The Fractured Himalaya

India’s relations with China have always been constrained by the dark shadows of the memories of the conflict with China of 1962. Blame for India’s defeat by China is easily allocated, with Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s First Prime Minister, being the chief accused. However, simplistic deduction from history will never be of value to the course of negotiation of outstanding issues in relations with China. Nirupama Rao’s brilliant book, as Edmund Burke famously said is ‘an exercise to strengthen the mind’, a source of value in our understanding of the present. She writes seeking an answer to a question that has harried us all, Why did India and China stumble into a war in 1962?

Rao highlights how, India’s closeness to Tibet, dictated not only by geography but ties of religion, pilgrimage, trade, and cultural osmosis, makes the India-China relationship a three-body problem. By the 1940s, Tibet had exercised a high degree of de facto independence for decades, despite claims by the Qing empire’s successors to sovereignty over it. Once the communist regime’s aims became apparent and Tibet’s isolationist government sought international recognition, diplomatic options were limited. The willful and deliberate dissociation of the subject of Tibet, and her status, from the issue of India’s frontiers with Xinjiang and Tibet by the policymakers in Delhi, once China entered Tibet in 1950-51, was an ill-conceived move. The PRC’s invasion of Tibet left the Indian diplomats grasping at the straws. Weighed down by India’s view of its emerging relationship with China and the geostrategic risk that the Tibetan invasion posed; India choose to be a passive observer when a resolution was introduced at the United Nations to condemn China’s aggression and develop actions to be taken. At this juncture, Rao chronicles Nehru as being driven by his rather idealist and romanticized view of China and its greater role in Asia, while China continued to assume a more realist approach.

In the fifties, both China and India had visions of their place in the world as two great civilization-states. Nehru saw India’s rich history and cultural values, her geographical size and plural democracy, and the advocacy of peace and non-violence,

@himadribose together with the Five Principles of the Panchsheel as undergirding India’s naturallyordained leadership role in world affairs. Mao and the Chinese Communist Party also envisaged a central and similarly ordained role for China on the international stage, however, intending to promote a global revolution.

Rao chronicles missed opportunities for resolving core issues in her assessment of the negotiations surrounding the Sino-Indian Agreement of 1954. At this juncture, India had acknowledged for the first time that Tibet was a part of China. India’s ability to negotiate favorable terms had been given a fillip by efforts to repatriate Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, supporting China’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, and even providing a conduit for supplies to Chinese troops in Tibet. In 1954, India had leverage to exert in its negotiations – perhaps more than at any other time since. Despite this, Nehru chose not to raise the issue of settling the border. Following the signing of the 1954 agreement, Nehru made the “political decision” to have borders with China depicted as definite on maps of India (previously they had been marked “undefined” or omitted entirely, particularly in Aksai Chin). Furthermore, Nehru’s decision to show the boundary as definitive lines was not buttressed by action on the ground to make good this claim. Adding to the mix, Chinese silence on the matter was construed as assent. Chinese records reveal that the Chinese deliberately maintained silence, while the Indian reading of Chinese intent continued to be flawed. Eventually, a seal of legitimacy was placed on China’s occupation of Tibet by India with no concrete benefits in India’s way.

Nirupama eloquently articulates the dissonance between the Chinese and the Indian views on the border. Initially, the Chinese remained evasive about the border issue till Premier Zhou Enlai eventually came to insist by 1959 that the dispute be adjudicated and a “give and take” principle be applied. Nehru initially followed the advice he first received from his ambassador in Beijing, K.M. Panikkar, and similarly avoided raising the issue of a border settlement. Pannikar’s views were far removed from an in-depth understanding of the Chinese mindset and lulled Indian diplomacy to inaction. By the time signs emerged, particularly in Ladakh, of the magnitude of the difference in territorial claims, public outrage and growing criticism in parliament further reduced any options on the Indian side.

China took exception to the “illegal McMahon Line” in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) (now Arunachal Pradesh). India had long insisted, as it still does, on adhering to the outcome of the 1914 Simla Convention, the result of a trilateral conference between representatives of Britain, China, and Tibet. The British had made Chinese acknowledgment of Tibetan autonomy a condition for diplomatic recognition

@himadribose of the new Republic of China, strong-arming them into participating in the conference. The Chinese representative to the conference initially agreed to Britain’s proposed division of Tibet into two parts with the outer region ending at the line marking the would-be border between Tibet and India’s northeast. But after the conference, the Chinese government repudiated the draft. The trilateral agreement became a bilateral one between Britain and Tibet. The Chinese repudiation rested entirely on the demarcation of the zones of Outer and Inner Tibet. Until 1919, the Chinese did show some willingness to accept such terms but disagreement on the frontier between Inner and Outer Tibet prevented a resolution of this problem. After 1919, nationalist opinion in China hardened and the Chinese stand was that Tibet was a part of China that had temporarily broken away. China perceived border regions like Tibet as being tied to China in a special blood relationship forged at the time of the marriage of a Tang dynasty princess to the Tibetan King Songsten Gampo in 642 C.E.

When the border issue was eventually raised in talks in the 1950s, the Chinese rejected what they saw as an “imperial” line. The PRC did, however, agree to use part of the McMahon Line – which largely applies the watershed principle to its course – in its border with Burma, although it did not refer to the line by name. Regardless, it remains notable that while Indian defenses in NEFA collapsed in October of 1962, the PLA did withdraw to this line, despite continuing to insist that they did not accept it. Shortly before the war broke out, both sides sat down in 1960 to make their respective cases. On the Chinese side, sought refuge in “the taunt of British imperialism” “to obscure the inadequacy of their documentation” while the Indian argument was steeped in scholarly historical justification.

Things were even more complicated in the Western sector, where the discovery of Chinese road-building across the uninhabited Aksai Chin signaled the demise of the short-lived period of “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” – a phrase Rao aptly describes as “delusional diplomacy”. Nehru’s decision to unilaterally cement the borders on India’s maps in 1954 forced India to claim the desolate, high-altitude Aksai Chin without effectively occupying it (or comprehensively surveying it). The solidified boundary on India’s map combined with the public knowledge of the Aksai Chin road after 1957 hampered Nehru’s options and led to India’s hardline stance on border talks in 1960 when Zhou appeared willing, finally, to perhaps take up the issue. For India, the problem meant establishing a presence in areas only formally claimed on maps or by treaty. Most notably, this required India to send personnel to administer Tawang for the first time in 1951. Later, this would also include Nehru’s promotion of a so-called “Forward Policy” by establishing advance points in Aksai Chin.

@himadribose Could relations between India and China from 1949 leading into the war have been handled differently? Arguably yes, an Indian strategy spelling a hard-line, combative approach to Communist China, could not have been easily actioned, given India’s constraints in a time of nation-building and internal political and economic challenges. However, India could have grasped the nature of the opponent and maneuvered favorably. Instead, Nehru listened to advice from K.M. Panikkar, India’s Ambassador in Beijing. Unfortunately, his advice was seriously flawed and misguided. Acts of omission were also involved in the failure of Indian diplomats in senior positions, as policy formulators, to exercise proper judgment, and also to candidly counter the Prime Minister’s preferences and choices in China policy. India’s frontier policy of ‘firm boundaries’ was transacted in stark contrast to a foreign policy on China that stressed conciliation, dialogue, and accommodation. When Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai visited Delhi in April 1960, the opportunity for negotiations for a settlement was neither grasped nor recognized. Later, India’s policy planners in the Defence, Home, and External Affairs Ministries, did not foresee the scale of the Chinese reaction to the surveillance/‘forward’ policy in Ladakh.

The leaders of India and China were also many worlds apart. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were the offspring of revolution and war, “personifications of the adage that iron, cold iron is the master of them all”. Nehru’s code of conduct, his vision of Asia, and his cosmopolitan approach to the world; formed by his exposure to ideas of the enlightenment, fundamental rights, and democratic values, stood in sharp divergence with the revolutionary outlook of his Chinese counterparts. The Chinese approach was devoid of sentiment or misplaced idealism, in contrast to India’s utopian ‘vision’ for India and China that sought to bridge vast divergences in history, ideology, and national character. Rao argues that Nehru’s greatest mistake was to assume that the Chinese leaders thought and acted in ways he could understand.

Rao, in summation, stresses the core thread of the book, “Diplomacy may be life without maps, but an understanding of its history enables us to chart new paths and address fault lines. Only a combination of hindsight about history, and foresight, can help illuminate the pathways to an ultimate solution.”

Overall a book that is an in-depth scholarly examination of India - China relations from 1949 to 1962. The book is worthy of a place in the library of all those who desire a deeper understanding of our chequered past with China and, recognize that attainment of such an understanding is the key to its possible resolution.

@himadribose