Frankly speaking

ON October 15, 1966, the United States' Consul General in Calcutta (now Kolkata) sent a report to the State Department, with copies to U.S. missions in Pakistan. Taken from The American Papers: Secret and Confidential India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Documents 1965-1973 (Roedad Khan (Ed.); Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1999; pages 193-194). It read thus:

Memorandum of Conversation.

Participants: Lt. General S.H.F.J. Manekshaw, GOC-in-C Eastern Command; Consul General William K. Hitchcock.

Returning by Indian Airlines from New Delhi to Calcutta on the night of October 12, I had the opportunity of having an uninterrupted two-hour conversation with General Manekshaw. He seemed less guarded than during any of the many talks we have had over the past two years.

1. India and Pakistan. As he had done with Ambassador Bowles in Calcutta a month ago, the General emphasised his conviction that the resolution of Indo-Pak differences is the central challenge confronting the two countries. The key to the difficulty is Kashmir, and he is hopeful that a new and basic re-examination of this problem can be undertaken immediately after the Indian elections in February 1967. The continuance of Indo-Pak differences forces each country to fritter away its relatively limited resources on efforts to maintain adequate protection against the eventuality of open conflict. The Indo-Pak border should be much like the U.S.-Canadian border, and the defence policies of the two countries should be common rather than opposed. Together they could provide the force necessary to counter China without assistance from others. He remains confident that Ayub has few illusions about China but finds himself in a political box, incapable of pressing his views even on his own people. In the formulation of a negotiating position on Kashmir, Manekshaw believes the Indian military and the civil servants can make a much more significant contribution than they have in the past. Heretofore India's posture frequently has been determined by domestic political considerations at odds with the strategic realities the two countries confront in Asia.

2. The September 1965 Indo-Pak War. Although he said he realises that hindsight is of little value, he speculated ruminatingly that a number of basic problems would probably have been settled to the long range benefit of all had the September 1965 war gone on for two or three months more. He said he was at that time in daily contact with the Indian Army Chief of Staff, General [J.N.]Chaudhuri, and had argued vigorously against the inhibitions India imposed upon itself in order to avoid encouraging Chinese intercession into the war. He told Chaudhuri that he did not believe the Chinese would move but said he would heartily welcome such an attack and was confident this would be the most effective, possibly the only, way to explode the Indian myth of Chinese invincibility. It was ridiculous, he said, that the Indian allowed the Chinese, through a few menacing sounds, to pin down the more than 300,000 troops he has in his command. (This is the first time he has ever mentioned such a figure to me, though it is consistent with our previous assumptions.) He was quite critical of Chaudhuri's conduct of the war, contending that the Chief of Staff, a victim of the numbers game, was excessively conscious of how many Patton tanks he had destroyed in the last engagement without knowing precisely why he was destroying them in the first place. He also differed with the Indian secretive attitude toward both the Indian and foreign press. He said that few countries have a more limited capacity of projecting themselves to the world in a favourable light than India.

3. Indian Military 1962-66.This last point led to my asking him why India doesn't make available to the press of the world information which would show the dramatic contrast between its strength now and its weakness in 1962, particularly as this strength constitutes an inescapably important consideration in any Chinese calculation with regard to the subcontinent. A greater realisation by Indians that they are as committed as they are against China might lead to a more realistic attitude on their part toward Vietnam. He replied that he wished I had asked the question a month ago, i.e., before he went to Delhi to substitute for the Indian Army Chief of Staff during the latter's recent visit to Moscow. While Manekshaw was in Delhi he had many opportunities for brutally frank discussions with Defence Minister [Y.B.] Chavan, and he would have been delighted to have advocated such a line of action. However, now he would have to go through the Chief of Staff and, as with the previous Chief of Staff, he finds it difficult to press for a course of action which might be difficult to sell to India's political leadership. He said he was nevertheless going to look into this question.

4. I asked him whether he had had any further thoughts about when he might be able to go to the [United] States. (I and others had broached this subject with him several times in the past and he had always put off by saying he couldn't possibly leave his command for the required period of time.) His reply to the question this time was most interesting. If they select me as Chief of Staff (implying by his tone that he expected this to occur), I would be delighted to go. He said he was deeply concerned over the degree to which India is becoming militarily dependent to Soviet equipment. This dependence has developed out of arrangements made during discussions Chaudhuri and, more recently, Kumaramangalam had held with the Soviets in Moscow, discussions which, he added, are producing a lot of equipment for India. He believes that if he were to go to the U.S. now the consequences would be (1) that he would be identified with a Western bias (which he most definitely has), (2) that such identification might thwart his promotion to Chief of Staff and (3) that, not being Chief of Staff, he would be unable to take effective action to redirect Indian military thinking away from the Soviet Union. I said that I found all this most interesting; I felt that I could assure him a welcome in the U.S. whenever he thought it might be propitious to go.