Chinese Machine Guns Opened on the Indian Army at Nathu La on 11 September 1967. Three Days of Indian Artillery Later, the Ridges Were Still Indian

By noon on 11 September 1967 fog had thickened over Nathu La. Second Lieutenant NC Gupta, a young Signals officer, was in a bunker on the South Shoulder, the Indian side of the 14,200 foot pass on the Sikkim-Tibet border. The post around him had been empty when he reached it two hours earlier. Chinese machine guns had been firing since morning, dead soldiers lay in the open near the new barbed wire fence, and one of them moved.

“As I was watching from one of the bunkers I saw one of the dead moving,” Gupta wrote in his diary. It was Major Bishan Singh of 2 Grenadiers, the company commander whom the whole pass knew as Tiger Nathu La, hurt in the first burst of fire and lying barely ten metres from a Chinese bunker. “With great difficulty I managed to lift him and partly drag him into our defences,” Gupta wrote.

Major General VK Singh, who served in the same division in 1967 and published Gupta’s account in 2014, adds that Gupta received the Sena Medal after being recommended for the Maha Vir Chakra.

The CIA’s daily brief to President Lyndon Johnson on 12 September called the previous day’s clash “the most serious in several years.” Firing at Nathu La went on until 14 September. Defence Minister Swaran Singh told the Lok Sabha in writing on 14 November that “at no time did the Indian troops lose control of any military post to the Chinese.” Six days later, answering a question in the House, he said “our people put up a very good show.”

A division that would not leave in 1965

The pass sits on the old trade road from Gangtok in Sikkim to Yatung and Lhasa. Sikkim had been an Indian protectorate since 1947. In the war of 1962 Nathu La saw skirmishes, VK Singh writes in Scholar Warrior, the journal of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies in Delhi, and soon afterwards the pass was closed to trade.

In September 1965, while India was fighting Pakistan, China served an ultimatum asking India to withdraw its posts at Nathu La and Jelep La. Corps headquarters ordered the two divisions holding them to vacate, VK Singh says. 27 Mountain Division left Jelep La, and the Chinese took it at once. Major General Sagat Singh, who commanded 17 Mountain Division at Nathu La, refused.

His reasoning, as VK Singh sets it out, was geographic. Both passes lay on the watershed, which was the natural boundary, and the McMahon Line that India claimed as the international border follows the watershed. Leaving would give the Chinese observation and fire into India and deny the same to Indian troops. Sagat had also read the Chinese closely. Their loudspeakers warned that Indians would suffer as they did in 1962, but when Chinese troops advanced in numbers they always stopped at the border, turned and went back, and they never used artillery to cover an advance, which they would have done had they meant to take a post.

In December 1965 the Chinese fired on a patrol of 17 Assam Rifles at 16,000 feet in North Sikkim and killed two men, VK Singh records. Through 1966 and early 1967 the propaganda and the attempts to cross the line went on. Sagat put up loudspeakers of his own and broadcast taped messages in Chinese every day.

Thirty yards of ground

Maj Gen Sheru Thapliyal, an artillery observation officer at Sebu La in 1967, describes Nathu La as the place where the two armies stand closest anywhere on the Sino-Indian border, barely 30 yards apart. The Chinese hold the northern shoulder, the Indians the southern, and no agreed line runs between them. Indian observers on Sebu La and Camel’s Back, two features beside the pass, could see down the Yatung Valley for several kilometres and deep into Chinese ground. From the northern shoulder the Chinese had very little view into Indian ground. Thapliyal calls this factor crucial. Jelep La, he wrote years later, “remains under Chinese possession till date.”

In the first week of August 1967, 2 Grenadiers under Lieutenant Colonel Rai Singh took over the border posts from 18 Rajput. VK Singh lists a platoon each on Camel’s Back, the South Shoulder, Centre Bump and Sebu La, with the main defences at Changgu. Captain PS Dagar was second in command to Bishan Singh.

On 13 August the Sebu La observation post reported Chinese troops on the crest line digging trenches on the Indian side. When challenged, they filled the trenches in and withdrew. The same day they added eight loudspeakers to the 21 already in place, loud enough now to be heard at Changgu.

A fence, a commissar and a bucket of water

Sagat took the problem to his corps commander, Lieutenant General JS Aurora, and got his agreement to mark the crest line with wire. Work began on 20 August and the Chinese objected at once. One strand went up that day and two more over the next two days.

On 23 August about 75 Chinese soldiers with fixed bayonets walked slowly up in an extended line and stopped at the border. Their political commissar read slogans from a red book and the soldiers repeated them. The Indians stood to for an hour, and the Chinese went back.

On 1 September Aurora and Sagat walked the line and crossed it by a few steps in poor visibility. The Chinese commissar ran up shouting “Chini, Chini,” and a photographer arrived to photograph their footprints. Next morning a patrol under Bishan Singh was surrounded at the U Bump and pushed its way through.

On 4 September Sagat ordered the fence built up with concertina coils. The work stopped on the 5th after Rai Singh and the commissar argued over where the border ran. That night, VK Singh writes, the Chinese cut away one shoulder of the Bump so that water poured on the other would flow into China. Next morning, when Indian soldiers went to straighten some wire, a few Chinese ran up with a bucket of water and poured it on the Bump to show where the watershed lay.

On 7 September about 100 Chinese came to the fence, and the two sides fought hand to hand and then threw stones. A few Chinese were wounded and two Indians. On the night of 10 September Sagat briefed everyone on the next morning’s wire work at 112 Mountain Brigade headquarters at Changgu. A company of 18 Rajput came up to reinforce, and an ad hoc force of 90 men was organised to charge the Chinese positions if they opened fire. Sagat wanted the job finished before he went on leave on 12 September.

The morning of 11 September

As the work started, a Chinese commander and his commissar came to the fence and argued with Rai Singh. VK Singh writes that Sagat had told Rai Singh to stay in his bunker beside the brigade commander, Brigadier MMS Bakshi. Rai Singh came out with an escort and stood face to face with the Chinese officers. The Chinese opened fire on the sappers and Rajputs working on the wire. Rai Singh was hit and fell.

Thapliyal and Probal DasGupta both describe a whistle on the Chinese side and then machine guns from the northern shoulder. DasGupta puts the time at about 7.45. The sappers of 70 Field Company and the men of 18 Rajput were caught in the open on a pass with no cover. Thapliyal counts nearly 70 dead within ten minutes, with many more wounded.

The Grenadiers came out of their trenches and went for the Chinese post, led by Captain Dagar. Major Harbhajan Singh’s company of 18 Rajput, caught on the wire, concluded that only an assault would silence the Chinese guns, and he led a charge on the Chinese position. Men fell to the machine guns, VK Singh writes, but those who reached the bunkers used their bayonets. Both Harbhajan Singh and Dagar were killed. Harbhajan Singh received the Maha Vir Chakra and Dagar the Vir Chakra, both after death. Rai Singh was later awarded the Maha Vir Chakra as well, Thapliyal writes.

By 9.45 Gupta had lost contact with every post on both shoulders. The wounded could not be brought in for three days and nights, Thapliyal says, because any move to do so drew a hail of Chinese bullets. In Gupta’s diary, a wounded soldier was recovered from the fence after six days in the open, which he called nothing short of a miracle.

Who gave the order to fire

Indian artillery was waiting. Thapliyal and the other observation officers on Sebu La and Camel’s Back asked for fire, and “permission for which came a little later,” he writes. The Ministry of Defence’s own History Division, in a volume on the conflict with China released for restricted circulation in March 1993, records in the words The Tribune quotes that the General Officer Commanding 17 Division, Sagat Singh, “blasted the Chinese positions with 5.5 medium guns.”

Who authorised it is told differently. DasGupta writes that neither Sagat as division commander nor Aurora as corps commander had the authority to order artillery fire, that the Army chief was abroad, and that Sagat decided to order it himself when his requests to higher authority went unanswered. DasGupta adds, as something that “is said,” that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was asked and gave the go-ahead when the order had already gone out. Thapliyal’s account is that permission arrived a little later. Neither cites a document for the sequence. The Defence Minister’s statement to Parliament was that the Chinese fire “was followed by artillery fire” and “Indian troops returned the Chinese fire.”

Three days of guns

Because Indian observers could see every Chinese position and the Chinese could see few Indian ones, Thapliyal writes, the artillery was most effective, and most of the Chinese bunkers on the northern shoulder and in the depth areas were destroyed. Chinese guns opened within half an hour but fired largely blind and did little damage. The duel went on day and night for three days.

Thapliyal writes that on 14 September the Chinese threatened to use their air force if the shelling did not stop. Swaran Singh told the Lok Sabha on 20 November that the Chinese had said so over their loudspeakers, on the third day or so, and that Peking radio and newspapers later denied it. None of the accounts quoted here reports Chinese aircraft being used. The History Division says the Chinese agreed to a ceasefire on 16 September. Thapliyal remembers the dead being exchanged at the pass on 15 September, with Aurora and Sagat there.

DasGupta writes that Sagat ordered Brigadier Bakshi to plan an attack on the Chinese for 13 September and that permission never came from Delhi. Swaran Singh told the House that from the first day India had proposed a ceasefire, as a matter of policy.

What the records disagree on

Indian counts of the dead fall into a range. The History Division gives 65 Indians killed and 145 wounded at Nathu La. Swaran Singh’s written answer gives 88 killed and 163 wounded across Nathu La and Cho La together. DasGupta gives 88 dead and over 150 injured at Nathu La alone. For the Chinese, the Minister said exact casualties were not known but that about 300 were killed and wounded at Nathu La and 40 at Cho La. The History Division says 400 killed or wounded. Thapliyal puts it over 400, and DasGupta writes of about 340 dead and more than 450 injured. Nobody outside the two armies counted.

China’s account was that Indian troops had intruded and attacked, and that its frontier guards struck back in self-defence. Peking Review of 22 September 1967 said so and reported that Chinese troops handed over the bodies of 14 Indian soldiers and 24 weapons on 16 September. ThePrint reports that a Chinese note of 12 September said 60 Indian troops had opened fire and killed or wounded 25 Chinese guards, and told India not to “repeat your mistake of 1962.” Michael Rowand wrote in Foreign Policy that China gave no casualty figures until the 1990s and then claimed 36 of its soldiers killed or wounded. The CIA brief of 12 September said the skirmishes “stem from aggressive forward patroling by both sides.”

The Indian record has its own hard entry. Gupta’s diary, as VK Singh and ThePrint both report it, says more than 90 men of 2 Grenadiers left their post that day and more than three dozen were later court-martialled, and VK Singh says similar lapses occurred in other units. DasGupta writes that Sagat came forward with a sten carbine and stood on the road down from Nathu La, threatening to shoot anyone he found going to the rear. Thapliyal’s summary is that there were awards for bravery as well as courts martial for cowardice.

Cho La on 1 October

Twenty days later, a few kilometres north of Nathu La, the fight came again. Swaran Singh told the House that the Chinese at Cho La had been strengthening their defences for some time and on 1 October questioned the Indian occupation of a position “which had always been in our control.” A scuffle followed in which a Chinese soldier bayoneted an Indian soldier and an Indian sentry bayoneted two Chinese soldiers in return. The Chinese then opened fire with medium machine guns, recoilless guns and 60 mm and 82 mm mortars, and the Indian troops returned it.

Thapliyal writes that 7/11 Gorkha Rifles and 10 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles took casualties early, then stood firm and forced the Chinese back nearly three kilometres to a feature called Kam Barracks, where, he says, they still sit. “Cho La pass is firmly in Indian hands,” he writes. The CIA brief of 2 October put the new clash a little over three miles from the Nathu La fight and noted that no further firing had been reported overnight. The Indian Army marks 1 October as Cho La Day, IANS reported in 2020.

The first time since 1962

VK Singh gives the verdict that Indian military writers repeat. “This was the first time the Chinese got a bloody nose, and the myth of their invincibility was broken,” he writes. DasGupta’s 2020 book carries the same view in its title, Watershed 1967: India’s Forgotten Victory Over China.

Foreign readers of the time reached a milder version of the same conclusion. Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution reports that American embassy officials reported that “Indians confident they had the best of the incident,” and that The New York Times praised Delhi’s “firmness and restraint” and noted that India was better prepared than five years before. Rowand adds that the CIA argued in August 1967 that the Indian military could be expected to repulse a Chinese attack without relinquishing substantial territory.

VK Singh writes that the heavy losses on both sides caused an uproar and that Sagat Singh was posted out soon afterwards as General Officer Commanding 101 Area, although the fence he had insisted on had the approval of higher authority. He went on to command 4 Corps in the war of 1971, The Tribune notes.

Thapliyal commanded the Nathu La brigade years afterwards. He wrote that the Chinese hold the northern shoulder and the Indian Army the southern, that mail is exchanged at the pass twice a week in a hut built for the purpose, and that he conducted the first border personnel meeting there in 1995.