Forty years after China humbled India in a two-front Himalayan war masterminded by strongman Mao Zedong, the lessons of that crushing defeat still reverberate in New Delhi.
The war was Mao's attempt to demolish India as an alternative democratic model and geopolitical rival to communist China by heaping humiliation on it when it was militarily incapable and least expected to be attacked.
That aggression changed the fortunes of the two Asian giants. India, respected then as a model pluralistic state in the developing world, never fully recovered from that invasion and is still searching for a role in international affairs commensurate with its size.
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