The Reputational Imperative by Shankar Mahesh

Author:Shankar, Mahesh [Shankar, Mahesh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2018-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Indian policy in the lead-up to the war of 1962 with China is puzzling in two significant ways. First, given the nature of the stakes and Nehru’s supposedly idealistic view of the prospects of Sino-Indian ties, it is difficult to explain why New Delhi brushed aside the Chinese premier’s 1960 offer of a deal that would have left India with territory of most value to it in exchange for letting China hold land that Indian officials thought of as being useless to them. A second quandary pertains to why the Nehru government displayed this intransigence and, what’s more, soon after pursued an even riskier and militarily provocative Forward Policy in full awareness of the fact that the country clearly lacked the military wherewithal with which to back up such a stance in the event that the Chinese responded with greater force.

This chapter has demonstrated how the reputational imperative was a crucial, and thus far unexplored, factor influencing Indian decision making during this period. New Delhi’s rejection of Zhou’s package offer at the 1960 talks, by this account, had very little to do with any salience—strategic or symbolic-nationalist—that he attached to territory in the western sector. Similarly, domestic political pressures, while important, are less persuasive as a determinant of Indian conduct than is commonly believed to be the case. Rather, Nehru and his officials assumed an intractable posture on self-confessedly unimportant territory primarily because they feared that making any concessions to a stronger China, especially in a context of Beijing’s perceived unilateralism, would communicate the sort of weakness that Chinese leaders were historically prone to exploit. Such reputational concerns were in fact apparent, as the previous chapter has detailed, from very early on, but they acquired even greater urgency toward the late 1950s. The Forward Policy was similarly driven less by some sense that Indian troops would be able to successfully reverse earlier PLA advances, but instead by the thinking that taking such action, however symbolic, was the least India could do in order to establish its resolve. The hope in New Delhi was that this, along with China’s internal and external frailties, would be sufficient in forcing the adversary to put a brake on making further military advances and perhaps even make the sort of pullbacks that Nehru required as a prerequisite for negotiations. This assessment proved to be disastrously incorrect and led instead to China’s decision to prosecute a punishing war in late 1962.

The war having humiliatingly confirmed India’s profound weakness against China, it is not surprising that the reputational fears that had animated New Delhi all along only intensified after it and that negotiations and compromise became even less palatable to Nehru. Regardless of Beijing’s declaration of a unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal in the eastern sector, the Indian prime minister persisted in his demand that Chinese troops and officials withdraw at the least to the status quo prior to September 8, 1962 (maintaining India’s territorial gains made as part of the Forward Policy) before any talks could be held.

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