Borderline disputes

When lands are contested, map-making and cartography become more an exercise of sovereign assertion, rather than a description of the physical features of the area in question. Therefore the best way to start any book which talks of borders and boundaries is to look at the relevant maps to get an idea of the history of the conflict, the shifting claims, the change of names as well as an idea of the terrain: the mountain ranges and passes, the glacial bodies, the flow of the rivers, habitation patterns, and the political entities on both sides of the borderline. Half the battle is won or lost by the descriptors that are used to describe an area – thus till 1952, the vast area beyond then J&K (now Ladakh), and stretching from the hill districts and states of Punjab, the upper reaches of Garhwal and Kumaon (then in Uttar Pradesh, now in Uttarakhand), Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and the NEFA (now Arunachal) was called Tibet, but after that, the maps of Survey of India refer to the region as China. As such this book also talks about the India-China border dispute, and somewhere along the line, the possibility of Tibet ever being able to reassert itself as a sovereign nation, capable of defining and protecting her own borders, is ruled out for all practical purposes.

This context is important for the treaties which form the basis of our claim – be it the Treaty of Chushul, signed between Zorarwar Singh of the Dogra Raj, then a vassal state of Ranjit Singh’s Khalsa Raj, or the Johnson Line of 1865, the (British) foreign office line of 1873, the McCartney–Mc Donald line of 1899 and the most controversial McMahon line of 1914, all bear the signatures of Tibetan officials, which are now repudiated by China. This is the genesis of the contest, which now involves the world’s two most populous countries with nuclear capability. They involve not just the second and the fourth largest economies of the world but also the garrison state of Pakistan, a nuclear power with a flailing political economy, and now totally dependent for its economic and military survival on support from China.

All this, and much more is on offer in this eminently readable book by India’s foremost geostrategic expert Maroof Raza, which covers the historical perspective of this conflict, the cold strategic insight of China under Mao compared to Nehru’s (misplaced) idealism, the Sino Pak nexus which saw Pakistan ‘gift’ (or surrender) large tracts of the erstwhile ‘Jammu wa Kashmir wa Ladakh wa Tibet Ha (the official name of J&K till 1947). This gave China control over Aksai Chin and a direct road connection to Sinkiang. We learn about the boundary swap proposals made by the Chinese premier Chou (Zhou) En Lai to Nehru in 1959, which called for India to accept the fait accompli in Aksai Chin in exchange for the status quo in NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) where the intrepid Major Bob Khathing had taken over the Tawang monastery, and asserted India’s sovereign rights.

This perhaps explains why the Chinese unilaterally withdrew from this area after the India-China encounter in 1962, which Shiv Kunal Verma describes as ‘The war which Wasn’t’.

This is followed by attempts by the Indian establishment to save Nehru and the higher defence leadership from getting the flak for the debacle of 1962. Thus, even as most of the papers related to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War have been declassified by the CIA as well as the Foreign and Commonwealth office, we in India still hold the Henderson Brooks – Bhagat report in the vault of absolute confidentiality.

After the ignominious exit of the trio of Krishna Menon, Army chief Thapar and Lt Gen BK Kaul, India’s new defence minister YB Chavan and Gen JN Chaudhary saw the resurgence of a new Indian army under the leadership of a determined Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. In 1967, this army gave a resounding rebuff to China when Major Gen Sagat Singh of 17 Mountain Division at Gangtok, acting in concert with the Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen J S Aurora and COAS, Sam Manekshaw prevailed upon the adversary in the battles of Nathu La and Cho La. Thus changed the dynamics of the India China relationship forever. No longer could it be regarded as an asymmetrical contest where the Chinese could walk in and leave at the moment of their choosing. This ‘forgotten victory’ has been documented in detail by Probol Dasgupta who avers that this ensured that China did not step in on Pakistan’s side in the 1971 war.

In 1979, Deng offered the Zhou border adjustment package to the Janata regime when Vajpayee was the External affairs Minister. Although border talks were resumed, not much headway was made, for Indian political parties too had built up the rhetoric to ‘not yield an inch of Indian territory’, as defined in Article 1, Shedule 1 of the Constitution. Therefore, tensions again built up in 1984 on the exact alignment of the McMahon line on the Thangla Ridge, an area north of Tawang. General Sundarji launched ‘Op Falcon’ and ‘Exercise Checkboard’ involving ten divisions of the Indian army and several squadrons of the IAF. Politically too, the decision to grant statehood to Arunachal in December 1986 sent a clear signal to the Chinese that India was determined to assert her authority in the contested territory. During the visit of Narasimha Rao to Beijing in 1993, India and China signed the Border Peace and Tranquility agreement, with the caveat that ‘maintenance of peace and tranquility should not imply an agreement between India and China as to the alignment of the LAC (Line of Actual Control) between the two countries.

The next standoff between the two countries involved the boundary of a third – Bhutan. For 72 days in 2017, the Indian and Chinese troops stood eyeball to eyeball along the ‘Dolam plateau’. India was not willing to abandon Bhutan on account of intimidation by China. Raza says that the triggers for Doklam were India’s steadfast rejection of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative of Xi, on the one hand, and the first visit of Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh on the other.

The last major confrontation on the contested border was at four LAC locations in Ladakh – in the areas of Galwan, Hot Springs, Pangong Tso and Demchok, besides one in Sikkim in 2020. Often called the Galwan Valley clashes, these saw Indian troops acting most decisively and fiercely after the CO of 16 Bihar was killed in the clashes resulting in the deaths of an undisclosed number of PLA troops. This time even the hotlines went unanswered and even though this was Covid time, escalation of conflict appeared to be a real possibility. However, to the credit of both sides, no bullet was fired from either side, and after the recent meeting between Modi and Xi in Russia on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in November this year, it was agreed to de-escalate, disengage, re(deploy) and demarcate the contested lines again.

Adding great strength to the book is the Foreword by Ambassador Phunchok Stobdan, the author of ‘The Great Game in Buddhist Himalayas’ and ‘India’s and China’s quest for Strategic Dominance’, the Introduction by Iqbal Chand Malhotra, who has written ‘Red Fear: the China Threat’, along with the Afterword by Lt Gen PJS Pannu, a strategic thinker who commanded the XIV corps of the Indian army in Ladakh, and currently heads the Military History and Strategy vertical at the Valley of Words. Stobdan places the context, Malhotra gives very clear insights into how China thinks, and Gen Pannu tells us how the valiant soldiers are defending one of the most inhospitable and ecologically frontiers anywhere in the world.

The writer, a former Director of LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist, and serves as the Festival Director of Valley of Words — a festival of arts and literature