India China and Northern Frontiers

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Rammanohar Lohia was born on 23 March 1910 in an ordinary middle class family. His father, Hiralal, was a freedom fighter and Congress leader. Lohia received his high school education at Marwari School in Bombay and higher education at Kashi Vishvavidyalaya (Banaras Hindu University) and Calcutta University. He was a student activist while he studied for his degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Berlin University.

Lohia was one of the founders of the socialist movement in India, and helped formation of the Congress Socialist Party in 1934.

He was a brilliant and original thinker as well as a man of action.

Upon his return from abroad, Lohia edited The Congress Socialist, an English weekly, published from Calcutta.

When Lohia was nine or ten years old, his father took him to Gandhiji. He touched the feet of Gandhiji. Gandhiji blessed him by patting him on the back. But his first live contact with Gandhiji was after he returned from Germany. He was very closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi. In a conversation with Lohia, Gandhiji said: Lohia was brave, but that there might be brave persons in his crowd, and he seemed to laugh away the whole concept of bravery by stating that the tiger was brave, too. He continued that there might be more learned persons in his crowd, and laughed away the whole idea of learning by stating that the lawyer was learned, too. Gandhiji concluded that Lohia had sheel, which could best be translated as possessing continuity in character, and said that there seemed to be none more consistent than Lohia in his crowd and also that consistency or continuity in character was the distinguishing mark of man from other animals.

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This is a collection of some of my speeches and writings on the subject of India's northern frontiers and on Kashmir, Urvasiam, Nepal and Tibet particularly. None of these date earlier than 1949. Earlier writings have not been included because the collection would have become cumbersome. That is not to say that they are any the less important. Some of them might in fact have showed up the usual errors of thought to which I, along with millions of others, was perhaps subject.

I do not know whether I had ever looked upon the Himalayas as India's sentry. I have declaimed that song with great éclat and so must have, to some extent, imbibed its spirit in my early youth. But I definitely remember to have become suspect of the Himalayas around 1948, when on the other side China turned communist and therefore by my definitions both vigorous and barbaric. These suspicions in fact may have been aroused in me earlier, around 1938 or 39, when I started studying India's history a little closely.

This is the 2nd Edition of this book after 1963. Lohia's speeches and writings on the subject after 1963 have not been included here. In this edition too relevant notes, statements by others, resolutions of Socialist Party, Praja Socialist Party, Samajwadi Yuvajana Sabha and some letters from others, documents and maps are included.

I thank Ms. Prabha, Ms. B. Lalitha, Ms. Nilaya Reddy, Mr. Turlapati Satyanarayana, Ravela Somaiah and Mr. Dhananjay who helped in preparing the manuscripts of the book.

**Contents and Sample Pages**