To counter Rahul Gandhi’s China, US jab, Modi brings up a book on JFK. What does it say?

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During his effect to the debate connected the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi connected Tuesday mentioned however past PM Jawaharlal Nehru sought the United States’s assistance during the 1962 Chinese aggression. “If idiosyncratic is truly funny successful overseas argumentation and wants to understand, I would urge a book, ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis’,” the PM said.

“This publication mentions correspondence betwixt India’s archetypal PM Jawaharlal Nehru and past US President John F Kennedy and besides decisions taken astatine the time. The publication brings retired the games being played successful the sanction of overseas argumentation astatine a clip the state was facing a batch of challenges,” Modi said, without straight mentioning the 1962 India-China War, which the publication talks about.

The 2015 publication that Modi mentioned was written by erstwhile US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) authoritative Bruce Riedel, and is called ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War’. Citing letters written by Nehru to Kennedy successful November 1962, the publication says Indian enactment was ill-prepared and taken aback, and sought combatant jets to stem the Chinese aggression successful 1962.

As India was accelerated losing its territory to China and suffering dense casualties, Nehru said successful his missive that India needed “air transport and pitchy fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression… A batch much effort, some from america and from our friends volition beryllium required”. Soon after, Nehru wrote different missive to Kennedy, which was manus delivered by B K Nehru, the past Indian Ambassador to the US, connected November 19.

“Nehru was frankincense asking Kennedy to articulation the warfare against China by partnering successful an aerial warfare to decision the PLA (People’s Liberation Army of China). It was a momentous petition that the Indian Prime Minister was making. Just a decennary aft American forces had reached a ceasefire with the Chinese Communist Forces successful Korea, India was asking JFK to articulation a caller warfare against Communist China,” the publication says.

“A minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all-weather fighters are essential. We person nary modern radar screen successful the country. The United States Air Force unit volition person to antheral these fighters and radar installations portion our unit are being trained,” Nehru wrote successful the letter, quoted by Riedel. In addition, helium requested “two squadrons of B-47 bombers” to onslaught successful Tibet.

Nehru besides assured Kennedy that these bombers would not beryllium utilized against Pakistan, but lone for “resistance against the Chinese”.

The website of the US Department of State’s Office of the Historian, nether the conception connected ‘Foreign Relations of the US, 1961-1963, South Asia’, besides cites a telegram from the Embassy successful India to the Department of State connected November 19, 1962.

The substance quoted by the State Department archival site, connected the telegram to beryllium delivered by B K Nehru, says, “The missive conveyed successful telegram 1891 was the archetypal of 2 letters sent by Nehru to Kennedy connected November 19. The 2nd was delivered to the White House by the Indian Ambassador connected the evening of November 19. The substance of that missive was transmitted to the Embassy successful New Delhi successful telegram 2167, November 19.”

“These letters person not been declassified by the Indian government,” the State Department’s website says.

A time earlier, the Leader of the Opposition successful Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had called India’s dependence connected Chinese products a large nationalist information concern. He besides linked the nonaccomplishment of the ‘Make successful India’ inaugural to the beingness of Chinese forces wrong Indian territory.

While speaking connected the overseas argumentation an INDIA bloc authorities would follow, Gandhi besides said, “When we speech to the US, we would not nonstop our Foreign Minister to invitation our PM to his (US president’s) coronation. We volition not nonstop him 3 oregon 4 times… ‘please invitation our PM’. Because if we had a accumulation strategy and if we were moving connected these technologies, the American president would travel present and invitation the PM.”

In a connection connected X, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described Gandhi’s assertion arsenic “falsehood”, saying: “At nary signifier was an invitation successful respect of the PM discussed. It is communal cognition that our PM does not be specified events.” He said that Gandhi’s “lies” whitethorn beryllium intended politically but “damage the federation abroad”.