India: Tough at Last

For the past three years, India’s struggle with Red China over their disputed Himalayan border has been more of a shouting than a shooting match. But last week, in an isolated area of the North East Frontier Agency near the border of Chinese-held Tibet, Indian and Chinese frontier guards engaged in a mortar and grenade duel that resulted in 55 casualties —33 Chinese and 22 Indians. As usual, both sides claimed that the other was the aggressor. What was unusual was a new Indian toughness toward the Chinese.

Though India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was once willing to negotiate the frontier wrangle, he has now come to believe that compromise on his part would lead to new Chinese incursions. Recently, India curtly refused China’s offer to arbitrate the border difference unless the Chinese first withdrew from the more than 14.000 square miles of Indian territory they occupy. Replied Peking: “No force in the world could oblige us to withdraw.”

Nehru fortnight ago appointed Lieut. General B. M. Kaul, 50. to act as “Commander of the Special Task Force to Intensify Operations Against the Chinese Intruders.” A tough, Sandhurst-educated antiCommunist, Kaul was placed on indefinite leave last August after he questioned Defense Minister Krishna Menon’s appeasement policy toward Red China. Kaul’s new assignment from Nehru: ”To free our territory in the northeast frontier.” Said Nehru at week’s end: India’s forces are “strongly positioned and in a large number operating from higher ground than the Chinese.”