The 1962 Chinese Invasion
Brahma Chellaney
(c) Hindustan Times
At sunrise on October 20, 1962, China’s People’s Liberation Army invaded India with overwhelming force on two separate flanks – in the west in Ladakh, and in the east across the McMahon Line in the then North-East Frontier Agency. The Chinese aggression, and the defeat and humiliation it wreaked on an unprepared India, remain deeply embedded in the Indian psyche.
India was taken completely unawares by the invasion. This reflected political naivete on its part. It also bared a woefully flawed intelligence network that failed to pick up the movement of heavy artillery and other Chinese military activity along the Himalayan frontier in the months ahead. The invasion of India was carefully planned well in advance and came after extended military preparations, including the improvement of logistics and the movement of heavy artillery from opposite Taiwan to Tibet, where PLA had since its annexation maintained infantry troops in large numbers to suppress the local population without the need to induct heavy weaponry. That began to change by the spring of 1962, but Indian intelligence remained horrifically oblivious.
Read more: Challanely
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