Memoirs of general who predicted 1962 out soon

NEW new delhi: Events leading up to the 1962 India-China state of war testament be in sharp-worded focalize again next week when chief of defence staff General Anil Chauhan releases the revised edition of the autobiography of the late Lieutenant General SPP Thorat, one of the most respected army officers of that era and whose prescient warning about Chinese intentions were ignored by the government at the time.The CDS will release the revised edition of the book, From Reveille to Retreat – An Autobiography, in Pune on September 24; the book was first published in 1985 and went into its last reprint two decades ago. The latest version, published by Hedwig Media House, omits some portions that are no longer relevant and includes many previously unpublished papers and photographs.One of the chapters in the autobiography deals with the North-Eastern Frontier, capturing the aggressive Chinese actions along the northern borders in the late 1950s, the government’s refusal to admit any danger to India, the stark differences between the political and military leadership, Thorat’s strained relations with the then defence minister VK Krishna Menon and the defence of the North-Eastern Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh) being entrusted to the para-military force Assam Rifles and not to the army.The revised memoirs will serve as a refresher course for a new generation of readers who may be oblivious to that watershed in India’s military history.“The more I thought, the more perplexed I became about the government’s inexplicable attitude towards NEFA. The (army) Chief and I broached the subject with the Prime Minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) and the Defence Minister on a number of occasions, but they did not take serious note of our views,” the decorated general wrote in his memoirs.“Both refused to believe that China would make any inimical move against us, and, therefore, saw no reason why they should make warlike preparations in NEFA, which, they feared, might annoy China.”Having failed to persuade the political leadership to appreciate his points of view, Thorat, who was the Eastern Army commander at the time, decided to submit his appreciation of the situation in writing so that it would remain on record for the future.His note written to the government on October 8, 1959 was seen by the Prime Minister only in October 1962 after the debacle in NEFA.An important paper concerning national security, written by an army commander and supported by the chief, should have been shown to the PM but Krishna Menon conveniently overlooked this aspect, he wrote.The Chinese thrust came exactly as predicted in his paper, he wrote.Thorat’s moral courage in refusing to bend down to the weird whims of Krishna Menon during the crisis of the 1962 denied him the opportunity of leading the Indian Army as its chief, military affairs expert Major General Ian Cardozo (retd) writes in the foreword to the revised edition.“If he had been made the Chief of the Indian Army, then the humiliation that the country and the Army suffered would perhaps have not happened. Prior to the war... He worked out all the factors that faced the country at that time and evolved a detailed strategy to counter Chinese aims and ambitions; but the government preferred to follow a plan called the ‘Forward Policy’ made by a ‘police officer’ which led, amongst other issues, to our ultimate defeat.”YSP Thorat, the general’s son, writes in the preface to the revised edition that the next edition of the book aims to ‘close the loop’ by including the records of former army chief General KS Thimayya and General Thorat housed in the Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya, New Delhi.