From the Managing Editor

This issue of the Journal of Defence Studies is being published 50 years after China attacked India across the Himalayas. A majority of Indians and Chinese today do not have any personal memories of the war. Since the war was seen as a victory for China and a defeat for India, it naturally evokes different sentiments in the two countries. For China, it was a punitive strike to teach India a lesson, to make it accept a lower position in the hierarchy of nations and, perhaps, an opportunity to convey its strength to the world at large, and particularly to the two superpowers of the day. It could also have been externalization of the internal power struggle in China. For India, it was betrayal by a fellow Third World country, an ancient civilisation like India, and a shared history of anticolonialism. More importantly for India, it was, simultaneously, a humiliating experience and a wake-up call.