by JOHN CHERIAN
As the Chinese government likes to frequently remind the world, the Sino-Indian border dispute is a legacy of colonial rule. Chinese historians and commentators never fail to point out that the government in Beijing, even when it was at its weakest, had refused to accept the ad hoc border imposed by the British colonialists. The British organised a conference in Shimla in 1914, which the representatives of China and Tibet attended. The conference’s objective was to negotiate a treaty that would demarcate the border between Tibet and British-ruled India. The British plan was to put pressure on the weak Chinese central government to grant more autonomy to the Tibetans and redraw the border in India’s favour.
There was a bigger imperial British plan: to gradually dismember China, by first cutting off Tibet and then Xinjiang. Britain expected China, which was then under a weak central government and was being dictated to by European powers, to capitulate easily. The Chinese delegation refused to be browbeaten and succumb to the machinations of the British. But the British went ahead and signed an agreement with a handpicked Tibetan delegation delineating the northern border, which came to be known as the McMahon Line. It was named after a British colonial officer working in India by the name of Henry McMahon.
China vehemently rejected the ad hoc border that the British sought to thrust down its throat. The British warned the Chinese government that there would “be great trouble” if Beijing did not accept the McMahon Line as the border between Tibet and India. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary at that time, warned: “If China does not sign but resorts to an aggressive policy, the consequences must be disastrous for China.”
Both the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong refused to recognise the McMahon Line, arguing that Tibet was not an independent country and therefore had no right to sign a separate border agreement with the British.
Independent India and Communist China established good relations that lasted almost until the end of the first decade of Indian Independence. The Chinese side tried to prevail on the Indian government to negotiate an acceptable solution to the impasse on the border, but Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru swore by the sanctity of the McMahon Line bequeathed by the departing colonial power.
Zhou Enlai’s visit
In a last-ditch attempt to find an amicable solution to the border dispute, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai visited New Delhi in 1960. The Chinese government offered to recognise India’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh up to the McMahon Line in return for India’s recognition of China’s claim over the Aksai Chin peninsula. Nehru rejected the offer and adopted an inflexible diplomatic posture on the border issue.
Nehru was in a unique position to compromise as the border issue had not become as emotive as it is today. The ruling Congress party had an overwhelming majority in Parliament and controlled all the State legislatures. Only the Jan Sangh (the Bharatiya Janata Party’s predecessor) and the small Socialist bloc led by Ram Manohar Lohia, all supporters of Tibetan independence, were against the resolution of the border issue.
The issue of Tibetan independence had become a “cause celebre” in the West and among right-wing and social democratic political parties in India. The Dalai Lama, who had raised the banner of revolt against the Chinese government, sought and was given political refuge in India in 1959, angering Beijing. A Tibetan government-in-exile was set up under the Indian government’s patronage with liberal funding from the West. The Chinese Communist Party did not let the Tibet issue come in the way of negotiations although a noticeable hardening of positions on each side was visible.
Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, has claimed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) covert operations in Tibet, which had started in 1956, had made Beijing suspicious about India’s reluctance to settle the border issue. With the tacit approval of the Indian authorities, the CIA had trained and financed a failed guerilla campaign under the leadership of Thondup for a few years after the 1962 war. It is indisputable that one of the major reasons the Chinese decided to go to war in 1962 against India was the perception that New Delhi wanted to restore the “status quo ante” in Tibet so that the autonomous region could return to its pre-1949 status.
‘Forward policy’
Nehru’s “forward policy”,which gave the Indian military the green light to set up military outposts in territory under the military control of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), sparked off the 1962 war. The goal was to expel the Chinese military from all the areas claimed by India. It was a serious miscalculation. The Henderson-Brooks Report on the 1962 India-China war,which the Indian government commissioned, concluded that the “forward policy” increased the chances of conflict with China. The classified report, which is now widely available online, stated that the Indian Army was not militarily in a position to implement Nehru’s “forward policy”. According to Chinese military scholars, Nehru’s adventurist military policy was aimed at turning Tibet once again into “a buffer state” between India and China. The Chinese viewed this as a continuation of Britain’s imperial policy.
There is no doubt that Nehru harboured sympathies for the Tibetan cause, but at the same time it should be remembered that it was India which turned down an U.S. proposal made in 1951 for joint action to support the cause of Tibetan independence. In 1954, India had formally recognised Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. However, New Delhi also encouraged the Dalai Lama to fight for increased autonomy from Beijing. Beijing accused the Nehru government of playing a role in the uprising staged by the Dalai Lama’s followers in Lhasa in 1959. Nehru had sent a message to the Dalai Lama saying that he was welcome to seek political sanctuary in India.
Bruce Riedel, who has held senior posts in the CIA and is an expert on the region, in his book JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War (2017), has revealed that the covert operations by the CIA and others in Tibet played a role in Mao’s decision to invade India. The Dalai Lama later said that the covert American actions were only part of the “Cold War tactics” to undermine the socialist bloc. The CIA was actively supporting the Tibetan separatists from 1957 to 1961 and it could not have been done without the cooperation of the Indian intelligence agencies.
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