Neville Maxwell

In 1959 he was posted to New Delhi as the South Asia Correspondent. In the next eight years, he traveled from Kabul to East Pakistan and Kathmandu to Ceylon, reporting on the end of the Nehru era in India and the post-Nehru developments. During the 1962 Sino-Indian War, Maxwell wrote for The Times from New Delhi and was the only reporter there who did not uncritically accept the official Indian account of events. This eventually led to his "virtual expulsion" from India.

In the 1960s, Maxwell incorrectly predicted that India would not remain a democracy for much longer. While serving as the South Asia Correspondent of The Times of London, Maxwell authored a series of pessimistic reports filed in February 1967. In the atmosphere leading up to the 4th Lok Sabha elections, he wrote that "The great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed. [Indians will soon vote] in the fourth—and surely last—general election."

In 1967, Maxwell joined the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, as a senior fellow to write his book India's China War. He was with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at Oxford University when the book was published in 1970.

The book may have been instrumental in bridging the gulf between the US and China. According to Maxwell, Kissinger told Zhou Enlai, "Reading that book showed me I could do business with you people." US President Richard Nixon too is said to have read the book and discussed it with Zhou Enlai during his 1972 visit to China. Maxwell's contention that the war was "a frame-up" was "a flash of light everywhere." Zhou is said to have acknowledged to Maxwell, "your book did a service to truth which benefitted China."

On 17 March 2014, Maxwell posted the first part of the Henderson Brooks–Bhagat Report on his website. The report was written by two Indian army officers in 1963 to examine India's defeat in the Sino-Indian War. It has been classified as top secret by the Indian government, but Maxwell acquired a copy and his India's China War contains the gist of the report. After the Indian government refused to release the report for over 50 years, Maxwell decided to make it public.

Neville Maxwell (1926 – 23 September 2019) was a British journalist and scholar who authored the 1970 book India's China War, which is considered a revisionist analysis of the 1962 Sino-Indian War, putting the blame for it on India. Maxwell has been praised for his objective view on the 1962 Sino-Indian War, but criticised for his pessimistic and often inaccurate views on Indian democracy.