Opinion Friends in need?

Ironically,by this time the Chinese had declared the unilateral ceasefire and withdrawal,and the supply of Western arms was,therefore,drying up. Instead,discussions had shifted to what India should ask for,and what it should not,especially in view of its slender resources. More strikingly,Western powers tied the question of arms aid to that of Kashmir,advising India to “make concessions to Pakistan”.

Here I might add in parenthesis that while there was sympathy for India in the West during the China war,there was also schadenfreude,particularly because it was the standard-bearer of non-alignment that had come to grief. For example,Harold Macmillan,then British prime minister,recorded in his private diary on October 23,1962,that Nehru had been “transformed from an imitation of George Lansbury (a British Labour party leader) into a parody of Churchill”.

At first,junior diplomats in the American embassy and the British high commission in Delhi approached B.L. Sharma,the Kashmir specialist in the ministry of external affairs,to sound him out on whether India would “now make up with Pakistan”. After all,they argued,President Ayub Khan had behaved “admirably” by not firing a shot across his border “when you were busy with your Chinese friends”. But barely had Sharma reported this to his superiors that principal actors in the power play arrived from Washington and London.

From America came a large and high-powered delegation,headed by Averell Harriman,a seasoned,tactful and well-liked diplomat. Quick on his heels arrived the British secretary of state for Commonwealth relations,Duncan Sandys,a complete contrast to Harriman. He was acerbic,hectoring and arrogant; through the long and often tense negotiations,he lived up to his reputation. Lord Mountbatten,then Britain’s chief of defence staff and known to be Nehru’s friend,also landed in Delhi. Though a member of the Sandys delegation,he often acted independently.

Sir Paul (later Lord) Gore-Booth,then British high commissioner in Delhi,was to record in his memoirs: “Mr Sandys lost no time in making it clear that one of his objectives in coming to India was to see whether in the existing fluid situation,some real steps could be taken to solve the Kashmir problem.” John Kenneth Galbraith,the US ambassador,had a lot more to say on Sandys,the bull that carried his china shop with him. “Among other things,he (Sandys) proposed,” wrote Galbraith in Ambassador’s Journal,“that India enter into a military alliance with the West and come under the protection of the NATO nuclear deterrent.” Added the US ambassador: “The Indians were aghast and it was fuzzed over — Gore-Booth is perturbed,but defends his minister in the best traditions of the British civil service.”

Shuttle diplomacy has become all too familiar in recent decades but the almost daily flight of the Sandys-Harriman duo from Delhi to Rawalpindi and back was this country’s first taste of it. Harriman,as was his nature,was calm and courteous,and maintained a low profile. Sandys was the exact opposite. So much so that came the day when at the daily briefing — at which H.C. Sarin of the ministry of defence used to inform us journalists of the progress of the Chinese withdrawal — G.K. Reddy got up to say: “Never mind the Chinese. Please tell us whether or not Duncan Sandys has withdrawn from the subcontinent.”

He hadn’t,and didn’t leave for quite a while longer. Instead,after talks with Ayub Khan in Rawalpindi,he arrived at Nehru’s office one morning and produced a 10-line “joint communiqué” that he said Khan had broadly agreed to,and India should do the same. Nehru and his two advisers — foreign secretary M.J. Desai and Commonwealth secretary Y.D. Gundevia — refused. Khan,they said,wanted a settlement of the Kashmir dispute alone. There were other problems such as illegal immigration into eastern Indian states from Pakistan’s eastern wing. Everything had to be settled if there was to be peace between the two neighbours.

Sandys carried the elaborately amended draft to Ayub Khan and secured his acceptance of it. On November 29,the joint communiqué was issued. It declared that India and Pakistan had agreed to make a “renewed effort” to resolve their outstanding differences “on Kashmir and related matters” to enable them to “live in peace and friendship”. For this purpose,talks would be held at the ministerial level initially,and at an “appropriate stage”,Prime Minister Nehru and President Khan would meet.

In the affairs of the subcontinent,however,nothing ever proceeds smoothly. The next day,in reply to questions in Parliament,Nehru made some remarks about Kashmir’s status. He also said that he was not going to be “pushed around by Mr Duncan Sandys or anybody else”. This infuriated Ayub Khan. The tireless Sandys flew back to Delhi,secured from Nehru a statement that there was “never any question of preconditions or of any restrictions” on the scope of the impending India-Pakistan talks.

Ayub Khan was pacified,and the stage was set for six rounds of talks between Swaran Singh and Z.A. Bhutto. As is well known,the exercise turned out to be a total waste of time.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator