years earlier? What were its recommendations and had these recommendations been acted on? He would not wait for an answer. "Yeh aaj poochne ka samay hai". ("Now is the right time to ask this"). Yet, Vajpayee circa 1999 says "Yeh aaj poochne ka samay nahin hai!" Moreover, said Vajpayee, when he was a younger – and wiser – man, "Let no one say this is not the time to raise such issues, because if we are to avoid repeating our mistakes, then we will have to learn the lessons of our past mistakes." That, strangely, is exactly what the opposition is now telling Vajpayee, PM.

A new edition of D.R. Mankekar’s The Guilty Men of 1962 has just been published. With a Foreword by GeorgeFernandes. He ends with the homily, "A nation which does not learn from the mistakes of the past may be denied even an opportunity to mourn the mistakes of the future." Quite. Now, in the name of God – go!

Aiyar is a Congress party official but these views are his own