India became Independent on 15 August 1947. And, it was only good two yearslater,ie. on 01 October 1949, that the Chinese Communists with MaoTse Tung, at their helm,came to power in China. When the British left the Indian sub-continent in August 1947, Tibet was an independent country and there was a trading mission in Lhasa,the capital of Tibet. It was a failure of our foreign policy and that of the then Hon. Prime Minister of india, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, that we failed to formulate & conclude a treaty of peace & friendship with Tibet and protect its territorial integrity, like what we did in the case of Sikkim & Bhutan. There is no denying the fact that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was an able leader and one of the greatest statesman of his time. However, like all humans, he too had his failings. He failed to appreciate, the astuteness & intellectual brilliance of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the then Home Minister of India, when he as early as on 04 November 1950 informed Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in writing,that Communist China was a potential threat / enemy to India, and to watch out. Unfortunately, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his exuberance as a world statesman and in his over enthusiasm to cultivate the Chinese, disregarded the venerable Sardar%u2019s advice, for which India paid a heavy price in 1962, and continues to pay even today.
