Tapir Gao, the BJP MP representing Arunachal East parliamentary constituency, has made some sensational claims about Chinese encroachment on Indian territory in the post-1962 period in his home state. The government, however, is yet to confirm or deny his claims outright. On 19 November 2019, Gao raised the issue during the Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha. In a special mention, he asserted that China pushed 50 to 60 km inside the Indian boundary in Arunachal Pradesh over the last 35 years. His list of encroached places included Asaphila, where reportedly Jaswant Singh, former External Affairs Minister, had once served under Army Captain. It has allegedly been under the Chinese control since 1984-85. The next Doklam, Gao feared, would occur in Arunachal Pradesh.
On 4 December, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, demanded the government to come clear on Gao’s remarks. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in his reply tried to play the situation down. The problem arises, as Singh rightly said, because of the non-demarcated nature of the border. Moreover, there are perceptual differences on both sides regarding the boundary line. The minister assured the Indian Army was fully prepared to meet any eventuality. He, however, dodged the issue of Chinese encroachment of India’s territory.
Then came the bloodbath in Galwan Valley on the night of 15 June 2020. Twenty Indian soldiers were martyred, whereas an unspecified but apparently larger number of soldiers perished on the other side. It was for the first time in forty years that lives had been lost on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). This gave ballast to Gao’s claims. Gao, speaking to news portal EastMojo, named a string of posts in Upper Subansiri district like Asaphila, Longzu, Bisa and Maza that China has gradually encroached after the 1962 War. Sumdorong Chu Valley, in Tawang district, was allegedly captured by the Chinese in 1986.
India shares roughly 3,200 km of border with China. The greater part of this border is actually abreast of the Tibetan Autonomous Zone. Only a small portion in Ladakh UT borders Xinjiang Autonomous Province. This is separate from nearly 500 km west of Karakoram Pass which had been occupied by Pakistan in 1947, and later ceded to China in 1963. If, hypothetically, Tibet had remained independent of China, as it had been for practically four decades before its occupation by Mao’s People’s Republic, India would have left with negligible length of border to defend with China. In that case it would have been a non-militarised border, if not also an open one.
Historically the borders between British India and Tibet were delineated at the Tripartite Conference (13 October 1913 to 2 April 1914) in Shimla with accredited British, Chinese and Tibetan plenipotentiaries participating. The venerated monarchy of China had by then been overthrown; and Tibet led by the XIIIth Dalai Lama had declared her independence. The moment was opportune for the British to recognise the independence of Tibet. However, the British being a colonial power, there was little incentive for such a decision. On the other hand this precedence of recognising “independence” could have jeopardised their authority in India. The Shimla Agreement, 1914 was not accepted by China, which repudiated the signatures of its own representative. Though China did not ratify the agreement, Peking’s objection was not related to borders between British India and Tibet. The British unilaterally published those maps in 1929, noting that borders between British India and Tibet are settled. In the eastern sector this boundary is called McMahon Line, named after Henry McMahon, the British diplomat.
The British, until their last day in India, had continued to recognise the suzerainty of China over Tibet. Nehru, in recognizing China’s suzerainty, was merely following that settled position. India was not happy at China’s invasion (which the Chinese termed as ‘liberation’) of Tibet. He miscalculated Chinese designs, and erroneously thought that China would never invade Tibet to assert its suzerainty. His misperceptions soon exploded in his face. However, at the same time, India’s options were limited when the Tibetans had been cold-shouldered by Britain, the US and the Kingdom of Nepal, etc, in their quest for independence. Would India have risked a diplomatic or military confrontation with China when her own territory was not at stake? There are always imponderables in history.
The loss of Tibet’s buffer status adversely impacted India’s external security. It led to the militarisation of a customary and peaceful border. Till the signing of the so-called “Panch Sheel” Agreement in Peking on 29 April 1954 there was no obvious difference between India and China on the border issue. The border question became evident only after the first visit of Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister, to New Delhi on 25 June 1954. It marked the beginning of the short-lived Indo-Chinese fraternisation. During the entire period of “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” (1954-1959) India was buffeted by Chinese incursions (or allegations of Indian trespassing). The External Affairs Ministry always took every such reported event seriously. Still, Jawaharlal Nehru, as the Foreign Minister, believed that these were only inadvertent.
However, Nehru felt concerned that maps in China’s official publications passed off large parts of Indian territory as Chinese. He took up the issue during his first official visit to China in October 1954 with Zhou Enlai. Zhou tried to allay his concerns by saying that since the new People’s Republic (estd. 1949) could not conduct cartographic and geological survey as yet, China was still using the old Guomindang (Kuomintang) era maps. Nehru did not press his point, but merely wished that Chinese maps would be updated in near future.
However, it subsequently became evident that China had no such intentions. Chinese intrusions at Bara Hoti, Dam-Zan, Shipkila Pass, etc, continued to happen in 1955 and 1956. In 1958, India realised that China has built a road from Yeh Cheng in Xinjiang to Gartok in Tibet. The road ran across the Aksai Chin in Ladakh on the Indian side of the traditional border. The China Pictorial magazine (July 1958 issue) published a map where the India-China border was marked with a thick brown line, but moved large parts of India in eastern (NEFA) and western sector (Ladakh) into Chinese side. Finally, on 22 March 1959 Nehru was obliged to write a long letter to his Chinese counterpart Zhou Enlai, wherein he referred to three treaties existing between British India/Indian princely states/ Indian protectorates and erstwhile imperial government of China on the border issue.
The treaties Nehru referred to were a) Anglo-Chinese Convention, 1890 to delineate the frontier between Tibet and Sikkim (an Indian protectorate, which later joined Indian Union in 1975) b) The 1842 tripartite agreement between the Maharaja of Kashmir, Chinese imperial authority and Lama gurus of Lhasa based on which China in 1847 admitted that boundaries with Kashmir were sufficiently fixed and a 1893 Chinese map shows Ladakh as territory of princely state of Kashmir and c) the MacMahon Line between India’s eastern sector and Tibet (Shimla Conference, 1913-14) which was accepted both by Tibet and India, and China’s rejection of the agreement was based merely on position of the line separating Inner Tibet from Outer Tibet and Tibet as a whole with mainland China. There was no objection on the line separating Tibet and India.
While the Ministry of External Affairs might have all those historical maps in its archives, China knows that map is not the territory. It is more interested in establishing actual control on ground. The “Line of Actual Control” is terminology first employed by Zhou Enlai in 1959. In a diplomatic correspondence to Nehru dated 7 November 1959, Zhou wrote: “In order to main effectively the status quo of the border between the two countries, to ensure the tranquility of the border regions and to create a favourable atmosphere for a friendly settlement of the boundary question, the Chinese government proposes that the armed forces of China and India each withdraw 20 km at once from the so-called McMahon Line in the east, and from the line up to which each side exercises actual control in the west”.
The “Line of Actual Control” of 7 November 1959 was not designed to remain stationary. It moved many km southwards both in Ladakh and NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) after the massive Chinese invasion of 20 October 1962. Still the Dragon’s feet did not stop in 1962. China continued to nibble away at the Indian border, something that Tapir Gao gave illustrations of. The 15 June 2020 attack in Galwan Valley was the latest in the series. China wants the disengagement to take the shape of a “four kilometres” buffer zone between the two armies from the conflict spot. It implies India should withdraw from its own territory to create a new “Line of Actual Control”.
The script sounds similar to that of Zhou Enlai’s in 1959. No wonder China has shown little inclination to negotiate the borders. Its extravagant claims have dissuaded India from putting the border issue on the negotiation table. The India-China border as a result remains undelineated on the map and undemarcated on the ground.
The writer is an author and independent researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed herein are his personal.