The recent uproar over Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi quoting from former Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane’s unpublished memoir has echoes of another storm that broke out in Parliament over another book on India-China relations.In 1970, Australian journalist Neville Maxwell, then the New Delhi correspondent for The Times, published India’s China War, a book that questioned the role of the Nehru-led political leadership during the 1962 war with China.AdvertisementEven before Maxwell’s book came out, there were three prominent books already in the market — The Untold Story (1967, by Lt Gen BM Kaul), The Guilty Men of 1962 (1967, by veteran journalist D R Mankekar) and Himalayan Blunder: The Curtain-Raiser to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 (1969, by Brigadier JP Dalvi) — all critical of the role of the political and military leadership during the war. But unlike the others, Maxwell’s book quoted excerpts from a classified document: the Henderson Brooks Report prepared by the Operations Review Committee set up by the Army after India’s loss to China in the 1962 war.The report was authored in 1963 by Lt Gen T B Henderson Brooks and Brigadier Premindra Singh Bhagat. Henderson Brooks, who was born in Burma, was commissioned into the British Indian Army in 1929 as a King’s Commissioned Indian Officer. During the 1962 war, he commanded the Army’s Jalandhar-based XI Corps. After he retired from the Indian Army in March 1964, he migrated to Australia where he died in January 1997. Brigadier Bhagat later became Lt General.Their report was submitted to then acting Army Chief J N Chaudhury in 1963. But since it was not a parliamentary or judicial commission, but an internal operational review ordered by the Army, it was never tabled in Parliament — and never made public. Which is why Maxwell created a stir when he quoted from the report.AdvertisementOn November 9, 1970, four months after Maxwell’s book hit the stands, two MPs of the Praja Socialist Party, Nath Bapu Pai and Hem Barua, and CPI MP H N Mukherjee asked a combined question in Lok Sabha, “Whether Mr Neville Maxwell… obtained permission to reproduce extracts from the Henderson Brooks report on NEFA reverses; and if not, what action has been taken against the author for publication of these extracts?”Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram replied, denying that Maxwell had approached the Government for permission to reproduce extracts from the Henderson report or that any such permission was given.But Pai wasn’t assuaged and moved a privilege motion against the Defence Minister. As other members supported Pai, Jagjivan Ram said, “If… it is found that anybody has supplied any classified document to any unauthorised person, action under the Official Secrets Act will be taken…”But the matter didn’t end there.On December 16, 1970, two days before the Winter Session was to be adjourned sine die, Jagjivan Ram made a statement before the House, announcing a CBI probe into Maxwell “having direct or indirect access to classified papers” and the possibility of a breach of the Official Secrets Act.Several MPs from the ruling and Opposition benches joined the discussion. Pai again asked how many copies of the Henderson Brooks report were available, to which the Defence Minister said, “Only one.” When pressed further, the minister said it was with the Cabinet Secretariat. To which, Hem Barua said, “If I say, sir, that the Cabinet Secretary sold the copy to Mr Maxwell, can you dislodge me from that position?”It was a long day at work for the MPs. Pai’s privilege motion was rejected by the Speaker, who said that the government had ordered a CBI inquiry and that any further discussion should be only after the report came out.But if the Henderson Brooks report was never made public, the conclusion of the CBI inquiry into the leak of the report isn’t known either.On June 7, 1971, in reply to a Lok Sabha question by Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the status of the CBI inquiry, Jagjivan Ram said it was “yet to be concluded”.you may likeOn April 6, 1976, another MP, HM Patel, again raised the issue of the results of the CBI inquiry not being made public. “Surely, there is nothing very terrible in it that prevents you from telling us. This secretiveness should not be carried too far. As a matter of fact, it may indicate where your weakness lay…,” he said.Since then, Maxwell’s book and the Henderson Brooks report have periodically come up in the political discourse. In 2014, Maxwell posted a part of the report on his website. He died in 2019 in Sydney.On July 8, 2014, in reply to Rajya Sabha member H K Dua’s question on Maxwell posting the report on his website, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley replied, “This [Henderson Brooks Report] is a Top Secret document and has not been declassified so far. Further, release of this report, fully or partially or disclosure of any information related to this report would not be in national interest.”The writer is Senior Associate Editor, The Indian Express