# Beyond 120 Bahadur: Inside Battle of Rezang La and the 1962 India-China War | S3 | Ep 30

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 21 Nov 2025, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/68674734/21_nov_25_defence_21_november_128.mp3

With the release of the Farhan Akhtar-starrer 120 Bahadur, the spotlight returns to the Battle of Rezang La -- one of the bravest last stands in military history. But the 1962 India-China war was much more than just one battle. It was a geopolitical storm involving a "Forward Policy," a distracted America, and a political leadership caught off guard. In this deep-dive episode, host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan will peel back the layers of the 1962 conflict. They discuss the tactical realities of Major Shaitan Singh’s Charlie Company, the mystery of the "missing" Indian Air Force, how and why the Indian Army was handed a solid defeat, the strange connection between the Himalayas and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, of course, whether this indeed was Nehru's 'Himalayan Blunder'. In this episode, Dev and Sandeep discuss: - The Real Rezang La: How 120 men of the 13 Kumaon held off thousands of Chinese troops at 18,000 feet without winter gear. - The McMahon Line: Who drew it, why it was flawed, and why a "thick line on a map" led to war. - The Geopolitics: Did the Panchsheel Agreement lull Nehru into a false sense of security? What was the "Forward Policy"? - The Cuban Connection: How Mao Zedong timed the attack to coincide with the Cuban Missile Crisis to ensure US silence. - Classified History: What is the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report, and why does the Indian government refuse to declassify it 60 years later? - The Chinese Perspective: Why Beijing calls this a "Self-Defence Counterattack" and why they unilaterally withdrew after winning. Whether or not you plan to watch 120 Bahadur, this is your comprehensive crash course on the war that changed India forever. Tune in! Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound mixed by Rohan Bharti

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
[0:09] Speaker 2: takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
[0:12] Speaker 2: Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
[0:16] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:20] Speaker 2: to decode all things to do with India security and
[0:23] Speaker 2: explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
[0:27] Speaker 2: stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
[0:32] Speaker 1: This is in Our Defense. Hello, and welcome to Another Defense.
[0:37] Speaker 2: This week, we're gonna talk about the nineteen sixty two war,
[0:39] Speaker 2: a war that I feel not many people know about properly,
[0:43] Speaker 2: and especially the Battle of rez Angla, a battle that
[0:46] Speaker 2: I think everybody should know about. But why that's because
[0:50] Speaker 2: a movie is releasing this weekend. In fact, I think
[0:52] Speaker 2: by the time this podcast is out, the first shows
[0:54] Speaker 2: would I've been in theaters. The film is called biz Bahadur.
[0:58] Speaker 2: It starts Fakhta and shares a set of producers who
[1:02] Speaker 2: worked on a film that I believe has so far
[1:05] Speaker 2: been India's best war and military film, Luxury.
[1:10] Speaker 3: So in this.
[1:11] Speaker 2: Context, we'll talk about this battle, what makes this battle
[1:14] Speaker 2: so epic, and also about the ninety sixty two war,
[1:17] Speaker 2: a war that is often misunderstood, A war that I
[1:20] Speaker 2: said earlier people totally understand properly.
[1:23] Speaker 1: And who better for that than Sandi.
[1:27] Speaker 3: Hey Good, Dave Good to be back. War movies my
[1:30] Speaker 3: favorite topic.
[1:32] Speaker 1: You know, war movies.
[1:33] Speaker 2: So, like I said, my personal favorite in India has
[1:37] Speaker 2: been is a lux But I have a feeling that
[1:43] Speaker 2: and based on my chats with other defense correspondence, defense
[1:47] Speaker 2: defense journalists and experts like you, yours would probably a
[1:51] Speaker 2: film that I haven't seen that my generation has not seen,
[1:54] Speaker 2: the ninety sixty four movie Hockey Cut Yeah, which by
[1:57] Speaker 2: the way, also is based on the Battle of Yes.
[2:00] Speaker 1: It is that your favorite? It is?
[2:01] Speaker 3: It is? It's actually a close contest between Hackey Cut
[2:05] Speaker 3: and Vijeta Ja Is a Shashi Kapur made movie in
[2:10] Speaker 3: Champinigal director was it in eighty three? It was the
[2:14] Speaker 3: Yeah eighty two. Eighty three is when it released. It's
[2:17] Speaker 3: a toss between Haki Cut and Vijeta right and two
[2:21] Speaker 3: outstanding movies made by very passionate producers, directors and made
[2:26] Speaker 3: Haki Cut just two years after the nineteen sixty two war.
[2:30] Speaker 3: So you know when we were coming to grips with
[2:33] Speaker 3: what happened during the India China War. And of course
[2:35] Speaker 3: Vijeta was more about celebrating the Indian Air Force. But
[2:39] Speaker 3: Vijeta has a link to your favorite film luxsh I
[2:43] Speaker 3: believe Lux is actually a remake of Vijetah Okay, yeah,
[2:47] Speaker 3: if you see it, you you you figure out that
[2:49] Speaker 3: it's actually a coming of age movie. Rightsian is this
[2:52] Speaker 3: young kid who doesn't know what to do with life,
[2:54] Speaker 3: and then he gets into the army and he gets
[2:56] Speaker 3: a certain sense of purpose and then it becomes this
[2:58] Speaker 3: you know, man combat Harden's exactly the script of Interesting right,
[3:03] Speaker 3: So Shashi Kapur's son, who's Kunal Kapur, he's this And incidentally,
[3:09] Speaker 3: this is the first time that you had an actor,
[3:13] Speaker 3: a lead actor, playing a Sikh in the in the
[3:16] Speaker 3: lead role. And you know, until then, it's it's very
[3:18] Speaker 3: funny that you notice these little things that until then
[3:22] Speaker 3: see characters only you know, SAIDs and they would be
[3:25] Speaker 3: character actors. But here he grew his hair, he tried
[3:28] Speaker 3: a turban and he literally got into the part of
[3:32] Speaker 3: this young a force officer who comes, you know, he graduates,
[3:37] Speaker 3: he becomes a war hero. That's what was very fine
[3:40] Speaker 3: film actually, but you know they better than anyone else.
[3:44] Speaker 3: There are just ten war movies that we've made in
[3:48] Speaker 3: the last at R Dwers. There's so few to choose from.
[3:52] Speaker 3: I mean, we haven't seen really gripping war movies in
[3:55] Speaker 3: a sense like Saving Private Ryan or Thin Red Line
[3:58] Speaker 3: or Stalin Grad or whatever. We have a lot of
[4:01] Speaker 3: war history to talk about, right from not just the
[4:04] Speaker 3: twentieth century, but even before that. But the kind of
[4:08] Speaker 3: films that have come out. I mean I was talking
[4:11] Speaker 3: to Ami Raza Hussein, you know, made that great ballet
[4:15] Speaker 3: on Cargill, He staged that big play. And this is
[4:19] Speaker 3: where the war movies in India. They're all romantic movies
[4:21] Speaker 3: with you know, war in the backdrop. That's it.
[4:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And interesting that you mentioned war history because
[4:29] Speaker 2: that is actually something I wanted to begin begin this
[4:32] Speaker 2: episode with, is your thoughts on whether India is not
[4:38] Speaker 2: very great at war history. And I think this is
[4:40] Speaker 2: a topic that is going to be very personal to
[4:43] Speaker 2: you because you're somebody who loves.
[4:44] Speaker 1: Reading about military history.
[4:46] Speaker 2: Right, there's something that you've told us previously, and military
[4:51] Speaker 2: history is actually shaped the sort of you know career
[4:53] Speaker 2: trajectory that you've taken within within the broad the broad
[4:59] Speaker 2: umbrella of covering defense. Because the reason I say so is,
[5:04] Speaker 2: you know, when I try to research about the Anti
[5:06] Speaker 2: sixty two War, especially, I could not really find a
[5:09] Speaker 2: lot of material. One the report that was commissioned by
[5:12] Speaker 2: the then Army Chief, the Brooks Bagad Report, that remains
[5:15] Speaker 2: classified to till rate. Second, I was very surprised to
[5:18] Speaker 2: know there was actually an official history commissioned by the
[5:21] Speaker 2: Ministry of Defense. It was written by Colonel anil Athale.
[5:25] Speaker 2: But I could not find that history anywhere. It's not
[5:28] Speaker 2: there on the Ministry of Defense website. There are references
[5:31] Speaker 2: to it on some forums like BATA Structure and stuff
[5:33] Speaker 2: like that, but I really could not find a lot
[5:36] Speaker 2: of info about this. I think perhaps the only conflict
[5:41] Speaker 2: that has a full fledged report document out in public
[5:45] Speaker 2: Dominis Cargio War, the committed Report. But apart from that,
[5:49] Speaker 2: like I said, I think when it comes to war history,
[5:52] Speaker 2: India is not very good.
[5:53] Speaker 3: Do you share that sentimentary I think that's true to
[5:56] Speaker 3: an extent, but you know, I would have correct you
[5:58] Speaker 3: on the fact that there is actually a lot of writing.
[6:00] Speaker 3: They've won the nineteen sixty two war. I mean, it's
[6:03] Speaker 3: one of the most documented wars you know, in Indian
[6:08] Speaker 3: history because simply because China was involved, right, and we
[6:11] Speaker 3: have writing as late as five six years back, when
[6:15] Speaker 3: you have Bertil Littner's book India's China War, I mean,
[6:18] Speaker 3: I forget the name of the war on the roof
[6:19] Speaker 3: of the world, I forget the name of his book title.
[6:22] Speaker 3: But he's written a book. International author writing a book,
[6:27] Speaker 3: Nevill Maxill's book, of course, and there is reason to
[6:30] Speaker 3: believe India's China War is one of those early books
[6:33] Speaker 3: that came out I think in seventeen seventy one. Nevill
[6:36] Speaker 3: Maxill is the Australian author, but he gives a very
[6:39] Speaker 3: one sided view of the war. He says, his whole
[6:42] Speaker 3: point has been that India triggered of China's you know,
[6:45] Speaker 3: bought a aggression and we provoked them and therefore the
[6:48] Speaker 3: attacked and all. It's a very one sided version. But
[6:50] Speaker 3: it is a version that many believe is something that
[6:55] Speaker 3: he wrote based on the Henderson Brooks Report. He had
[6:58] Speaker 3: an early copy of the Henderson Brooks Report and before
[7:01] Speaker 3: he passed away he died a few years back, he
[7:05] Speaker 3: released the copy of the report that he had, you know,
[7:07] Speaker 3: thereby confirming our suspicions that all along that he knew
[7:12] Speaker 3: what the Henderson Brooks report was. And here's the funny
[7:15] Speaker 3: thing that you know, when I came to Delhi many
[7:17] Speaker 3: years back from Mumbai as a young defense journalist, I
[7:21] Speaker 3: filed the RTI was new at that time that you know,
[7:24] Speaker 3: right to information, and I filed an RTI and I
[7:27] Speaker 3: asked for a copy of the Henderson Brooks Report. Everybody does.
[7:30] Speaker 3: It's a rite of passage, you know. I want to
[7:32] Speaker 3: get the declassified version of the Henderson Brooks Report. So
[7:36] Speaker 3: the person who was handling, one of the officers was
[7:38] Speaker 3: handling this petition, he called me to his office and
[7:41] Speaker 3: he says, you want the Henderson Brooks Report. One second,
[7:44] Speaker 3: just leaned down to his thing, pulled out a small
[7:46] Speaker 3: book India's China war nevill Maxim. That's the Henderson Brooks Report.
[7:50] Speaker 3: That's that's how it is. This is someone who had
[7:54] Speaker 3: seen the report. So the point that he was making
[7:59] Speaker 3: is that it's not the civilian side of the ministry
[8:02] Speaker 3: or the Defense ministry or the political side that doesn't
[8:06] Speaker 3: want the report to be declassified. He says it was
[8:08] Speaker 3: the Indian military that did not want it to be declassified.
[8:11] Speaker 3: So there are two copies of it that exist. The
[8:14] Speaker 3: only two known copies we know is one is of
[8:16] Speaker 3: course with the Defense Secretary and the other one is
[8:19] Speaker 3: with the Director General Military Operation. Right, I'm both in
[8:22] Speaker 3: South block.
[8:23] Speaker 2: Interesting, which is I think why this episode is going
[8:26] Speaker 2: to be a rager because I think you've read lots
[8:29] Speaker 2: and bits and pieces of that, but you know, Sandivabo,
[8:32] Speaker 2: I want to start with the Battle of Arazangla because
[8:35] Speaker 2: the movie is coming out and because I don't want
[8:36] Speaker 2: this to be a border sort of a moment for
[8:39] Speaker 2: me where I learn about this epic battle from a
[8:41] Speaker 2: movie I wanted to learn. I want to learn about
[8:44] Speaker 2: it from someone like you who's read about it extensively
[8:46] Speaker 2: and also understand why is this battle considered to be
[8:51] Speaker 2: so epic. What I have are some references which tells me,
[8:56] Speaker 2: which tells me that it is epic, but I'm not
[8:58] Speaker 2: sure why, but I'll read it out for our.
[9:00] Speaker 1: Listeners and viewers.
[9:01] Speaker 2: One is the poem that is inscribed on the memorial
[9:05] Speaker 2: that stands at the spot where this battle battle was waged.
[9:10] Speaker 2: Is it's a It's a poem by Thomas Bibbington mccally.
[9:13] Speaker 2: It's from the horaceis at the bridge. The first forced
[9:16] Speaker 2: lines of the stanza are, how can a man die
[9:19] Speaker 2: better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his
[9:23] Speaker 2: father and temples of his gods? Basically talking about selflessness,
[9:27] Speaker 2: talking about the ultimate sex sacrifice, for your society's history,
[9:32] Speaker 2: for your society in general, for your culture. And also
[9:35] Speaker 2: I will read out a couple of sentences from the
[9:38] Speaker 2: weed Chakra citation to the officer who was leading the
[9:41] Speaker 2: one hundred hundred and twenty Order heat troops at the Battle.
[9:45] Speaker 1: Of Razanga, Major shatan Singh.
[9:47] Speaker 2: The last part of his citation says so the sitation
[9:51] Speaker 2: also says, by the way that during the battle, for
[9:53] Speaker 2: every man that India lost, the enemy China lost around
[9:56] Speaker 2: four to five uh. And for Shatansing himself, the citation says,
[10:00] Speaker 2: when Major Shatansingh felt disabled by wounds in his arms
[10:04] Speaker 2: and abdomen, his men tried to evacuate him, but they
[10:06] Speaker 2: came under heavy machine gun fire. Major Shatansing then ordered
[10:10] Speaker 2: his men to leave him to his fate in order
[10:12] Speaker 2: to save their lives. Major Shathansing Supreme courage, leadership, exemplary
[10:16] Speaker 2: devotion to duty inspired his company to fight almost to
[10:19] Speaker 2: the last man. And there are legends that later on,
[10:22] Speaker 2: when expressions were sent to that area to sort of
[10:25] Speaker 2: recover the bodies of the fallen soldiers, the soldiers were
[10:30] Speaker 2: found in firing positions. Apparently the guns were in their hands.
[10:34] Speaker 2: They had I think lee and field rifles. The rifles
[10:36] Speaker 2: were in their hands and their fingers were on the
[10:39] Speaker 2: triggers and that's how they had died.
[10:41] Speaker 3: So this is what I.
[10:42] Speaker 2: Have based on my im easily research. Take it from
[10:46] Speaker 2: this andfulous about this batch.
[10:48] Speaker 3: So you know, you know Razanglas. Of course this very
[10:51] Speaker 3: important battleground in Ladakh, and Ladakh was one of two
[10:55] Speaker 3: key battlegrounds in the nineteen sixty two war and the
[10:58] Speaker 3: war as everyone. The background to this is that until
[11:04] Speaker 3: nineteen fifty, India and China never had a border. Right
[11:08] Speaker 3: when you don't have a border, you don't have conflicts.
[11:10] Speaker 3: But what happened in nineteen fifty is that China absorbed Tibet.
[11:14] Speaker 3: Right they militarily invaded and captured Tibet, conquered Tibet. And
[11:18] Speaker 3: this is a province that a nation that the British
[11:23] Speaker 3: had always maintained as a buffer zone between India and
[11:27] Speaker 3: the Chinese Empire. Right, they had two buffers, Like I
[11:29] Speaker 3: always say this, one buffer is on the west, that's
[11:31] Speaker 3: Afghanistan with the Russian Empire, and the other one was
[11:34] Speaker 3: the buffer with the Chinese Empire, which is Tibet. Now,
[11:37] Speaker 3: when red China, Red China is Mao Mao Zedong who
[11:41] Speaker 3: takes over China in fourteen nine and fifty he starts
[11:45] Speaker 3: expanding and captures Tibet fifty nine that Dalai Lama flees
[11:50] Speaker 3: with one hundred thousand followers and he comes into India
[11:53] Speaker 3: and India gives him shelter and that doesn't go down
[11:56] Speaker 3: well with the Chinese, and the tensions begin, and in
[12:01] Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two, Mao decides to strike at India. And
[12:06] Speaker 3: this is again where you know Henderson Nevill Maxill goes
[12:09] Speaker 3: completely wrong. We're saying that, you know, we provoke them.
[12:12] Speaker 3: So what does India do when the tensions are building up?
[12:16] Speaker 3: Nehru Prime Minister Arrow at that time he reasserts the
[12:21] Speaker 3: McMahon line, our claim on the fact that this is
[12:24] Speaker 3: India's boundaries as left by the British in nineteen forty seven,
[12:27] Speaker 3: which China doesn't recognize and Mao Zedong at that time.
[12:32] Speaker 3: You have to understand the background of what's going on
[12:35] Speaker 3: in China. At that time, nineteen fifty nine, Mao had
[12:38] Speaker 3: launched the Great Great Leap Forward. It's one of the
[12:42] Speaker 3: single most disastrous plans launched by any leader, which has
[12:46] Speaker 3: killed the maximum number of people. Right something. Thirty to
[12:49] Speaker 3: forty million Chinese died because of this Great Leap Forward
[12:53] Speaker 3: very quickly. For those of you watching this, the Great
[12:56] Speaker 3: Leap Forward is that Mao wanted to make China and
[12:59] Speaker 3: agricultural superpower and an industrial superpower at the same time.
[13:03] Speaker 3: And he got people into creating you founderies in their
[13:07] Speaker 3: homes by collectivizing farms, farmland and all that. He destroyed
[13:11] Speaker 3: the industrial sector, He destroyed the agriculture. Thirty to forty
[13:15] Speaker 3: million Chinese I believe to have starved to death. Mao
[13:18] Speaker 3: wanted a distraction. And what is the distraction? It was
[13:21] Speaker 3: the India and that's when he kind of moved in
[13:24] Speaker 3: that planned this very well. In nineteen sixty two, they
[13:28] Speaker 3: struck at the precise movement that the United States, which
[13:31] Speaker 3: is this other actor in this grand theater, was distracted
[13:35] Speaker 3: with the Cuban missile crisis that precise month in October,
[13:39] Speaker 3: right almost two weeks in October, A few days been overlap. Yeah,
[13:43] Speaker 3: it was actually over I mean that's when they chose
[13:45] Speaker 3: to launch their offensive. And here you have the United States,
[13:49] Speaker 3: which is this other significant partner of India, both the
[13:53] Speaker 3: United States and the Soviet Union, locked in conflict trying
[13:57] Speaker 3: to prevent nuclear war. Mouth of the opportunity to launch
[14:01] Speaker 3: the swift border aggression. So the waves of the Chinese troops,
[14:06] Speaker 3: and they were all very prepared. They had upwards of
[14:09] Speaker 3: four divisions right on the Tibetan plateau. We barely had
[14:14] Speaker 3: one division right, that is how thinly guarded it was.
[14:17] Speaker 3: But the run up to this thing was that they
[14:19] Speaker 3: had the government of India launched something called the Forward Policy,
[14:23] Speaker 3: which is to assert our sovereignty on the line that
[14:27] Speaker 3: we believed. We launched these little penny packets of men,
[14:32] Speaker 3: small companies, platoons and all along the border with China,
[14:37] Speaker 3: all along the boundary with China. And when China struck,
[14:41] Speaker 3: this is on the eighteenth of November, is the second
[14:43] Speaker 3: phase of the Chinese offensive. You had Razanghla, which is
[14:47] Speaker 3: this very important hill feature overlooking the Spungur Gap and
[14:52] Speaker 3: you have the Chushul airfield there right. It's really important
[14:57] Speaker 3: for the Indian army to hold that because if they
[15:01] Speaker 3: let go of that vantage point, the Chinese would walk
[15:05] Speaker 3: in and grab the Chushul airfield and the whole defense
[15:09] Speaker 3: of that entire Chucial area would collapse and they could
[15:12] Speaker 3: literally march into Lay and capture that whole region. So
[15:16] Speaker 3: it was really important that they held their ground there.
[15:19] Speaker 3: And this is when you have the men of Major
[15:23] Speaker 3: Chatansingh's company, the communities who hold their ground over there,
[15:27] Speaker 3: and literally in a span of the battle lasted about
[15:30] Speaker 3: ten hours or something like that. But it is outstanding
[15:34] Speaker 3: in the grit and determination that our soldiers displayed that
[15:38] Speaker 3: they literally, as you mentioned, they died fighting to the
[15:41] Speaker 3: last man, last round out of a company. A company
[15:44] Speaker 3: is about one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty men.
[15:48] Speaker 3: An infantry battalion is made up of three companies, sometimes more.
[15:53] Speaker 3: They were part of a battalion that one company of
[15:56] Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty men. Each company is commanded by
[15:58] Speaker 3: a major. One hundred and sixteen of them died. They
[16:02] Speaker 3: were you know the story. Our story is that the
[16:06] Speaker 3: Chinese attacked in very large numbers, and that is true
[16:10] Speaker 3: of mountain warfare, where the ratio of defenders to the
[16:16] Speaker 3: offensive is sometimes one is to ten, one is to twenty.
[16:19] Speaker 3: Even the Chinese attacked in very large numbers. It was
[16:23] Speaker 3: a brigade plus that attacked this small little defensive line
[16:27] Speaker 3: of about three to four kilometers that the company was
[16:30] Speaker 3: strung out along these three to four kilometers, and over
[16:33] Speaker 3: ten to twelve hours they struck late in the night
[16:36] Speaker 3: and by early morning they had overrun this company. Now,
[16:39] Speaker 3: the thing is that they did not retreat. Now there
[16:44] Speaker 3: are other parts in the in the northeast, for instance,
[16:47] Speaker 3: battles where there have been retreats of the Indian army
[16:50] Speaker 3: for tactical reasons, and you know, brigades that collapsed, they've
[16:54] Speaker 3: been captured and all that. But here in Ladak, the
[16:57] Speaker 3: defense was ferocious. I mean it was so tenacious. The
[17:01] Speaker 3: kind of defense like literally this kind of thing we've
[17:03] Speaker 3: never seen in any Indian conflict post nineteen forty seven.
[17:07] Speaker 3: We've seen that in Saragari, but the battle in the
[17:09] Speaker 3: nineteenth century. But here again they held their positions, last man,
[17:13] Speaker 3: last round. They literally died fighting and they were faced
[17:17] Speaker 3: with tremendous ords. I mean, the army got into this
[17:21] Speaker 3: absolutely stupid forward policy, right, they committed soldiers on the ground.
[17:26] Speaker 3: They had no equipment, they had no heavy atlerry, they
[17:30] Speaker 3: didn't have machine guns, they didn't they had bold action rifles,
[17:33] Speaker 3: all of those things, and they never actually anticipated the
[17:39] Speaker 3: Chinese would actually do what they did during the Border
[17:43] Speaker 3: war in October. Now, when you don't believe your adversary
[17:46] Speaker 3: is capable of launching and offensive, your fundamentals are flawed.
[17:51] Speaker 3: And when your fundamentals of flawed, it leads to a
[17:53] Speaker 3: very severe military defeat, which is what happened in sixty two.
[17:57] Speaker 3: So the men of this company, Chatan major, Chatan Singh's company,
[18:02] Speaker 3: which is completely overrun, but it remains the greatest stand,
[18:07] Speaker 3: last stand made by Indian Army since nineteen forty seven.
[18:12] Speaker 3: It's an outstanding act of bravery that these men they've
[18:15] Speaker 3: literally fought because they knew that if they fail, if
[18:18] Speaker 3: they did not hold their line, the Chinese would roll
[18:21] Speaker 3: over and they would capture everything, all the territory at
[18:24] Speaker 3: the year. So that's what And this is a story,
[18:26] Speaker 3: interestingly that came to light much later. Yeah, oh, only
[18:30] Speaker 3: in early nineteen sixty three that in the medie of
[18:33] Speaker 3: what happened, the army was, you know, still picking up
[18:36] Speaker 3: the pieces. What happened when the Chinese retreated, that is
[18:39] Speaker 3: when the early nineteen sixty three, I believe that Jan
[18:42] Speaker 3: is when they December Jan when they went to those
[18:44] Speaker 3: positions and they found that, you know, soldiers had literally
[18:48] Speaker 3: died fighting over there, they had lost contact with this company.
[18:52] Speaker 3: And what the survivors then told them, they literally didn't
[18:57] Speaker 3: believe their initial That is one version of the story
[19:00] Speaker 3: that they didn't believe what the survivors, the four odd
[19:03] Speaker 3: or the six odd survivors who told this thing that
[19:06] Speaker 3: you know, they had been sent away by the company.
[19:09] Speaker 3: Some of them came back walking back to our lines
[19:11] Speaker 3: and that they narrated this heroic story of you know,
[19:14] Speaker 3: sacrifice bravery, which which is captured in that movie Hakikat
[19:19] Speaker 3: and so major Chatan Singh's you know, bravery is legend.
[19:23] Speaker 3: I mean, this is the stuff that the Indian Army
[19:24] Speaker 3: literally worships. And those lines that you mentioned that you
[19:27] Speaker 3: just read out, it's there on that Razangla Memorial eighteenth
[19:32] Speaker 3: of November every Years day.
[19:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that poem actually talks about a Roman
[19:39] Speaker 2: Roman commander who stands literally the gates of his city
[19:44] Speaker 2: preventing the enemy from entering. That's exactly what happened in
[19:48] Speaker 2: this case. So then zooming out on deep now to
[19:51] Speaker 2: the larger war, we'll obviously talk about the two aspects
[19:56] Speaker 2: that lead to a conflict between India and China. One
[19:59] Speaker 2: that mcmahuny in famous McMahon line, and second, in this case,
[20:03] Speaker 2: the so called neh Roose blunder. We'll come to that obviously,
[20:06] Speaker 2: but for now I want to talk about just at
[20:08] Speaker 2: the tactical level, those those those days of the war,
[20:12] Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty two war, from its start to its end,
[20:15] Speaker 2: what happened in those two two sectors, the sectors that
[20:18] Speaker 2: are now known as the Western Front and the Eastern Front, which,
[20:21] Speaker 2: by the way, for many people is a bit odd
[20:23] Speaker 2: because when you look at the map of India it
[20:24] Speaker 2: seems or carry what a west Keso sector. But then
[20:26] Speaker 2: you know, if you face yourself towards China, that's when
[20:29] Speaker 2: you will realize Western is just the left of you,
[20:32] Speaker 2: Eastern is the right of you. The right back then
[20:34] Speaker 2: was the Northeast Frontier agency is basically the left was
[20:39] Speaker 2: Ladakh like you were describing, so China launch and offensive.
[20:43] Speaker 2: Tell us what happened over the many days? And why
[20:47] Speaker 2: is this war scene and it is a failure for
[20:50] Speaker 2: the Indian Army.
[20:51] Speaker 3: Well, you know, I give you the build up to
[20:54] Speaker 3: that conflict. What happened? Really when we grossly underestimated Mao Zedong,
[21:01] Speaker 3: we didn't read him right. And Prime Minister Neru this
[21:06] Speaker 3: is a good man, but he had no combat experience.
[21:11] Speaker 3: He didn't understand where people came from, what shaped them
[21:15] Speaker 3: as leaders. Mao Zedong is a guy who's been fighting
[21:18] Speaker 3: all his life. Right, he was in the hills, in
[21:21] Speaker 3: the caves. He literally launched the Chinese Communist Party in
[21:25] Speaker 3: the twenties, and then he captured that country in nineteen
[21:27] Speaker 3: forty nine. Wiley guy. Right, He waited for Chiang Kashak
[21:32] Speaker 3: to wear himself out fighting the Japanese, and once the
[21:35] Speaker 3: Japanese had been defeated, he just marched and took over
[21:39] Speaker 3: the whole country. Right, So the Chinese Communist Party is
[21:41] Speaker 3: a very wiley party, and that's the reason they're still
[21:44] Speaker 3: in power over there. And when he saw China, when
[21:49] Speaker 3: Mao saw Nehru, he saw him as a bit of
[21:51] Speaker 3: a simpleton. Who didn't understand the complexities of you know,
[21:56] Speaker 3: waging war, or who understood imperial geography and all of
[22:00] Speaker 3: those things. You can argue that you know, Neru probably
[22:03] Speaker 3: didn't even have the exposure to conflict combat to didn't
[22:10] Speaker 3: know anything about the military for instance. Right, we are
[22:13] Speaker 3: supposed to have won our freedom through non violent means, right,
[22:17] Speaker 3: and that is that that is a big, big, a
[22:24] Speaker 3: fundamental DNA problem that when you say that you know
[22:29] Speaker 3: you've acquired your independence through non violent means, then you're
[22:34] Speaker 3: not able to use violence to defend yourselves. Right. And
[22:38] Speaker 3: so the nineteen sixty two war was we literally plunged
[22:43] Speaker 3: headlong into this conflict with the Chinese. We didn't read
[22:46] Speaker 3: them right, We didn't prepare for this, despite the fact
[22:49] Speaker 3: that you had military exercises like La Kila that was done.
[22:53] Speaker 3: There was an exercise called La Kila which actually said that, look,
[22:56] Speaker 3: the Chinese could attack us, and this is what we
[22:58] Speaker 3: need to do to defend ourselves. Saddhar Patail, a late
[23:02] Speaker 3: Home minister before one of his last messages to Panderu
[23:06] Speaker 3: was that we've never had a border with the Chinese.
[23:10] Speaker 3: They are now on our border. Do not trust them? Right,
[23:13] Speaker 3: So you had plenty of warning of the fact that
[23:17] Speaker 3: the Chinese did not mean us any good, right, they
[23:21] Speaker 3: were implacable enemies. But Prime Minister Eru, he chose the
[23:26] Speaker 3: path of you know, Panchi and the mutual coexistence and
[23:31] Speaker 3: two Asian civilizational nations coming together against imperialism, you know,
[23:36] Speaker 3: all of that. So he made all those fundamental mistakes.
[23:39] Speaker 3: And then when China invaded and they launched their divisions
[23:44] Speaker 3: into us, he was in a state of shock because
[23:47] Speaker 3: it's like this building that you've created. Overnight, you see
[23:51] Speaker 3: that building collapsing. Literally. It's very tragic because and he
[23:55] Speaker 3: passed away just two years after the war, in sixty
[23:58] Speaker 3: to sixty four. He had died. And one of the
[24:01] Speaker 3: reasons for that he was literally a broken man after
[24:03] Speaker 3: this conflict. And when you made that initial misconception of
[24:09] Speaker 3: the Chinese, you got in the wrong people. He got
[24:12] Speaker 3: one of his relatives there, General left BM Call would
[24:16] Speaker 3: never face any action during the Second World War. He
[24:18] Speaker 3: appointed all the wrong people. The you know, Timaya had
[24:23] Speaker 3: recommended SVP thor Art we made chief. He overruled his recommendation.
[24:28] Speaker 3: Tho Art was an aggressive soldier. General. He chose somebody
[24:33] Speaker 3: else jel Thapper, who was more pliable part of the
[24:36] Speaker 3: extended family and all that. So, you know, when you
[24:38] Speaker 3: see political interference in the military, this was the most
[24:41] Speaker 3: glaring aspect of that because it kind of manifested itself
[24:45] Speaker 3: in defeat. And the worst part about it is, and
[24:50] Speaker 3: this is horrifying, because in nineteen sixty two India had
[24:55] Speaker 3: a very strong air force. We may not have had
[24:58] Speaker 3: that up yeah, you know, we may not have had
[25:00] Speaker 3: a very strong military on the ground that was capable,
[25:04] Speaker 3: kitted out, equipped to fight a high altitude campaign. You're
[25:07] Speaker 3: talking of going from fifteen feet to fifteen thousand feet, right,
[25:10] Speaker 3: that is the altitude at which the Indian Army was fighting.
[25:13] Speaker 3: I mean, it is a Himalayan It's been called a
[25:16] Speaker 3: Himalayan blunder, but it's a Himalian battle that they fought.
[25:19] Speaker 3: You're literally going from the planes, you're going up to
[25:21] Speaker 3: the mountains and you're fighting an army that's pouring across
[25:26] Speaker 3: the plateau. They're sitting on the plateau. They have the
[25:28] Speaker 3: high ground and they just had to extend their lines
[25:30] Speaker 3: a few hundred kilometers to resupply their troops. But as
[25:34] Speaker 3: for us, it's literally an uphill task. You climbing up,
[25:38] Speaker 3: you're ascending and then you're fighting on those valleys. But
[25:41] Speaker 3: at that time we had eighteen fighter squadrons. The Indian
[25:45] Speaker 3: Air Force was one of the best air forces in Asia.
[25:48] Speaker 3: May not be in the world, but in Asia it
[25:50] Speaker 3: was a fantastic air force. You had Hawker Hunters, you
[25:55] Speaker 3: had Uragans, you had bombers, you had Canberras, you had
[26:00] Speaker 3: state of the art aircraft right, and they were not
[26:03] Speaker 3: allowed to enter the fray. They were kept out of
[26:06] Speaker 3: the war because because the political leadership, Prime Minister was
[26:13] Speaker 3: advised and it took that decision that if we deployed
[26:17] Speaker 3: the air force in an offensive role, the Chinese would
[26:20] Speaker 3: retaliate by bombing our cities. Colkata, right, Coolkata would be bombed.
[26:25] Speaker 3: The Chiefness of Cool Bengal said, oh, no, you know,
[26:29] Speaker 3: my state will be bombed by the Chinese. The Intelligence
[26:32] Speaker 3: Bureau you had Bolana Maliku's the IB chief for decades.
[26:37] Speaker 3: The IB was in charge of external intelligence. By the way, yes,
[26:40] Speaker 3: so R and W was set up much later, six
[26:43] Speaker 3: years after this disastrous war. They gave all kinds of
[26:47] Speaker 3: stupid assessments to the political leadership that oh, we can't
[26:50] Speaker 3: deploy the air force because if we deployed, the Chinese
[26:52] Speaker 3: will deploy their air force, They will deploy their bombers.
[26:55] Speaker 3: Despite having all the intel that the you know, the
[26:59] Speaker 3: Indian Air Force was literally raring to go. And here
[27:03] Speaker 3: is something that I picked up in during the Cargil War.
[27:07] Speaker 3: I remember I was in Bombay at that time. Am
[27:10] Speaker 3: Marshall Tipness had come down to brief us there and
[27:14] Speaker 3: in the press conference he said, you know, this was
[27:16] Speaker 3: after the air Force had been deployed in safeith Sagar
[27:18] Speaker 3: in Cargil. And he says, he turned to me and
[27:21] Speaker 3: he said that no, I was a young pilot sitting
[27:24] Speaker 3: in the cockpit of a Hunter aircraft. I was fully armed, guy,
[27:28] Speaker 3: I was. My tank was full, my cannons were loaded,
[27:33] Speaker 3: we had rockets, and we were waiting sitting in the
[27:36] Speaker 3: cockpit literally and waiting for the order to be given
[27:38] Speaker 3: so we could take off and attack the Chinese. And
[27:41] Speaker 3: he says that order never came. And it was such
[27:44] Speaker 3: a demoralizing incident for the Indian Air Force that despite
[27:48] Speaker 3: having all of these you know, state of the art
[27:52] Speaker 3: fighter aircraft, fighter bombers, they were never deployed in combat.
[27:56] Speaker 3: And this is because and this is something that comes
[27:59] Speaker 3: out of talking to air power experts like a Marshal
[28:02] Speaker 3: Jord and this is that, you know, there's a fundamental
[28:05] Speaker 3: mismatch in the way the political leadership has seen airpower.
[28:09] Speaker 3: Airpower by definition, is a very offensive arm of military power.
[28:15] Speaker 3: Whereas when you say that we are only meant for defense,
[28:20] Speaker 3: you know, the armed forces of India, if you put
[28:21] Speaker 3: it in your mind that, oh, they only meant for defense,
[28:24] Speaker 3: you will never think of using airpower. Right. So this
[28:27] Speaker 3: is something that in hindsight, hindsight is you know, perfect vision.
[28:32] Speaker 3: I know, but if they had, if the political leadership
[28:35] Speaker 3: had decided to unleash the Indian Air Force, they could
[28:38] Speaker 3: have gone. They could have retrieved the nineteen sixty two war.
[28:41] Speaker 3: I still believe that despite all our reverses, despite the
[28:45] Speaker 3: sacrifices of you know, the brave soldiers like Major Chatan
[28:50] Speaker 3: Singh literally last man, last round, the Indian Air Force,
[28:54] Speaker 3: if it had come into the conflict even as late
[28:56] Speaker 3: as November, they could have retrieved the situation. They could
[28:59] Speaker 3: have had the Chinese because yes, what of course the
[29:04] Speaker 3: Prime Minister was being advised by all these vice experts.
[29:07] Speaker 3: The US ambassador to India advised him against that, believe
[29:11] Speaker 3: it or not. John Kenneth galbrate for the US ambassador,
[29:14] Speaker 3: and he said, don't know, you shouldn't deploy the air
[29:16] Speaker 3: force because the Chinese will attack. The IB of course
[29:19] Speaker 3: told him that the political ground this thing. Leadership they
[29:23] Speaker 3: also advised against this. And here you're wondering that why
[29:26] Speaker 3: did the Prime minister take advice from all of these
[29:29] Speaker 3: guys who don't mean the country. Well, and here's the thing.
[29:34] Speaker 3: There was intelligence then to suggest there was a Chinese
[29:40] Speaker 3: pilot would defect it with a meek seventeen or a
[29:42] Speaker 3: mid nineteen to Taiwan, right in the late fifties, early sixties.
[29:46] Speaker 3: And he had told the introgators, the Western introgators, we
[29:50] Speaker 3: were incidently given access to this briefing where he said
[29:55] Speaker 3: that the Chinese air force on the Plateau doesn't have
[29:58] Speaker 3: enough fuel to fly or fight. So this whole thing
[30:00] Speaker 3: of thousands of bombers coming and hitting India was non existent.
[30:04] Speaker 3: There were no aircraft, They were not in any shape
[30:07] Speaker 3: to fight or fly because guess what a few years
[30:10] Speaker 3: before that the Chinese had broken up with the Soviets
[30:15] Speaker 3: Khrushev hat you know, thrown the Chinese out and they
[30:18] Speaker 3: had fought a border war after that in sixty nine,
[30:21] Speaker 3: so the ties were really at an all time low.
[30:24] Speaker 3: Their entire fighter fleet was of Russian origin. They needed
[30:27] Speaker 3: Russian experts, they needed Russian technicians, they needed fuel, all
[30:30] Speaker 3: of those things they didn't have. All they had was
[30:33] Speaker 3: a very strong military. We had a military that was
[30:36] Speaker 3: strong but not adequate in numbers. They were throwing divisions
[30:41] Speaker 3: at us and we were replying with what not even brigades.
[30:44] Speaker 3: We had. A brigade is a three thousand strong military force.
[30:47] Speaker 3: A division is like fifteen thousand strong, right, and you have,
[30:51] Speaker 3: you know, positions like this defended by companies, platoons. That's
[30:55] Speaker 3: how we were fighting. It's heartbreaking when you read these accounts,
[30:59] Speaker 3: but you had the air force chose not to use
[31:02] Speaker 3: it and guess what happened.
[31:06] Speaker 2: So then the other question and the other mystery is
[31:10] Speaker 2: at what point did China, which was in an advantageous position,
[31:15] Speaker 2: decide that's it and chose to basically stop the war.
[31:18] Speaker 2: And it if it was, like you're describing, such a
[31:21] Speaker 2: bad show, poor show by the military, what stopped them
[31:25] Speaker 2: from literally invading the entire northeast, from literally invading the
[31:28] Speaker 2: entire Atadah.
[31:29] Speaker 3: Good question there, and you ask your friends from the Northeast,
[31:33] Speaker 3: especially in Assam, and they've never forgiven the political leadership
[31:37] Speaker 3: for what they said in November of nineteen sixty two
[31:41] Speaker 3: when the Prime Minister is supposed to have said, my
[31:43] Speaker 3: heart goes out to the people of Assam, right part
[31:46] Speaker 3: of a speech where we believe that the whole Northeast
[31:50] Speaker 3: had been lost. And you know, as far as they poor,
[31:54] Speaker 3: that's on the planes in Assam. They had just vacated
[31:56] Speaker 3: the whole place. They had emptied out the treasury, that
[32:00] Speaker 3: opened up the jails, asylum and there are some very
[32:03] Speaker 3: haunting reports by Bigi Verghese, who was a reporter at
[32:08] Speaker 3: that time, walking through you know, taste Poor and describing
[32:12] Speaker 3: the situations that it goes down. India actually believed that
[32:16] Speaker 3: the whole of the Northeast was going to collapse, right.
[32:20] Speaker 3: There was nothing stopping the Chinese. Now is a good question.
[32:23] Speaker 3: Why did the Chinese pull back Somewhere on the twentieth
[32:26] Speaker 3: of November. They seem to have decided that we need
[32:30] Speaker 3: enough is enough, and we are now we're drawing back
[32:32] Speaker 3: to our claim lines. So they climbed all the way back.
[32:36] Speaker 3: They left all the positions that they had captured, even
[32:39] Speaker 3: returned a lot of the equipment that they had captured
[32:43] Speaker 3: from us. Unusual. It's there in some of their propaganda videos.
[32:46] Speaker 3: I mean, that is basically meant to, you know, put
[32:49] Speaker 3: out up the Chinese Communist Party's view of things. But
[32:53] Speaker 3: here's the thing, they didn't do it out of any magnanimity.
[32:56] Speaker 3: Now it's November, right towards the end of November, snow's falling,
[33:01] Speaker 3: and Chairman Mao knows as anyone else that you cannot
[33:04] Speaker 3: maintain those logistical lines for very long. So under the
[33:10] Speaker 3: pretext of this magnanimity, there was actually a lot of
[33:14] Speaker 3: military thinking that went in where they said that, look,
[33:18] Speaker 3: we can't maintain these positions. There is a possibility that
[33:22] Speaker 3: the Indians could hit us back with American support. So
[33:24] Speaker 3: they withdrew very quietly. They went back to their claim
[33:27] Speaker 3: lines and Ladak of course, they did pull back, and
[33:30] Speaker 3: where they're standing today is literally where they were in
[33:34] Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two in November, and we have lost in
[33:39] Speaker 3: ladakh An area the size of the state of Kerala,
[33:43] Speaker 3: my state, thirty eight thousand square kilometers is lost. And
[33:47] Speaker 3: this is what we're negotiating axcitchin the entire area of
[33:50] Speaker 3: oxcite Chin, which is what you know. We have the maps,
[33:55] Speaker 3: we have the evidence to suggest that all of this
[33:58] Speaker 3: were treaties that were negotiate as way back as the
[34:01] Speaker 3: seventeenth century between Indian rulers in Ladak and the Tibetan rulers.
[34:07] Speaker 3: And of course this was formalized by the British in
[34:09] Speaker 3: the early twentieth. Now, the Chinese don't recognize any of that.
[34:12] Speaker 3: They call it you know, colonial learn so I mean
[34:15] Speaker 3: you leave everything that the Chinese. They will find the
[34:19] Speaker 3: evidence to suggest that even India, at some point this
[34:23] Speaker 3: hypothetical was, you know, a vassal state of the Chinese.
[34:26] Speaker 3: Therefore India, all everything under the sun in India belongs
[34:29] Speaker 3: to us. You know, the Chinese have a way of
[34:31] Speaker 3: doing things and you know, manipulating history and you know,
[34:36] Speaker 3: manipulating geography and cartographic cartographic aggression. You have to learn
[34:40] Speaker 3: it from the Chinese, that's how they do it.
[34:41] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[34:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, this is akin to like you know, taking four
[34:44] Speaker 2: steps forward and then taking two steps back and say
[34:46] Speaker 2: we were drawing, but you're forgetting that they've taken to
[34:49] Speaker 2: step forward by there.
[34:49] Speaker 1: Yeah right right, that's net net right.
[34:52] Speaker 4: We'll talk more about this, but after a quick treak,
[34:55] Speaker 4: people want the series correct, So let's first talk about
[34:57] Speaker 4: the existing players in the market, what they're doing in
[35:02] Speaker 4: the Indian TV segment.
[35:03] Speaker 1: For a series.
[35:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, which do you think is the first name which
[35:08] Speaker 3: comes into your mind?
[35:10] Speaker 1: Which is doing something ravishing?
[35:12] Speaker 5: So my mind, the Mahindra definitely tops the list, but
[35:17] Speaker 5: I think most people will disagree. Most people will think
[35:21] Speaker 5: of the Humdi Crati Electric, which shares a very similar
[35:27] Speaker 5: approach in terms of philosophy to the car that we're
[35:31] Speaker 5: about to talk about today. The Mahindra, though, represents something
[35:37] Speaker 5: radical and that's why it catches my fancy and I
[35:41] Speaker 5: think a lot of people in my age group would
[35:44] Speaker 5: agree as into not older people such as I like
[35:49] Speaker 5: the B six.
[35:50] Speaker 3: Quite a lot. Yeah, straight up, I'll tell you why.
[35:54] Speaker 1: But would you buy one? Yes, I would rush B six.
[35:57] Speaker 3: I would bish.
[35:58] Speaker 5: Because the old person who came back and you were like,
[36:01] Speaker 5: I want the Scorpio because it's soft, it's comfortable, and
[36:04] Speaker 5: it can go fast without old people in my car
[36:07] Speaker 5: realizing that it can go fast. Isn't that a fantastic thing?
[36:10] Speaker 5: I mean you said you are good to buy the basics.
[36:13] Speaker 1: The b B six is going to be a very different.
[36:20] Speaker 2: Welcome back something before the break, you were talking about
[36:23] Speaker 2: the sixty two or how it panned out, how it
[36:26] Speaker 2: basically resulted in a loss for the Indian Army and
[36:30] Speaker 2: you had the Chinese withdrawing. I thought that, ever, that's
[36:33] Speaker 2: always struck me is that in the years after, in
[36:36] Speaker 2: the months after, was there never any thought given discussions
[36:41] Speaker 2: held within the government, within the military to sort of
[36:45] Speaker 2: take revenge. Because there's one thing about military is that
[36:48] Speaker 2: we know that you keep talking about on this podcast,
[36:51] Speaker 2: is that they swear by the philosophy and of an
[36:54] Speaker 2: eye for an eye. So if someone attacks you, if
[36:57] Speaker 2: someone takes your territory, if someone punches you, you punch back,
[37:01] Speaker 2: you take back there you.
[37:02] Speaker 1: Also attack them.
[37:04] Speaker 2: So Okay, in November, you've lost the fighting, you've lost
[37:07] Speaker 2: the war, the winterest coming. Like you said, in those months,
[37:11] Speaker 2: there probably would have been time to recoup, resupply, get
[37:14] Speaker 2: your proofs from the planes, maybe rethink the idea of
[37:17] Speaker 2: using air force for some coercive bombing. Was that, ever,
[37:21] Speaker 2: ever a question in the minds of or a point
[37:24] Speaker 2: of discussion from what you've read.
[37:26] Speaker 3: Well, you know there are I know for a fact
[37:30] Speaker 3: that they were very very detailed air force planning that
[37:34] Speaker 3: would gone into these offensive missions, right down to the
[37:37] Speaker 3: number of sorties that they would generate and the weapons
[37:39] Speaker 3: that they would use, cannons, rockets, bombs, all of that.
[37:43] Speaker 3: They was all planned, It was all there. The political leadership,
[37:46] Speaker 3: of course, like I said, repeatedly rejected these things. No, no,
[37:49] Speaker 3: we're never going to use their force in an offensive role.
[37:52] Speaker 3: So not one bomb was dropped, not one rocket was fired,
[37:56] Speaker 3: not one cannon was fired, right through the whole conferenty.
[38:00] Speaker 3: It's a shameful, uh you know, state of things that
[38:04] Speaker 3: played out in nineteen sixty two. But you know this
[38:07] Speaker 3: other point you mentioned they very interesting. Now what happened
[38:11] Speaker 3: actually as a result of that defeat is that the
[38:13] Speaker 3: whole system went into shock and you had this myth
[38:17] Speaker 3: of the twelve foot tall chinaman being created, and that
[38:21] Speaker 3: is something that has held firm even till date if
[38:26] Speaker 3: you look at it right up to Ladak, probably at
[38:29] Speaker 3: the I'm talking with the twenty twenty Ladak standoff where
[38:32] Speaker 3: you had the Galvan skirmish. Incidantly, there's a movie being
[38:35] Speaker 3: made about that as well being shot. Yeah, some Monkans
[38:38] Speaker 3: thing that's out early next year. So probably the first
[38:41] Speaker 3: time in cinema history that you're seeing two movies on
[38:45] Speaker 3: the China War several decades apart, being made within you know,
[38:49] Speaker 3: released within months of each other. Interesting. Yeah, and by
[38:54] Speaker 3: the way, there's a third movie also out on the
[38:56] Speaker 3: other front, So the two fronts.
[38:57] Speaker 1: There's a movie that's.
[39:00] Speaker 3: So it's all geopolitical movies are the flavor of the season,
[39:04] Speaker 3: it seems. But you know, coming back to the point
[39:06] Speaker 3: is that when you're defeated in the mind, I think
[39:11] Speaker 3: you become very defensive. But at the same time, the
[39:15] Speaker 3: fear of China kind of went into the system. So
[39:20] Speaker 3: let's not provoke the Chinese. Another sixty two might happen.
[39:24] Speaker 3: That kind of got called out for the first time
[39:26] Speaker 3: in sixty seven when you saw the clashes in Sundorong Chu,
[39:30] Speaker 3: where for the first time the Indian military stood up
[39:33] Speaker 3: and there replied to the Chinese. They kind of backed off.
[39:37] Speaker 3: You had in eighty seven to Jener sundar Ji l
[39:40] Speaker 3: lifted an entire brigade. In Al Nachel, there was a
[39:44] Speaker 3: standoff in the Chinese which lasted almost a decade. Several
[39:48] Speaker 3: years after that, in fact, and in twenty twenty, when
[39:52] Speaker 3: India rapidly militarized, I was on the ground there covering
[39:55] Speaker 3: this build up and I saw the first things that
[39:58] Speaker 3: India had deployed. There was the Indian Air Force fighter
[40:02] Speaker 3: jets landing in Lay, and you know, there was a
[40:05] Speaker 3: sense of relief for me that I said, if there's
[40:08] Speaker 3: ever going to be a war, This was sometime in
[40:10] Speaker 3: about June or July, if there's ever going to be
[40:12] Speaker 3: a war, nott forbid. Nobody wants these kind of things
[40:15] Speaker 3: to happen. The Indian Air Force is not going to
[40:16] Speaker 3: be left out this time, right, So the defeat in
[40:22] Speaker 3: the mind actually led to a kind of a defensive mentality.
[40:26] Speaker 3: But at the same time, the Indian state in post
[40:30] Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two carried out one of the most significant
[40:34] Speaker 3: reforms of the defense ministry in terms of expanding the
[40:37] Speaker 3: military budget. The military budget literally went through the roof.
[40:42] Speaker 3: It crossed three percent of the GDP. It was less
[40:44] Speaker 3: than two percent at that time. It crossed three percent
[40:48] Speaker 3: and they started raising mountain divisions, you know, formations. Literally,
[40:54] Speaker 3: the Indian military grew, it became double or triple the size,
[40:58] Speaker 3: and what you see today is a result of that
[41:01] Speaker 3: post nineteen sixty two build up of soldiers literally double
[41:06] Speaker 3: triple in size. And Pakistan saw that happening and they
[41:10] Speaker 3: realized Field Marshal Ayub realized that the only chance he
[41:12] Speaker 3: had to grab Kashmir was sixty five. They were held
[41:17] Speaker 3: to a standstill, and in seventy one you saw that
[41:20] Speaker 3: utter defeat where East Pakistan was broken away, became an
[41:23] Speaker 3: independent nation. And I argue I wouldn't be wrong on this.
[41:27] Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy one would not have happened but for nineteen
[41:31] Speaker 3: sixty two, because that shock to the system was so
[41:34] Speaker 3: intense that we started putting in a lot of things
[41:37] Speaker 3: in process. We expanded, we you know, gave serious thought
[41:41] Speaker 3: to We started giving a lot of attention to battle
[41:46] Speaker 3: hard and military leadership like General Harbucks, Field Marshall manic Shaw.
[41:50] Speaker 3: All of these personalities came out after the defeat of
[41:53] Speaker 3: sixty two. Whereas you had that whole coterie of generals
[41:57] Speaker 3: that led us that you know, literally sleep walked into
[42:00] Speaker 3: disaster in sixty two. They were completely marginalized, they've faded
[42:04] Speaker 3: away into history. But you had a very new crop
[42:07] Speaker 3: of aggressive young leaders who found favor and they rose
[42:12] Speaker 3: through the ranks, thank god for that. So and also
[42:17] Speaker 3: some very severe serious capability building was done. There was
[42:22] Speaker 3: an organization called the DGS Director at General Security which
[42:26] Speaker 3: was set up, you know, shortly after the war in
[42:29] Speaker 3: sixty two, which was three arms. Is actually our first
[42:32] Speaker 3: big covert war fighting force. It was under the Intelligence
[42:36] Speaker 3: Bureau to begin with. It had three arms. It had
[42:39] Speaker 3: the Special Frontier Force, which was literally that you can
[42:42] Speaker 3: call it the Dalai Lama's Army. The Special Services Bureau
[42:46] Speaker 3: meant to train local populations and you know, resistance fighting,
[42:51] Speaker 3: something that was learned in Europe during the Nazi occupation.
[42:55] Speaker 3: And you had the third one, which is the Aviation
[42:57] Speaker 3: Research Center. Three very key organizations and under this overall
[43:01] Speaker 3: DGS that was set up. This organization continues, it's now
[43:04] Speaker 3: under the RNAW. And of course in sixty eight you
[43:07] Speaker 3: had the RNW being set up as a dedicated external
[43:10] Speaker 3: intelligence agency. So they said that, look, you can't have
[43:13] Speaker 3: your intelligence agency doing everything internal and external intelligence, which
[43:18] Speaker 3: is what the IB was doing. So they weren't giving
[43:20] Speaker 3: very clear intel to the government, and a lot of
[43:24] Speaker 3: capabilities gaps were there. Those were filled up, and that's
[43:29] Speaker 3: why you saw a very different account of us presenting
[43:33] Speaker 3: ourselves in seventy one, and of course that continued this
[43:37] Speaker 3: paralysis when it came to China. You know, it continued
[43:40] Speaker 3: that no border infrastructure till the early twenty first century
[43:45] Speaker 3: when we actually saw the Chinese building up big time
[43:49] Speaker 3: on the Tibetan Plateau, when there was an explosive burst
[43:52] Speaker 3: of infrastructure building. You had that high altitude railway line
[43:57] Speaker 3: that came over there, and that's when India realized, look,
[43:59] Speaker 3: if we don't match their infrastructure build you're going to
[44:02] Speaker 3: see another sixty two kinds of situation, and this time
[44:05] Speaker 3: they probably won't go back. Right. So a lot of
[44:08] Speaker 3: the building up that you're seeing now with the Border
[44:11] Speaker 3: Roads organization and all that is a response to what
[44:13] Speaker 3: the Chinese have been doing in the twenty first century.
[44:16] Speaker 3: But the main thing is that it's really important to
[44:19] Speaker 3: first fight the Chinese in the mind Yeah, and they're
[44:22] Speaker 3: very good at mind games, and our defensive mentality, I
[44:26] Speaker 3: think that is going to take a while to get
[44:29] Speaker 3: out of needs to be complimented with an offensive mindset
[44:35] Speaker 3: as well.
[44:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think you've already seen some bits and
[44:38] Speaker 2: pieces of that during the reasons four years standoff with
[44:42] Speaker 2: the Chinese when you had at the tactical level at
[44:44] Speaker 2: least the Indian army or taking some offensive action, taking
[44:48] Speaker 2: some of putting on some offensive missions when they thought
[44:52] Speaker 2: the need was there for such missions, right, Sania, you
[44:57] Speaker 2: know a quick time engine on this infamous mcmahone line
[45:03] Speaker 2: to sort of understand why this problem exists between between
[45:07] Speaker 2: India and China. Uh, Is it as simple as what
[45:11] Speaker 2: I've read that the core of the core core problem
[45:14] Speaker 2: is that the line was drawn on a small map
[45:17] Speaker 2: with the pen. The stroke of that pen on that
[45:20] Speaker 2: map looks thin to you, but on the ground it
[45:22] Speaker 2: could be vast. The width could be as many many kilometers.
[45:25] Speaker 2: Which is why you have China saying claiming until point
[45:28] Speaker 2: A while India games and point b, and you have
[45:30] Speaker 2: both those points overlapping. And also the fact that the
[45:33] Speaker 2: text of the of that of that agreement when it
[45:36] Speaker 2: was signed by the British, by the British, everything in
[45:39] Speaker 2: this world, I thing today, modern problems all goes back to.
[45:42] Speaker 3: The British Empires. Blame it on the British.
[45:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, so when the when the treaty was assigned, when
[45:48] Speaker 2: the Tibet was still not under Chinese occupation.
[45:52] Speaker 1: Uh, there was some.
[45:53] Speaker 2: Text about how that sort of line runs naturally towards
[45:56] Speaker 2: the north and something about watershed, but then that did
[45:59] Speaker 2: not matched what was happening on the government the geography
[46:03] Speaker 2: of how the revers flowed. So is it as simple
[46:05] Speaker 2: as that or is it more to it?
[46:07] Speaker 3: It? Actually there's more to it. It's a fact. See,
[46:10] Speaker 3: the British made a hash of things wherever they've gone,
[46:12] Speaker 3: right across the world. That's one of the legacies of
[46:14] Speaker 3: the British Empire. We have to just live with it.
[46:17] Speaker 3: But the fact is that if you look at the
[46:18] Speaker 3: larger picture, the bigger picture is that China is not
[46:21] Speaker 3: interested in a border or a boundary settlement with India.
[46:25] Speaker 3: If you look at the Great Game. I mean, people
[46:29] Speaker 3: say that the Great Game ended when the British left
[46:32] Speaker 3: in nineteen forty seven and forty eight, and possibly one
[46:36] Speaker 3: of the last acts of the Great Game was the
[46:38] Speaker 3: transfer of Gilgit Baltistan to Pakistan and show that India
[46:43] Speaker 3: and the Soviet Union never had a land boundary. But
[46:46] Speaker 3: I argue that the Great Game still continues. The players
[46:50] Speaker 3: have changed a bit. The Chinese have now entered the
[46:53] Speaker 3: Great Game the Americans want to come back in. The
[46:56] Speaker 3: Chinese do not want a settlement of the boundary with
[46:58] Speaker 3: India because that reduces a lot of pressure on the
[47:03] Speaker 3: Indian military. Chinese are one of the founders of acupressure
[47:10] Speaker 3: and acupuncture, and this is something that they would like
[47:13] Speaker 3: to do all along this boundary with India. The Chinese
[47:16] Speaker 3: regard India as a near peer competitor in Asia, and
[47:20] Speaker 3: throughout their last sixty seventy years, their effort has been
[47:26] Speaker 3: to ensure that India has scrawled in the Indian subcontinent
[47:30] Speaker 3: what people call the South South Asia. Right, so they
[47:34] Speaker 3: have propped up Pakistan as a counter to India in
[47:39] Speaker 3: South Asia. They've propped up North Korea as a counter
[47:42] Speaker 3: to South Korea and to Japan in East Asia. Now,
[47:47] Speaker 3: if they were to settle the boundary with India along
[47:51] Speaker 3: whatever alignment is mutually agreed to by both the countries,
[47:56] Speaker 3: that would free up a lot of military resources right
[48:00] Speaker 3: where you're not deployed all along the LAC like India
[48:05] Speaker 3: is has been since twenty twenty, and we still don't
[48:08] Speaker 3: know more than five and a half years later, we
[48:11] Speaker 3: still don't know why the Chinese did what they did.
[48:13] Speaker 3: In twenty twenty. But you just have to go into
[48:16] Speaker 3: the mind of chi Jin being to understand and you
[48:19] Speaker 3: possibly start to get answers. And whoever I've asked in
[48:22] Speaker 3: the Indian leadership, definitely the Chief of Defense Staff, the
[48:27] Speaker 3: late Serious General Rabat. He mentioned that this operation in
[48:31] Speaker 3: twenty twenty Ladak was directly it came down from the
[48:36] Speaker 3: political leadership in China, right, it was chi Jinping. It
[48:39] Speaker 3: goes all the way up there. Nothing in China happens
[48:41] Speaker 3: by accident. So this whole thing was a means of
[48:44] Speaker 3: keeping India in check, under control, under a lot of pressure.
[48:49] Speaker 3: There were talks about you know, you take you know Laddak,
[48:57] Speaker 3: you know you allow us to keep Accechin and we
[49:00] Speaker 3: we will allow you to keep ar Nachal Pradesh. That
[49:02] Speaker 3: swap was suggested by Chawin Lai in the fifties sixties.
[49:08] Speaker 3: But then that's gone off into the background. Now. But
[49:12] Speaker 3: now you know, the entire India China boundary dispute has
[49:17] Speaker 3: become a kind of a military race for power and supremacy.
[49:22] Speaker 3: If China will not want to settle this right now,
[49:25] Speaker 3: because it would, like I said, allow India to focus
[49:30] Speaker 3: on building up the military, or reduce the pressure on
[49:34] Speaker 3: the border, which will free up resources to maybe tackle Pakistan.
[49:39] Speaker 3: You know, those are those things. So they would want
[49:42] Speaker 3: that pressure on India to remain, which is why you
[49:44] Speaker 3: see the kind of collusivity between India and China all through.
[49:50] Speaker 3: We saw it through Operations Indu and even before that.
[49:54] Speaker 3: That's where it's headed. But the fact is that, yes,
[49:56] Speaker 3: the British did err in a lot of places historic
[50:00] Speaker 3: they have that thick line is that is a fact.
[50:04] Speaker 3: There are portions because of the thickness of the pencil
[50:07] Speaker 3: which are you know, overlapping. But if you're if your
[50:11] Speaker 3: main if your mindset does not allow you to settle
[50:13] Speaker 3: the border favorably, then it doesn't matter. Those alignments really
[50:18] Speaker 3: don't matter. Then all that they will you will be
[50:21] Speaker 3: faced with is an adversary who will keep doing what
[50:24] Speaker 3: we call salami slicing tactics right four steps forward, two
[50:28] Speaker 3: steps back, and he's created a so called buffer zone,
[50:31] Speaker 3: and he's pressurizing you on the buffer zone. Incidently, the
[50:34] Speaker 3: place where Major Chatansi and his men made their last
[50:37] Speaker 3: stand falls in the buffer zone. So we briefly had
[50:41] Speaker 3: access to that five years back when we launched that
[50:45] Speaker 3: operation on the Kailash Range to capture all those areas
[50:49] Speaker 3: that were in the buffer zone. But as part of
[50:51] Speaker 3: the post you know, conflict pullback, we kind of move
[50:57] Speaker 3: back and that's now once again back in the buffer zone.
[51:00] Speaker 3: All those areas, the sungars where they made their last
[51:04] Speaker 3: and some of their graves are there, you know, all
[51:06] Speaker 3: of those places are still in the buffalo. This is
[51:07] Speaker 3: what China's grand strategy is. They're not looking at any
[51:11] Speaker 3: great border settlement with India. In fact, only two countries
[51:14] Speaker 3: they have not settled their borders with are India and
[51:17] Speaker 3: of course Bhutan, which they're pressurizing. So and this is
[51:21] Speaker 3: possibly going to become worse in the years. If we
[51:24] Speaker 3: don't stand up to the Chinese, we're going to have,
[51:26] Speaker 3: you know, a hard time ahead. I don't foresee a
[51:31] Speaker 3: very happy situation in the next couple of years. If
[51:35] Speaker 3: they were to settle that it would have I mean,
[51:38] Speaker 3: it would be the most logical thing to do. They
[51:41] Speaker 3: would not have to deploy on these you know. And
[51:44] Speaker 3: the sixty two War, what we forget, Dave, is that
[51:46] Speaker 3: it's the first time in history that two nations had
[51:49] Speaker 3: fought at this altitude in division strength, and the post
[51:54] Speaker 3: twenty to twenty deployment as well. Never in history have
[51:58] Speaker 3: such large formations like you're not talking of literally divisions
[52:03] Speaker 3: or course, but entire field armies are deployed at such
[52:06] Speaker 3: altitudes like more than one hundred thousand, one hundred and
[52:09] Speaker 3: fifty thousand men deployed on this altitude. Never happened before.
[52:14] Speaker 3: It's the logical thing to do, demilitarize that entire area,
[52:19] Speaker 3: go down to a settlement, start the boundary level talks.
[52:24] Speaker 3: The special representatives are talking us and ours and theirs.
[52:29] Speaker 3: But when you have incidents like Laddak, your Gulvan clash
[52:34] Speaker 3: and all that, that takes the whole process back by decades.
[52:37] Speaker 3: So your entire negotiations on the McMahon line and all
[52:42] Speaker 3: that have literally, you know, taken a beating. Now for us,
[52:47] Speaker 3: the biggest casualty, and we've discussed this in past episodes,
[52:50] Speaker 3: is the loss of trust. You can't trust the Chinese.
[52:54] Speaker 3: You know, they have continuously been building up their side
[52:59] Speaker 3: of the boarder. They've been creating those boarder of villages
[53:02] Speaker 3: which are which point to very gloomy signs for the future.
[53:07] Speaker 3: Where they've looked at the treaty clauses which say that
[53:13] Speaker 3: populated areas cannot be exchanged, right, so therefore closing any
[53:17] Speaker 3: such possibility of any So I think the boundary lines,
[53:22] Speaker 3: whichever way you look at whether it's the McMahon line,
[53:25] Speaker 3: whether it's the lac, the way we look at it,
[53:27] Speaker 3: the way they look at it, this is going to
[53:29] Speaker 3: continue for the next ten twenty years until possibly a
[53:33] Speaker 3: new generation of politicians come either in India or in China,
[53:38] Speaker 3: or in both places and then decide, look, it's only
[53:42] Speaker 3: in our best interest to settle this right now. It
[53:44] Speaker 3: doesn't seem to be the case given the kind of
[53:48] Speaker 3: leadership that you have in China that's antagonistic to you.
[53:51] Speaker 3: Final thought on the sixty two ward.
[53:52] Speaker 2: We've spent the entire episode talking about how we see
[53:55] Speaker 2: it from the Indian perspective, but I was very I'm
[53:58] Speaker 2: very interested to know how does China see the sixty
[54:01] Speaker 2: two war, whether it's it's in literature, whether it's in
[54:05] Speaker 2: it's writing, the aless that China has across several thing
[54:09] Speaker 2: times across the world, what they sort of propagate when
[54:12] Speaker 2: they talk about sixty sixty two war in terms of
[54:14] Speaker 2: why they launched even they accept that they launched an offensive.
[54:19] Speaker 2: So what have you read about this? What do you
[54:21] Speaker 2: know about this? What can you tell us about how
[54:23] Speaker 2: China sees war?
[54:25] Speaker 3: Well, a good question there. You know the Chinese, how
[54:27] Speaker 3: they see this as it is framed in their official
[54:31] Speaker 3: lingo as the Sino Indian border self defensive offensive war
[54:40] Speaker 3: something like that. You know, it's a it's a it's
[54:43] Speaker 3: quite a mouthful. But they're saying that it was a
[54:46] Speaker 3: war that they had to strike in self defense. That's
[54:50] Speaker 3: what the title suggests. In Chinese. It hasn't occupied much
[54:55] Speaker 3: mind space for the Chinese. They look at the Korean
[54:57] Speaker 3: War as this heroic struggle against the West and all
[55:00] Speaker 3: of that, and it was a brutal war. But sixty
[55:03] Speaker 3: two is a footnote. It rarely exists. It barely exists.
[55:08] Speaker 3: And I kind of see why, because of that great
[55:11] Speaker 3: lea forward, when you've lost thirty million of your citizens,
[55:14] Speaker 3: then a small boundary war in which the casualties are
[55:18] Speaker 3: as follows the Indian casualties. About four thousand soldiers were
[55:23] Speaker 3: killed and four thousands were captured. Around four thousand several
[55:27] Speaker 3: thousands more injured. The Chinese. And this is the thing
[55:30] Speaker 3: that you have to take with a pinch of solid
[55:32] Speaker 3: They claim to have lost only about seven hundred soldiers
[55:36] Speaker 3: and a one thousand injured. The official figures would probably
[55:40] Speaker 3: be much more. And in Razangla, incidently, India's the company,
[55:46] Speaker 3: the higher company that was of Kumaunis that were literally
[55:50] Speaker 3: last man, last round. They supposed to have inflicted heavy
[55:53] Speaker 3: casualties on the Chinese more than a thousand, is what
[55:56] Speaker 3: we say, because they literally kept firing bullets until there
[56:00] Speaker 3: were no bullets to fire. The Chinese state never accepts
[56:05] Speaker 3: casualties very easily, so even in this framing of this
[56:09] Speaker 3: war as a self defensive offensive action that they undertook,
[56:15] Speaker 3: they haven't come out with what many people believe the
[56:18] Speaker 3: actual accurate estimate of casualties. So it's a minor footnote
[56:24] Speaker 3: in their whole, you know, overall military history thing, and
[56:29] Speaker 3: it's not given too much of importance. But politically, for Mau,
[56:37] Speaker 3: it is really important to teach India lesson. And Mao
[56:41] Speaker 3: was out of control in you know sixty two, as
[56:45] Speaker 3: I mentioned, he was this mad, angry, savage, paranoid dictator
[56:52] Speaker 3: who did the most horrible things to his people. And
[56:59] Speaker 3: guess who he threw into a gulag camp and brutalized
[57:03] Speaker 3: and beat up Xi Jinping's parents. They were hardcore, they
[57:08] Speaker 3: were so they were literally the people that Chi Jin
[57:13] Speaker 3: Pin began, that Mao began his struggle with so. Chi
[57:18] Speaker 3: Jin Ping's father was condemned, he was banished to the countryside.
[57:22] Speaker 3: His wife was forced to condemn her son young she
[57:27] Speaker 3: So there's an interesting study of how this enigma that
[57:33] Speaker 3: Chi Jinping has become today is a result of all
[57:35] Speaker 3: the childhood trauma that he's sufferst to have suffered during
[57:38] Speaker 3: the Cultural Revolution and all of that. But sixty two
[57:43] Speaker 3: minor footnote for the Chinese no movies made. There was
[57:47] Speaker 3: exactly that one movie. It's a propaganda movie that came
[57:50] Speaker 3: out a couple of years back to was released on
[57:52] Speaker 3: the fiftieth anniversary of the India China were still there
[57:56] Speaker 3: on YouTube. It's I think it's a half hour, forty
[57:58] Speaker 3: five minute thing, but no popular culture, no movies in
[58:03] Speaker 3: popular culture. All their attention of the Chinese film industries
[58:09] Speaker 3: for what the Japanese did to them and what the
[58:11] Speaker 3: Americans did to them in Korea. So I think we
[58:13] Speaker 3: seem to have gotten away with with just that minor
[58:16] Speaker 3: propaganda movie in the sixties, right.
[58:20] Speaker 2: Interesting, I think we ended there one final quick question
[58:24] Speaker 2: talking about movies. So, movies happening on this The battle
[58:27] Speaker 2: of the movie had already happened on this by the way,
[58:29] Speaker 2: fresh one is happening now, Like you said, a movie
[58:32] Speaker 2: on galvan is happening. What's that one battle across all
[58:36] Speaker 2: the wars that NDAs fought you think deserves a movie
[58:39] Speaker 2: that still doesn't hasn't been made.
[58:42] Speaker 3: A movie that apart from mine on the Operation X
[58:48] Speaker 3: Subtle Book plug that of course. But but one I
[58:53] Speaker 3: would like to see is and I believe he's already
[58:58] Speaker 3: making a movie on it. That is Faranata is planning
[59:02] Speaker 3: something on the nineteen seventy one missile attack on Karachi.
[59:06] Speaker 3: That's one we talked about last night. Yes, so that
[59:09] Speaker 3: is possibly under you know, in under production. But you know,
[59:13] Speaker 3: more than just the battles, there are plenty of battles
[59:17] Speaker 3: that we can focus on. You know, there are also
[59:21] Speaker 3: stories that need to be told. They've on operations like
[59:26] Speaker 3: the Indian armies move into Bangladesh for instance, the Liberation
[59:30] Speaker 3: of Bangladesh. I you know, it was one of the
[59:34] Speaker 3: most glorious chapters in the twentieth century where you had
[59:38] Speaker 3: one army entering this province in support of a genocide
[59:44] Speaker 3: people who are you know, being massacred by an occupational army,
[59:50] Speaker 3: of the Pakistani army, liberating that province, making a new
[59:56] Speaker 3: country of Bangladesh, and then rapidly withdrawing, you know, allowing
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: that country to flourish and you know, thrive for more
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: than half a century. That story has never been told,
[1:00:08] Speaker 3: you know that how India created Bangladesh or helped create
[1:00:12] Speaker 3: Bangladesh in just nine months, starting from Operation Searchlight in
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: March nineteen seventy one, right up to the creation of
[1:00:19] Speaker 3: Bangladesh in December sixteenth, nineteen seventy one, and a country
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: that was literally, you know, living on a hand to
[1:00:27] Speaker 3: mouth existence. It was a very poor country, but it
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: had a very focused politico military leadership that thought that
[1:00:35] Speaker 3: this was the right thing to do. And there are
[1:00:37] Speaker 3: so many other smaller stories as part of this larger
[1:00:40] Speaker 3: story that can be told about how there was a
[1:00:43] Speaker 3: very brave Pakistani journalist who saw the massacre and he
[1:00:47] Speaker 3: wrote that big, very haunting story, Anthony Mascarinus genocide in
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: seventy one. All of those, I think we've still not
[1:00:56] Speaker 3: you know, done justice to the sacrifice that we made
[1:00:59] Speaker 3: very unusual, but a very interesting kind of thing that
[1:01:03] Speaker 3: only India could do. We always, you know, when you
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: look at world history, oh, how the Allies liberated France
[1:01:09] Speaker 3: and Europe from the Nazis and all that, we never
[1:01:13] Speaker 3: look at this one great example of how India liberated
[1:01:17] Speaker 3: this province there where there was actually a genocide on.
[1:01:21] Speaker 3: So that's the story. Anyone watching it, get any ideas,
[1:01:24] Speaker 3: please make a story on the nineteen seventy one liberation
[1:01:26] Speaker 3: of Bangladesh. It's one of the greatest stories of the
[1:01:29] Speaker 3: twentieth century.
[1:01:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a fantastic point.
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: Actually, I think perhaps we should do a couple of
[1:01:33] Speaker 2: episodes on that in fact, because it's, like you said,
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: it's sort of the perfect operation, right, It's not just
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: as simple as you just sending your army across and
[1:01:41] Speaker 2: with it coming back with victory. It's also operations like
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: the one you've wrote written about, the sort of bays
[1:01:47] Speaker 2: you prepared before that offensive that you launched, physical offensive
[1:01:51] Speaker 2: that you launched, that overt offensive, the COVID base that
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: you prepared, whether it was by funding the Muktibaiini, whether
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: it was through the naval cover tops that not many
[1:01:59] Speaker 2: knew about until your book came out, so that's sort
[1:02:02] Speaker 2: of yeah, you're right, it's the perfect operation that I
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: think deserves a movie and.
[1:02:06] Speaker 3: A politico military kind of thing. And you know, exactly
[1:02:09] Speaker 3: like how possibly like the Cuban missile crisis could be
[1:02:13] Speaker 3: even more an OTT series because I think that far
[1:02:16] Speaker 3: too many chapters exactly for one movie to do justice.
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: It's a fantastic point.
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: So I if anyone's you know, listening, is listening to
[1:02:23] Speaker 2: us out there, perhaps they can take some.
[1:02:25] Speaker 3: Use from there.
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: That's it and the great chat has always fantastic discussion.
[1:02:30] Speaker 2: Loved all the inserts that you had on this.
[1:02:32] Speaker 3: Thanks very episode, Thanks for having me.
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: Thanks so much, and thanks as always to our listeners
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: and viewers. That's it for this week's defense. Lowes was
[1:02:38] Speaker 2: more tune in next week. They'll then stay safe and
[1:02:40] Speaker 2: do not cross any boundaries out of us port.

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