A day after Congress MP and LoP Rahul Gandhi’s dig at the central government’s foreign policy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a no-holds-barred attack against him in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, i.e., February 4.
In a veiled jibe at the LoP, PM Modi said that some leaders use the word “foreign policy”, just to be perceived as a “mature leader”. The Prime Minister further added that those interested in foreign policies should peruse the book, “JFK’s Forgotten Crisis”.
Since PM Modi’s mentioning of the book, there has been an eagerness among people as to what the book actually suggests. Social media users are posting their own views and remarks about the book; while those who haven’t read it are now filled with curiosity.
“This book mentions correspondence between India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru and then US President John F Kennedy and also decisions taken at the time. The book brings out the games being played in the name of foreign policy at a time the country was facing a lot of challenges,” PM Modi told the lower house.
Let’s unfold what’s in the book
Published in 2015, ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War’ is authored by former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Bruce Riedel. The book delves into the India-China War in 1962, citing letters exchanged between Nehru and John F Kennedy- the then US President.
Throwing light on the then Indian government’s leadership, the book says that it was “ill-prepared and taken aback”.
“Poorly equipped and badly led Indian Army”
“The Chinese attack on India that began in October 1962 inflicted major casualties on the poorly equipped and badly led Indian army and resulted in China’s occupation of 14,500 square miles of territory claimed by India in Kashmir called Aksai Chin or the desert of white stones. So grave was the defeat that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was compelled to ask Kennedy for “immediate American military aid to India, including an airlift of infantry weapons and light equipment for troops fighting on the border, and even American piloted transportation planes, and he had authorized a formal request to Washington for consideration of a joint air defense, involving American air cover for Indian cities to free India’s air force for tactical raids against the Chinese. Hundreds of U.S. military advisers and air force personnel descended on New Delhi,” as one eminent American historian of modern India has written, says the book.
“Nehru was more interested in Pat Kennedy”
“When Kennedy was visiting India, the U.S. embassy in New Delhi convinced Prime Minister Nehru to give him an audience. As Jackie Kennedy later recalled, the embassy staff told Kennedy that “whenever Nehru gets bored with you, he taps his fingertips together and looks up at the ceiling.” After only ten minutes with Kennedy, she said, “Nehru started to look up at the ceiling” and began tapping his fingertips. It was an inauspicious start to their relationship. According to another account, Nehru was much more interested in Pat Kennedy, JFK’s attractive twenty seven-year-old sister, than in either Jack or Bobby”, the book suggests.
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