A perilous stand-off to avoid.

Byline: Jawed Naqvi

IT was a pleasant day in October 1962. Barrister Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi was settling down for his sundowner when the watchman came charging in. 'Sir,' he was quaking with fear from the news on the radio. 'China has attacked Hindustan.' Unmoved by the intrusion into his quiet repast, Abbasi Sahib resolved the matter expeditiously. 'Dekho, phaatak band kar do.' (Look here. Just shut the gate.)

Abbasi Sahib lived in a sprawling mansion across the road from the British-era governor's palace in Lucknow. His wife, the celebrated thumri singer and movie actor Begum Akhtar, concealed her emotions, a trick she had learnt while performing for difficult patrons, primarily the royal courts of Jaipur and Hyderabad.

It was the masthead in the morning's National Herald that expressed the enormity of the challenge on the ill-defined mountainous borders. 'The nation is in peril. Defend it with all your might.' National Herald was Nehru's newspaper and these were Nehru's words, unusually positioned above the masthead to highlight the seriousness of the turn of events. Within the next couple of days - barring his sworn opponents - the nation was firmly standing behind the heartbroken prime minister.

I remember Amma going out with some women in our area to deposit jewellery in the government's coffers. The women were not warmongers, but Nehru had asked for their help, and so it had to be given.

Had Indian leaders been more forthcoming with the truth, there would perhaps be a more informed polity.

The metaphor of the gate to stop a foreign incursion was not Barrister Abbasi's monopoly. The current prime minister sees himself as the gatekeeper of the nation on different fronts. And it is clearly considered a lapse on Nehru's part too, that he didn't (or couldn't) keep India's gate securely fastened when the Chinese troops came calling.

Nations have settled their most intractable borders by choice but also by duress. Where to stop and how much to give and what to take instead is tricky. Usually, the higher the strategic advantage one seeks in the bargain the lower is the trust quotient in the quest.

On can construct an idea of nationhood around historical facts or around glorious and necessarily spurious myths. It seems a quirk of unalloyed history though that as a north Indian one shares the national flag with the culturally and linguistically distant Naga people but not with Nepalis where one might be more at home. Put this apparent national...