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Fear of The Past

The document discusses India's continued refusal to declassify the Henderson Brooks Report, which investigated the causes of India's defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. While the main findings of the report have long been known, the government claims declassification could compromise national security or relations with China. However, other democracies routinely declassify sensitive documents older than 30 years by redacting details. India's excessive secrecy over archives prevents robust debate and understanding of history, weakening its democratic system of self-correction.

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30 views1 page

Fear of The Past

The document discusses India's continued refusal to declassify the Henderson Brooks Report, which investigated the causes of India's defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. While the main findings of the report have long been known, the government claims declassification could compromise national security or relations with China. However, other democracies routinely declassify sensitive documents older than 30 years by redacting details. India's excessive secrecy over archives prevents robust debate and understanding of history, weakening its democratic system of self-correction.

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vikrantattray
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EDITORIALS

Fear of the Past


Ofcial Indias obsession with secrecy does not allow us to have a perspective on the past.
peaking in the Rajya Sabha on 9 November 1962, shortly after the war with China had broken out, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru observed, People have been shocked ... [by] the reverses we suffered. So I hope there will be an inquiry so as to nd out what mistakes or errors were committed and who were responsible for them. Following on this assurance to Parliament, the government constituted an inquiry into the Indian armys performance in the war against China. Just under six months later, the two-member committee comprising Lieutenant General T B Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P S Bhagat submitted the report to the army chief. Defence Minister Y B Chavan conveyed to Parliament a watered-down version of the key ndings of the report. He also said that the report could not be published as it would not only endanger our security but affect the morale of those entrusted with safeguarding the security of our borders. After ve decades, the report is yet to be ofcially declassied despite periodic calls for its release. The governments stonewalling has been supported by other institutions. In an egregious ruling issued in 2009, the Central Information Commission (CIC) held that no part of the report might at this stage be disclosed under the provisions of the Right to Information Act. Declassifying it would apparently seriously compromise Indias security and its relationship with China. On the contrary, the main ndings of the report have been known ever since the publication in 1970 of Indias China War, by Neville Maxwell who was the India correspondent of The Times at the time of the war. In an article published in this journal in 2001 (Henderson Brooks Report: An Introduction, 7 April), Maxwell conrmed as much. The operational aspects of the 1962 war have also been discussed threadbare in a host of memoirs and studies. Most importantly, the ofcial history of the war commissioned by the Ministry of Defence draws on the Henderson Brooks Report and has been available on the internet for some years now. The governments decision to keep the report under the wraps is reective of the obsession with ofcial secrecy. Of course, it may be inadvisable to reveal some of the details of military deployments that remain relevant to date. But the government could have adopted a more forthcoming stance. For one thing, it could have released those portions of the report whose contents are already public knowledge. For another, it could have redacted sensitive details and declassied the report a procedure routinely followed in many other democracies. By refusing to adopt 8

such a course, the government had strengthened the feeling that the report has been buried for purely political reasons. In this context, Maxwells decision to post large chunks of the document online has understandably evoked much interest and commentary. Much of the current discussion, however, is framed in simplistic terms about who were the Guilty Men of 1962 (to borrow the title of a well-known book published in 1968) and is conducted with an eye to the election season. This is doubly unfortunate. A well-informed debate on the subject is long overdue not least in the context of current bogeys about Chinas assertiveness. Further, the ongoing discussion could have turned the spotlight on the limited availability of archival records pertaining to Indias foreign policy. Indeed, the governments obduracy over the Henderson Brooks Report is merely a specic instance of a wider problem: the absence of a system in which the 30-year rule for declassication is followed by the government. None of the ministries declassify and transfer records that are 30 years or older to the archives. The Ministry of External Affairs has belatedly begun the process of declassication; although documents pertaining to China (and much else of interest) continue to remain under lock and key. The Ministry of Defence has not even done this much. This is hardly surprising, given that most of the ofcial histories commissioned by the ministry languish for decades before publication. The claim that documents pertaining to a live issue cannot be declassied simply does not wash. The United States and United Kingdom governments have released hundreds of important documents pertaining to the ongoing conicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Israel has followed the 30-year norm for declassication and has opened up records pertaining to past conicts that have a direct bearing on contemporary issues. Access to private papers remains as difcult as consulting ofcial archives. For instance, to consult the papers of the former defence minister, V K Krishna Menon, permission needs to be obtained from none less than the prime minister of India. This deplorable situation makes India singularly illiberal amongst mature democracies. Robust debates on contemporary history are crucial in a democratic polity. The core strength of a democracy is its capacity for self-correction. But this depends on its ability both to scrutinise the past and to understand how the present was shaped. Archives may not always throw up secrets, but they will afford perspective. Outdated notions of state secrecy should not be allowed to vitiate this vital task of democratic self-understanding.
APRIL 5, 2014 vol xlix no 14
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

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