Learning from history

Deepak Sinha

A veteran paratrooper and a senior Visiting Fellow with the Peninsula Foundation in Chennai, Deepak writes on matters of military and broader security concerns. His blog Para Phrase will seek to unravel issues in the security domain without fear or favour, mainly from a military perspective. 

In 1615 the English King, James I, sent Sir Thomas Roe, to the Mughal Court of Emperor Jehangir to successfully negotiate a commercial treaty that allowed the East India Company(EIC) exclusive rights to reside and establish factories in Surat and other areas. In return, the company provided the Emperor with goods and rarities from the European market. It was the basis for a highly lucrative trade deal that lasted for over seventy years, till in the late 1600s in its yearning for greater profits, it fell afoul of the Mughal Governor of Bengal while attempting to renegotiate trade terms.
Threats and gunboat diplomacy, using an English Fleet especially sent for this very purpose, led to the Anglo-Mughal War of 1686-90.

After initial setbacks Emperor Aurangzeb captured the Company’s factories and personnel spread over the realm and blockaded their forces in Bombay and Madras till they sued for peace. After paying a sizeable fine of Rupees 1.5 Lakhs, equivalent Pound Sterling 4.5 Million at the time, the EIC received a full pardon and was granted permission to continue with its trade.

Emperor Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 put paid to this reciprocity, as anarchy and large scale rebellions in the provinces rendered his successors increasingly powerless. The EIC took full advantage of the ensuing chaos, and using a combination of diplomacy, skulduggery and force, went on to become the dominant player in the subcontinent by 1805. In the next century and a half the EIC and subsequently the English State, stripped the country of its wealth, an action Dalrymple called “the single largest transfer of wealth until the Nazis,” an amount some assess to be £ 45 Trillion at today’s rates.

This little historical excerpt is a stark reminder as to the reasons why we remained enslaved for the better part of half a millennium. Our leaders had always put their own well-being and self-interest above everything else, and preferred to fight amongst themselves instead of unitedly against a common enemy. Their actions not only stripped us of our wealth but also our common cultural and civilisational heritage that had made the Sub Continent the envy of the world. What was indeed was most galling was that neither the Mughals nor the British could have ever succeeded without the connivance of our own kith and kin, who sold their loyalty for power, trinkets and a few pieces of silver.

Even Partition, which is at the root of most of our troubles today, was a British formulation as we now know from documents in public domain. Aimed at retaining a foothold in the Sub-Continent allowing them to dominate the shipping lanes and the region. Clearly, the British adroitly took advantage of the ambitions and egos of our leading politicians of the time. They were able to instil in them the belief that Partition was the only workable solution to deal with communal tensions they had encouraged, regardless of the carnage that was bound to follow.

We cannot set back the clock, but surely, we can ask ourselves a very simple question- do our present set of leaders give us any reason to believe they are any different from the earlier ones? Are they being manipulated, by forces we may be unaware of, to act in total disregard for our national interest? It happened in 1948, when Prime Minister Nehru approached the United Nations just when the tables had turned in our favour and we were in the position to liberate those areas of Jammu and Kashmir that had fallen to the Pakistan Army and the Raiders. Success then would have nipped the British experiment in the bud, thus given Nehru’s proximity to the Mountbatten’s, our national interest suffered and we continue to face Pakistan’s depredations there even to this day. Events leading up to the Sino-Indian Conflict 1962, suggest the same. Who advised Nehru to recognise Chinese sovereignty over Tibet post haste after the Dalai Lama had accepted the Agreement of 1953 between his representatives and Beijing? Why didn’t we de-recognise that sovereignty after the Dalai Lama repudiated the Agreement in 1959, given all our troubles with China?

One fails to understand the motivation of the Prime Minister to thump the table, when Field Marshal (then General) Cariappa raised the issue of deploying forces along the McMahon Line and state “It is not the business of the Commander-in-Chief to tell the Prime Minister who is going to attack us where. In fact, the Chinese will defend our Eastern Frontier ….…you mind only Kashmir and Pakistan”, as eminent military historian Maj K C Praval (Retd) writes? For whatever reasons, not difficult to guess, our military was reduced to being a mere bystander on matters of national security, a situation that prevails even to this day. Incidentally, as preposterous as it may sound, Nehru was foolish enough to reject Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s proposed joint defence pact against the Chinese made in 1959.

Surely these examples hardly show national interest being guarded, in fact quite the opposite and cannot have been mere coincidence? The same could be said of the Indo-Pak Wars of 1965 and 1971. What motivated Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to return back Haji Pir and other territories that we had liberated? Why did we repatriate 93000 prisoners of war after 1971 without getting all of our own personnel back, let alone resolving the Kashmir issue? Surely those prisoners were a tremendous bargaining chip to resolve the Kashmir issue in our favour?

One is therefore quite cynical of this government’s sudden interest in playing down Chinese depredations and doing everything we can, other than lying down in supplication, to lure the Chinese, with promises of trade and economic cooperation, in return for a fig leaf of peace that would allow this government to obfuscate and cover up the shame and embarrassment of losing control of 3000-4000 sq. kms of territory in Eastern Ladakh. For that matter why are we openly supporting Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians and Lebanese despite a nuanced policy that was in place for the past few decades? So, whose interest is this government trying to protect, surely not our national interest? From all the information available on the internet, is it really that difficult to surmise?