China's "aggression in 1962"and the "Hindu bomb" Maxwell,Neville World Policy Journal;Summer 1999;16,2;ProQuest Research Library Pg.111 REC●NSIDERATI●NS Neville Maxuell is a senior research associate at Queen Elizabeth House.Oxfurd Universiry.He rovered the Sino-Indian conflict as South Asia correspondent of the Times(London)and is the anthr of India's China War (Pantbeon.1970). China's“Aggression in 1962”and the“Hindu Bomb” Neville Maxwell When the Indian prime minister A.B.Vaj- The myth that the 1962 border war re- payee sought to justify his country's nuclear sulted from an unprovoked surprise attack tests last year in a personal letter to Presi- by an expansionist China has been cherished dent Clinton,he must have appreciated that ever since by India's political class as ex- a truthful account of his government's moti- plaining the humiliating military defeat vation would hardly suit his purpose.Acqui- their country suffered.That the Indian ac- sition of nuclear weaponry had long been a count of the dispute was almost universally dream of the Hindu nationalist party(now accepted outside India at the time,and even the Bharatiya Janata Party,or BJP)that Vaj- now enjoys some international credence, payee leads,was proclaimed as an aim in its will have encouraged Prime Minister Vaj- political platform soon after India achieved payee to try it out again on the Clinton ad- independence,and was put into effect as ministration.But the truth of the Sino- soon as possible after it won power.Impa- Indian dispute and the border war that cli- tience,even contempt,with India's preten- maxed-but did not resolve-it is precisely sions to extend Gandhian nonviolence into the opposite.It was India that created the the international sphere had from the be- dispute,India that refused to submit it to ginning marked the BJP's approach,and the the normal process of boundary negotiation, nuclear tests in 1998 were seen as the only and India that confronted China with a sus- appropriate demonstration of the emergence tained military challenge which finally al- of Hindu India as a great power.But a less lowed Beijing only one possible response:a assertive and more emollient explanation preemptive counteroffensive. than that was clearly called for if Washing- The origin of the border dispute lay in ton's indignation about the tests was to be the task that faced both independent India assuaged. and the new People's Republic of China Therefore Vajpayee had recourse to an (PRC),as it did many Asian countries in the old fiction,almost a fable perhaps in that he mid-twentieth century:the definition and probably believed in its essential truth.He legal settlement of boundaries.This task was cited China's"armed aggression against In- among the first formal expressions of their dia in 1962"and the unresolved Sino-Indian new identity as modern,sovereign states as border dispute as justification for the tests, they moved to emulate and catch up with presenting them as essential to meet the Europe,which in the preceding three centu- threat to India's security posed by China's ries had seen the introduction of boundaries, nuclear weapons.The prime minister's let- a new political institution.Premodern states ter was not intended for publication,but could exist within frontiers,which were not the“threat from China'”was the essence of lines but areas,zones of transition between the Indian government's orchestrated and state powers:modern states needed bounda- prearranged public justification for its nu- ries,precisely defined linear limits to sover- clear tests. eignty,negotiated between neighbors. China's "Aggression in 1962"and the "Hindu Bomb" 111 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.Further reproduction prohibited without permission.Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. China's "aggression in 1962" and the "Hindu bomb" Maxwell, Neville World Policy Journal; Summer 1999; 16, 2; ProQuest Research Library pg. 111