What’s up? Just a few weeks ago Army Chief Gen. Bikram Singh remarked that there was no chance of a repeat of the 1962 India-China conflict, meaning that India won’t be humiliated if the two countries squared off today. Now Air Chief Marshal Norman Anil Kumar Browne has noted on the eve of Air Force Day (October 8) that the outcome of the skirmish with China would have been vastly different had the Indian Air Force been called into a fighting role in the skies.
All this is plain silly and shows that some of our military men remain oblivious of the political and international context of both history and the present. Catching India by surprise, wave upon wave of Chinese troops crossed the line that Beijing treats as its boundary with India and hung around for a month, giving an unprepared India a lesson in the consequences of complacency. It was no war. The Chinese jets did not come into play either. Having made their point, the People’s Liberation Army units withdrew to their own side.
Politically, the Chinese were angry with New Delhi for offering the fleeing Dalai Lama shelter a few years earlier. They also wanted to undercut India in the eyes of the decolonised world, and to an extent succeeded. But life has changed, and India is no longer unprepared. That does not mean we insist on making noises on the 50th anniversary of a border skirmish and a non-war. Sabre-rattling with nothing in sight makes no sense.