BookReview: "The Battle of Rezang La". That shameful history of 1962 war, when India's political and military leadership left their soldiers in the cold.

Pratim Ranjan Bose

Economic liberalization and the rise of nationalist politics are helping the country in reassessing its past. This is happening more by default than design as people started speaking their minds. The carefully built imageries, narratives of the past to protect some interests are replaced by more objective assessments. To me, this is the proverbial bloom of hundred flowers.

“The Battle of Rezang La” (pass) is the story of a company (120) of soldiers who almost all (110) laid their life in protecting an important area in Ladakh in the 1962 Sino-India war, which India lost.

But that’s not what makes the book interesting. Written by a former uniformed officer and published in 2021, it reconstructed part of a shameful history, where the country’s political and military leadership dumped its soldiers unprepared, before the enemy fire.

There was more to this story. Once the war was over, the Indian leadership did everything to suppress all information about the heroics of these soldiers, who fought a war at 18000 ft without proper clothing, arms, ammunition and even food.

The intelligence support was highly compromised. The defence ministry was headed by a humbug Leftist who was not even in the country when the war broke out. The government was headed by someone who had little regard for defence strategic issues, untl the fag end of his tenure.  

Jawaharlal Nehru famously considered the army a burden on the country’s exchequer and denied doing anything for strategic needs till about 1960 when the Border Roads Organisation was formed. A prisoner of his imaginary world of the non-aligned movement and ‘ahimsha’, he didn’t feel the need to protect the northern boundaries till the disaster struck.

Typical to those days, the army top brass drawn from the elites of the country rallied around the high profile defence minister and the Prime Minister. The defence minister was not on talking terms with some of his generals.

With this background, India went to war against China, which had been preparing for months. They had better intelligence, border roads which ensured the all-important supply line to fight a high-altitude war. Theoretically, India had firepower. In reality, we didn’t even have roads to take the artillery to the border.

We were less in terms of the number of soldiers. But we had superior firepower in the air – which for reasons that can be explained by defence strategists – was not put to use in Sino-India War.

Soldiers rushed in at the last minute. Before they could even build the bunkers - necessary to survive in one of the coldest regions on earth where temperature moved between minus five to minus 30 – they found themselves in the middle of a war with the Chinese outnumbering Indians on 10:1 average.

The Charlie company of the 13 Kumaon Battalion (now renamed after Rezang La) fought against such heavy odds. They didn’t have communication. Artillery support didn’t arrive. Yet, they grossly outnumbered the Chinese in the casualty ratio. An estimated 1300 Chinese soldiers died against the 110 Indians.

The battalion became local folklore both in Ladakh and Haryana (from where soldiers were drawn). But sadly, not many even within the army came to know about their heroic. Because military bosses didn’t like it to be publicized.

I know little about military strategies. But I have interests in the economy, infrastructure and geopolitics. I follow military history and developments from that perspective. The recent India-China conflict at Galwan valley took place in this region only.

It’s a very thin boon of barely 175 odd pages. All the names are real. The writing style is something like a military diary, which is frill-free. Price Rs 400. Quick read. 

 

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