The Henderson Brooks Report on the Sino Indian Border War 1962 – Top Secret

Spent my Sunday afternoon reading this interesting Top Secret report on the Sino Indian Border War in 1962. The Indian Govt is still holding this report dearly as a top Secret document. Ever since the decisive defeat of the Indian Army, the Indians have been telling the world that China was the aggressor and started the war. And the western media with its hidden agenda simply sang along and made China the bad boy.

This document described fully, in details, the role of the Indians in starting this border war, how it prepared an army corp to evict the Chinese border guards from the disputed borders and how it made all the preliminary incursions and occupation of Chinese positions that ignited the war. It was highlighted the arrogant mindset of the Indians and how they belittled the Chinese with comments like firing a few shots into the air and the Chinese soldiers would fled, or if they advanced and occupied Chinese positions the Chinese would not fight back.

It all started with Nehru’s Forward Policy, a term coined so innocently but with the intent to occupied Chinese territories at the China Indian border. A 4th Corp was commissioned and built up to support this campaign. And for several months, with the forces being introduced into the border area and advancing and occupying positions in the Chinese held positions, the Forward Policy seemed very easy and successful until the Chinese launched a counter offensive to retake all their lost positions and to re-establish the status quo. The border situation has since been maintained till today without the Chinese making any advances into Indian territories that was hyped in 1962 as China nibbling into Indian territories and used as the justification to occupy Chinese territories.

The Top Secret report is a very engaging read and a must read for military officers to get a feel of how the Indian built up an offensive force to the scale of an army corp and how the war was fought, the logistics and how the withdrawal was conducted when they were overwhelmed. There were also many revelations and insights into the thinking, psychic and the Indian perception of the Chinese and how the Chinese would react to their advances.

Reading the report is like a case study of a real war, not war games, with real statistics involving brigades and divisions. The report is still available at http://www.indiandefencereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TopSecretdocuments2.pdf

This report is still banned by the Indian Govt and it is not sure how long it would be available before it is removed from the net. This is what Wikipedia commented on the report. ‘The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report, also referred to as the Henderson Brooks report, is a classified report prepared by two Indian Army officers, Lieutenant-General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier Premindra Singh Bhagat, on the Sino-Indian War of 1962. Bhagat later was promoted as a lieutenant general. Part I of the two-part report was leaked in 2014 by a retired left-wing Australian journalist. (The second part deals with the enduring lessons of the Chinese aggression.)
 
The Henderson Brooks-P.S. Bhagat report was supposed to be an "operations review" of the causes of the Indian Army's humiliating rout by the ‘invading’ People's Liberation Army. The two investigating officers, however, skirted the operations review by focusing on the political causes of the rout in the war….’
 
The comments in Wikipedia were likely to be posted by an India author that still flouted the PLA as the invading forces and blaming China for the war. The Henderson Brooks report is the raw data and proof and what really happened and who was the aggressor. It categorically dismisses the Indian myth that they were the angels and were invaded by the Chinese.

Kopi Level - Green