"We Were Out of Touch with Reality"

In any other week but one in which the U.S. and Russia were in lethal confrontation, the eyes of the world would have been on the Himalayas--where the two Asian giants are locked in momentous war.

The battles at either end of the 2,500-mile mountain border between India and Red China marked the end of three years of skirmishing and wordy debate about just where the frontier lies. They also marked the beginning of the end of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's incredible naivete about the nature of his enemy. At 72, Nehru was getting a lesson in Communist tactics that most responsible statesmen learned long ago. Glaringly, Nehru's policy of appeasing the Reds was exposed as bankrupt in the bloodied snow of the mountain battleground. But Nehru was still insisting that India cannot give up its "basic principles" of nonalignment just because of "the present difficulty."

The present difficulty was that Indian troops were being driven back by the determined, well-armed Chinese, with heavy losses at every point of the fighting.

Falling Outposts. In the wastes of Ladakh, in Kashmir, the invading Chinese overran Indian outposts, and Indian troops struggled to set up a second line of defense. It was even worse in the North East Frontier Agency at the other end of the border, where the fighting takes place in a region that has changed little since a 17th century Indian explorer described it as "another world, whose frightful roads are like paths leading to death. The great forests that clothe its hills are full of violence, like the hearts of the ignorant."

The Chinese invaders poured through the mountain passes in a three-pronged drive aimed at the monastery village of Towang, which stands upon a 9,000-ft. height guarding the green valley of the Brahmaputra River. A 3,000-man Indian brigade was virtually wiped out, and an exhausted survivor said that the successive waves of Chinese troops "were like ants--they extended as far as the eye could see." At nearby Ndhola, the Indians fought until they ran out of ammunition and then retreated through the mountains, where--famished, frostbitten, stumbling with snowblindness--hundreds died of exposure.

Two fresh Indian brigades, supported by mountain artillery and heavy mortars, were rushed to reenforce Towang. Their convoy was still bouncing up the rutted Jeep path from Tezpur when they discovered that they were too late. Towang fell to the Chinese "after bitter fighting," but its Indian defenders, said a government spokesman, "withdrew according to plan." The Indian defense was further crippled by the absence of the border commander, Lieut. General B. M. Kaul, who reluctantly allowed himself to be evacuated after a bout of pneumonia.

Greedy Banyas. The entire region lay open to the Chinese as far as Tezpur on the Brahmaputra, 100 miles from Towang. Indian planters who had displayed unruffled British calm began shipping their families south. Forty-five U.S. Baptist missionaries in eastern Assam began to pull out, turning over mission schools and hospitals to Indian assistants. Some imported food was in short supply, and India's banyas (village shopkeepers) took advantage of the situation to boost prices. The evidence of the Chinese advance came, oddly enough, from transistor radios. At first it was possible to tune in on Indian army short-wave transmitters and hear orders and messages in Urdu. From midweek on, Indians listened to the messages of the advancing Chinese. An added source of information was the sibilant voice of a young Indian woman, who reads all Peking radio broadcasts beamed to India: Indian soldiers nicknamed her the "Yellow Peril."

There was bitterness in the defeated army. Indian intelligence had reported that 100,000 Chinese troops were massed along the border against only 20,000 Indians. Tibetan refugees had brought news of the massive Chinese buildup weeks ago, but the government failed to act on the information. Defense Minister Krishna Menon, longtime Communist apologist, popped up in Bangalore and Bombay breathing defiance: "Those who have invaded our territory will have to be thrown out to the last man!" An Indian officer said angrily: "He should be back at his desk, and silent."

Girded Loins. After brooding for two days, Prime Minister Nehru made a broadcast denouncing China as a "powerful and unscrupulous opponent" and declaring "We must gird up our loins and face this greatest menace that "has come to us since we became independent." He announced that India would seek arms abroad, though he still seemed hesitant about directly asking for badly needed military aid from the West, since that might interfere with India's neutralist stance. Nehru pathetically harped on Red China's "lack of gratitude" for India's speedy recognition of Peking, and conceded that the invasion has "made us realize that we were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world and living in an artificial atmosphere."

A meeting with Russia's Ambassador Ivan A. Benediktov was a further eye opener for Nehru, who had clearly been counting on Nikita Khrushchev to help restrain Red China. The ambassador flatly advised Nehru 1) not to appeal to the West for arms, because this would involve India in the cold war, and 2) not to take the border question to the U.N., since, in the last resort, the Soviet Union would be forced to side with Red China. Benediktov advised negotiation with Red China-Peking's latest offer, after advancing up to 40 miles into India, is that both sides pull back twelve miles from the "line of actual control," which would just sacrifice that much more Indian territory.

It was the kind of blandly cynical, one-sided "compromise" offer that the Reds have often in the past directed at the West and that Nehru has always urged the West to accept. This time, with his own borders at stake, he rejected it. At the same time, Nehru instructed India's U.N. representative to make a blistering attack on Red China's aggression, then to support Peking's U.N. admission, because "the only effective way to check Chinese military adventurism is to make her accept her responsibilities as a member of the world organization."

In his talk with Benediktov, Nehru kept asking: "Why are they attacking us? Why now?" To some observers, the answer goes far beyond the 52,000 sq. mi. of border territory claimed by China. India, by a mixture of planning, incentive and free enterprise, has made undeniable strides out of poverty, in glaring contrast to Red China's inhuman regimentation, which has brought nothing but hardship and near famine. The invasion may be aimed at disrupting India's political and economic life. In broadcast after broadcast, Peking hammered at India's "retrograde economic system" and U.S. aid.

Cheating Enemy. Nehru could take heart from the determination of the Indian people, reinforced by an ancient, almost visceral dislike of the Chinese. A Bengali teacher said, "I met some Communist acquaintances last night. I told them that if they turned out to be responsible for bringing sorrow to our country, I would kill them with my bare hands." Unions decided to give up strikes. Even India's Communists obliquely condemned Red China, and pacifists like saintly Vinoba Bhave supported the war effort.

At week's end, Nehru finally got off dead center through the declaration of a state of emergency, putting the nation on a war footing. India's elder statesman, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, leader of the conservative Swatantra Party, demanded that Nehru fire Menon as De fense Minister and take over the post himself. He charged that India's defense policy "has proved to be a miserable failure. It is meaningless to accuse the enemy of cheating--it's the enemy's business to cheat." Rajaji mourned that India stood alone: "All our neighbors are either against us or have lost confidence in us. Our foreign policy has failed by any test."

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