Chinese checkers on border board: Will India make the winning move?

By: T R Ramaswami
source: The Economic Times

Those under 50 were not born when the Indo-China battles took place. Only those now above 80, with access to newspapers and other sources of information and sufficient knowledge of history and geography, would have grasped the significance of the happenings during 1947-65.

Regardless of age, only soldiers, diplomats, bureaucrats, media personnel, historians and oddballs (like this writer) would have sufficient incentive to develop interest and keep track of the happenings on this subject.

A thousand, or even a million, words would not be sufficient to appreciate the anatomy of the events. All papers from 1913, i.e., before World War I, on the border issue are still not public.

As the saying goes, the Official Secrets Act protects officials, not the secrets. The Henderson-Brookes report, now nearly 50, is still unavailable, even to Parliament, on grounds of national security! Probably the biggest secret is the abject incompetence, mule-like obstinacy and desire for self-preservation, with deceit if necessary, of someone very high then.

Interested folks should lay their hands on just three books - India's China War by Neville Maxwell, India-China Boundary Problem by A G Noorani and Himalayan Blunder by Brig. J P Dalvi, the senior-most officer taken prisoner after Independence and the ill-fated commander of 7 Brigade - the formation around which the 1962 tragedy started and ended.

Some history is inevitable to appreciate the background. A good map - you can web-search 'Sino-Indian War' - will aid comprehension. After the Battle of Gujrat (just below the Chenab, south-west of Jammu, now in Pakistan) in the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the Sikh empire came to an end and the British acquired Kashmir as one of the prizes. How it passed on to Maharaja Gulab Singh is another story by itself.

To rein in the ambitious Maharaja, the British drew a line beyond which he was forbidden to venture into Tibetan territory. It may be noted that till the 10th/11th century, Ladakh was part of Tibet. This 1846 line, drawn by the British Boundary Commission (BBC), stretched from the River Spiti (now in Himachal Pradesh) to the Pangong Lake, east of Chusul.

In 1865, the Johnson-Ardagh Line closed the gap between Pangong and the Karakoram Pass and extended from near Shahidullah, along the Kuen-Lun Mountains, joining the BBC line near Lanak La. But the British Foreign Office modified this in 1873, curtailing it to the Karakoram Range.

Still later came the Macartney-Macdonald Line of 1899 that extended the 1873 line slightly into Aksai Chin beyond the Karakoram. This line is significant. It is the only line formally communicated to the Chinese - which evoked no reply. Further, the road the Chinese built in the 1950s across Aksai Chin falls well outside this line.

From the middle of the 19th century till about 1915, the British were more worried about the Russians than the Chinese. Having created a buffer zone in Afghanistan vide the Wakhan Corridor, the British, for nearly half a century, were virtually inviting the Chinese to come right up to the Karakoram line so as to create another buffer. The collapse of China in 1911 and the Russian Revolution in 1917 altered the geopolitical scenario significantly.

Taking advantage of the weakness of China, the British convened the Simla Conference in 1913 with Tibet and China, to now create a buffer between China and British India. There, one of the most underhand deals of deceit was played out.

A concept of Outer and Inner Tibet (similar to the Russian-Chinese treaty regarding Mongolia) was initiated. The inner line was the famous, or infamous, McMahon Line, the outer line running along the foothills of Assam, the pre-1914 boundary.

The Simla Conference, as Neville Maxwell puts it, was one where there were two participants in a tripartite conference openly signing a secret declaration, one text of a draft convention initialled by three parties, another initialled by two, and a map initialled by all three!

But the net result was that the conference produced nothing that was accepted by China. The McMahon Line was virtually forgotten till 1935, and here came another sleight of hand. International treaties, pacts, agreements, etc, are published in Atchison's Register much like the Lloyd's register for shipping. Having missed announcing the 1913 Tibetan Convention in the 1929 edition, the British in 1937 published what was passed off as the 1929 edition.

All copies of the original 1929 edition were to be suppressed and were recalled and destroyed. One survived - in the Harvard University library. This falsification of evidence was to enable the British to state that the Simla Convention was always valid from 1914. Only, this claim was first made in 1960 - by Independent India!

This was the position in 1947. All lines drawn by the British but none of them agreed to by China. We became independent but it appears that there are different modes of becoming independent. A G Noorani details the manner in which Independence was granted and the various nuances of the methodologies.

The leaders of Pakistan and India adopted the Canadian/Australian model and accepted "transfer of power from British hands and devolution of treaties concluded by the British. They were stopped from contesting that position."

In contrast, Ireland's Dail Eireann (their Lok Sabha) maintains that Ireland's power comes directly from God to the people of Ireland and, hence, any treaty/pact signed by the British was null and void. Even the Burma Independence Act was different: there, the British relinquished power and there was no transfer.

The nuances of these words may make sense only to someone steeped in international law, but was the Indian National Congress aware of the consequences? If so, has it kept this hidden from its people so far? We had bound ourselves to treaties as far back as 1792, concluded by the East India Company! Noorani adds that while the 1914 Indo-Tibetan treaty on the Mcmahon Line concerned British India, the Aksai Chin province was never a part of British India, although a part of the British Empire. This distinction is significant. Was this fact known and, if so, was this also hidden?

The stage was set for the denouement.

Rustic Indian proverb: jiski lathi, uski bhains. If both have lathis, then the one whose is bigger or uses it more effectively will win. That's 1962 in short, but we have jumped time. After Independence, Tibet demanded return of the territories taken by the British! These included large parts of Ladakh, Assam and the districts of Darjeeling and Sikkim.

In 1949, China announced that its army would match into Tibet for a more centralised administration, accomplishing the exercise despite India's protestations. No other country opened its mouth. South Asian power politics had shifted with the exit of the British and, in retrospect, perhaps we should have accepted Dominion Status while our netas learned statecraft and geopolitical strategy using a military backing.

Strangely, when India moved into the Tawang tract in 1951, there was no protest from China. It appeared that China had tacitly accepted the McMahon Line.

In 1954, Jawaharlal Nehru decided to redraw maps showing firm boundary lines where earlier colour wash reflected an unsettled boundary. Aksai Chin became entirely Indian territory. Nehru further declared that the border was firm and not open to discussion.

Unilaterally drawing a map to your convenience is easy. Occupying and enforcing your administration on the ground is another. While deciding to advance and establish posts in the disputed area, an event that shook India was taking shape.

In 1956, the Chinese started building a road from Yarkand to Gartok, 1,200-km long with about 180 km in Aksai Chin claimed by India! The joke is that the Chinese completed a road right across 'our territory' without us knowing about it till 1957 - from press reports in China congratulating the building of the road!

Nehru kept this hidden from Parliament till 1959, till a patrol sent to establish the configuration of the road just disappeared. With India lodging a protest, the dispute was out in the open.

China responded with the bitter truth: the entire Sino-Indian boundary has never been formally delimited. Much correspondence flowed, each with new nuances/stances/interpretations being revealed. In the interim came the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959. Things began to happen very fast.

Long before letters, protests, etc, flowed, Nehru maintained to Parliament and people that there was no dispute - hence, no negotiation. He virtually painted himself into a corner. Political compulsions, media and an enraged Opposition made track-changes difficult.

But the fault for deciding on a collision course was set by Nehru by his inexplicable intransigent approach. He and the country paid a heavy price for this. While claiming Aksai Chin, Nehru defended the government's ignorance of the road by stating that it was remote, no one lived there, nothing grew there, etc. He was told: nothing grows on your head either.


From 1959 to 1962 began a race that could only end in a collision - which it did. Adopting an aggressive forward policy with inadequate resources both in men and material, the Indian army was ordered to move and patrol areas, including Chinese-claimed areas but shown as Indian territory only on our maps

With the gun loaded, safety catch off, only the trigger had to be pulled. It came in the form of an Indian post set up at Khinzamane, in extreme north-west NEFA, north of the McMahon Line. Subsequent claims to the Thagla Ridge and the setting up of another post called Dhola on the banks of the Namka Chu, all north of the McMahon Line, was enough to rile the Chinese.

They launched their attack. 7 Brigade just evaporated, Brig. Dalvi taken prisoner. How the war was conducted is best described by him: the PM wanted the Chinese pushed out and pushed the defence minister, who pushed the army chief, who pushed the Army Commander, who pushed the Corps Commander, who pushed the Division Commander, who pushed the Brigade Commander, who pushed the nearest battalion into the river!

But let us not be harsh on the soldier. Unacclimatised, dressed in cotton with canvas shoes, with no artillery support, he was gasping at 17,000 ft. His fate was compounded by contradictory stop-go orders, often vague, coming right from Delhi from a political class that had an amateurish boy scout vision in conducting military operations. The Chinese tore through Tawang, Se La and Bomdi La, and were just miles away from Tezpur.

The 'forward policy' enunciated and implemented over three years was in shambles in less than three weeks. On November 21, 1962, the Chinese announced a unilateral ceasefire and a withdrawal to the November 7, 1959, positions. Tacitly, the Chinese were inviting India back to negotiations. It was the first time in history that a military power did not exploit victory and demand anything more. The situation today is almost the same as November 21, 1962.

We unilaterally drew borders that even the British, a more powerful nation, took care not to. Having drawn them, we transgressed them with bravado not matched with military and political capability, paying a heavy price not only in lives but also in morale and national shame for an adventure that could have been avoided and settled on the table.

Even if negotiations failed and we did not unilaterally take aggressive steps, the matter could even today have been as it was in 1959. To effect a border settlement would mean to admit the tacit error of Nehru and exorcising the belief that we were innocent victims in 1962 and that the Chinese cannot be trusted.

We need to educate our people that it was our fault, be transparent, not withhold facts and build up a consensus. Those who swear of "not letting go even an inch of territory" should be given guns and sent to the border.

The country is being held hostage to the ego and the Himalayan blunders of one man, long dead, and probably the worst first CEO of any major country. Only one major gain: Mao-Tse Tung, whose dictum, "never start a war that you cannot win", which Nehru learnt the hard way, was primarily responsible for galvanising the Indian army.