Uninterrupted: India’s disastrous war against China in 1962 are probably still lying in the Namka Chu valley, says Michael Dalvi, son of Brig. J P Dalvi

Brigadier John Parashram Dalvi, the highest ranking Indian army officer to have been taken prisoner of war, in his case by the Chinese after the short border conflict with India in 1962, returned to tell the tale after seven months of being held hostage with a group of other officers in Lhasa, Tibet. The book, 'Himalayan Blunder', strips bare the deliberate misinformation that Army officers as well as the entire country was fed about the Army's preparedness to fight the Chinese ("the soldiers wore gym shoes in the mountain heights) and the subsequent humiliation they were subject to when Chinese troops overran posts deep in the Ladakh sector as well as in Arunachal Pradesh, then known as North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA). As Indian and Chinese troops confront each other in the Western Sector once again, 'Himalayan Blunder' by Brigadier J P Dalvi is a searing account of what went wrong in 1962 as well as an essential moral for the future.
"The Indian soldier will die for the izzat of his paltan, which he believes is the izzat of his country," says Michael Dalvi, 75, a former cricketer and gentleman-at-large who lives in Dehradun, surrounded by memories of his father's 1962 war, a restaurant-bar called 'Brigadier's", and the incredible courage of the Indian Army's jawans. He spoke to ThePrint's National Affairs editor Jyoti Malhotra over video link