The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  As far as the Panchen Lama’s return was concerned, the Tibetan officials conveyed to the Chinese that an early return of the Tashi Lama was desirable, but unaccompanied by any Chinese military escort. A disappointed General Huang eventually left for China after a few months, but left behind two liaison officers and a Chinese official from Kansu, along with a wireless set. This ad hoc establishment slowly firmed in, assuming the shape of a ‘regular diplomatic mission’. For the first time since 1912, there was a small yet credible Chinese presence at Lhasa. This was undoubtedly the most significant achievement of Huang’s mission.42 The visit of Huang was followed by a high-level delegation led by Basil Gould, the new political officer in Sikkim. The aim of this visit was to reassure the incumbent Tibetan government of British support against Chinese pressure and help them reconcile matters relating to the Panchen Lama’s return. Like the Chinese, the British too stationed their representative, Richardson, along with a wireless operator, in Tibet to facilitate speedy communications when Gould returned to India43.

  Meanwhile, the process of discovering the reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama had commenced. Guidance and help was sought through the medium of oracles, the high lamas, prophecies and tests. The young candidate was found in the village of Takse in the Amdo region in 1937. He was brought to Lhasa, and the necessary formalities were conducted for training him for the temporal and spiritual responsibilities that would be his on his assuming eighteen years of age. Until that time, the regent, with the authority of the Tsongdu and the Kashag, would run the affairs of the state. It was at this juncture that the McMahon Line was resurrected, on the initiative and commitment of Sir Olaf Caroe, the deputy secretary in the foreign department. This happened as a consequence of the Tibet visit of the adventurer and botanist F. Kingdon Ward, who entered the Pome and Kongbo areas north of the Tsangpo without the sanction of the Tibetan government. He had crossed the red line (the McMahon Line), which continued to be the de jure boundary as agreed on in 1914. Because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations carried out during the Simla Conference, coupled with the fact that the text of the convention had not been communicated to either the Assam government or to the political officer in Sikkim, there was considerable lack of awareness with regard to the McMahon Line. This was how Ward was allowed to cross the red line from the Assam side, where the administration had little knowledge of the red line. This was not the case in Tibet, where the powers that be were aware of McMahon’s red line.

  This deficiency on the British side was set right by Olaf Caroe, who had the map of the McMahon Line and the ‘1914 Convention with Tibet and connected agreements’ published in the Aitchison’s Treaty series, Vol. XIV in 1936 as well as the depiction of the McMahon Line boundary done by Survey of India, even though both actions were done without much publicity. The older, 1929 version of the Aitchison’s Treaty series was withdrawn and discretely replaced with the revised version. After this, Captain G.S. Lightfoot was assigned the task of touring the Tawang area in April 1938 and to report on the situation along the McMahon Line. He was instructed to convey to ‘all concerned that Tawang is by treaty Indian’.44 However, his recommendation of positioning a small administrative set-up was turned down, mainly on account of the financial commitment that it would entail.

  Soon, the Second World War broke out, and once again Tibet was consigned to the sidelines of history. In fact, China consolidated her ties with the USA and the Allies by helping in the war effort and in containment of the Japanese. However, at the same time, Tibet continued to exist as a practically independent nation and maintained a neutral posture, unlike during the First World War when it had volunteered its support to Britain. Unfortunately, an independent Tibet did not offer any strategic advantages to any major power, because of which none of them showed interest in lending it a helping hand, as that might be at the cost of strained relations with a stronger China. Besides having its own army since 1923, Tibet had its own flag, currency and passports, and maintained a de-facto independent existence. Tibet’s unenviable position during the inter-war years has been brilliantly described in the words of an Australian scholar and researcher, Heather Spence: ‘It was Tibet’s particular misfortune to be caught in the clutch of two powerful neighbours, Britain and China, who used her as a pawn in the compassionless game of political intrigue and diplomacy.’45

  At the time of transfer of power to India in 1947, the Tsongdu in Lhasa, ‘after the fullest deliberation, placed on record its tacit acceptance of the Simla Convention and the Trade Regulations of 1914, albeit, it was of the view that these should be revised in due course of time’.46

  PART VII

  BOUNDARY ISSUE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT INDIA AND PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

  ‘Even Brahma cannot see the end of a well-devised deceit.’1

  Panchatantra

  17

  Bonhomie, Appeasement, Imprudence, Deception

  India and China represent two ancient civilizations, separated by a high-altitude desert plateau and a grand mountain chain, one of the most spectacular in the world. These two great nations were not neighbours in the real sense, as Tibet formed the buffer between them. Geography has largely prevented the two nations from close interaction, trade and commerce, or, for that matter, from being a military threat to each other. For centuries, therefore, these two civilizations coexisted peacefully, although the two empires—their core areas set apart by a few thousand kilometres—waxed and waned in their power and domination of the peripheral states within reach of their respective spheres of influence. At times, as borne out by history, these areas of interest overlapped, as has been described by John W. Garver in his masterly analysis2 of the challenges in Sino-Indian relations. Yet, on the whole, two distinct and profound cultures evolved over time in the Indus and Gangetic plains in South Asia and in the Huang Ho and the Yangtze basins in East Asia with some overlap.

  Even though both nations had to face numerous invasions and even suffer foreign rule, the profundity and innate strength of their cultures absorbed the outsiders, who ended up adapting to the civilizations of their subordinated nations. At the zenith of the Mughal and Manchu empires in India and China respectively, about 40 per cent of world trade was generated by these populous and prosperous nations. This period was followed by the Industrial Revolution in Europe during the seventeenth century, and an era of colonization of Africa and Asia for about three centuries by the Western powers. India had to endure over two centuries of British rule. In the case of China, which was not colonized except for a few parts, it was forced by the world powers to be subservient to them and made to comply with a number of ‘unequal treaties’. It suffered a century or more of this ‘humiliation’. China also went through two revolutions and a civil war, all of which resulted in intense internal strife. The first revolution overthrew the Manchu Empire in 1911 and proclaimed a new republic. The second resulted in the creation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, having pushed the defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s regime into Taiwan. The end of the Second World War heralded a new era, and both these great nations emerged as sovereign and independent countries, one embracing a parliamentary democratic system of governance and the other following the path of communism.

  When India announced its recognition of PRC on 30 December 1949, within three months of the republic’s formation, it became the second non-communist country to do so after Burma.

  As India took its first strides as an independent nation, the undefined and undemarcated portions of its northern boundary with the Tibet region of China, which were inherited from the British, needed to be addressed as a priority. After the inconclusive war initiated by Pakistan over Kashmir in 1947–48 ended with a ceasefire, the India–Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) boundary question emerged as the next major challenge for India. The Chinese takeover of Tibet by force during 1950–51 exposed the northern borders of India to potential Chinese threat for the first time, highlighting our vulnerability.

  The British s
trategy of over half a century, of having an autonomous Tibet as a buffer, was put to rest as India looked on passively. The geostrategic implications of this event were, surprisingly, not given due consideration and were hardly debated by the Indian policymakers of the time. In a muted protest, the Government of India conveyed ‘deep regret’ about the Chinese resolution of the Tibetan problem by use of force. During that time, the war in Korea diverted world attention and had now assumed international proportions. It sucked in the US and its allies, who were arrayed against Soviet-backed North Korea and China. It was the first major conflict of the ‘cold war’. As the rest of the world looked on, China blatantly crushed under its army boots its repeated assurances to Tibet and British India that it would respect Tibetan autonomy and not turn Tibet into a regular province of China. The tragedy of Tibet has been poignantly described in Amar Kaur’s authoritative account of Tibetan history: ‘The political chessboard had finally yielded “the smallest of pawns” and Tibet, faced with a neighbour unwilling to guarantee her independence, fell victim to her own weakness and in the face of imperialist expansionism.’3

  India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was given sagacious advice by eminent leaders like his home minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and the secretary general in the external affairs ministry, Girija Shankar Bajpai, on settling the boundary matter with China. In an elaborate letter to Nehru on 7 November 1950, soon after the capture of Chamdo by the Chinese army, which threw open to them the gates to Lhasa, Patel, the visionary that he was, said in no uncertain terms:

  The Chinese Government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intention… The final action of the Chinese [invasion of Tibet], in my judgement, is little short of perfidy … we have to consider what new situation now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we know it, and the expansion of China almost up to our gates … We seem to have regarded Tibetan autonomy as extending to independent treaty relationship. Presumably all that was required was Chinese countersignature (referring to the Simla convention of 1914 and the McMahon Line). The Chinese interpretation of suzerainty seems to be different. We can therefore safely assume that very soon they will disown all the stipulations that Tibet has entered into with us in the past.4

  Patel went on to highlight the challenges posed to our security in the light of the new threat and suggested measures to meet them. Unfortunately, his strategic advice fetched a tepid response from Nehru, and Patel too passed away soon afterwards. There was no one left in India to challenge Nehru’s views. A former diplomat and China expert has commented: ‘No official had the temerity to raise it (the impact of China overlooking the southern slopes of the Himalayas) anymore.’5 Any such views were brushed aside with disdain.

  Had these recommendations been acted on, the history of Sino-Indian relations might have been different. Ignoring Patel’s sound advice, Nehru and his close advisers in foreign policymaking, Ambassador K.M. Panikkar in particular, believed a close friendship with China would be in India’s long-term interests even if, in the bargain, Tibet’s autonomous existence of near-independence had to be forsaken. On 18 November 1950, Nehru responded to his home minister, Patel: ‘It is exceedingly unlikely that we may have to face any real military invasion from the Chinese side, whether in peace or in war, in the foreseeable future.’6 It is clear that Nehru did not seriously consider a threat to India from China across the Himalayan frontier till about 1956. In fact, when the first commander-in-chief of the Indian armed forces, General Sir Robert Lockhart, presented an elaborate plan for expansion of the Indian Army to Nehru, the prime minister peremptorily dismissed the idea. Nehru said: ‘We foresee no military threats. You can scrap the army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs.’ Yet there was gross ambivalence on Nehru’s part when, addressing the Lok Sabha on 20 November 1950, he said:

  … the frontier from Ladakh to Nepal is defined chiefly by long usage and custom … Our maps show that the McMahon Line is our boundary and that is our boundary—map or no map. That fact remains and we stand by that boundary, and we will not allow anybody to come across that boundary.7

  This was a reassuring statement as far as our nation was concerned, but it did not encourage any discussion or discourse on the boundary issue, as all appeared to be well on the Himalayan frontier; tout va bien!

  It could not escape the attention of any rational strategic mind that to honour such a commitment to the nation India would need appropriate military muscle—a capable army, navy and air force. How did Nehru fail to see this logic or, for that matter, fail to seek professional military advice? At that critical juncture in India’s history, who was responsible for the national security strategy? The unilateral desire of a nation to live in peace cannot be a guarantee of its peaceful existence. The ignoring of this axiom led to our nation paying a heavy price eventually.

  Nehru was unquestionably a visionary statesman, but he was as much an idealist too. Ranged against him were committed communist leaders like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai—pragmatic and earthy veterans of People’s Republic of China. They were sworn proponents of a geopolitical strategy to regain all the ‘lost’ Chinese territories and avenge the ‘century of humiliation’ of China by the world powers. They had envisioned a policy for the consolidation of Tibet and other outer dependencies to create a strong nation of five races, the Han, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan and Muslim (Hui). The Chinese believe ‘they are and have always been of one race, that they share a common origin, and that those who occupy what is China today have always enjoyed a natural affinity with each other as one big family’.8

  Moreover, China is a ‘civilization-state’, whose historians are convinced that the process of ‘territorial expansion’ has to be considered as one of ‘unification’ rather than ‘conquest’, and who have alluded to such expansion as ‘a progressive evolution towards a preordained and inevitable unity’.9 The Chinese takeover or ‘liberation’ of Tibet had, in one stroke, made their intentions very clear, throwing overboard any semblance of vacillation, indecisiveness or weakness that China may have displayed in the first half of the twentieth century.

  At this point in history, unlike the Russo-phobia of the British Empire, which prompted it to prefer a weak China as a buffer country, India’s security interests would have been best served by an autonomous Tibet instead. This buffer vanished, leaving India with two options to counter China’s action. The first was to render assistance to Tibet by all means, including use of force if the need arose, and the second was to sympathize with the Tibetans and protest diplomatically while accepting the situation as a fait accompli. Viewing the scenario in a realistic manner, the Indian government found itself left with no choice but the latter option. Unarguably, at that point, dispatch of an expeditionary force into Tibet was, militarily speaking, out of the question. Besides, there were other equally, if not more, pressing demands for use of the military for consolidation of the Indian republic, such as integration of Hyderabad and Junagarh, and liberation of Goa, Daman and Diu, besides, of course, the new commitment of defending the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir.

  Speaking in support of the decision his government had to make, Nehru, who was also the foreign minister during his entire seventeen-year tenure as prime minister, said: ‘The only result of such a course (firm stand) might be a flare-up on our border or more oppression, more cruelty against the Tibetans. I do not believe in making empty gestures—it is of no use unless I have the power and strength to implement any decision that I take.’10 There was a certain amount of dichotomy and ambivalence in the above statement when viewed in the context of Nehru’s earlier statement on the inviolability of the McMahon Line, because that was based on a false sense of bravado rather than on India’s actual military capability. Further, nothing much was done to enhance our defence preparedness during the decade of the 1950s. Anything Nehru said, wrote or approved on foreign affairs became our policy, such was the aura of his persona. And his views became so sacrosanct t
hat his policies were very seldom questioned.

  This remained the case at least during the first decade of our nationhood. Wing Commander R.V. Parasnis has emphasized the lack of a comprehensive approach to foreign policy evolution. He recorded that, ‘According to B.K. Nehru, he alone among the politicians, other than Jawaharlal Nehru, had any understanding of foreign affairs in those early years after Independence. (Among the bureaucrats the only knowledgeable person was Girija Shankar Bajpai.)’11 Subsequently, it was the ‘Nehru-Menon combine’ that gave directions to the bureaucracy on foreign policy issues. ‘Keeping the defence services out resulted in a lame Indian foreign policy, without the backing of the required military muscle,’ said Parasnis.12 Reflecting on Nehru, a former foreign secretary and an old China hand, Jagat S. Mehta, commented, ‘We shall never again have the likes of Nehru and we, the professionals, lacked the courage to offer him timely corrective counsel … His bark was frightening but his bite was not vicious.’13

  Sadly, emphasis on national security strategy was conspicuous by its absence at the highest level, and the military leadership was snubbed into silence or indifference. The Nehru–Menon combine played havoc with the military leadership, literally forcing them to accept militarily unsound commitments. Giving more than due importance to the assessments of the intelligence chief, B.N. Mullik, Nehru and Menon were able to persuade the acquiescing generals like Thapar and Kaul to agree to their ‘forward policy’ of showing our flag in remote frontier areas along our boundary.