India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha
Suspicion of the Chinese, however, was by no means restricted to parties on the right. In February 1960 President Rajendra Prasad commented on the ‘resentment and anger’ among the students of his native Bihar. These young people, he reported, wanted India to vacate ‘the Chinese aggression’ from ‘every inch of our territory’. They ‘will not tolerate any wrong or weak step by the government’.29
With positions hardening, New Delhi invited Chou En-lai for a summit meeting on the border question. The meeting was scheduled for late April, but in the weeks leading up to it there were many attempts to queer the pitch. On 9 March the Dalai Lama appealed to the world ‘not to forget the fight of Tibet, a small but independent country occupied by force and by a fanatic and expansionist power’. Three days later a senior Jana Sangh leader urged the prime minister to ‘not compromise the sentiments of hundreds of millions of his countrymen , and ‘to take all necessary steps against further encroachment by the Chinese . Less expected was a statement of the Himalayan Study Group of the Congress Parliamentary Party, which urged the prime minister to take a ‘firm stand on the border issue’.30
In the first week of April the leaders of the non-communist opposition sent a note to the prime minister reminding him of the ‘popular feeling’ with regard to China. They asked for an assurance that in his talks with Chou En-lai ‘nothing will be done which may be construed as a surrender of any part of Indian territory’.31 Hemmed in from all sides, the prime minister now sought support from the Gandhian sage Vinoba Bhave, then on a walking tour through the Punjab countryside. Nehru spent an hour closeted with Bhave in his village camp; although neither divulged the contents of their talks, these became pretty clear in later speeches by the sage. On 5 April Bhave addressed a meeting at Kurukshetra, the venue, back in mythical time, of the great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. On this blood-soaked battlefield he offered a prayer for the success of the Nehru-Chou talks. ‘Distrust belonged to the dying political age,’ said the Gandhian. ‘The new age was building itself around trust and goodwill.’ The conversations with the Chinese visitor, hoped Bhave, would be free of anger, bitterness and suspicion.
It was not a message that went down well or widely. Five days before Chou En-lai was due, the Jana Sangh held a large demonstration outside the prime minister’s residence. Protesters held up placards reminding Nehru not to forget the martyrs of Ladakh and not to surrender Indian territory. The next day, the non-communist opposition held a mammoth public meeting in Delhi, where the prime minister was warned that if he struck a deal with the Chinese his ‘only allies would be the Communists and crypto-Communists’. In this climate, the respected editor Frank Moraes thought the talks were doomed to failure. The gulf between the two countries was ‘unbridgeable’, he wrote, adding: ‘If Mr Chou insists on maintaining all the old postures, all that Mr Nehrucan tell him politely is to go back to Peking and think again.’
Nehru, however, insisted that the Chinese prime minister ‘would be accorded a courteous welcome befitting the best traditions of this country’. Chou was then on a visit to Burma; an Indian viscount went to pick him up and fly him to Delhi. When he came in 1956, he had been given a stirring public reception; this time – despite the Indian prime minister’s hopes – he arrived ‘amidst unprecedented security arrangements’, travelling from the airport in a closed car. The Hindu Mahasabha organized a ‘black flag’ demonstration against Chou, but his visit was also opposed by the more mainstream parties. Two jokes doing the rounds expressed the mood in New Delhi. One held that ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai’ had become ‘Hindi-Chini Bye Bye’; the other asked why Krishna Menon was not in the Indian delegation for the talks, and answered, ‘Because he is in Mr Chou En-lai’s party.’32
Chou En-lai spent a week in New Delhi, meeting Nehru every day, with and without aides. A photograph reproduced in the Indian Express after the second day of the talks suggested that they were not going well. It showed Chou raising a toast to Sino-Indian friendship, by clinking his glass with Mrs Indira Gandhi’s. Mrs Gandhi was stylishly dressed, in asari, but was looking quizzically across to her father. On the other side of the table stood Nehru, capless, drinking deeply and glumly from a wine glass while avoiding Chou En-lai’s gaze. The only Indian showing any interest at all was the vice-president, S. Radhakrishnan, seen reaching across to clink his glass with Chou’s.
Chou En-lai and Nehru spent nearly twenty hours in conversation. The transcripts of their talks are still officially secret, but copies kept by a vigilant (or rule-breaking) official have been consulted by this writer. These highlight vividly the hurt and hostility that pervaded the discussion. Nehru began by recalling all that India had done for China, such as introducing its leaders to the Asia-Africa conference at Bandung and pushing its case in the United Nations. In the light of these good turns, the Chinese ‘infringement’ of India’s frontiers ‘came as a great shock’. Chou answered with a complaint of his own, which was that in view of the friendship, ancient and modern, between India and China, ‘the activities of the Dalai Lama and his followers have far exceeded the limits of political asylum’.
For two days Nehru and Chou traded charges and counter-charges. If the Indian insisted that the Himalaya had long been considered his country’s natural as well as demographic frontier, then the Chinese dismissed the McMahon Line as a pernicious legacy of imperialism. Both prime ministers showed an excellent grasp of detail, each defending his case with impressive exactitude, each mentioning specific villages, valleys, hilltops, rivers, posts and treaties to make or advance his country’s claims. Finally, Chou suggested that they try to ‘seek a solution’ rather than ‘repeat arguments’. A suitable settlement, in his view, would be that ‘neither side should put forward claims to an area which is no longer under its administrative control’. Some hours later he became more explicit, when he said that ‘in the eastern sector, we acknowledge that what India considers its border has been reached by India’s actual administration. But, similarly, we think that India should accept that China’s administrative personnel has reached the line which it considers to be her border in the western sector’.
Again, suitably decoded, this meant – your case is stronger in the west, but our needs are greater there. And while our case is stronger in the east, perhaps more of your interests are at stake there. Please keep Tawang and its environs, Chou was saying, for all we want is Aksai Chin and the road linking Sinkiang and Tibet.
Chou advocated the retention and recognition of the status quo, but as Nehru pointed out in reply, that term was itself disputed. ‘The question is, what is status quo?’ said the Indian Prime Minister. For ‘the status quo of today is different from the status quo of one or two years ago. To maintain today’s status quo would be very unfair if it is different from a previous status quo. The solution suggested by Chou would justify what, in Nehru’s (and India’s) view, were gains made illegally and by stealth by China.33
Chou En-lai also met the home minister, G. B. Pant, and the vice-president, Dr S. Radhakrishnan, both of whom complained, more in sorrow than in anger, of China’s lack of appreciation for all India had done to gain its communist government legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Chou was more combatively challenged by the brilliant and opinionated finance minister, Morarji Desai. When the Chinese leader asked how the Indians could have allowed their soil to be used by Tibetan dissidents, Desai answered that ‘in our country everybody holds conventions; the Algerians do so and so do the Indians sometimes [against their Government]’. Then he cleverly (or perhaps mischievously) added: ‘The Chinese Prime Minister is aware that Lenin sought asylum in the UK but nobody restricted his political activities. We in India do not encourage anyone to conspire against China but we cannot prevent people from expressing their opinions. Freedom of speech is the basis of our democracy.’34
Reporting on his talks with Chou En-lai to the Indian Parliament, Nehru drily noted that ‘the significant sentence in the [joint] communiqué [issued by the two sides] is
Even if the Indians had the better of this argument overall, there remained a basic incompatibility of positions. Any evidence emanating from Western sources – even from unaffiliated travellers and itinerant Jesuit priests – was dismissed as tainted by ‘imperialism’. The Chinese would, up to a point, present counter-evidence, but in the end they would back off, saying that the border had not been delimited between the two countries as sovereign nations, that India could not claim the (ill-gotten) legacy of British India and that communist China did not stand by any treaties negotiated by anyone presuming to represent Tibet or China before the year of the revolution, 1949.36
It is noteworthy that the Chinese wished to maintain their gains in the western sector, where their historical position was weak. In exchange, they were willing to forfeit their much stronger claims in the east. This was clearly because of their need to have speedy access to Tibet. In October 1960, after his own summit with Nehru had failed and the officials’ meetings were going nowhere, Chou En-lai vented his frustrations in this regard to the American journalist Edgar Snow. He claimed that the boundary dispute ‘came to the fore’ only after ‘the Dalai Lama had run away and democratic reforms were started in Tibet’. He accused India of wanting to ‘turn China’s Tibet region into a “buffer zone”’. ‘They don’t want Tibet to become a Socialist Tibet, as had other places in China’, he complained. And then he drew this somewhat far-fetched conclusion: ‘The Indian side . . . is using the Sino-Indian boundary question as a card against progressive forces at home and as capital for obtaining “foreign aid”.’37
V
The territorial map of India was being challenged from the outside by the Chinese. There was also pressure for the map to be redrawn from within, by various linguistic groups left dissatisfied by the recommendations of the States Reorganization Commission of 1956. The Maharashtrians continued to press the centre to give them the city of Bombay. Their case was artfully presented by the dynamic young chief minister, Y. B. Chavan, who argued that this was the way the Congress could makeup the losses of the 1957 election, when the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti had made a serious dent in its vote and seat shares. Eventually, on 1 May 1960, the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra came into being, with Bombay allotted to the latter.
The creation of Maharashtra quelled resentment in the west of India, while giving a boost to unfulfilled expectations in the north. For the one major language group that still didn’t have a state of their own were the Punjabis. Their demand had been refused on the grounds that here language was dangerously allied with religion; that what was presented as ‘Punjabi Suba’ was in fact a ‘Sikh Suba’, a pretext for what could even become a separate nation of the Sikhs. Anyway, throughout 1960 and 1961 the evergreen Master Tara Singh launched a series of agitations for a Punjabi-speaking state. With him was another Sikh holy man, Sant Fateh Singh, a deputy who would later become a rival of the Master. Led by these two men, the Akali Dal volunteers began to court arrest in groups. Meanwhile, the Master and the Sant would go on periodic fasts, each announced as being ‘unto death’, each called off before making that supreme sacrifice.38
Against the Akalis, Nehru stood firm; the Congress chief minister of Punjab, Pratap Singh Kairon, firmer still. He came down hard on the Akali agitation, putting thousands of protesters in jail. Educated in America, Kairon was a man of drive and ambition, characteristics somewhat lacking in the other chief ministers of the day. Nehru thought this also translated into popular appeal. As he wrote to a friend, ‘Sardar Pratap Kairon’s strength in the Punjab is that he represents, and is largely trusted by, the rural people. Those who criticize him are usually city people, whether Sikh or Hindu. During the recent fast of Master Tara Singh, it is extraordinary how the rural areas were not affected by it. They were busy with the Panchayat elections and other activities.’ 39
Kairon was the uncrowned king of Punjab for the eight years he was in power. He had dash and vision; he started an agricultural university, pioneered the tube-well revolution and persuaded peasants to diversify into such remunerative areas as poultry farming. He drew out the Punjabi women, persuading them to study, work, and even – given their athleticism – participate in competitive sports. He mingled easily with the common folk; anyone could walk into his office at any time. On law and order, his dispensation of justice was rough and ready. Thus he instructed his police to fine rather than imprison a peasant protester, who didn’t mind becoming a martyr in the off-season but ‘can’t bear losing his earnings’. But a townsman who broke the law must be jailed, ‘for he can’t stand separation from the sweet lubricants of family’.40
As it happened, these were lubricants that Kairon could not be easily separated from himself. His two sons ran amok during his chief ministership, building huge business empires with the help of the state machinery, flouting property laws and zoning clauses. The chief minister was accused of the ‘gross abuse of office to promote the business interests of his sons who have minted crores of rupees in the last few years’. Civil servants were instructed to turn a blind eye to these transgressions. Tough questions were asked in Parliament. Several Congress leaders, among them Indira Gandhi, urged the prime minister to replace Kairon. But Nehru stood by his man, expressing admiration for his drive and his stalwart stand against Punjabi Suba. However, he did agree to constitute a Commission, headed by a Supreme Court judge, to enquire into the allegations againstKairon.41
As the historian A. G. Noorani has written, ‘in very many ways Sardar Pratap Singh Kairon [of Punjab] and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed [of Kashmir] were alike’. Both men ‘were blunt in speech, direct in approach, impatient with bureaucratic delays and disdainful of the proprieties of public life. Each did a hatchet man’s job.’ And ‘both enjoyed the patronage of Prime MinisterNehru’.42
There was bad publicity for the prime minister in one border state, the Punjab, owing to the Akali agitation and the malfeasance of the state administration. And there was worse publicity in another border area, the Naga hills, owing to the dramatic appearance in London of the rebel leader A. N. Phizo. Sometime in 1956 Phizo had hopped across into Burma and then into East Pakistan, from where he continued to direct the Naga resistance movement. After three years of long-distance generalship he decided his case needed the backing of the Western world. Travelling under a forged El Salvadorean passport, he reached Switzerland, where he made contact with Reverend Michael Scott, a radical Anglican priest who had previously worked with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. With Scott’s help he reached the United Kingdom.43
In London Phizo called a series of press conferences where, flanked by Michael Scott, he charged the Indian army with genocide against the Naga people. Also with Scott’s help, he printed a pamphlet which spoke of how ‘our
Phizo was here simultaneously appealing to the British love of the underdog, to memories of the still recent war against fascism (with the Nagas placed in the role of the Jews, and the Indian government as the Nazis) and to the Christian sentiments of his audience. The rhetoric was somewhat artless, and yet surprisingly successful. His cause was taken up by David Astor, the liberal owner of the Observer newspaper who had played a stellar role in the fight against the Nazis. Phizo’s charges were given wide play by the paper, and by several other journals too.45
Always sensitive to the opinions of the British press, the government of India answered with a propagandist tract of its own. This said that while the prime minister had assured the Nagas of ‘maximum autonomy’, under Phizo’s leadership, ‘the Naga movement began to assume a violent character’. The extent of violence and the suffering of civilians was not denied, but the blame for this was placed on the insurgents. The government’s stand remained that ‘they are prepared to concede the largest possible autonomy to the Nagas in their internal affairs in addition to all the privileges of Indian citizenship, such as representation in Parliament, but they could not agree to an independent state for them’.