Yeshwantrao Chavan - The Defence Years
K. G. Joglekar

In the mid-eighties, it needs an effort to recall the scenario of 1962, in which Yeshwantrao Chavan moved to New Delhi from Bombay to take over the Defence portfolio in the Union cabinet.  Things have changed so much.  

Thanking on Defence in India had from the day of independence been oriented towards meeting a possible threat from Pakistan.  Former revolutionaries like M. N. Roy and V. D. Savarkar had written forcefully about the threat from an awakened and militant China and so had eminent soldiers like General Thimayya.  A syndicate at the National Defence College had pin-pointed the Chinese threat in much clearer terms.  But the tendency at the political level was to brush aside such talk as alarmist if not war-mongering.  Critics of Jawaharlal Nehru maintain that he had been taken in by Chinese promises of friendship.  A more charitable interpretation would be that Nehru was playing for time.  He wanted that if the clash with China was to come at all, it should come a few years later when India would be much better prepared economically and even militarily to meet the challenge.  But Mao had other ideas.  He therefore struck in NEFA and Ladakh.  While it will be wrong to read too much in the reverses of the Indian Army in the Himalayas, it will be equally wrong to belittle them.  A Pakistani general had even then said that the Chinese success was only limited in nature and the bulk of the Indian Army was still in tact.  

The debacle in NEFA and to a lesser extent in Ladak had far-reaching psychological and political effects.  Defence was an important portfolio but it had so far been given a lower priority than industry, agriculture and commerce.  Suddenly, the Defence budget shot up.  Funds were diverted from development to Defence.  Prices shot up and the economy came under severe strain.  At the international level, the prestige of Jawaharlal Nehru and India took a nosedive.

The Chinese aggression and the Indian reverses had far-reaching effects on the home front also.  After the death of Sardar Patel in 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as the undisputed leader of the Congress Party.  But even he, with his tremendous hold on the people of India respected the views of life-time colleagues and comrades of the freedom struggle.  But death removed them on by one.  First Patel and then Kidwai, Azad, Pant and B. C. Roy were gone.  Jawaharlal Nehru was himself well past seventy and the question 'After Nehru Who ?' or even 'After Nehru What ?' was asked openly outside India and in whispers within the country.  The power struggle took the form of a contest for the post of the Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in Parliament between Mr. Morarji Desai representing the rightists within the Congress and Mr. Jagjiwan Ram whom the Leftists adopted as their candidate.  The matter was resolved only when the Prime Minister devalued the office of the Deputy Leader, thus making it clear that the Deputy Leader was not necessarily his political heir.

The reverses in the Himalayas forged unity at the National level but ironically sharpened the conflict within the Congress organisation.  The Defence Minister, V. K. Krishna Menon, came under severe attack for the unpreparedness of the Indian forces and had to resign.  Nehru's own prestige suffered a severe blow.  For a time it appeared as if the rightists within the Congress would get the upper hand.  In fact, it appeared as if the nation's foreign policy, which had non-alignment as its basic principle, would take a sharp turn to the right.  The Soviet Union's ambivalence in the days immediately following the Chinese aggression made things more difficult for Nehru.