Indo-China Border Dispute - I

The border dispute between India and China is one of the most intricate and complicated issues in India’s foreign policy. Undoubtedly,  abrupt changes in the global power-structure and the India’s emergence as an economic power calls for restructuring  of the nation’s foreign policy so as to maximise geo-strategic advantage through transparent initiatives and by exercising fresh options that foster national security implying peace on borders, control of internal insurgency and mutually beneficial understanding with key countries of the world.

All the three components are interconnected. In this context, this paper is an attempt to analyse the factors leading to increasing complexity of the border issue between India and China culminating eventually in the 1962 war and the need to highlight the need of fresh options and approaches for its resolution.

In the mid-20th century, China with other newly liberated states of Asia was faced with the task of converting traditional frontiers and inadequately defined borders into boundaries in order to establish its identity as an independent modern political unit on the model set up primarily by the western European states during their course of last three centuries. The facts that it had a vast empire whose territories were lost in the 19th century and after the II World War had about a dozen states as neighbours made the task highly challenging.

Thus even after tacitly abjuring irredentist claims to territories which once were part of the vast empire, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) faced a large and daunting task : negotiating and renegotiating to achieve agreed and accurately defined boundaries with its border states contiguous with China over thousands of miles in often inaccessible territory charted primitively if at all.      

India too after independence in 1947 was faced with a very dismal and discouraging political scenario. The Mountbatten Plan provided for the creation of Pakistan succumbing to the communal demands and pressures of the Muslim League and thereby gave a severe jolt to the attempts of the INC (Indian National Congress) struggling hard to keep all threads of the country together and united.

Again, the doctrine of the Lapse of Paramountancy had made 562 Princely States independent to choose their political future in effect thereby presenting a scattered, fragile and disintegrated sub-continent. Kashmir’s indecision to decide its political option and Pakistan’s attempt to seize it by force which culminated into the deadlock consequent upon the U.N.’s intervention aggravated the situation further. It is against this background that Indian national leaders were faced with a new reality in 1949 with the emergence of Red China replacing the Nationalist Government.

The status of the boundary at the time of India’s independence along the Chinese border is clear from the maps produced by New Delhi as late as 1950. Four official maps showed the boundary from the Indo-China-Afghanistan tri-junction to the India-China-Nepal tri-junction as undefined, while all four depicted the MacMohan Line as the boundary in the east.

The undefined boundary in the western sector reflects the British failure to successfully negotiate a boundary-settlement with China. The frontier in this sector includes a large piece of territory known as Aksai Chin projecting out to the north-east. The altitude of this area over 16000 feet and the composition of its soil make it unfit for human habitation but has considerable strategic value for the Chinese as forming the shortest road link between Tibet and Sinkiang.

In the eastern sector, the MacMohan Line came into existence in 1914 at Shimla which was accepted by India and Tibet but not by China though the Chinese representative at the Conference had not at any time complained  the  bilateral agreement between India and Tibet defining 850 miles of their borders.

Independent India’s policy towards its north-eastern border particularly Tibet was under sporadic consideration even before the civil war in China ended as it was felt that a strong Chinese Government would advance claims to the region below the MacMohan Line.

For India, the maintenance of the MacMohan Line was crucial for the protection of her strategic interests as it had advanced India’s border northward by some 60 miles from its then alignment beneath the foothills of the Assam Himalayas to the crest of mountains rimming the Tibetan plateau. Therefore the rift between de jure and de facto line was ended on Feb. 12, 1951 when Major R. (Bob) Khating evicted the Tibetans from Tawang.

China interestingly did not protest at all though it had all along made its determination to “liberate” Tibet clear in no unambiguous terms which it did in 1951 establishing full control of Tibet. Indian leaders were particularly apprehensive about the north-eastern sector as the people inhabiting these areas had no established loyalty to India and moreover had ethnic, cultural and religious ties with Tibet. Their loyalties, it was feared, could be susceptible to the lures of communism and kinship: both of which could be utilized by China. Hence, it was held important to establish check posts to prevent infiltration while simultaneously making efforts to integrate the peoples of this area with India.

This policy of the Indian Government was in no small measure guided by her perception of China as irredentist, militaristic and expansionist state and therefore a robust and firm stand on the border issue was required necessary vis-a-vis China. This stand was the guiding factor in Nehru’s directive in 1954 to publish new maps replacing old ones leaving no undemarcated line.

This line was to be non-negotiable and along with Nehru’s refusal to Chinese proposals for a border settlement has been criticised as the “escalation strategy” by the revisionists’ accounts. The new maps incorporated Aksai Chin within India in the western sector and were not protested by China at all, though, in the historical perspective, India’s inclusion of Aksai Chin within her territories was open to question. 

That China did not evoke any interest in holding discussions about the definition of the Indo-China boundary served only to create uncertainty and doubt about China’s intentions in the Indian establishment during 1950s. In 1957 during his visit to India, Zhou en Lai, the Chinese Premier, referred to the MacMohan Line in the context of the Sino-Chinese boundary that although China had never recognised the Line they thought that “now that is an accomplished fact, we should accept it”.

It was taken in India as a clear acceptance of the MacMohan Line by China. Zhou still did not question Indian claims in the western sector though the Chinese were constructing a highway linking Sinkiang and Tibet passing through Aksai Chin. This only lent credence to Delhi’s perception that China had occupied Aksai Chin furtively and treacherously.

End of Part I

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Dr Dinesh Sharma: He is presently working as an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Government Degree College, Champawat, Uttarakhand and has been teaching at under-graduate and post-graduate levels for the last several years. Dr. Sharma has participated in a number of seminars, conferences and workshops and has presented many research papers in the same. The developments in the fields of Indian Political System and the International Relations are of particular interest to him.