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Saturday, July 2, 2022

Patel’s Warning About Chinese Communism

On 7 November 1950, in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel noted that India’s ambassador to China (K. M. Panikkar) was unfit for the job. He wrote: “The Chinese Government have tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intentions. My own feeling is that at a crucial period they managed to instill into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so-called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means.”

In this letter, Patel warns Nehru that Chinese communism is ten times more dangerous than imperialism because "it has a cloak of ideology.” He wrote: "communism is no shield against imperialism and that Communists are as good or as bad imperialists as any other.” But Nehru was not used to listening to any criticism of his policies. He ignored Patel’s advice and India paid (and is still paying) the price for his foolish China policy.

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