Thorat, the soldier who saw 1962 coming

TODAY (September 24), in Pune, the Indian Army will pause to honour one of its most remarkable but under-recognised soldiers. The autobiography of Lieutenant General SPP Thorat is being re-released in the presence of the Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan and other senior officers. The event is not simply a ceremonial reissue of an old book; it is a moment of reckoning with history. For Thorat was a man whose clarity of vision, had it been heeded, might have altered the trajectory of India's military story in the 1960s.

For those who have read my book 1962: The War That Wasn't, his name is not unfamiliar. I have argued there that if Thorat, then Army Commander Eastern Command, had been elevated to the post of Chief when General Thimayya retired in 1961, the war with China might have taken a very different turn.

Indeed, the 1965 war with Pakistan may never have happened, for 1962 would not have left India militarily humiliated and psychologically scarred. Thorat, with his deep professional grounding, his refusal to pander to political whim and his unerring grasp of the threat from across the Himalayas, offered India an alternative military destiny.

Born in 1906, Thorat was a Sandhurst-trained officer who cut his teeth in World War II. His service record was impeccable, his reputation that of a hard-driving professional who expected much from his men but always more from himself. He belonged to that generation of Indian officers who carried forward the traditions of the pre-Independence army, yet adapted quickly to the demands of a new nation.

By the late 1950s, as Commander of the Eastern Command, headquartered then in Lucknow, Thorat had a clear understanding of the challenges India faced in its Northeast. Unlike many around him, he harboured no illusions about Chinese intentions.

History turned cruel when General Thimayya retired in 1961. By all professional logic, Thorat should have been his successor. Instead, politics intervened. Prime Minister Nehru, swayed by his faith in Lt Gen BM Kaul, orchestrated the appointment of General Pran Thapar as Chief— a pliant figure who would, in turn, facilitate Kaul's rise. Thorat, inconveniently professional and blunt, was cast aside.

That decision had consequences beyond personalities. It symbolised the wider malaise of the time: the chasm between political assumptions and military realities. The Army's professional assessments were being ignored, and nowhere was this more evident than in the handling of the Chinese threat.

In March 1960, Thorat staged a command post exercise in Lucknow, code-named Exercise Lal Qila. It was no routine staff drill. Lal Qila was a brutally honest attempt to wargame what a Chinese attack would look like. Thorat's appreciation was chilling: the Indian Army, under-prepared and ill equipped, would suffer reverses unless drastic corrective steps were taken. He spelled out force requirements, logistic shortfalls and the need to hold defensible positions.

But his warnings fell on deaf ears. The government, caught up in the romance of Panchsheel and 'Hindi-Chini bhai bhai', was unwilling to accept that the Chinese might use force. Within the Army, Thorat's forthrightness won him few friends in Delhi. His exercise papers were tucked away, and the man himself was soon to be eased out of the succession race.

When the hammer blow fell in October 1962, everything Thorat had predicted came to pass.

When I finally held the Lal Qila papers, what struck me most was Thorat's grasp of the operational art. He was not merely drawing defensive lines on maps; he was thinking of how India's unique military institutions could be employed.

His plan envisaged forward troops holding the McMahon Line as long as possible, then deliberately falling back onto a prepared defensive line further in depth. In the interim, units like 2 Assam Rifles, already deployed in Eastern NEFA, were to disrupt Chinese lines of communication and buy time.

Alas, none of this came to pass. The forward deployments remained exposed, the fallback lines were unprepared and the Assam Rifles never got their chance. The result was catastrophe.

Thorat's foresight touched my family directly. My father, then Captain Ashok Kalyan Verma, was serving with 2 Rajput at Walong, the easternmost outpost on the frontier. In January or February 1961, Thorat, as Army Commander Eastern Command, visited the battalion. He was taken around the defences by the Commanding Officer, Lt Col Maha Singh Rikh. After studying the ground and dispositions, Thorat remarked that the Chinese would most probably choose October 20, 1962 to attack. It was an astonishingly precise forecast — made nearly 20 months in advance.

At that time, my father was detailed as Thorat's liaison officer. The story remained lodged in his memory, and when he recounted it in my hearing two decades later in 1981, I was electrified. That moment was the spark that set me on a trail that eventually led to the Lal Qila papers. It was through Thorat's son, Yashwant, that I finally held the file which had predicted with such brutal honesty the disaster to come.

It is tempting, though sometimes frowned upon, to indulge in counterfactual history. Yet when it comes to Thorat, the counterfactual is compelling. Had he been made Chief in 1961, the Army would have been commanded by a professional who had diagnosed the Chinese threat with accuracy. India would still have faced challenges of terrain, equipment and logistics, but it would not have stumbled blind into disaster.

And without the trauma of 1962, the regional dynamic with Pakistan would have evolved differently. Pakistan launched its 1965 adventure in the belief that India was still reeling from its Himalayan defeat. A confident, unbloodied Indian Army under Thorat's stewardship might well have deterred such adventurism. In that sense, Thorat was not just a soldier of his time but a man whose sidelining altered the very course of South Asian history.

As a person, Thorat was austere, uncompromising and deeply principled. He expected no favours and gave none.

His autobiography is a document of warning and witness. In its pages, we hear the voice of a general who saw clearly, who spoke truth to power and who was punished for it. In revisiting his words today, we are not only honouring his memory but also reminding ourselves of the enduring need for professionalism in civil-military relations.

The presence of senior Army officers at the book's re-release is significant: the Army is formally reclaiming one of its finest. The timing too is apt, as India continues to grapple with its northern borders and the shadow of 1962 still lingers in strategic consciousness. History denied him the chance to lead India's Army in its hour of need. But history now gives us the chance to read him again, to reflect on what was lost, and to draw the lessons afresh.

Shiv Kunal Verma is a military historian.