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The Communist Chinese invasion of Korea was "aggression." but the West was also "not blameless"; the crushing of the Hungarian rebellion was unfortunate, but all the facts were not clear; when the Soviet Union broke the nuclear test moratorium last year, Nehru deplored "all nuclear tests."
Like a Buddha. Yet in its way, nonalignment paid enormous dividends. India received massive aid from both Russia and the West. Getting on India's good side became almost the most important thing in the United Nations. At intervals, the rest of the world's statesmen came to India to pay obeisance to Nehru as though to a Buddha. And Nehru obviously believed that whatever he did. in case of real need the U.S. would have to help India anyway. Meanwhile, as he saw it. the object of his foreign policy was to prevent the two great Asian powers —Russia and China—from combining against India. In his effort to woo both, acerbic Krishna Menon, says one Western diplomat, "was worth the weight of four or five ordinary men. He was so obnoxious to the West that, almost alone, he could demonstrate the sincerity of India's neutrality to the Russians."
At the 1955 Bandung conference. Nehru and China's Premier Chou En-lai embraced Panch Shila, a five-point formula for peaceful coexistence. The same Indian crowds that now shout. "Wipe out Chink stink!" then roared "Hindi Chini bhai bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers). India refused to sign the peace treaty with Japan because Red China was not a party to it. At home, Menon harped on the theme that Pakistan was India's only enemy. Three years ago, when Pakistan proposed a joint defense pact with India, Nehru ingenuously asked, "Joint defense against whom?" Western warnings about China's ultimate intentions were brushed aside as obvious attempts to stir up trouble between peace-loving friends.
Even the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1951 had rung no alarm bells in New Delhi—and therein lie the real beginnings of the present war.
Initialed Map. Under the British raj, London played what Lord Curzon called "the great game." Its object was to protect India's northern borders from Russia by fostering semi-independent buffer states like Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. In those palmy colonial days, Tibet was militarily insignificant, and China, which claims overlordship of Tibet, was usually too weak to exercise it.
When the Chinese Republic of Sun Yat-sen was born in 1912, Britain decided to look to its borders. At a three-nation meeting in Simla in 1914, Britain's representative. Sir Arthur McMahon, determined the eastern portion of the border by drawing a line on a map along the Himalayan peaks from Bhutan to Burma. The Tibetan and Chinese delegates initialed this map, but the newborn Chinese Republic refused to ratify it, and so has every Chinese government since.
The McMahon Line was never surveyed or delimited on the ground, and British troops seldom penetrated the NEFA hill country, where such tribes as the Apatanis. the Tagins and the Hill Miris amused themselves by slave-raiding and headhunting. As recently as 1953. the Daflas wiped out a detachment of the Assam Rifles just for the fun of it.
At the western end of the border, in Ladakh. the British made even less of an