Nehru made no gesture towards resignation, and he and his Government thus survived the disaster, which would surely have overturned any other democratic Cabinet. But Nehru’s old moral and political domination in Parliament and the Congress Party was gone, not to be recovered in his remaining eighteen months of life. The inner balance of power in New Delhi shifted with uncertainty and indecision as Nehru remained to be the Prime Minister. Before the border fighting, when Nehru was in his prime, it might be said that India had a dictator who would not establish a dictatorship. One area of decisive and determined change in the Indian Government was that of defense. In the next two years, India’s defense expenditure was more than doubled. The latest available American and British supplies replaced the obsolete equipment and stores. The political position of the Army was sharply changed, almost reversed by the debacle. There would be no more interference by the civilians in internal Army matter. In a letter to Bertrand Russell in December, Nehru referred to "the danger of the military mentality spreading in India, and the power of the Army increasing." In broader political terms, a marked shift to the Right appeared as a consequence of the border war, which exposed the intrinsic shallowness and weakness of the Indian Left as a national political force. The Left leadership, represented by Kerala and West Bengal, showed avowed sympathy for Peking and refused to denounce China for aggression, and as a result lost popularity. But the influence of the Sino-India dispute on the political balance was far from racial in India, and probably did no more than accelerating trends already in progress.
One of the most marked and saddest consequences of the border was perhaps the personal and political decline of Nehru. Menon said later in 1962: "I think he collapsed; it demoralized him completely because everything he had built up in his life was going." The remaining youthfulness was stricken from his shoulders, and he was left stooped and unsteady, cherishing a bitter sense of injury against the Chinese, whom he felt had betrayed him and all he had striven for. Much less was heard in India about forcing the Chinese "to vacate their aggression," although in 1970 the opposition Congress tried to commit the Government to doing just that. The forward policy was not revived. The Army build up its strength in Ladakh and opened roads to its forward positions, but they remained outside the Chinese claim line and the dispositions were defensive. The overall superiority in numbers of the Chinese Army and their advantages in movement on the Tibetan plateau make it likely that the Indians can never hope to mount a successful offensive action anywhere on the northern borders, so long as China’s central power is unbroken. As the borders settled into an armed truce, diplomatic relations between China and India were also frozen. Nehru resisted the pressure to break off the diplomatic relations with Peking, but closed the Chinese consulate in Bombay. It was a concession to domestic opinion, but it cost India its consulate in Lhasa, a loss which must have made Lord Curzon turn in his grave. It was years before anyone in India was bold enough to suggest mending relations with China. In 1969, when Mrs. Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, made the suggestion, she was criticized in Parliament. The Chinese showed no interest in improving relations with India. Chinese maps continue to ignore the McMahon Line. Presumably Peking’s long-standing offer to negotiate a boundary settlement on the basis of the status quo when India is ready to do so still stands. But thus to go back to the beginning would mean India’s tacit admission of error, and recantation of the deeply cherished belief that in 1962 she was the innocent victim of unprovoked Chinese aggression. That will never be easy.
