Beyond 120 Bahadur: Inside Battle of Rezang La and the 1962 India-China War | S3 | Ep 30 - In Our Defence

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for

(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense. Hello, and welcome to Another Defense.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
This week, we're gonna talk about the nineteen sixty two war,
a war that I feel not many people know about properly,
and especially the Battle of rez Angla, a battle that
I think everybody should know about. But why that's because
a movie is releasing this weekend. In fact, I think
by the time this podcast is out, the first shows
would I've been in theaters. The film is called biz Bahadur.

(00:58):
It starts Fakhta and shares a set of producers who
worked on a film that I believe has so far
been India's best war and military film, Luxury.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
So in this.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Context, we'll talk about this battle, what makes this battle
so epic, and also about the ninety sixty two war,
a war that is often misunderstood, A war that I
said earlier people totally understand properly.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
And who better for that than Sandi.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Hey Good, Dave Good to be back. War movies my
favorite topic.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
You know, war movies.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So, like I said, my personal favorite in India has
been is a lux But I have a feeling that
and based on my chats with other defense correspondence, defense
defense journalists and experts like you, yours would probably a
film that I haven't seen that my generation has not seen,

(01:54):
the ninety sixty four movie Hockey Cut Yeah, which by
the way, also is based on the Battle of Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
It is that your favorite? It is?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
It is? It's actually a close contest between Hackey Cut
and Vijeta Ja Is a Shashi Kapur made movie in
Champinigal director was it in eighty three? It was the
Yeah eighty two. Eighty three is when it released. It's
a toss between Haki Cut and Vijeta right and two
outstanding movies made by very passionate producers, directors and made

(02:26):
Haki Cut just two years after the nineteen sixty two war.
So you know when we were coming to grips with
what happened during the India China War. And of course
Vijeta was more about celebrating the Indian Air Force. But
Vijeta has a link to your favorite film luxsh I
believe Lux is actually a remake of Vijetah Okay, yeah,

(02:47):
if you see it, you you you figure out that
it's actually a coming of age movie. Rightsian is this
young kid who doesn't know what to do with life,
and then he gets into the army and he gets
a certain sense of purpose and then it becomes this
you know, man combat Harden's exactly the script of Interesting right,
So Shashi Kapur's son, who's Kunal Kapur, he's this And incidentally,

(03:09):
this is the first time that you had an actor,
a lead actor, playing a Sikh in the in the
lead role. And you know, until then, it's it's very
funny that you notice these little things that until then
see characters only you know, SAIDs and they would be
character actors. But here he grew his hair, he tried
a turban and he literally got into the part of

(03:32):
this young a force officer who comes, you know, he graduates,
he becomes a war hero. That's what was very fine
film actually, but you know they better than anyone else.
There are just ten war movies that we've made in
the last at R Dwers. There's so few to choose from.
I mean, we haven't seen really gripping war movies in

(03:55):
a sense like Saving Private Ryan or Thin Red Line
or Stalin Grad or whatever. We have a lot of
war history to talk about, right from not just the
twentieth century, but even before that. But the kind of
films that have come out. I mean I was talking
to Ami Raza Hussein, you know, made that great ballet

(04:15):
on Cargill, He staged that big play. And this is
where the war movies in India. They're all romantic movies
with you know, war in the backdrop. That's it.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, right, And interesting that you mentioned war history because
that is actually something I wanted to begin begin this
episode with, is your thoughts on whether India is not
very great at war history. And I think this is
a topic that is going to be very personal to
you because you're somebody who loves.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Reading about military history.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Right, there's something that you've told us previously, and military
history is actually shaped the sort of you know career
trajectory that you've taken within within the broad the broad
umbrella of covering defense. Because the reason I say so is,
you know, when I try to research about the Anti
sixty two War, especially, I could not really find a

(05:09):
lot of material. One the report that was commissioned by
the then Army Chief, the Brooks Bagad Report, that remains
classified to till rate. Second, I was very surprised to
know there was actually an official history commissioned by the
Ministry of Defense. It was written by Colonel anil Athale.
But I could not find that history anywhere. It's not
there on the Ministry of Defense website. There are references

(05:31):
to it on some forums like BATA Structure and stuff
like that, but I really could not find a lot
of info about this. I think perhaps the only conflict
that has a full fledged report document out in public
Dominis Cargio War, the committed Report. But apart from that,
like I said, I think when it comes to war history,

(05:52):
India is not very good.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Do you share that sentimentary I think that's true to
an extent, but you know, I would have correct you
on the fact that there is actually a lot of writing.
They've won the nineteen sixty two war. I mean, it's
one of the most documented wars you know, in Indian
history because simply because China was involved, right, and we
have writing as late as five six years back, when

(06:15):
you have Bertil Littner's book India's China War, I mean,
I forget the name of the war on the roof
of the world, I forget the name of his book title.
But he's written a book. International author writing a book,
Nevill Maxill's book, of course, and there is reason to
believe India's China War is one of those early books
that came out I think in seventeen seventy one. Nevill

(06:36):
Maxill is the Australian author, but he gives a very
one sided view of the war. He says, his whole
point has been that India triggered of China's you know,
bought a aggression and we provoked them and therefore the
attacked and all. It's a very one sided version. But
it is a version that many believe is something that
he wrote based on the Henderson Brooks Report. He had

(06:58):
an early copy of the Henderson Brooks Report and before
he passed away he died a few years back, he
released the copy of the report that he had, you know,
thereby confirming our suspicions that all along that he knew
what the Henderson Brooks report was. And here's the funny
thing that you know, when I came to Delhi many
years back from Mumbai as a young defense journalist, I

(07:21):
filed the RTI was new at that time that you know,
right to information, and I filed an RTI and I
asked for a copy of the Henderson Brooks Report. Everybody does.
It's a rite of passage, you know. I want to
get the declassified version of the Henderson Brooks Report. So
the person who was handling, one of the officers was
handling this petition, he called me to his office and
he says, you want the Henderson Brooks Report. One second,

(07:44):
just leaned down to his thing, pulled out a small
book India's China war nevill Maxim. That's the Henderson Brooks Report.
That's that's how it is. This is someone who had
seen the report. So the point that he was making
is that it's not the civilian side of the ministry
or the Defense ministry or the political side that doesn't

(08:06):
want the report to be declassified. He says it was
the Indian military that did not want it to be declassified.
So there are two copies of it that exist. The
only two known copies we know is one is of
course with the Defense Secretary and the other one is
with the Director General Military Operation. Right, I'm both in
South block.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Interesting, which is I think why this episode is going
to be a rager because I think you've read lots
and bits and pieces of that, but you know, Sandivabo,
I want to start with the Battle of Arazangla because
the movie is coming out and because I don't want
this to be a border sort of a moment for
me where I learn about this epic battle from a
movie I wanted to learn. I want to learn about

(08:44):
it from someone like you who's read about it extensively
and also understand why is this battle considered to be
so epic. What I have are some references which tells me,
which tells me that it is epic, but I'm not
sure why, but I'll read it out for our.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Listeners and viewers.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
One is the poem that is inscribed on the memorial
that stands at the spot where this battle battle was waged.
Is it's a It's a poem by Thomas Bibbington mccally.
It's from the horaceis at the bridge. The first forced
lines of the stanza are, how can a man die
better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his

(09:23):
father and temples of his gods? Basically talking about selflessness,
talking about the ultimate sex sacrifice, for your society's history,
for your society in general, for your culture. And also
I will read out a couple of sentences from the
weed Chakra citation to the officer who was leading the
one hundred hundred and twenty Order heat troops at the Battle.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Of Razanga, Major shatan Singh.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
The last part of his citation says so the sitation
also says, by the way that during the battle, for
every man that India lost, the enemy China lost around
four to five uh. And for Shatansing himself, the citation says,
when Major Shatansingh felt disabled by wounds in his arms
and abdomen, his men tried to evacuate him, but they
came under heavy machine gun fire. Major Shatansing then ordered

(10:10):
his men to leave him to his fate in order
to save their lives. Major Shathansing Supreme courage, leadership, exemplary
devotion to duty inspired his company to fight almost to
the last man. And there are legends that later on,
when expressions were sent to that area to sort of
recover the bodies of the fallen soldiers, the soldiers were

(10:30):
found in firing positions. Apparently the guns were in their hands.
They had I think lee and field rifles. The rifles
were in their hands and their fingers were on the
triggers and that's how they had died.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
So this is what I.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Have based on my im easily research. Take it from
this andfulous about this batch.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
So you know, you know Razanglas. Of course this very
important battleground in Ladakh, and Ladakh was one of two
key battlegrounds in the nineteen sixty two war and the
war as everyone. The background to this is that until
nineteen fifty, India and China never had a border. Right
when you don't have a border, you don't have conflicts.

(11:10):
But what happened in nineteen fifty is that China absorbed Tibet.
Right they militarily invaded and captured Tibet, conquered Tibet. And
this is a province that a nation that the British
had always maintained as a buffer zone between India and
the Chinese Empire. Right, they had two buffers, Like I
always say this, one buffer is on the west, that's

(11:31):
Afghanistan with the Russian Empire, and the other one was
the buffer with the Chinese Empire, which is Tibet. Now,
when red China, Red China is Mao Mao Zedong who
takes over China in fourteen nine and fifty he starts
expanding and captures Tibet fifty nine that Dalai Lama flees
with one hundred thousand followers and he comes into India

(11:53):
and India gives him shelter and that doesn't go down
well with the Chinese, and the tensions begin, and in
nineteen sixty two, Mao decides to strike at India. And
this is again where you know Henderson Nevill Maxill goes
completely wrong. We're saying that, you know, we provoke them.
So what does India do when the tensions are building up?

(12:16):
Nehru Prime Minister Arrow at that time he reasserts the
McMahon line, our claim on the fact that this is
India's boundaries as left by the British in nineteen forty seven,
which China doesn't recognize and Mao Zedong at that time.
You have to understand the background of what's going on
in China. At that time, nineteen fifty nine, Mao had

(12:38):
launched the Great Great Leap Forward. It's one of the
single most disastrous plans launched by any leader, which has
killed the maximum number of people. Right something. Thirty to
forty million Chinese died because of this Great Leap Forward
very quickly. For those of you watching this, the Great
Leap Forward is that Mao wanted to make China and

(12:59):
agricultural superpower and an industrial superpower at the same time.
And he got people into creating you founderies in their
homes by collectivizing farms, farmland and all that. He destroyed
the industrial sector, He destroyed the agriculture. Thirty to forty
million Chinese I believe to have starved to death. Mao
wanted a distraction. And what is the distraction? It was

(13:21):
the India and that's when he kind of moved in
that planned this very well. In nineteen sixty two, they
struck at the precise movement that the United States, which
is this other actor in this grand theater, was distracted
with the Cuban missile crisis that precise month in October,
right almost two weeks in October, A few days been overlap. Yeah,

(13:43):
it was actually over I mean that's when they chose
to launch their offensive. And here you have the United States,
which is this other significant partner of India, both the
United States and the Soviet Union, locked in conflict trying
to prevent nuclear war. Mouth of the opportunity to launch
the swift border aggression. So the waves of the Chinese troops,

(14:06):
and they were all very prepared. They had upwards of
four divisions right on the Tibetan plateau. We barely had
one division right, that is how thinly guarded it was.
But the run up to this thing was that they
had the government of India launched something called the Forward Policy,
which is to assert our sovereignty on the line that

(14:27):
we believed. We launched these little penny packets of men,
small companies, platoons and all along the border with China,
all along the boundary with China. And when China struck,
this is on the eighteenth of November, is the second
phase of the Chinese offensive. You had Razanghla, which is

(14:47):
this very important hill feature overlooking the Spungur Gap and
you have the Chushul airfield there right. It's really important
for the Indian army to hold that because if they
let go of that vantage point, the Chinese would walk
in and grab the Chushul airfield and the whole defense

(15:09):
of that entire Chucial area would collapse and they could
literally march into Lay and capture that whole region. So
it was really important that they held their ground there.
And this is when you have the men of Major
Chatansingh's company, the communities who hold their ground over there,
and literally in a span of the battle lasted about

(15:30):
ten hours or something like that. But it is outstanding
in the grit and determination that our soldiers displayed that
they literally, as you mentioned, they died fighting to the
last man, last round out of a company. A company
is about one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty men.
An infantry battalion is made up of three companies, sometimes more.

(15:53):
They were part of a battalion that one company of
one hundred and twenty men. Each company is commanded by
a major. One hundred and sixteen of them died. They
were you know the story. Our story is that the
Chinese attacked in very large numbers, and that is true
of mountain warfare, where the ratio of defenders to the

(16:16):
offensive is sometimes one is to ten, one is to twenty.
Even the Chinese attacked in very large numbers. It was
a brigade plus that attacked this small little defensive line
of about three to four kilometers that the company was
strung out along these three to four kilometers, and over
ten to twelve hours they struck late in the night

(16:36):
and by early morning they had overrun this company. Now,
the thing is that they did not retreat. Now there
are other parts in the in the northeast, for instance,
battles where there have been retreats of the Indian army
for tactical reasons, and you know, brigades that collapsed, they've
been captured and all that. But here in Ladak, the

(16:57):
defense was ferocious. I mean it was so tenacious. The
kind of defense like literally this kind of thing we've
never seen in any Indian conflict post nineteen forty seven.
We've seen that in Saragari, but the battle in the
nineteenth century. But here again they held their positions, last man,
last round. They literally died fighting and they were faced
with tremendous ords. I mean, the army got into this

(17:21):
absolutely stupid forward policy, right, they committed soldiers on the ground.
They had no equipment, they had no heavy atlerry, they
didn't have machine guns, they didn't they had bold action rifles,
all of those things, and they never actually anticipated the
Chinese would actually do what they did during the Border

(17:43):
war in October. Now, when you don't believe your adversary
is capable of launching and offensive, your fundamentals are flawed.
And when your fundamentals of flawed, it leads to a
very severe military defeat, which is what happened in sixty two.
So the men of this company, Chatan major, Chatan Singh's company,
which is completely overrun, but it remains the greatest stand,

(18:07):
last stand made by Indian Army since nineteen forty seven.
It's an outstanding act of bravery that these men they've
literally fought because they knew that if they fail, if
they did not hold their line, the Chinese would roll
over and they would capture everything, all the territory at
the year. So that's what And this is a story,
interestingly that came to light much later. Yeah, oh, only

(18:30):
in early nineteen sixty three that in the medie of
what happened, the army was, you know, still picking up
the pieces. What happened when the Chinese retreated, that is
when the early nineteen sixty three, I believe that Jan
is when they December Jan when they went to those
positions and they found that, you know, soldiers had literally
died fighting over there, they had lost contact with this company.

(18:52):
And what the survivors then told them, they literally didn't
believe their initial That is one version of the story
that they didn't believe what the survivors, the four odd
or the six odd survivors who told this thing that
you know, they had been sent away by the company.
Some of them came back walking back to our lines
and that they narrated this heroic story of you know,

(19:14):
sacrifice bravery, which which is captured in that movie Hakikat
and so major Chatan Singh's you know, bravery is legend.
I mean, this is the stuff that the Indian Army
literally worships. And those lines that you mentioned that you
just read out, it's there on that Razangla Memorial eighteenth
of November every Years day.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that poem actually talks about a Roman
Roman commander who stands literally the gates of his city
preventing the enemy from entering. That's exactly what happened in
this case. So then zooming out on deep now to
the larger war, we'll obviously talk about the two aspects

(19:56):
that lead to a conflict between India and China. One
that mcmahuny in famous McMahon line, and second, in this case,
the so called neh Roose blunder. We'll come to that obviously,
but for now I want to talk about just at
the tactical level, those those those days of the war,
the nineteen sixty two war, from its start to its end,
what happened in those two two sectors, the sectors that

(20:18):
are now known as the Western Front and the Eastern Front, which,
by the way, for many people is a bit odd
because when you look at the map of India it
seems or carry what a west Keso sector. But then
you know, if you face yourself towards China, that's when
you will realize Western is just the left of you,
Eastern is the right of you. The right back then
was the Northeast Frontier agency is basically the left was

(20:39):
Ladakh like you were describing, so China launch and offensive.
Tell us what happened over the many days? And why
is this war scene and it is a failure for
the Indian Army.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, you know, I give you the build up to
that conflict. What happened? Really when we grossly underestimated Mao Zedong,
we didn't read him right. And Prime Minister Neru this
is a good man, but he had no combat experience.
He didn't understand where people came from, what shaped them

(21:15):
as leaders. Mao Zedong is a guy who's been fighting
all his life. Right, he was in the hills, in
the caves. He literally launched the Chinese Communist Party in
the twenties, and then he captured that country in nineteen
forty nine. Wiley guy. Right, He waited for Chiang Kashak
to wear himself out fighting the Japanese, and once the

(21:35):
Japanese had been defeated, he just marched and took over
the whole country. Right, So the Chinese Communist Party is
a very wiley party, and that's the reason they're still
in power over there. And when he saw China, when
Mao saw Nehru, he saw him as a bit of
a simpleton. Who didn't understand the complexities of you know,

(21:56):
waging war, or who understood imperial geography and all of
those things. You can argue that you know, Neru probably
didn't even have the exposure to conflict combat to didn't
know anything about the military for instance. Right, we are
supposed to have won our freedom through non violent means, right,

(22:17):
and that is that that is a big, big, a
fundamental DNA problem that when you say that you know
you've acquired your independence through non violent means, then you're
not able to use violence to defend yourselves. Right. And

(22:38):
so the nineteen sixty two war was we literally plunged
headlong into this conflict with the Chinese. We didn't read
them right, We didn't prepare for this, despite the fact
that you had military exercises like La Kila that was done.
There was an exercise called La Kila which actually said that, look,
the Chinese could attack us, and this is what we

(22:58):
need to do to defend ourselves. Saddhar Patail, a late
Home minister before one of his last messages to Panderu
was that we've never had a border with the Chinese.
They are now on our border. Do not trust them? Right,
So you had plenty of warning of the fact that
the Chinese did not mean us any good, right, they

(23:21):
were implacable enemies. But Prime Minister Eru, he chose the
path of you know, Panchi and the mutual coexistence and
two Asian civilizational nations coming together against imperialism, you know,
all of that. So he made all those fundamental mistakes.
And then when China invaded and they launched their divisions

(23:44):
into us, he was in a state of shock because
it's like this building that you've created. Overnight, you see
that building collapsing. Literally. It's very tragic because and he
passed away just two years after the war, in sixty
to sixty four. He had died. And one of the
reasons for that he was literally a broken man after
this conflict. And when you made that initial misconception of

(24:09):
the Chinese, you got in the wrong people. He got
one of his relatives there, General left BM Call would
never face any action during the Second World War. He
appointed all the wrong people. The you know, Timaya had
recommended SVP thor Art we made chief. He overruled his recommendation.
Tho Art was an aggressive soldier. General. He chose somebody

(24:33):
else jel Thapper, who was more pliable part of the
extended family and all that. So, you know, when you
see political interference in the military, this was the most
glaring aspect of that because it kind of manifested itself
in defeat. And the worst part about it is, and
this is horrifying, because in nineteen sixty two India had

(24:55):
a very strong air force. We may not have had
that up yeah, you know, we may not have had
a very strong military on the ground that was capable,
kitted out, equipped to fight a high altitude campaign. You're
talking of going from fifteen feet to fifteen thousand feet, right,
that is the altitude at which the Indian Army was fighting.
I mean, it is a Himalayan It's been called a

(25:16):
Himalayan blunder, but it's a Himalian battle that they fought.
You're literally going from the planes, you're going up to
the mountains and you're fighting an army that's pouring across
the plateau. They're sitting on the plateau. They have the
high ground and they just had to extend their lines
a few hundred kilometers to resupply their troops. But as
for us, it's literally an uphill task. You climbing up,

(25:38):
you're ascending and then you're fighting on those valleys. But
at that time we had eighteen fighter squadrons. The Indian
Air Force was one of the best air forces in Asia.
May not be in the world, but in Asia it
was a fantastic air force. You had Hawker Hunters, you
had Uragans, you had bombers, you had Canberras, you had

(26:00):
state of the art aircraft right, and they were not
allowed to enter the fray. They were kept out of
the war because because the political leadership, Prime Minister was
advised and it took that decision that if we deployed
the air force in an offensive role, the Chinese would

(26:20):
retaliate by bombing our cities. Colkata, right, Coolkata would be bombed.
The Chiefness of Cool Bengal said, oh, no, you know,
my state will be bombed by the Chinese. The Intelligence
Bureau you had Bolana Maliku's the IB chief for decades.
The IB was in charge of external intelligence. By the way, yes,

(26:40):
so R and W was set up much later, six
years after this disastrous war. They gave all kinds of
stupid assessments to the political leadership that oh, we can't
deploy the air force because if we deployed, the Chinese
will deploy their air force, They will deploy their bombers.
Despite having all the intel that the you know, the
Indian Air Force was literally raring to go. And here

(27:03):
is something that I picked up in during the Cargil War.
I remember I was in Bombay at that time. Am
Marshall Tipness had come down to brief us there and
in the press conference he said, you know, this was
after the air Force had been deployed in safeith Sagar
in Cargil. And he says, he turned to me and
he said that no, I was a young pilot sitting

(27:24):
in the cockpit of a Hunter aircraft. I was fully armed, guy,
I was. My tank was full, my cannons were loaded,
we had rockets, and we were waiting sitting in the
cockpit literally and waiting for the order to be given
so we could take off and attack the Chinese. And
he says that order never came. And it was such

(27:44):
a demoralizing incident for the Indian Air Force that despite
having all of these you know, state of the art
fighter aircraft, fighter bombers, they were never deployed in combat.
And this is because and this is something that comes
out of talking to air power experts like a Marshal
Jord and this is that, you know, there's a fundamental

(28:05):
mismatch in the way the political leadership has seen airpower.
Airpower by definition, is a very offensive arm of military power.
Whereas when you say that we are only meant for defense,
you know, the armed forces of India, if you put
it in your mind that, oh, they only meant for defense,
you will never think of using airpower. Right. So this

(28:27):
is something that in hindsight, hindsight is you know, perfect vision.
I know, but if they had, if the political leadership
had decided to unleash the Indian Air Force, they could
have gone. They could have retrieved the nineteen sixty two war.
I still believe that despite all our reverses, despite the
sacrifices of you know, the brave soldiers like Major Chatan

(28:50):
Singh literally last man, last round, the Indian Air Force,
if it had come into the conflict even as late
as November, they could have retrieved the situation. They could
have had the Chinese because yes, what of course the
Prime Minister was being advised by all these vice experts.
The US ambassador to India advised him against that, believe

(29:11):
it or not. John Kenneth galbrate for the US ambassador,
and he said, don't know, you shouldn't deploy the air
force because the Chinese will attack. The IB of course
told him that the political ground this thing. Leadership they
also advised against this. And here you're wondering that why
did the Prime minister take advice from all of these
guys who don't mean the country. Well, and here's the thing.

(29:34):
There was intelligence then to suggest there was a Chinese
pilot would defect it with a meek seventeen or a
mid nineteen to Taiwan, right in the late fifties, early sixties.
And he had told the introgators, the Western introgators, we
were incidently given access to this briefing where he said

(29:55):
that the Chinese air force on the Plateau doesn't have
enough fuel to fly or fight. So this whole thing
of thousands of bombers coming and hitting India was non existent.
There were no aircraft, They were not in any shape
to fight or fly because guess what a few years
before that the Chinese had broken up with the Soviets

(30:15):
Khrushev hat you know, thrown the Chinese out and they
had fought a border war after that in sixty nine,
so the ties were really at an all time low.
Their entire fighter fleet was of Russian origin. They needed
Russian experts, they needed Russian technicians, they needed fuel, all
of those things they didn't have. All they had was
a very strong military. We had a military that was

(30:36):
strong but not adequate in numbers. They were throwing divisions
at us and we were replying with what not even brigades.
We had. A brigade is a three thousand strong military force.
A division is like fifteen thousand strong, right, and you have,
you know, positions like this defended by companies, platoons. That's
how we were fighting. It's heartbreaking when you read these accounts,

(30:59):
but you had the air force chose not to use
it and guess what happened.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
So then the other question and the other mystery is
at what point did China, which was in an advantageous position,
decide that's it and chose to basically stop the war.
And it if it was, like you're describing, such a
bad show, poor show by the military, what stopped them
from literally invading the entire northeast, from literally invading the

(31:28):
entire Atadah.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Good question there, and you ask your friends from the Northeast,
especially in Assam, and they've never forgiven the political leadership
for what they said in November of nineteen sixty two
when the Prime Minister is supposed to have said, my
heart goes out to the people of Assam, right part
of a speech where we believe that the whole Northeast

(31:50):
had been lost. And you know, as far as they poor,
that's on the planes in Assam. They had just vacated
the whole place. They had emptied out the treasury, that
opened up the jails, asylum and there are some very
haunting reports by Bigi Verghese, who was a reporter at
that time, walking through you know, taste Poor and describing

(32:12):
the situations that it goes down. India actually believed that
the whole of the Northeast was going to collapse, right.
There was nothing stopping the Chinese. Now is a good question.
Why did the Chinese pull back Somewhere on the twentieth
of November. They seem to have decided that we need
enough is enough, and we are now we're drawing back

(32:32):
to our claim lines. So they climbed all the way back.
They left all the positions that they had captured, even
returned a lot of the equipment that they had captured
from us. Unusual. It's there in some of their propaganda videos.
I mean, that is basically meant to, you know, put
out up the Chinese Communist Party's view of things. But

(32:53):
here's the thing, they didn't do it out of any magnanimity.
Now it's November, right towards the end of November, snow's falling,
and Chairman Mao knows as anyone else that you cannot
maintain those logistical lines for very long. So under the
pretext of this magnanimity, there was actually a lot of

(33:14):
military thinking that went in where they said that, look,
we can't maintain these positions. There is a possibility that
the Indians could hit us back with American support. So
they withdrew very quietly. They went back to their claim
lines and Ladak of course, they did pull back, and
where they're standing today is literally where they were in

(33:34):
nineteen sixty two in November, and we have lost in
ladakh An area the size of the state of Kerala,
my state, thirty eight thousand square kilometers is lost. And
this is what we're negotiating axcitchin the entire area of
oxcite Chin, which is what you know. We have the maps,

(33:55):
we have the evidence to suggest that all of this
were treaties that were negotiate as way back as the
seventeenth century between Indian rulers in Ladak and the Tibetan rulers.
And of course this was formalized by the British in
the early twentieth. Now, the Chinese don't recognize any of that.
They call it you know, colonial learn so I mean
you leave everything that the Chinese. They will find the

(34:19):
evidence to suggest that even India, at some point this
hypothetical was, you know, a vassal state of the Chinese.
Therefore India, all everything under the sun in India belongs
to us. You know, the Chinese have a way of
doing things and you know, manipulating history and you know,
manipulating geography and cartographic cartographic aggression. You have to learn

(34:40):
it from the Chinese, that's how they do it.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, this is akin to like you know, taking four
steps forward and then taking two steps back and say
we were drawing, but you're forgetting that they've taken to
step forward by there.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah right right, that's net net right.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
We'll talk more about this, but after a quick treak,
people want the series correct, So let's first talk about
the existing players in the market, what they're doing in
the Indian TV segment.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
For a series.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, which do you think is the first name which
comes into your mind?

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Which is doing something ravishing?

Speaker 5 (35:12):
So my mind, the Mahindra definitely tops the list, but
I think most people will disagree. Most people will think
of the Humdi Crati Electric, which shares a very similar
approach in terms of philosophy to the car that we're
about to talk about today. The Mahindra, though, represents something

(35:37):
radical and that's why it catches my fancy and I
think a lot of people in my age group would
agree as into not older people such as I like
the B six.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Quite a lot. Yeah, straight up, I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
But would you buy one? Yes, I would rush B six.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
I would bish.

Speaker 5 (35:58):
Because the old person who came back and you were like,
I want the Scorpio because it's soft, it's comfortable, and
it can go fast without old people in my car
realizing that it can go fast. Isn't that a fantastic thing?
I mean you said you are good to buy the basics.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
The b B six is going to be a very different.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Welcome back something before the break, you were talking about
the sixty two or how it panned out, how it
basically resulted in a loss for the Indian Army and
you had the Chinese withdrawing. I thought that, ever, that's
always struck me is that in the years after, in
the months after, was there never any thought given discussions

(36:41):
held within the government, within the military to sort of
take revenge. Because there's one thing about military is that
we know that you keep talking about on this podcast,
is that they swear by the philosophy and of an
eye for an eye. So if someone attacks you, if
someone takes your territory, if someone punches you, you punch back,

(37:01):
you take back there you.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Also attack them.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
So Okay, in November, you've lost the fighting, you've lost
the war, the winterest coming. Like you said, in those months,
there probably would have been time to recoup, resupply, get
your proofs from the planes, maybe rethink the idea of
using air force for some coercive bombing. Was that, ever,
ever a question in the minds of or a point

(37:24):
of discussion from what you've read.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
Well, you know there are I know for a fact
that they were very very detailed air force planning that
would gone into these offensive missions, right down to the
number of sorties that they would generate and the weapons
that they would use, cannons, rockets, bombs, all of that.
They was all planned, It was all there. The political leadership,
of course, like I said, repeatedly rejected these things. No, no,

(37:49):
we're never going to use their force in an offensive role.
So not one bomb was dropped, not one rocket was fired,
not one cannon was fired, right through the whole conferenty.
It's a shameful, uh you know, state of things that
played out in nineteen sixty two. But you know this
other point you mentioned they very interesting. Now what happened

(38:11):
actually as a result of that defeat is that the
whole system went into shock and you had this myth
of the twelve foot tall chinaman being created, and that
is something that has held firm even till date if
you look at it right up to Ladak, probably at
the I'm talking with the twenty twenty Ladak standoff where

(38:32):
you had the Galvan skirmish. Incidantly, there's a movie being
made about that as well being shot. Yeah, some Monkans
thing that's out early next year. So probably the first
time in cinema history that you're seeing two movies on
the China War several decades apart, being made within you know,
released within months of each other. Interesting. Yeah, and by

(38:54):
the way, there's a third movie also out on the
other front, So the two fronts.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
There's a movie that's.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
So it's all geopolitical movies are the flavor of the season,
it seems. But you know, coming back to the point
is that when you're defeated in the mind, I think
you become very defensive. But at the same time, the
fear of China kind of went into the system. So
let's not provoke the Chinese. Another sixty two might happen.

(39:24):
That kind of got called out for the first time
in sixty seven when you saw the clashes in Sundorong Chu,
where for the first time the Indian military stood up
and there replied to the Chinese. They kind of backed off.
You had in eighty seven to Jener sundar Ji l
lifted an entire brigade. In Al Nachel, there was a
standoff in the Chinese which lasted almost a decade. Several

(39:48):
years after that, in fact, and in twenty twenty, when
India rapidly militarized, I was on the ground there covering
this build up and I saw the first things that
India had deployed. There was the Indian Air Force fighter
jets landing in Lay, and you know, there was a
sense of relief for me that I said, if there's

(40:08):
ever going to be a war, This was sometime in
about June or July, if there's ever going to be
a war, nott forbid. Nobody wants these kind of things
to happen. The Indian Air Force is not going to
be left out this time, right, So the defeat in
the mind actually led to a kind of a defensive mentality.
But at the same time, the Indian state in post

(40:30):
nineteen sixty two carried out one of the most significant
reforms of the defense ministry in terms of expanding the
military budget. The military budget literally went through the roof.
It crossed three percent of the GDP. It was less
than two percent at that time. It crossed three percent
and they started raising mountain divisions, you know, formations. Literally,

(40:54):
the Indian military grew, it became double or triple the size,
and what you see today is a result of that
post nineteen sixty two build up of soldiers literally double
triple in size. And Pakistan saw that happening and they
realized Field Marshal Ayub realized that the only chance he
had to grab Kashmir was sixty five. They were held

(41:17):
to a standstill, and in seventy one you saw that
utter defeat where East Pakistan was broken away, became an
independent nation. And I argue I wouldn't be wrong on this.
Nineteen seventy one would not have happened but for nineteen
sixty two, because that shock to the system was so
intense that we started putting in a lot of things

(41:37):
in process. We expanded, we you know, gave serious thought
to We started giving a lot of attention to battle
hard and military leadership like General Harbucks, Field Marshall manic Shaw.
All of these personalities came out after the defeat of
sixty two. Whereas you had that whole coterie of generals

(41:57):
that led us that you know, literally sleep walked into
disaster in sixty two. They were completely marginalized, they've faded
away into history. But you had a very new crop
of aggressive young leaders who found favor and they rose
through the ranks, thank god for that. So and also
some very severe serious capability building was done. There was

(42:22):
an organization called the DGS Director at General Security which
was set up, you know, shortly after the war in
sixty two, which was three arms. Is actually our first
big covert war fighting force. It was under the Intelligence
Bureau to begin with. It had three arms. It had
the Special Frontier Force, which was literally that you can

(42:42):
call it the Dalai Lama's Army. The Special Services Bureau
meant to train local populations and you know, resistance fighting,
something that was learned in Europe during the Nazi occupation.
And you had the third one, which is the Aviation
Research Center. Three very key organizations and under this overall
DGS that was set up. This organization continues, it's now

(43:04):
under the RNAW. And of course in sixty eight you
had the RNW being set up as a dedicated external
intelligence agency. So they said that, look, you can't have
your intelligence agency doing everything internal and external intelligence, which
is what the IB was doing. So they weren't giving
very clear intel to the government, and a lot of
capabilities gaps were there. Those were filled up, and that's

(43:29):
why you saw a very different account of us presenting
ourselves in seventy one, and of course that continued this
paralysis when it came to China. You know, it continued
that no border infrastructure till the early twenty first century
when we actually saw the Chinese building up big time
on the Tibetan Plateau, when there was an explosive burst

(43:52):
of infrastructure building. You had that high altitude railway line
that came over there, and that's when India realized, look,
if we don't match their infrastructure build you're going to
see another sixty two kinds of situation, and this time
they probably won't go back. Right. So a lot of
the building up that you're seeing now with the Border
Roads organization and all that is a response to what

(44:13):
the Chinese have been doing in the twenty first century.
But the main thing is that it's really important to
first fight the Chinese in the mind Yeah, and they're
very good at mind games, and our defensive mentality, I
think that is going to take a while to get
out of needs to be complimented with an offensive mindset

(44:35):
as well.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, but I think you've already seen some bits and
pieces of that during the reasons four years standoff with
the Chinese when you had at the tactical level at
least the Indian army or taking some offensive action, taking
some of putting on some offensive missions when they thought
the need was there for such missions, right, Sania, you

(44:57):
know a quick time engine on this infamous mcmahone line
to sort of understand why this problem exists between between
India and China. Uh, Is it as simple as what
I've read that the core of the core core problem
is that the line was drawn on a small map
with the pen. The stroke of that pen on that

(45:20):
map looks thin to you, but on the ground it
could be vast. The width could be as many many kilometers.
Which is why you have China saying claiming until point
A while India games and point b, and you have
both those points overlapping. And also the fact that the
text of the of that of that agreement when it
was signed by the British, by the British, everything in
this world, I thing today, modern problems all goes back to.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
The British Empires. Blame it on the British.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, so when the when the treaty was assigned, when
the Tibet was still not under Chinese occupation.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Uh, there was some.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Text about how that sort of line runs naturally towards
the north and something about watershed, but then that did
not matched what was happening on the government the geography
of how the revers flowed. So is it as simple
as that or is it more to it?

Speaker 3 (46:07):
It? Actually there's more to it. It's a fact. See,
the British made a hash of things wherever they've gone,
right across the world. That's one of the legacies of
the British Empire. We have to just live with it.
But the fact is that if you look at the
larger picture, the bigger picture is that China is not
interested in a border or a boundary settlement with India.
If you look at the Great Game. I mean, people

(46:29):
say that the Great Game ended when the British left
in nineteen forty seven and forty eight, and possibly one
of the last acts of the Great Game was the
transfer of Gilgit Baltistan to Pakistan and show that India
and the Soviet Union never had a land boundary. But
I argue that the Great Game still continues. The players

(46:50):
have changed a bit. The Chinese have now entered the
Great Game the Americans want to come back in. The
Chinese do not want a settlement of the boundary with
India because that reduces a lot of pressure on the
Indian military. Chinese are one of the founders of acupressure
and acupuncture, and this is something that they would like

(47:13):
to do all along this boundary with India. The Chinese
regard India as a near peer competitor in Asia, and
throughout their last sixty seventy years, their effort has been
to ensure that India has scrawled in the Indian subcontinent
what people call the South South Asia. Right, so they

(47:34):
have propped up Pakistan as a counter to India in
South Asia. They've propped up North Korea as a counter
to South Korea and to Japan in East Asia. Now,
if they were to settle the boundary with India along
whatever alignment is mutually agreed to by both the countries,

(47:56):
that would free up a lot of military resources right
where you're not deployed all along the LAC like India
is has been since twenty twenty, and we still don't
know more than five and a half years later, we
still don't know why the Chinese did what they did.
In twenty twenty. But you just have to go into

(48:16):
the mind of chi Jin being to understand and you
possibly start to get answers. And whoever I've asked in
the Indian leadership, definitely the Chief of Defense Staff, the
late Serious General Rabat. He mentioned that this operation in
twenty twenty Ladak was directly it came down from the
political leadership in China, right, it was chi Jinping. It

(48:39):
goes all the way up there. Nothing in China happens
by accident. So this whole thing was a means of
keeping India in check, under control, under a lot of pressure.
There were talks about you know, you take you know Laddak,
you know you allow us to keep Accechin and we

(49:00):
we will allow you to keep ar Nachal Pradesh. That
swap was suggested by Chawin Lai in the fifties sixties.
But then that's gone off into the background. Now. But
now you know, the entire India China boundary dispute has
become a kind of a military race for power and supremacy.

(49:22):
If China will not want to settle this right now,
because it would, like I said, allow India to focus
on building up the military, or reduce the pressure on
the border, which will free up resources to maybe tackle Pakistan.
You know, those are those things. So they would want
that pressure on India to remain, which is why you

(49:44):
see the kind of collusivity between India and China all through.
We saw it through Operations Indu and even before that.
That's where it's headed. But the fact is that, yes,
the British did err in a lot of places historic
they have that thick line is that is a fact.
There are portions because of the thickness of the pencil

(50:07):
which are you know, overlapping. But if you're if your
main if your mindset does not allow you to settle
the border favorably, then it doesn't matter. Those alignments really
don't matter. Then all that they will you will be
faced with is an adversary who will keep doing what
we call salami slicing tactics right four steps forward, two

(50:28):
steps back, and he's created a so called buffer zone,
and he's pressurizing you on the buffer zone. Incidently, the
place where Major Chatansi and his men made their last
stand falls in the buffer zone. So we briefly had
access to that five years back when we launched that
operation on the Kailash Range to capture all those areas

(50:49):
that were in the buffer zone. But as part of
the post you know, conflict pullback, we kind of move
back and that's now once again back in the buffer zone.
All those areas, the sungars where they made their last
and some of their graves are there, you know, all
of those places are still in the buffalo. This is
what China's grand strategy is. They're not looking at any

(51:11):
great border settlement with India. In fact, only two countries
they have not settled their borders with are India and
of course Bhutan, which they're pressurizing. So and this is
possibly going to become worse in the years. If we
don't stand up to the Chinese, we're going to have,
you know, a hard time ahead. I don't foresee a

(51:31):
very happy situation in the next couple of years. If
they were to settle that it would have I mean,
it would be the most logical thing to do. They
would not have to deploy on these you know. And
the sixty two War, what we forget, Dave, is that
it's the first time in history that two nations had
fought at this altitude in division strength, and the post

(51:54):
twenty to twenty deployment as well. Never in history have
such large formations like you're not talking of literally divisions
or course, but entire field armies are deployed at such
altitudes like more than one hundred thousand, one hundred and
fifty thousand men deployed on this altitude. Never happened before.

(52:14):
It's the logical thing to do, demilitarize that entire area,
go down to a settlement, start the boundary level talks.
The special representatives are talking us and ours and theirs.
But when you have incidents like Laddak, your Gulvan clash
and all that, that takes the whole process back by decades.

(52:37):
So your entire negotiations on the McMahon line and all
that have literally, you know, taken a beating. Now for us,
the biggest casualty, and we've discussed this in past episodes,
is the loss of trust. You can't trust the Chinese.
You know, they have continuously been building up their side

(52:59):
of the boarder. They've been creating those boarder of villages
which are which point to very gloomy signs for the future.
Where they've looked at the treaty clauses which say that
populated areas cannot be exchanged, right, so therefore closing any
such possibility of any So I think the boundary lines,

(53:22):
whichever way you look at whether it's the McMahon line,
whether it's the lac, the way we look at it,
the way they look at it, this is going to
continue for the next ten twenty years until possibly a
new generation of politicians come either in India or in China,
or in both places and then decide, look, it's only
in our best interest to settle this right now. It

(53:44):
doesn't seem to be the case given the kind of
leadership that you have in China that's antagonistic to you.
Final thought on the sixty two ward.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
We've spent the entire episode talking about how we see
it from the Indian perspective, but I was very I'm
very interested to know how does China see the sixty
two war, whether it's it's in literature, whether it's in
it's writing, the aless that China has across several thing
times across the world, what they sort of propagate when

(54:12):
they talk about sixty sixty two war in terms of
why they launched even they accept that they launched an offensive.
So what have you read about this? What do you
know about this? What can you tell us about how
China sees war?

Speaker 3 (54:25):
Well, a good question there. You know the Chinese, how
they see this as it is framed in their official
lingo as the Sino Indian border self defensive offensive war
something like that. You know, it's a it's a it's
quite a mouthful. But they're saying that it was a

(54:46):
war that they had to strike in self defense. That's
what the title suggests. In Chinese. It hasn't occupied much
mind space for the Chinese. They look at the Korean
War as this heroic struggle against the West and all
of that, and it was a brutal war. But sixty
two is a footnote. It rarely exists. It barely exists.

(55:08):
And I kind of see why, because of that great
lea forward, when you've lost thirty million of your citizens,
then a small boundary war in which the casualties are
as follows the Indian casualties. About four thousand soldiers were
killed and four thousands were captured. Around four thousand several
thousands more injured. The Chinese. And this is the thing

(55:30):
that you have to take with a pinch of solid
They claim to have lost only about seven hundred soldiers
and a one thousand injured. The official figures would probably
be much more. And in Razangla, incidently, India's the company,
the higher company that was of Kumaunis that were literally
last man, last round. They supposed to have inflicted heavy

(55:53):
casualties on the Chinese more than a thousand, is what
we say, because they literally kept firing bullets until there
were no bullets to fire. The Chinese state never accepts
casualties very easily, so even in this framing of this
war as a self defensive offensive action that they undertook,

(56:15):
they haven't come out with what many people believe the
actual accurate estimate of casualties. So it's a minor footnote
in their whole, you know, overall military history thing, and
it's not given too much of importance. But politically, for Mau,

(56:37):
it is really important to teach India lesson. And Mao
was out of control in you know sixty two, as
I mentioned, he was this mad, angry, savage, paranoid dictator
who did the most horrible things to his people. And

(56:59):
guess who he threw into a gulag camp and brutalized
and beat up Xi Jinping's parents. They were hardcore, they
were so they were literally the people that Chi Jin
Pin began, that Mao began his struggle with so. Chi
Jin Ping's father was condemned, he was banished to the countryside.

(57:22):
His wife was forced to condemn her son young she
So there's an interesting study of how this enigma that
Chi Jinping has become today is a result of all
the childhood trauma that he's sufferst to have suffered during
the Cultural Revolution and all of that. But sixty two

(57:43):
minor footnote for the Chinese no movies made. There was
exactly that one movie. It's a propaganda movie that came
out a couple of years back to was released on
the fiftieth anniversary of the India China were still there
on YouTube. It's I think it's a half hour, forty
five minute thing, but no popular culture, no movies in

(58:03):
popular culture. All their attention of the Chinese film industries
for what the Japanese did to them and what the
Americans did to them in Korea. So I think we
seem to have gotten away with with just that minor
propaganda movie in the sixties, right.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Interesting, I think we ended there one final quick question
talking about movies. So, movies happening on this The battle
of the movie had already happened on this by the way,
fresh one is happening now, Like you said, a movie
on galvan is happening. What's that one battle across all
the wars that NDAs fought you think deserves a movie
that still doesn't hasn't been made.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
A movie that apart from mine on the Operation X
Subtle Book plug that of course. But but one I
would like to see is and I believe he's already
making a movie on it. That is Faranata is planning

(59:02):
something on the nineteen seventy one missile attack on Karachi.
That's one we talked about last night. Yes, so that
is possibly under you know, in under production. But you know,
more than just the battles, there are plenty of battles
that we can focus on. You know, there are also
stories that need to be told. They've on operations like

(59:26):
the Indian armies move into Bangladesh for instance, the Liberation
of Bangladesh. I you know, it was one of the
most glorious chapters in the twentieth century where you had
one army entering this province in support of a genocide
people who are you know, being massacred by an occupational army,

(59:50):
of the Pakistani army, liberating that province, making a new
country of Bangladesh, and then rapidly withdrawing, you know, allowing
that country to flourish and you know, thrive for more
than half a century. That story has never been told,
you know that how India created Bangladesh or helped create

(01:00:12):
Bangladesh in just nine months, starting from Operation Searchlight in
March nineteen seventy one, right up to the creation of
Bangladesh in December sixteenth, nineteen seventy one, and a country
that was literally, you know, living on a hand to
mouth existence. It was a very poor country, but it
had a very focused politico military leadership that thought that

(01:00:35):
this was the right thing to do. And there are
so many other smaller stories as part of this larger
story that can be told about how there was a
very brave Pakistani journalist who saw the massacre and he
wrote that big, very haunting story, Anthony Mascarinus genocide in
seventy one. All of those, I think we've still not

(01:00:56):
you know, done justice to the sacrifice that we made
very unusual, but a very interesting kind of thing that
only India could do. We always, you know, when you
look at world history, oh, how the Allies liberated France
and Europe from the Nazis and all that, we never
look at this one great example of how India liberated

(01:01:17):
this province there where there was actually a genocide on.
So that's the story. Anyone watching it, get any ideas,
please make a story on the nineteen seventy one liberation
of Bangladesh. It's one of the greatest stories of the
twentieth century.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Yeah, it's a fantastic point.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Actually, I think perhaps we should do a couple of
episodes on that in fact, because it's, like you said,
it's sort of the perfect operation, right, It's not just
as simple as you just sending your army across and
with it coming back with victory. It's also operations like
the one you've wrote written about, the sort of bays
you prepared before that offensive that you launched, physical offensive
that you launched, that overt offensive, the COVID base that

(01:01:53):
you prepared, whether it was by funding the Muktibaiini, whether
it was through the naval cover tops that not many
knew about until your book came out, so that's sort
of yeah, you're right, it's the perfect operation that I
think deserves a movie and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
A politico military kind of thing. And you know, exactly
like how possibly like the Cuban missile crisis could be
even more an OTT series because I think that far
too many chapters exactly for one movie to do justice.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
It's a fantastic point.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
So I if anyone's you know, listening, is listening to
us out there, perhaps they can take some.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
Use from there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
That's it and the great chat has always fantastic discussion.
Loved all the inserts that you had on this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Thanks very episode, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Thanks so much, and thanks as always to our listeners
and viewers. That's it for this week's defense. Lowes was
more tune in next week. They'll then stay safe and
do not cross any boundaries out of us port.

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Beyond 120 Bahadur: Inside Battle of Rezang La and the 1962 India-China War | S3 | Ep 30

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Beyond 120 Bahadur: Inside Battle of Rezang La and the 1962 India-China War | S3 | Ep 30