Make 1962 report public: BJD MP

THE HENDERSON Brooks report, which chronicles the 1962 India-china war, resurfaced in Parliament on Friday with a senior BJD MP asking the government to declassify the report so that people can learn what happened in the war that New Delhi lost and learn from it.

Pointing out that a court had directed the government to declassify Nathuram Godse’s statement on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Bhartruhari Mahtab said: “Ours is a vibrant democracy. There is a need to declassify all such materials that were declared classified at a certain given point of time...one such classified document is a report of the 1962 war which was submitted by Lieutenant General Henderson Brooks.this was prepared for the government in 1963 and it went into the reasons for India’s defeat in the 1962 border war with China.”

According to Mahtab, an “arrogant” minister, V K Krishnamenon, had tried to hide the document from the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. “People need to know about this report, which is known as the Himalayan Blunder,” Mahtab said.

“This (report) is a top-secret document and has not been declassified so far. Release of this report, fully or partially, or disclosure of any information related to this report, would not be in national interest,” the defence ministry said in a reply in the Rajya Sabha.