The 1962 Sino-Indian War. India is a country that was, as Roy’s novel explains, “poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace” (Roy, The God of Small Things, p. 20). Although India has fought many wars since it gained its independence from the British (1948), the one Roy calls specific attention to in her novel is the Sino-Indian War, in the midst of which her main characters, Rahel and Estha, are born. The Sino-Indian war is arguably the most wasteful and ill-advised war India has fought since independence. While the fighting lasted only one month, it involved a half million troops, took 7,000 lives, humiliated India, and left its prime minister, Pandit Jaharwalal Nehru, a broken man. The conflict began as a border dispute with China over Aksai Chin, “a high and desolate plateau, 17,000 feet above sea level, where nothing grows and no one lives, lying between the towering ranges of Karakoram and the Kuen Lun” (Maxwell, p. 13).
In the early 1950s, after driving out the Dalai Lama, the traditional ruler and high priest, and announcing the “peaceful liberation” of Tibet, China decided to consolidate its power in that region by developing the region’s infrastructure.
