The Impact of the Border War on Indian Perceptions of China

Abstract

THE UTTER COLLAPSE of the policies of detente and pansheel between India and Communist China since I959 has had continuing impact on domestic political and economic discourse. The effect of the border war has been all the greater because it followed immediately upon a period of intense emulative interest in China. The border war consequently affected only conceptions of their diplomatic and military relations with China, but their conceptions of domestic affairs as well. There were many in India who would have agreed with the former ambassador to Peking, B. K. Nehru, who asserted after the i962 invasion that Indian political and economic thought has undergone a traumatic experience.1 Any discussion of the perception of China after I959 must be put into the context of previous perceptions, especially in the I954-I959 period. This phase of Sino-Indian relations was initiated by the friendship treaty enunciating the five principles of pansheel and Prime Minister Nehru's return from China in the fall of I954. Both of these events followed five years of mounting enthusiasm for the new regime, an enthusiasm conspicuously unreciprocated by Peking. The sympathies of articulate opinion, if they can be judged from books on China published in India as well as by newspaper accounts, were very well disposed.2 The Government of India followed and reinforced this trend, championing the cause of Peking in the councils of the world, with the ruling Congress party telling its members that, not to recognize the new regime in China is to be unsympathetic to the aspirations of Asia.3 In January I950 Nehru told the Commonwealth foreign ministers that there had been a crying need for a change in China and that the new regime promised to bring the basis of that change.' Numerous public and private goodwill and cultural delegations