The disputed Sino- India frontier: Doklam is the latest
Since 1846, when the British signed the treaty of Amritsar with the Sikhs and wrested controlled J&K, including Ladakh, repeated attempts to demarcate a boundary with China have failed.
The ongoing dispute to have a boundary is the outcome of the fluctuations of the British foreign policy reacting to Russian pressure. For almost a hundred years commencing 1815, Britain — then ruling India — and Czarist Russia expanded their respective Empires. Historians describe this as the ‘Great Game’. Treaties were inked between the two to create buffers zones.
Undecided boundaries that have been shifted several times have led to confusion, with each side claiming and counter claiming and resulting in varying perception of the Line of Actual (LAC) between India and China. Unlike the western front with Pakistan where the Line of Control (LOC) is defined and signed on maps, there is no such document for the LAC. It all boils down to the perception of either side. Troops of both sides patrol the areas that they perceive as their own.
The British boundaries — five separate ones proposed in 1846, 1865, 1873, 1899 and 1914, which China never accepted — have no bearing on the present day situation. LAC partially adheres to one of the British-era boundaries, no more. Post 1947, there have been a proposal each from China and India but nothing happened. China proposal of 1960 to demarcate a boundary on present ‘day actualities’ was turned down by India. “Accepting that would have compromised territorial integrity ,” says a book ‘History of the Conflict with China. 1962’, produced by the History Division of Ministry of Defence, and released for restricted circulation in March 1993.
India and China have fought a war in 1962, the two have had a armed skirmish in 1967 at Nathu La and a eight month long stand-off at Sumdrong Chu in north-western Arunachal Pradesh in 1986, all over these variations. The latest issue at Doklam is the latest while relatively smaller flashpoints exist in Chumur and Depsang – both in eastern Ladakh that shares a 823 kms frontier with China.
Doklam is the outcome of one such move
The stand-off at Doklam, the tri-junction of India-Bhutan-China is the outcome of one such Britain -Tibet-China-Bhutan play between 1890 and 1914.
In 1910, Bhutan became a British protectorate and the India-China boundary drawn by Henry McMahon in 1914 included the northern and western limits of Bhutan. For the 89 sq km on Doklam plateau, Thimpu contends that Britain and China did not consult it when signing the 1890 treaty or the one in 1906 to give away the Chumbi valley – the wedge between Sikkim and Bhutan – to Tibet.
Move out of the ‘great game’ chess board.
India and China – their think-tanks and strategic thinkers — must now understand their boundaries are a flexible cartographic expression of the British ‘forward policy’ of the 19th century.
The two Asian giants, both nuclear armed and now leading economies, need to break away from a dispute, dictated by British polices of 150-200 years ago. The India-China boundary. Tibet was a ‘great game’ buffer, along with Afghanistan, Kashmir and Xinjiang. Ironically, all four, to date, remain trouble-spots. Time has come to move out of the ‘great game’ chessboard – it was fight between Moscow and London and not one between new Delhi and Beijing
Neville Maxwell, in his well –read book ‘India’s China War’ sums up the predicament which politicians could face in the post-British times: “With independence (1947) the boundaries of India ceased to be pawns of the British in their great game …. No longer could boundaries be conceived or shifted by men whose concern was not territory but strategic advantage; henceforth ….politicians could tamper with them only at their peril”. His words penned in 1973 have proved prophetic.
As result 12 core disputes remain along the LAC as perception of its exact location on ground varies. The option of agreeing to present day actualities will be politically harmful.
Demarcating it is the best option, that the Chinese did not resolve the dispute with the British, does not mean they will not resolve it with India. Demarcate the LAC on the internationally accepted principle that the water shed will decide the boundary. In Eastern Ladakh, for example, the rivers running west of Karokaram flow into the Indus river, those following east flow into China, making it a natural watershed.
India can keep showing on the map the entire Aksai Chin and maintain it wants to claim it as per the November 14, 1962, resolution passed in Parliament, which read: “The House resolves to drive out the aggressor (China) from the sacred soil of India, however long and hard the struggle may be.”
London leaned on China but could not get boundary marked.
London, at times, tacitly leaned on China to keep Russia out of Tibet during the ‘great game’ and signed separate agreements with both on the status of Tibet. One was signed in 1907 at St Petersburg with Russia promising to keep off from Tibet. In April 1906 Britain-China inked a deal under which British would exit Tibet hence undoing the annexation of Tibet carried out in 1904
Britain maintained its trade north of the Himalayas. However, despite concessions, London could never get the Chinese rulers to demarcate a boundary all along the Himalayan ridge line on an east west axis.
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