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In U-turn, Modi govt rules out release of Henderson Brooks report
Rajat Pandit,TNN | Jul 8, 2014,
Indian soldiers before leaving their post in the Ladakh region in November 1962 during the India-China war. (Getty Images photo)
NEW DELHI: In a marked U-turn from the earlier stand taken by BJP, the Modi government has firmly ruled out the release of the classified Henderson Brooks report into India's humiliating military debacle against China in 1962.
"This (Henderson Brooks report) is a top-secret document and has not been declassified so far. Release of this report, fully or partially, or disclosure of any information related to this report, would not be in national interest," said defence and finance minister Arun Jaitley, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
The Henderson Brooks report squarely blames the then Jawarharlal Nehru government's ill-conceived and ill-timed "Forward Policy", without proper intelligence or adequate military preparation, for India's abject defeat in 1962.
When 87-year-old Australian journalist and author Neville Maxwell had suddenly released a major chunk of the report last March, in the run-up to the general elections, the BJP had then promptly seized the opportunity to attack the Congress for compromising the country's military preparedness in the past as well as the present.
Indian soldiers during the 1962 India-China war. (Getty Images photo)
The BJP, in fact, had demanded the report's release on the ground that the country should know how the Nehru government had pushed the military into a war it could only lose. Jaitely himself, in a blog, had held it was not in larger public interest to keep documents "top-secret" indefinitely.
"Any society is entitled to learn from the past mistakes and take remedial action. With the wisdom of hindsight, I am of the opinion that the report's content could have been made public some decades ago ... Was the Himalayan blunder of 1962 in fact a Nehruvian blunder?
Indian troops at a Ladakh border post during the 1962 India-China war. (Getty Images photo)
Are we willing to learn the lessons from 1962?" said Jaitley, who was then the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha. Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in turn, had said, "We have a right to know what went wrong. We lost the war because of Nehru ... What are they (Congress) trying to hide by making the war report classified."
People fleeing in a train in Assam from the 1962 India-China war on November 1, 1962. (Getty Images photo)
Rajat Pandit,TNN | Jul 8, 2014,
NEW DELHI: In a marked U-turn from the earlier stand taken by BJP, the Modi government has firmly ruled out the release of the classified Henderson Brooks report into India's humiliating military debacle against China in 1962.
"This (Henderson Brooks report) is a top-secret document and has not been declassified so far. Release of this report, fully or partially, or disclosure of any information related to this report, would not be in national interest," said defence and finance minister Arun Jaitley, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
The Henderson Brooks report squarely blames the then Jawarharlal Nehru government's ill-conceived and ill-timed "Forward Policy", without proper intelligence or adequate military preparation, for India's abject defeat in 1962.
When 87-year-old Australian journalist and author Neville Maxwell had suddenly released a major chunk of the report last March, in the run-up to the general elections, the BJP had then promptly seized the opportunity to attack the Congress for compromising the country's military preparedness in the past as well as the present.
Indian soldiers during the 1962 India-China war. (Getty Images photo)
The BJP, in fact, had demanded the report's release on the ground that the country should know how the Nehru government had pushed the military into a war it could only lose. Jaitely himself, in a blog, had held it was not in larger public interest to keep documents "top-secret" indefinitely.
"Any society is entitled to learn from the past mistakes and take remedial action. With the wisdom of hindsight, I am of the opinion that the report's content could have been made public some decades ago ... Was the Himalayan blunder of 1962 in fact a Nehruvian blunder?
Indian troops at a Ladakh border post during the 1962 India-China war. (Getty Images photo)
Are we willing to learn the lessons from 1962?" said Jaitley, who was then the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha. Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in turn, had said, "We have a right to know what went wrong. We lost the war because of Nehru ... What are they (Congress) trying to hide by making the war report classified."
People fleeing in a train in Assam from the 1962 India-China war on November 1, 1962. (Getty Images photo)
