The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  … to assert our legitimate rights and claims … A small force, operating from Walong, could occupy Rima and hold the Rong Thod Chu and Zayul valleys in 24-30 hours and vice versa, a force moving from Rima can unopposed be in position on Menilkrai at within 36 hours and effectually prevent any advance up the Lohit Valley.

  He carried out his recce from January to March 1914, when the Simla Conference was in session and McMahon and Lonchen Shatra were in the process of finalizing the Tibet–India boundary alignment (the ‘red line’). O’Callaghan’s recommendations were indeed timely, and of immense help to McMahon in finalizing the eastern limit of the Himalayan boundary. O’Callaghan reportedly had the boundary markers unilaterally placed by the Chinese in the vicinity of Menilkrai, south of Walong, removed. He then proceeded to take them upstream to the border settlement of Kahao and disposed of them there. He thought leaving them at Menilkrai near Yepauk might, in later years, would be construed as a ‘tacit admission’ by the British of the southern limit of the Chinese or Tibetan frontier in the lower Zayul Valley.34

  In addition to exploring the Lohit Valley, Dundas sent Captain Hardcastle to survey the extremely remote Delei (Dilli) river valley. Delei is a prominent tributary of the Lohit, and joins the main river at Hayuliang, about 70 kilometres from Tezu. This is an important settlement where the Lohit river debouches from the hills and spreads out into numerous channels. Hardcastle was also tasked to establish communications with the ‘isolated’ Mishmis in this godforsaken area. He was informed of a singular incidence of a Chinese incursion from the Glei Dakhru Pass in the north during the summer of 1911, which has been described in the previous chapter. The passes (with writing in Tibetan and Chinese script) handed over to the Mazanon villagers by the Chinese were collected by the patrol. On translating them, Captain Jeffery affirmed that the documents35 corroborated the information provided by the headman. Other than this, Hardcastle found no evidence of the presence or influence of the Tibetans or Chinese in this valley.

  From Sadiya, the Dibang Valley rises steeply for about 200 kilometres to the crest line and then passes on to the snow-covered mountain range. Beyond that lies the Tibetan Pomed region. This valley, roughly 120 kilometres wide, is located to the west of the Lohit. It was largely an unexplored area until 1911. The subsidiary probes of the Mishmi mission in 1912–13 found evidence of Tibetan or Monpa people who had settled in the upper reaches of the Dibang and its tributaries such as the Dri and Adzon. They had come to this area during the first decade of the twentieth century in search of the ‘sacred glass mountain’ and also to save themselves from the rapacious Chinese soldiery. In the face of grave hostility shown by the Mishmis, many of these settlers perished in Mishmi raids or from disease, while the others returned to Tibet. Some of these settlers had come from the Pomed region after the devastating floods in the Yigrong-Pome Valley at the turn of the century (1899–1900), which swept away numerous villages. The bodies of the Pobas were carried away by the torrent all the way to Assam, along with trees of a kind not found in the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Hundreds were believed to have perished in this natural catastrophe.

  As part of their imperial strategy, the British expanded their areas of ‘control’ and ‘influence’ from the plains up to the Himalayan watershed by entering into various treaties and agreements using persuasion and, at times, force. Starting from Ladakh and the hill states and principalities of Lahaul, Spiti, Kangra and Kulu, the British gained control of the western Himalayan frontier of India. Eastwards, by virtue of the Treaty of Sagauli (1816) with Nepal, the British got control of the Kumaon and Garhwal Hills. Thereafter came the acquisition of Darjeeling district from the raja of Sikkim in 1835, annexation of Assam in October 1838, and ‘satisfactory settlements’ with Sikkim in 1861 and with Bhutan in 1865. As a result of these actions, Kalimpong was also ceded to the British. East of Bhutan, the British entered into many ‘agreements beginning in 1844 with the chiefs of little-known hill tribes living between the plains of Assam and the crest of the Himalaya, thereby secured the northern flank of the Brahmaputra Valley’.36

  The British strategy was to see the emergence of a zone along the northern frontier of India that would act as a buffer between Tibet and India in the form of small and big kingdoms and estates dependent on the Indian government. Yet for centuries these states and their inhabitants have had religious ties and barter trade, and at some places shared grazing grounds with the Tibetans. Also, as observed by Richardson:

  The Government of the Dalai Lama did not exercise direct authority in Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan, or any area south of the Himalaya except for the Chumbi valley, nor was it represented in those countries by permanent envoys; but the ties of religious homage, trade, racial affinity and a degree of common interest had given Lhasa a special position and influence.37

  Tibet’s Turbulent Decade: 1904–1914

  In every nation’s history there are periods and phases of tranquility, peace and progress, as also of turbulence and strife. At the turn of the twentieth century, Tibet witnessed a phase of intense turmoil, uncertainty and unprecedented violence. This was a glorious period as far as the British Empire was concerned, and India was being presented as a jewel in its crown. In Central Asia, the Great Game was in full flow, with Tzarist Russia pushing southwards into Iran and the Pamirs. Great Britain was engaged in taking matching steps to contain this expansion. The Manchu Empire in China was on its last legs after its debilitating defeats in the Boxer Rebellion and its ruinous war with Japan. The Manchu court’s hold over the far-flung dependencies like Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet was notional, or tenuous at best. Defeating the Russians both on land and at sea in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05, Japan had heralded its arrival as a major power in Asia. Most of the world powers, including France and Germany, were jockeying for control and spheres of influence, to get trading ports, concessions and other facilities in China. There was even this apprehension in Chinese minds that some parts of China might be sliced away to create European enclaves that would serve the purpose of trading bases along the Pacific rim. Despite its wobbly political hold over the outlying parts of the empire, the Manchu court did not give up, and continued to evolve organizations for more effective control of its frontier regions. In 1901 it set up the Boards of Territorial Development and of Frontier Defence, their oblique aim being to settle Chinese citizens in Mongolia and Tibet. It was hoped that with intermarriages and cultural exchanges over a period of time, the integration of these regions with the mainland would follow.38 This scheme met with great resistance from people of both regions, and Sinification of the Mongolians and Tibetans failed to take root even later, despite the most vigorous measures adopted during the period of Chao Erh-feng.

  In this environment, the hidden land of the lamas remained an enigma. Chinese control over Tibet was nominal, and more or less perfunctory. The thirteenth Dalai Lama was the God-king, with absolute spiritual and temporal powers. Born in the Takpo province of central Tibet, he was identified and ‘brought to Lhasa when two years old, and kept in a hermitage until confirmation was received that the Emperor accepted him as the Dalai Lama’.39

  He was enthroned at the age of three and brought up in the cocooned environment of the Potala palace. There, sheltered by the regent who managed the affairs of the state with the help of the cabinet or Kashag, comprising four ministers (Kalon), of whom one was a monk, and an ecclesiastical council that took care of religious matters, he grew up blissfully unaware of the outside world and without any female contacts. His formal religious training commenced when he turned six, and he gradually became proficient in spiritual and scriptural matters. The gifted and scholarly Russian Buriat monk Agvan Dorjieff was to become his guru and his only external influence and mentor. Besides his spiritual and religious instructional responsibilities, the tutor was also appointed by the Dalai Lama ‘as “Work Washing Abbot”, part of his duty being to sprinkle water, scented with saffron flowers, a little on the person of the Dalai Lam
a, but more on the walls of his room, on the altar, and on the books, as a symbol of cleansing. He was thus in a close relationship with the young god-king, now come into power.’40

  The young Dalai Lama grew up with the belief that foreigners were not to be trusted, particularly the white man, and must therefore be kept away. The Russians were to be an exception, as a result of the ‘Dorjieff factor’. The Tibetans had witnessed the amalgamation of Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas with British India by the employment of coercive tactics by the British against Sikkim and Bhutan. Further, the British making Sikkim a protectorate of the British Crown and taking it away from Tibetan control and influence did not do much to allay Lhasa’s fears about invasion and possible colonization by the British. The armed expulsion of the Tibetan army in 1888 from an encroachment in an area near Jelep La, referred to as ‘Natong’ and ‘Lungtur’ (the areas are currently called Nathang and Lungthu), was the first military engagement between the British and the Tibetans. This one-sided and unequal skirmish led to the Sino-British Convention of 1890 that was signed in Calcutta on 17 March, settling matters relating to the Indo-Tibetan boundary in Sikkim and border trade. Significantly, the Himalayan watershed was agreed as the dividing line between Tibet and Sikkim. While accepting the status of Sikkim as a protectorate of Britain, the Convention spelt out that ‘the boundary of Sikkim and Tibet shall be the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the Sikkim Teesta, and the affluents from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu, and northwards into other rivers of Tibet (emphasis added)’.

  However, the Tibetans had reservations about this Convention, as they were not a party to the agreement. Happenings in Mongolia had a collateral impact on the internal situation in Tibet. Both being Buddhist states, there was a fair amount of intercourse between them on religious and temporal matters. Theologically, Tibet and its monasteries had a higher standing, owing to the pre-eminent position of the Dalai Lama, the chief incarnation of the four-handed Chen-re-zi, the patron diety. At the same time, the Russians, considering Mongolia as a territory clearly within their sphere of influence, backed Mongolia’s quest for independence and greater autonomy from China, unlike Britain in the case of Tibet.

  The thirteenth Dalai Lama led an extraordinary life. He was forced into exile on two occasions, spending about eight years of the turbulent decade of 1904–14 away from his land and his people. It was but natural that his outlook was shaped by the environment he grew up in. Till the Younghusband expedition, considered an ‘invasion’ by the Tibetans, the Dalai Lama had not ventured out of Tibet, and his only exposure to the outside world was through Dorjieff or through pilgrims from near and far Asia—Mongolians, Russian Buriats and Tibetans who sought his blessings. He was well aware of Tibetan history and had gained a profound knowledge of the Buddhist scriptures. Besides, he had read accounts of the famous king Songstan Gampo, the Tsong Khapa, the great scholar and founder of the Gelugpa School (the Yellow Hat tradition), and the ‘Great Fifth’ Dalai Lama. He was the first Dalai Lama to successfully graduate to the highest eccleisiastical level within the Gelugpa monastic tradition by qualifying for the degree of ‘Geshe Lharampa’ in 1899, when he was twenty-four. He survived what was considered a serious assassination attempt, through the medium of a tantric mantra embedded in the sole of his boots. On being discovered, the perpetrators of this devious plan were incarcerated, and they died in prison in 1900.

  The turn of the century witnessed great turmoil in Central Asia. The situation in Asia, especially in China, Tibet, Mongolia and East Asia, had become very complicated because of the Ch’ing dynasty’s downslide. Adding to this was the web of Russian intrigues with the Dalai Lama through Dorjieff, which strained relations between Tibet and British India. The fear of subjugation of Tibet or parts of it by Britain, and the inevitable commercial exploitation that might follow, made the Tibetans extremely suspicious of the British. This situation led to the Younghusband expedition, the flight to Mongolia of the Dalai Lama and his exile from 1904 to 1909. The Dalai Lama’s exaggerated sense of mortification from his belief that the British would eliminate him made him flee at an unbelievable pace. The irony is that the British never even attempted a pursuit!

  The reader already knows the story of the Dalai Lama’s flight, which eventually ended in the Chinese Amban assuming temporal authority over Tibet and administering it with what remained of the Kashag, the Tsongdu and officials who were mainly Chinese. The Chinese ‘fiction’ of control over Tibet now became a reality, thanks to Younghusband’s expedition and Britain’s ‘hands off’ policy.

  While the British were only prepared to accept Chinese suzerainty and not sovereignty over Tibet, for the Chinese it was only ‘Chu Kuo’ (sovereignty) as they did not believe in ‘Shang Kuo’ (suzerainty).41

  The awestruck and bewildered population of Lhasa watched the alien forces moving around, indulging in hectic parleys during the brief occupation of Lhasa by the British. The amazing part was the mute witnessing of the proceedings by the Chinese Amban, Yu T’ai, and his guard, as if they had nothing to do with Tibet, the capital of a supposedly vassal state of the Chinese Empire. In fact, the Chinese Amban played a positive role in the parleys and discussions that took place in Lhasa, though he did not append his signatures on the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904. This continued till the signing of the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty, which took place with the pomp and show so typical of the British Raj on 7 September 1904 at the ‘new Throne Room in the castle of Potala’.42 The Tibetans, Chinese and others in Lhasa were equally bewildered and perplexed to notice that the British forces had no intention of remaining in occupation of Tibet and had begun preparations to leave Lhasa within two months. On 23 September, the British struck down their camp and commenced their journey back to Sikkim via Shigatse, where they were to establish a trade mart. Chumbi Valley was to remain under British occupation, as per the Lhasa treaty, initially enshrined for seventy-five years—up to 1979! Though, sadly for British India, this was watered down to three years by Whitehall, and the indemnity to be paid by Tibet reduced from Rs 75 lakh to one-third of that amount, to be paid in three annual instalments. This liability was taken over by the Chinese.

  The immense loss of face and the rude shock delivered to the Chinese by the almost uncontested advance of Younghusband’s force into the heart of Tibet woke them up from their slumber. The result was manifestation of an aggressive forward policy by the Manchu court as far as all its dependencies—Sinkiang, Mongolia, Tibet, the area of the Marches and northern Burma—were concerned. The Chinese army came down with a heavy hand on these regions, and the world witnessed the ruthless Sinification of all these regions from 1905 to 1910. This policy heralded the era of the ‘butcher’ Chao Erh-feng in the Marches, particularly along the frontiers of Amdo and Kham regions of Tibet. Encouraged by the weak ‘hands off’ policy of Britain, the Chinese began to consolidate their hold over eastern Tibet and gradually spread their power westwards to central and southern Tibet.

  The Tibetans deluded themselves by believing the Chinese would not invade Tibet proper or advance up to Lhasa, and feverishly prayed that divine intervention or the incantations of the lamas would keep the Chinese away. It was too much to expect the ramshackle Tibetan army, badly mauled and demoralized as it was by the overwhelming fire power and tactics of a modern European army led by Brigadier Macdonald in 1903–04, to be able to contain the Chinese army along Tibet’s traditional and time-worn eastern frontiers. The prolonged negotiations between the British and the Chinese, which were initiated in Calcutta and which concluded in Peking in 1906, on terms that were hugely advantageous to the Chinese, helped China to regain her prestige and power in Tibet. As a matter of fact, an enfeebled China could not have had a better deal!

  The Russian bogey weighed so heavily on British thinking that the British preferred to have a stable northern border with Tibet under the suzerainty of a ‘benign’ China. They failed to see beyond the horizon. Rumours of construction of an off-shoot of
the trans-Siberian railway line towards Sinkiang added to the exaggerated threat perception. Russo-phobia ran deep amongst the policymakers in London, so much so that they manoeuvred to have a disadvantageous self-denying agreement signed with Russia in 1907—a case of British imperial strategy superseding British India’s interests. Though this convention largely contributed to ending the Great Game in Central Asia between the two powers, it tied their hands at the same time, as far as playing any role in Tibet was concerned. In fact, it offered Tibet on a platter to the Chinese, helping them secure the position they were desperately trying to wrest for themselves since 1720. In 1908, a fresh trade agreement, as decided during the Lhasa Convention of 1904 and the Adhesion Agreement of 1906, was signed between Britain and China, with a Tibetan representative acting under the Chinese commissioner, with the aim of reviewing and amending, where necessary, the Tibet Trade Regulations of 1893. This agreement was another example, if more proof was needed, of the pliability and spinelessness of British diplomacy regarding the safeguarding of British India’s strategic interests along the Indo-Tibetan frontier.

  With the signing of the Trade Agreement of 1908, the mandarins of the Manchu court had in one stroke gained many victories. The first was that Article III of the bipartite 1904 Lhasa Convention (Appendix 2) did not stipulate Chinese participation along with Britain and Tibet in future discussions on amendments to the trade regulations. This condition was given a quiet burial, to the detriment of Tibet’s interests. The second victory for the Chinese was their being able to prevail on the British negotiators to make the Tibetan representative subordinate to the Chinese. The third was the unambiguous articulation of Chinese supremacy in the functioning of the trade marts in Tibet—the Chinese were given the final say in resolving local disputes. And, finally, the last lever of British influence in the region—the stationing of an armed escort for protection of British trading missions—was also sacrificed. Regulation 12 of the new agreement specified that these escorts would be withdrawn as soon as the Chinese were able to effectively police central Tibet. These regulations were not purely tools for streamlining border trade but, more significantly, for functioning ‘as a means to secure political objectives’ and gain moral ascendency.43