The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  In July 1954, Nehru addressed a secret memorandum on the Sino-Indian border to the secretary general in the MEA, the foreign secretary, the defence secretary and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, describing the Tibet treaty as ‘a new starting point of our relations with China and Tibet’.26 Nehru’s misplaced confidence that China would continue to be a peaceful neighbour remained only a cherished hope, as China had its own agenda and national interest to take care of. Moreover, China had no hesitation in employing subterfuge or deceit to achieve its goals.

  Nehru had also said: ‘Both as flowing from our policy and as a consequence of our agreement with China, this frontier should be considered a firm and definite one, which is not open to discussion with anybody. A system of check-posts should be spread along this entire frontier. More especially, we should have check-posts in such places as might be considered disputed areas.’27

  Ashok Karnik, a distinguished officer of the Intelligence Bureau, wrote: ‘Pandit Nehru and IB Chief B.N. Mullik evolved what was later termed as the “Forward Policy”.’ As the border check-posts necessarily had to be manned by the border guards or the police, ‘Mullik offered to establish the posts through the IB staff’.28

  According to Karnik’s version of the situation, ‘The Army refused to man the posts as it was essentially a civilian job and the posts were militarily indefensible.’ Apparently, Nehru and Mullik decided to go ahead with their strategy, which consisted of showing the flag, hoping such an action would prevent the Chinese from encroaching into unoccupied Indian territory, as had been the case in Aksai Chin. Nowhere has it been recorded that Nehru ever sought professional military advice (until 1959) while evolving and implementing this forward policy. The boundary matter, including issues related to the tribal territory in the region, evolved into a domain that was exclusively handled by the MEA and the IB under the direct guidance and supervision of Nehru, the prime minister (also holding charge as minister of external affairs). There was an element of high secrecy in this enterprise, and even the cabinet was not kept in the loop.

  The administrative affairs of the north-eastern frontier tracts were the responsibility of the state administration of Assam and the MEA. In 1951, the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) was created to include these tribal areas. Keeping in view the sensitivity and strategic importance of NEFA, it was placed directly under the MEA (although constitutionally it remained a part of Assam), with the governor of Assam acting as the agent of the president. The Indian Frontier Administrative Service was raised in 1956 for administration of these tribal areas. As described by Verrier Elwin, they were a ‘body of senior officers’ with a ‘special aptitude for serving in the frontier areas’.29

  The ‘forward policy’ was IB’s strategy of establishing isolated posts in the Aksai Chin area to ‘fill the vacuum’.30 Obviously, the Indian appreciation of Chinese reactions to its own moves was flawed. At the same time, taking advantage of favourable terrain, the Chinese were building roads, moving up and deploying troops and munitions, and establishing logistic bases. While proffering friendship and extending the hand of peace to India, the PLA was also getting ready to teach India a lesson if and when the necessity arose. With a more astute and deeper understanding of China, we might have been able to see through this charade and perhaps been better prepared to face its onslaught when it came. Instead we indulged in wishful thinking.

  18

  Disputed Areas in the Ladakh and Central Sectors

  The Indian subcontinent, which starts from the Hindu Kush and lies south of the Pamirs, the Karakoram, Kunlun and Himalayan ranges, jutting into the Indian Ocean, has been historically, and by custom and tradition, known as Hindustan. The Sino-Indian boundary, from the Pamirs to the Gya peak north of the Spiti river, covering a distance of about 1,500 kilometres, represents in actuality the boundary between the state of Jammu and Kashmir and the erstwhile Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang) in the north, and Tibet in the north-east. Kashmir has for ages been an intrinsic part of India, whereas Ladakh, also called ‘little Tibet’, was a small Buddhist kingdom which had close ties with Tibet. It was amalgamated with the rest of Kashmir during the Mughal period in the seventeenth century.

  At times between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, Ladakh was independent or semi-autonomous, but during the expansion of the Sikh empire under Ranjit Singh in the nineteenth century, it was brought firmly into the ambit of the Lahore Durbar and made a part of Punjab. Thereafter, once the British were victorious in the Anglo-Sikh wars, this region passed on to Jammu and Kashmir under the Treaty of Amritsar in 1846, and remains so till date.

  Buttressing the Karakoram from the east, the Kunlun range encloses a desolate and almost uninhabited area of high plateau, where Buddhist Ladakh merges with Sinkiang in the north and Tibet in the east. It is this very sparsely populated region where the boundaries of British India, Tibet and China kept changing as three factors played out—the Russian threat, the waxing and waning Chinese hold over Tibet, and the British policy of retaining a buffer between Russia and its Indian Empire that would be cost-effective too. The boundary in this sector remained fluid and fluctuating (Figure 18). This flexibility and lack of finality to it was also a direct result of China’s stated policy of avoiding a boundary settlement with the British from a position of weakness. It believed the consequences of doing so would be akin to giving the ‘imperialists blades with which Chinese territory could be pared away’. This logic was also helpful to the Chinese in warding off the criticism they fetched for their proverbial ‘procrastination and lack of finality’ in dealing with boundary matters.

  Karakoram–Aksai Chin region

  The northern part of this sector, from the tri-junction of the boundaries of India, China and Afghanistan along the Qara Tagh range up to the Kunlun mountains, was historically controlled by the ruler of Hunza, the northernmost region of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) bordering China. Its limits were only vaguely known. In the absence of a distinct and continuous watershed line, there does not appear to exist any clear-cut traditional or historical boundary in this region. The only historical records (including maps) available of this part of the boundary are from the British period, beginning from about the middle of the nineteenth century, when Kashmir came under control of Britain as a dividend from the Sikh wars.

  There were two distinct strands of British thinking which dictated the limits of Jammu and Kashmir in this region: (i) the forward alignment, advocated by W.H.Johnson, who was part of the Great Trignometric Survey (GST) of British India, and Major General Sir John Ardagh, director of intelligence at the war office; and (ii) the moderate and pragmatic boundary proposed by George Macartney, a civil servant who was the British consul in Sinkiang for over two decades up to 1918, and Claude MacDonald, a British soldier-diplomat posted as a minister at the legation in Peking. The forward alignment had projected British India’s frontiers to the north of the Karakoram range, going eastwards up to the Kunlun mountains, thereby including within India the Aksai Chin plateau and the upper courses of the Yarkand and Karakash river systems too. This proposal was put forth after the defeat of the Chinese at the hands of Japanese in 1895.

  At this stage, it was expected that the Chinese would not be able to maintain their control over the Xinjiang region and that Russia could take advantage of the vacuum thus created. In order to forestall this possibility, it was suggested by Sir John Ardagh in 1897 that the British should include the whole of uninhabited Aksai Chin within their territory as China may no longer be able to function as a buffer region. The British aim was to keep the northern approaches to the passes in their possession. The proposed line ran along the crest of the Kunlun range and came to be called the Johnson–Ardagh Line. The western terminus of McMahon’s ‘red line’ drawn in 1913–14 coincided with the Ardagh alignment at the north-western corner of India.

  However, Viceroy Elgin and his advisers rejected the ‘forward policy’ as being impractical and unnecessary, and recommended acceptance of the Macar
tney/MacDonald line. Consequently, the British made an offer based on this line to the Chinese government in 1899.1 This moderate solution saw the line follow the northern side of the Karakoram range, cut across the Aksai Chin plateau and join the Lanak La. This gave to China the whole of Karakash Valley, a trade route and almost all of Aksai Chin proper, except the Lingzi Thang salt plains and the whole Changchenmo Valley (Figure 18). Colonial empire building and consolidation required the making of such compromises, as colonial powers were not impinged by nationalistic impulses. However, since this boundary never received formal recognition and acceptance by the Chinese, and on account of another bout of ‘Russo-phobia’, the British frontier policy reverted to inclusion of Aksai Chin within British territories during the term of Lord Hardinge in the early part of the twentieth century.2

  In 1927, the Government of India appears to have again looked into the matter and decided that the boundary from Afghanistan to the Karakoram Pass (where the Chinese had created a boundary pillar in 1892), should run along the northern side of the main Karakoram range, encompassing the Shaksgam Valley comprising an area of 5,180 square kilometres (a region illegally ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963). Eastwards of the Karakoram Pass and to the south of the Kunlun range lay the Aksai Chin and Lingzi Thang plains claimed by the Chinese. However, till 1951 there was no semblance of Tibetan, let alone Chinese, administration in this area. On the other hand, during the official talks in 1960, the Indian side produced evidence of revenue collection from this area belonging to Tangtse in Ladakh district (tehsil), whereas the Chinese were unable to provide credible evidence to prove that the area south of the Kunlun mountains was ever a part of Sinkiang.3

  However, the status and precise definition of the boundary east of the Karakoram Pass to the Kunlun range is not well recorded. Nevertheless, at the time of India’s independence, the boundary, as indicated in maps by the colour wash and the silhouette formed by the letters of the words ‘boundary undefined’, more or less followed the watershed between the Shyok and the Yarkand rivers, and then ran along the Qara Tagh range till it reached the Kunlun mountains. It then ran along that range, from where it took a southward direction till it reached the Lanak La.

  The words ‘boundary undefined’, it must be noted, were not printed on the maps in a random manner. It would be incorrect to assume that there was no boundary inherited by India at the northern frontier, even if the boundary wasn’t precisely marked. The Chinese position on the issue of alignment of the boundary in the Ladakh region was on shaky ground, and the goalposts shifted historically from 1890 onwards and up to the mid-twentieth century. Further, the westward shift of the 1956 line to the 1960 line, and subsequently to the line after the 1962 war with India, was achieved by aggression on the part of the Chinese.

  Border Region of Eastern Ladakh

  The eastern boundary of Ladakh with Tibet offers an example of a traditional boundary modified by political changes, unlike in the case of its bleak and remote northern boundary with Sinkiang. This region, comprising the frontier from Lanak La up to the Spiti river, includes the Indus basin, the traditional trade route from Ladakh to Tibet (Lhasa), and also the pilgrimage routes to Manasarovar and Mount Kailash. Before the tenth century AD, ‘Ngari Khorsum’, or western Tibet, formed a part of the Ladakhi kingdom, and its boundary with the rest of Tibet lay at the Mayum Pass. This included the entire Indus–Sutlej basins within Ladakh, which gave the kingdom a perfect watershed boundary with Tibet.

  Two significant treaties confirmed Ladakh’s frontier as ‘anciently established’, though without further definition. The first treaty dates back to 1684, when Ladakh was a major Himalayan kingdom. It was drawn up between the king of Ladakh, Skyid-Ida-Ngeema-Gon, and the Tibetan plenipotentiary, Mee-Pham-Wang-Po. The agreement said, ‘The boundaries fixed in the beginning when King Skyid-Ida-Ngeema-Gon gave kingdom to each of his three sons shall still be maintained. Besides the sanctity of the frontier, this agreement stipulated conditions for wool trade between the Ngari and the Khorsum regions.4 This emphasized that a clear understanding between the Ladakhis and the Tibetans did exist on the question of the boundary between them. It also illustrates the legal standing of both kingdoms, especially Tibet, to sign treaties.

  The second treaty was signed in September 1842 by Ladakh after its annexation by Gulab Singh, himself a feudatory of the Sikh empire. It was signed by the plenipotentiaries of Kashmir, the Dalai Lama of the time and the emperor of China. Making references to the boundary in the region, the treaty said, ‘We shall neither at present nor in future have anything to do or interfere at all with boundaries of Ladakh and its surroundings as fixed from ancient times.’5 (See Appendix 1 for excerpts of the text.) The treaty further reinforced the fact that the traditional boundaries of Ladakh and Tibet had been fixed for centuries.

  In this context, a note sent by the British government to the Chinese imperial commissioner at Canton on 13 January 1847 reads: ‘Respecting the frontiers, I beg to remark that the borders of these territories have been sufficiently and distinctly fixed so that it will be best to adhere to this ancient arrangement.’6 The Chinese response of silence to this note may have been considered as their tacit agreement to it.

  In making over the state of Kashmir to Gulab Singh and his heirs in 1846, the British India authorities hoped at the same time to negotiate a fixed frontier with Tibet and the Chinese Empire in this area, and to create conditions for peaceful trade. When it proved impossible to draw Tibet and China into discussions, frontier survey and definition were carried out by British officers, who adopted for this purpose a principle of ‘watershed lines between the drainages of different rivers’. Geographical details of the natural features of the inaccessible northern plateau (Aksai Chin) lacked accuracy; but southwards from the Lanak La and through the Pangong lake area, a year of careful survey culminated in a well-authenticated boundary, which held good until the Chinese communist takeover of Tibet in 1951.

  In fact, the treaty of 1842 gave renewed sanction to the customary and traditional frontier in this region. This treaty too did not define the frontier because it was already well defined by custom, usage and tradition. Actually, the Chinese government informed the British authorities in India that since this sector of the India–Tibet boundary was already well known and well defined, additional measures in respect of it would be unnecessary.7

  However, the Chinese now argue that though these treaties do mention a traditional boundary, none of them actually specifies the boundary. ‘The Indian government holds that the boundary line was fixed by a treaty concluded between Tibet and Kashmir in 1842. As a matter of fact, the treaty was a non-aggression pact which bound each to respect the territory of the other. It did not specify where “the old, established frontiers” lay between them,’ as narrated by Xuecheng Liu, a Chinese scholar.8

  To the west of the Karakoram Pass the Chinese claimed the Shaksgam Valley, an area of nearly 5,180 square kilometres, lying north of the Karakoram range. In their agreement reached in 1963 over this part of the boundary with Pakistan (in whose control this region is at present), the Chinese were successful in securing their territorial claims from Pakistan. However, a proviso has been made integral to this treaty in Article 6, stipulating that ‘the two parties have agreed that after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, the sovereign authority concerned will reopen negotiations with the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the boundary as described in this Article’. In this manner, China has kept the door open for negotiations with India, which rightfully is the sovereign nation of which the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir (including the Shaksgam Valley) is de jure an inalienable part, the state having formally acceded to India in October 1947. When viewed in the context of the sinister and illegal extension of the LoC from NJ 9842 eastwards to the Karakoram Pass by Pakistan on their maps, thereby claiming the Siachen glacier region, and the publication of this alignment in some international maps, the ‘Sino-Pak game’
becomes evident. Sadly for Pakistan, the Indian occupation of Siachen glacier put paid to their plans for a link-up with China in this region.

  The Chinese have laid a claim to approximately 38,000 square kilometres of territory comprising the entire Aksai Chin plateau, part of the Lingzi Thang plains and the area around Demchok. They claim that from the Karakoram Pass, the frontier between Sinkiang and Ladakh ran its entire length along the Karakoram range, although there is no credible proof in contemporary Indian or British documents to support it.9 ‘Some twentieth century Chinese maps have shown the Karakoram range as its boundary in the western sector. Unfortunately the British authorities had not settled this matter with the Tibetan or Chinese governments before they left India in 1947.10 However, there appears to be no historical or traditional background, or jurisdictional evidence for this unilateral claim. The Chinese boundary has been creeping southwards from the Kunlun range during the period 1890–1960 (Figure 18). The final alignment of the 1960 Chinese claim line really makes no geographical sense, in that from the Karakoram Pass it comes southwards up to Pangong lake, cutting across the Chip Chap and Chang Chenmo river valleys, including also the area around and including Demchok in China, before it joins the traditional eastern boundary between Ladakh and Tibet at Imis Pass.