Rupa Publications India 1962: The War That Wasn't

This book by Shiv Kunal Verma is an outstanding work of meticulous research. The author has laid bare the events leading to the rout of the Indian army in NEFA and Ladakh in great detail. In fact the detailing of events is so vast that the reader is taken through the actual events in a life like manner. The book exposes the arrogance, incompetence and sheer rigidity combined with sheer stupidity of the Generals and the political leadership. The roles of PM Nehru, Raksha Mantri Menon, COAS Thapar, IB Chief Mullick, eastern army commander Bogey Sen, 4 Corps GoC Bijji Kaul, 4 div GoC Niranjan Prasad/Anant Pathania has been thoroughly exposed. In addition to that the roles of various brigade and battalion commanders has been detailed. It is very clear from the book as to how Indian army was rushed in to battlefield without much preparation and asked to fight battles in tactically unsound positions. To read about our army struggling without high altitude gear, devoid of adequate ammunition and put in to death trap like defensive positions is simply heart rending and yet the jawans, JCO's and junior leadership fought well. The story of capitulation of Indian army after the Nam Ka Chu debacle is simply unbelievable. Tawang was abandoned without a shot being fired and the withdrawal of troops after every contact with the enemy revealed that the senior leadership just didn't have the stomach to fight. Nam Ka Chu, Bum La, Tawang, Walong, Se La, Bomdila, Chushul, Demchok, DBO etc were places where the debacle unfolded.Even Tezpur was vacated and Nehru in his infamous speech said that his heart went out to the Assam people. The non use of the IAF on dubious presumptions of Chinese air force strength completed the misery. Moreover Nehru's pleading with the Kennedy administration for squadrons of supersonic all weather US fighter jets left his non alignment charade in tatters. Nehru asking for US aircrafts when his own IAF jets were not even used clearly reveals the panic and totally muddled thinking. After reading the book the reader is left in a trance like state where it is simply difficult to accept the truth of the rout of the army. The author has taken to task various officers who after retirement penned various books to absolve themselves of the blame and pinned the responsibility for the debacle on others some of whom were nor even alive to rebut. Some of the names of soldiers like Joginder Singh, Jaswant Singh Rawat, Hoshiar Singh, Dhan Singh Thapa, Shaitan Singh, Bikram Singh etc clearly prove that Indian army is not short of brave men. One can only hope that the areas where the war was fought in 1962 are now secure and well defended. I congratulate the author for this seminal piece of work and I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth sans any myth of the 62 war.

A great rendering of the actual war which happened You can also get immersed and feel you are in the middle of the action A great book on the Indian war history and how the whole debacle unfolded Fantastic research and seems very credible The only challenge i see is that for people who don’t have understanding of Army and its formations and ranks it would be difficult to picture the entire battle field A must read book for all Indian History lovers

I know it’s bad practice to write a review of a book while halfway through it, but this is not a review. It’s a response, an uncontainable reaction if you will. In all my reading of history - history written by Indians in the present context - there have have been a bare half-dozen books or so which have attained to the condition of excellence. Shiv Kunal Verma’s “1962: The War That Wasn’t” is one of them. Under every single conceivable parameter it runs away with every prize one can think of. The prose crackles, scintillates; it’s the kind of language you are starved of Indian writing. The narrative is breathtaking in sweep and pace, the detail and research mind-numbing. Even for one weaned on the classics of military history this book sets a new high: it is no hyperbole when I say it joins the league of Anthony Beevor’s “Stalingrad” and Bernard Fall’s “Hell In A Very Small Place” - although sadly the latter is the closer analogy, given that Shiv Kunal Verma’s book chronicles a crushing defeat, just as eloquently and brutally as Fall’s chronicled Dien Bien Phu. The only breaks I’ve taken from reading it are the times I walk to my eating places. Otherwise I haven’t been able to tear myself away from it - not that I wanted to, of course. And I’m pretty sure to start reading it all over again once I finish. The story of the India-China debacle has been told by countless others before. The narratives by participants were either angry, exculpatory, or downright dishonest; reporters like Maxwell and Mankekar gave us an inkling of the political rot that underlay the defeat of the finest army in the world. Verma’s book - in its wide-angle vision as stunningly panoramic as the entire Himalayan massif itself from west to east - gives the lie to every one of them. The only heroes are the dead, and the few who stood and fought. As a memorial to the fallen, and as posthumous justice there could be nothing greater, nothing more moving than this. All those fancy literary awards, all those wine-and-cheese affairs, can go take a jump. Verma’s book deserves laurels all its own. Maybe just one prize, given just once, for the one book. And never again. For nothing can ever come even close to this. *** K V K Murthy Bangalore

Review about the book not its content, the font of the book is quite small, better to go with kindle

I have been an avid reader of military history and official campaign accounts specially those penned by sources who were actually involved in those campaigns are generally embellished or spruced up with heroics and vainglorious events which generally have pernicious undertones , a motive to exonerate or exculpate the protagonists who might be the author or narrator/ source on whose diction the book is being published. However this account by Mr Verma, having being written after an exhaustive research, perusing battalion and formation war diaries, archival records and few interviews of survivors at various echelons , is one such exception And I personally concur with each and every conclusion he has derived - the most factual but pernicious one being that the war was a command failure , top down , right from army headquarters, eastern command, corps , division, brigade and most unfathomable being the battalion. How and why despite being in possession of NEFA since 1947 and having inclination of nefarious Chinese designs were no steps taken to formulate, implement and rehearse contingency op plans ? Why were conclusions of war games shrugged aside and lingered amid the files piling filth and dust in South block. ? Why wasn't infrastructure developed which as Chinese showed was acheivable even during the course of the war? How did our gallant generals, highly decorated,erudite, even exoerienced in world wars, suddenly develop cold feet when encumbered with Chinese conundrum? Why did we not follow the basic principles of defence and how did the command echelons forget the immutable laws of war , the primary being " MAINTAINENCE OF AIM" ? Why bloody why? The ludicrous official histories divulge different conclusion but Mr Verma has rightly concluded that Indian forces were not merely defeated but routed, the brigade in 4 hours, division in less than 36 hours that too by enemy who was neither preponderant in firepower nor numerical strength , in a terrain that was a defenders delight and attackers nightmare both logistically and physically. The mental dissonance caused in the mind of our commanders by Communist generals is a classic example of Maneouver warfare and displays that more than the physical domain, battles are fought mentally. The COAS, Army commander, corps commander, DMO - the cream of Indian military strategy- all sitting at Tezpur when the second phase was abruptly launched by Chinese , all clueless regarding ORBAT and none repeat none could even comprehend the basic designs of the enemy, his thrust, his objectives, his designs, his tactics etc and this shows how much our armed forces of that era had been politicised when such elements were allowed to persist , rise even though they had no ability beyond commanding a platoon leave alone a battalion. Finally , Mr Verma could do with some maps and use army symbols to describe the battles as they unfolded . This would make the read far more comprehensible and interesting. But overall one one of the best and unbiased book on this dark epic of Indian army and such book should be a must read specially the commanders of today, who it is believed are falling back into the same old habits of yesteryears.