Will India finally learn its lesson on China?

Clashes between Indian and Chinese troops are shocking but nothing new. For almost twenty days, in the autumn of 1962, a handful of Indian soldiers surrounded by Chinese troops weathered incessant assaults, before being overrun in Walong, in the Namti plains; the Eastern most corner of India. No support came in 1962, from the shocked Indian government to the unprepared Indian army. A dusty stone-plaque stands there today pledging that Walong will never fall again; a pledge whose strength might soon be tested once more.

For a decade before those events, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first socialist post-independence prime-minister, wanted to create a utopian post-colonial alliance in Asia with China. Just like modern post-colonial academics, his ideas were also completely devoid of the geopolitical realities of power, something he finally internalised after a walloping at the hands of Maoist China. 

Nevertheless, this romantic idea of Pan-Asian solidarity persisted, as Nehru’s sister gave unconditional support to Chinese membership in the Security Council, even after the utter humiliation of the 1962 war, while charting a non-aligned path outside the US-Soviet rivalry.