Indigenous Communities and the 1962 India-China War: Oral Histories from Arunachal Pradesh

For the indigenous communities in Arunachal Pradesh, the 1962 Sino-Indian War was not a distant national event but an intimate disruption of everyday life. When Chinese forces entered the region, Indian officials and non-local populations withdrew, leaving local communities to face occupation, fear, and uncertainty on their own. For a brief period, the absence of the Indian administration also meant a return to familiar rhythms of life, producing memories that are layered and often contradictory. Based on oral histories, this Issue Brief explores how these experiences are narrated under enduring conditions of suspicion, where expressions of national belonging are carefully and repeatedly asserted. Attending to these fragile and self-conscious narratives, the study foregrounds the emotional weight of remembering war from the margins and questions the adequacy of state-centred histories to capture borderland realities.

The clashes between Indian and Chinese military forces in Aksai Chin that began in July 1962, turned into a full-blown war on 19 October on the Western Front. In the Eastern Front, the war began on 20 October and within four days, the Chinese army made inroads and took over the front for an entire month till it unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 21 November, and returned to its previous positions. For an entire month Arunachal Pradesh was under Chinese control with the Indian army, officials, staff, labourers and small businessmen, and all the non-indigenous population having fled the region. The indigenous communities were left behind to fend for themselves. Though it was a small period, there was a sense of uncertainty about what would come next, was more war around the corner? Would old Tibetan rule return? Or was it going to be Chinese rule? At the same time, there was also a strange sense of normalcy as the people were returning to their previous ways of life before the Indian administration had showed up a decade ago on their land.

A national event like the 1962 War is experienced and imagined differently in faraway parts of the country than in the borderlands; the way it transformed lives there is different. Most of the narratives about the War that exist are often based on the official accounts, military reports, intellectual discourses, writings by retired officials, stories by war veterans, foreign relations experts, and through emotionally charged popular media. The commemorations through establishment of war memorials, museums and tombs, dedicating awards, and the making of films and documentaries – etches only certain narratives into the public mind as if these are the only memories and realities that matter. They inadvertently erase and exclude the existence of the indigenous population living in these lands since time immemorial, upon whose land, villages, fields, forests, hills and homes the War was fought. There are no narratives that could provide alternative glimpses of the impacts of this national conflict on local communities. Therefore, this oral history documentation of the 1962 India-China War in Arunachal Pradesh is an effort to bring out the experiences of indigenous populations and to provide a more decentred perspective.

My field visits and interviews reveal unique stories. Those battlegrounds where bombs were shelled or soldiers lost their lives – were somebody’s kitchen garden, agricultural fields or pastoral land; a river from where people were fetching water or fishing, or people’s forest where they forage, hunt or gather fire-wood. The paths used by armies were the traditional trade routes or village paths and hunting paths. People lost their village and the world around it, with no knowledge what the future held, or why their homeland was turned into a battleground.