Keeping secrets

We dance around a ring and suppose/ the secret sits in the middle and knows much of modern Indian history is marked with that Frostian sense of baffling absence. Like the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962. We know the outcome,we still carry the psychic wounds,but the details exist somewhere,unseen by most human eyes.

The Henderson-Brooks or Brooks-Bhagat report is believed to be a blow-by-blow account of the 1962 wars operational details,and is speculated to contain a sharply critical appraisal of the actions of the prime minister,his overweening defence minister Krishna Menon,and the wars leading strategists. However,that report,now yellowing and soft with age,has been kept secret for almost 50 years in the defence ministry. No photocopies exist. Through the decades,despite changing political dispensations,the government has chosen to pretend it doesnt exist,as if burying the volumes deep in a South Block warren would make its contents less contentious. Now,after a long and sustained debate and campaign to declassify the file,the Delhi high court has directed the government to place it in court before making a final decision. While the defence minister has expressed his reluctance,the

upside is obvious the logic,the missteps of a dramatic moment in history are fascinating. Given that there is no imaginable security fallout,the governments reasons for keeping the file private seem pretty obscure. In India,we know our own collective story only through troubling gaps and evasions,anecdote and contradiction,compared to other countries where even war secrets are declassified after the usual 30-year period many countries dont even wait that long for the bulk of information.

But besides battering through the doors of state secrecy,unveiling the Henderson Brooks report would also make a decisive move towards closure. Whether or not this is admitted,by repressing the 1962 trauma,India-China relations remain stuck in a weird rut. Instead,acquainting ourselves with the details and nature of our decades-old confrontation is bound to provide a clearer picture of our neighbours true dimensions,and provide the basis for sensible action in the future.