Clamour over the Henderson Brooks Report: Missing the Wood for the Trees?
Bhartendu Kumar Singh
Indian Defence Accounts Service
e-mail: bhartendukumarsingh@gmail.com

Editors’ Note: The Henderson Brooks Report (HBR) was meant as an operational investigation into the failures of the Indian Army in the 1962 War. Due to the sensitivities of the time its scope was deliberately restricted. By no stretch of the imagination can the HBR be expected to be a reflection of China’s current policies or its’grand design’ at the time. The issue of transparency of official decisions in order to learn lessons from the past, albeit after a passage of time, cannot be over-emphasized. We now know that the mistakes made in 1962 were repeated in later conflicts and will inevitably be repeated in the future with equally devastating consequences unless the Indian establishment develops a more self-critical attitude to historical events and policies and learns from them. 

The recent decision by the Central Information Commission (CIC) rejecting the declassification demands for the Operations Review Committee on the 1962 Sino-Indian War (called the Henderson Brooks Report or HBR) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has not satisfied the appetite of some in the media. While the CIC judgment is a separate issue, the emerging debate on HBR is unfortunately locked within narrow contours of transparency and declassification rules. Little do we realize that the HBR could be too old and miniscule a tool to understand the gargantuan China problem.

A major grudge has been the perception of the report’s leakage to the Western press some decades ago. Allegedly, the report formed the basis of Neville Maxwell’s rather controversial and partisan book, India’s China War (1970). He also published an introduction to the so-called contents of the HBR in 2001 in the Economic and Political Weekly. There is no way to ascertain if Maxwell had access to the HBR. Maxwell specialized in India-bashing and made his career out of consistent and virulent criticism of India, often based on malicious and fallacious grounds. Unfortunately, many in India view the Sino-Indian War through the Maxwellian prism that blamed Nehru’s forward policy and his refusal to negotiate the border with China.

However, many reports and studies debunk Maxwellian hypothesis. In 1992, the MoD published “History of the Conflict with China, 1962” (available on the internet) that claims to have accessed the HBR. In their book, CV Ranganathan and Vinod Khanna, India and China: The Way Ahead After Mao’s India War (2000) discuss how Mao had already decided to teach India a lesson and was looking for the right excuse and opportunity. Elsewhere, in the Family Jewels (2007) documents covering the 1962 war, the CIA suggests that Premier Zhou Enlai “deceived” Nehru through procrastination and dissembling. He consistently impressed upon Nehru that Beijing had no territorial ambitions and that the Chinese maps portraying vast tracts of Indian territory as theirs were “old” maps from the Kuomintang era which had not been revised. Eminent Sinologists like Roderick Macfarquahar and John W Garver also wrote on decision-making in China prior to the war using Chinese sources and end up with far more sober analyses than Maxwell’s.

The HBR also suffers from methodological limitations that reduce its broader utility. It was essentially an ‘internal probe’ meant to ‘identify tactical loopholes and measures in the military operations’ and not to hypothesize on strategic threats from China or suggest ways and means to strengthen India’s strategic defence. Thus, it was not a comprehensive enquiry to begin with. It is also a well-known fact that the commission members had limited access to documents and were not supposed to interview top officers. Therefore, its publication could bring some benefits to the armed forces and military historians but may not be of any political value.

The HBR was submitted 46 years ago. Since then, much has also changed across the two sides of the Himalayas. China and India are both rising great powers in international relations with a pleasant expansion in their bilateral engagement. However, the huge investments by China in its military modernization have added to regional anxieties. China’s strategic reach in Tibet is complete with the construction of railways, roadways and other infrastructure in complete contrast to affairs on India’s side. The HBR, therefore, has lost its sheen, if not total relevance, in mitigating India’s China headache.

A plausible way of handling China could be learnt from the West. China remains a popular area studies in American universities which churn out hundreds of experts. Similarly, there are numerous think-tanks dedicated to the study of a rising China and which come out with innovative policy options for the US. The US Administration chips in through several categories of annual reports on China to the US Congress apart from the Congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) to report on China. In fact, some of the US annual reports such as the one on the military power of China are keenly awaited every year as they bring fresh insights into China’s expanding military might. Unfortunately, such efforts are largely missing in India, forcing policymakers to rely on Western reports and analyses that may not cater to India’s interests.

Much of the 1962 experience with China could be attributed to Indian ignorance and misperceptions. Since then, there has only been a marginal improvement in the knowledge base. Therefore, even if the HBR is published, it will add little to the Indian understanding of China and Indian policymakers would still grope in the dark for a ‘correct’ China strategy. If the motives behind declassification demands are really serious, then it should go beyond the HBR and rather invest more in studying China’s rising power profile and its implications for India. Institutionalized study of China needs to be undertaken within and outside the government for correct feedback to policymakers. Only this will ensure India and China live in peace with each other.

Note: The author is on deputation to the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). The views expressed herein are those of the author alone.

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