Sino-Indian War

On October 20, 1962 Chinese forces attacked Indian positions in two areas of the Himalayas: Aksai Chin in the west, in Ladakh, and the North-East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh, in the east. They quickly broke through. Chinese troops advanced to the edge of the Assam plain, then on November 21 declared a unilateral ceasefire and pulled back to their own side of what they called the line of actual control. The fighting lasted about a month.¹²

The border had never been settled. China did not accept the McMahon Line, drawn in 1914 between British India and Tibet, and India did not accept China's claim to Aksai Chin, through which China had built a road linking Xinjiang and Tibet. After China took control of Tibet and the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, relations worsened. India under Nehru adopted a forward policy of setting up small posts in disputed ground, and China saw it as a provocation.¹

India's army was poorly equipped and unprepared for combat at high altitude. India lists 1,383 soldiers killed, with thousands more missing or captured. China has given no full account of its own losses, though a figure of about 700 dead is often cited. The war came during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which kept the superpowers' attention elsewhere. It was a heavy blow to Nehru, who died in 1964, and led to the resignation of the defence minister, V. K. Krishna Menon, and a large rise in India's military spending.¹²