There is no need hereafter to plead with the Government of India to release the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report of the Sino-Indian War of 1962. Governments after Governments refused the requests of civil society to release the report which is expected to throw lights into the reasons behind the debacle of the Indian Army against the marauding Peoples liberation Army which annexed 37,244 sq km of Indian area by the name of Aksai Chin.
The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report would have thrown a lot of light into the factors which led to the one-month old battle between the two countries and an analysis of the war leading to the victory of China. With the publication of the book Venkat Forever: A Tribute To Ambassador AP Venkateswaran, India’s most colourful Foreign Secretary, the reasons for the Sino-Indian War and the factors which contributed to the victory of the Chinese are out.
What stands out in this book other than the reminiscences by the late diplomat’s close friends is the transcription of Oral History, an interview Kishan S Rana had done with Venkateswaran in 2010. The major factor which led to the trouncing of India by the Chinese in the 1962 war, according to Venkateswaran, was VK Krishna Menon, a close confidante of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Venkateswaran, who was the deputy secretary (China) from 1962 to 1964 in the Ministry of External Affairs was privy to all the goings-on in the corridors and backrooms of power. “How a leader like Nehru who was a true patriot could have his vision clouded by pre-conceived ideas of friendship or how you had sycophants running around the place who tried to tell him that he was right, all the time when he was patently wrong. No person can presume to be a God and know everything and Nehru was not an exception. It was courtiers around him including a prime one called VK Krishna Menon, who I think was the main-China fan,” Venkateswaran told the interviewer.
He has some more startling revelations to make. Menon, who wielded enormous power had wanted to subvert the civil service of the country and convert it into a cadre system! “Menon was a communist, whether he held a card or not. It does not matter if you are completely enslaved to the idea of communism. I remember Menon often arguing that we should have a cadre system. The cadre system is a communist system and his whole objective was to make the system in India a cadre system rather than a civil service system,” recounts Venkateswaran which has been incorporated in Venkat Forever.
Venkateswaran also reveals hitherto unheard events like the notes written by Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the then deputy Prime Minister to Nehru warning the latter about the evil intentions of China. But Nehru, the self-styled intellectual, chose to ignore Sardar’s notes. Sumal Sinha, another diplomat and a talented Chinese scholar had sent a telegram to Nehru the moment China annexed Tibet: “The Chinese have entered Tibet. The Himalayas have ceased to exist.” “This telegram was one of the most powerful telegrams I have ever seen in my entire life. Yet such a powerful telegram did not shake the Indian establishment as it should have. I think it largely reflects negatively on our idol who happened to be Jawaharlal Nehru,” Venkateswaran said.
For the post-1987 generation, Venkateswaran may be yet another former Indian diplomat. But for those who saw the shadow boxing in New Delhi’s seat of power and avid newspaper readers (that was a period when 24X7 news channels and the likes of Arnab Goswamis were alien elements) Venkateswaran was the star of all stars. His erudition and articulations were unparalleled which led a pilot-turned-Prime Minister turning against him and dismissing him from the Foreign Secretary’s post in a press meet which was being telecast live by Doordarshan, popularly known those days as Rajiv Darshan.
Since the revelations are by Venkateswaran, there is no need to counter-check the same because he belonged to a special class of intellectuals who spoke only the truth. An ordinary politician like Rajiv Gandhi was not able to digest the intellectual superiority of Venkateswaran and that was the reason for his exit from the Government service.
Immediately after the exit of Venkateswaran from the Government service, the legendary IAS officer MKK Nair had come down heavily on Rajiv Gandhi for demoralising the bureaucracy by easing out a brilliant bureaucrat like Venkateswaran. “Venkateswaran was the most efficient Foreign Secretary I had seen in independent India. I knew him since his days as a probationary IFS officer. Both Venkateswaran and and KS Bajpai, had worked under me for three months and I was bowled over by the extraordinary brilliance of these two youngsters. Venkateswaran had the rare quality and ability to analyse threadbare each issue, and reach a final decision. What happened was that our Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was a total failure in making use of the services of scholars like Venkateswaran,” wrote MKK Nair in his autobiography, With No Ill Feeling to Anybody.
I had met Venkateswaran only once. It was in August 1998 during a seminar on nuclear power organised by Vigil, a Chennai based think- tank led by Radha Rajan, a scholar par excellence. Venkateswaran, Arundhati Ghosh and Arun Shourie were the speakers. The three-hour long seminar and the speeches still reverberate in the minds of the audience. Venkateswaran explained with élan the significance of the 1998 nuclear test and why India should conduct more such tests. He also gave the audience a new perspective about Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha (non-violent agitation): “We did not win Independence. One man and a few thousands won it for us. How many of us were really involved in the struggle for independenceIJ Of course we all take credit for this. But the fact is that this man in his loin cloth decided that he would stand up against the largest empire the world has known. He won with a unique instrument called non-violence. People have misunderstood and misrepresented this concept of non-violence. He said that there was the non-violence of the weak and the non-violence of the strong”. Venkateswaran also quoted from an article written by Gandhi, “I am sorry that it is rather late in life that I realise that most of my followers belong to the category of those that practise non-violence because they are weak”.
“Mahatma Gandhi believed very firmly that non-violence was the great form of courage,” said Venkateswaran.
In an hour long scintillating speech, the former diplomat convinced everybody present in the hall that why India should have nuclear bombs and nuclear tests. He was totally against India signing the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and the CTBT. He has articulated these views through his columns and essays in The Pioneer and elsewhere. Even as former diplomats turned trumpeters for the Indo-US civil nuclear deal and argued why India should sign CTBT and NPT, Venkateswaran stood his ground. Had he supported the deal, he would have been made chairman of one of the many white-elephant bodies under the then Government led by Manmohan Singh!
Ten years ago, India made a U-turn from its nuclear policy and signed the infamous Indo-US civil nuclear deal much against the wishes of experts like Venkateswaran. Isn’t it sad to note that the country has not generated at least one MW of nuclear power even after a decade of signing the dealIJ That’s the power of warnings and alerts issued by the likes of Venkateswaran, a rare breed of intellectuals.
Venkat Forever makes for an interesting read. Reminiscences by his friends and relatives are touching as well as interesting. Venkat’s memoirs offer a panoramic view of the evolution of India’s foreign policy over the years. Such is the power of his words that even hundred years down the line, the country would remember Venkateswaran. Venkat is for ever for his dear ones as well as the country. He deserves a Bharat Ratna; and Venkat Forever is a must-read .