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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
During the long-sustained diplomatic polemics which accompanied and expressed the Sino-Indian boundary dispute, each side accused the other of refusing to negotiate. The argument became involved and finally confused, with each blaming the other for setting unreasonable pre-conditions. All that is clearly appreciated is that, after the abortive Nehru-Chou En-lai summit meeting of April 1960, the boundary dispute between India and China was never submitted to negotiation. Since both parties to this dispute had repeatedly affirmed their commitment to negotiations as the only proper means of resolving international differences, the failure to resort to negotiations in this instance is striking—and it left the quarrel to the arbitrament of force in the 1962 border war. This article will follow the subject of negotiations through the diplomatic exchanges, and attempt to show why the dispute remained un-negotiated. This isolation of a single—though crucial—element in an extended and complex dispute will inevitably leave some questions unanswered and loose ends in the narrative: these, the writer hopes, are dealt with in his full study of the Sino-Indian dispute.
1 India's China War (to be published by Jonathan Cape in October 1970).Google Scholar
2 Report of the Officials … of India and … China on the Boundary Question (hereafter Report) (New Delhi: Government of India, 1961)Google Scholar p. C-R 8. Notes, Memoranda and Letters Exchanged Between … India and … China: White Paper, III (hereafter WP), pp. 64–65Google Scholar; Richardson, H. E., Tibet and its History (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 176.Google Scholar
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4 Parliamentary Debates, Vol. V, No. 4, cols. 155–156.Google Scholar
5 Unpublished papers of the Government of India.Google Scholar
6 This observation reflects the fact that China had not been party to the secret exchanges between the British and the Tibetans in Delhi in 1914 from which the McMahon Line derived, just as she had never subscribed to the Simla Convention.Google Scholar
7 Unpublished papers of the Government of India.Google Scholar
8 Rajya Sabha, 9 December 1959Google Scholar; Parliamentary Debates, Vol. XXVII, No. 12, cols 1983–1984.Google Scholar
9 The sector between Uttar Pradesh and Tibet. In their discussions of the border question the Indians and Chinese used these terms: the western sector (between Ladakh on the one hand and Sinkiang and Tibet on the other); the middle sector; and the eastern sector (the McMahon Line, between Bhutan and Burma).Google Scholar
10 WP, III, pp. 91–92.Google Scholar
11 WP, III, p. 74.Google Scholar
12 Ibid.
13 WP, III, p. 91.Google Scholar
14 My italics. This quotation was taken from a transcription from the original by D. R. Mankekar, to whom the writer is indebted. The passage appears in indirect quotation in Mankekar, Guilty Men of 1962 (Bombay: Tulsi Shah Enterprises, 1969), p. 138.Google Scholar
15 In October 1944 Basil Gould, the British political officer for the area, informed the Tibetan authorities orally and in writing that his Government was willing to modify the McMahon Line so as to exclude Tawang from the territory it claimed; Report, p. C-R 106, p. C-R 211.Google Scholar
16 Report, pp. C-R 106–107. An eye-witness account of the Indians' arrival is given in a release of New China News Agency, 16 September 1959.Google Scholar
17 Report, p. C-R 107.Google Scholar
18 This part of Nehru's 1954 directive could not be generally implemented because most of the areas “which might be considered disputed” were beyond the logistical reach of the Indians. Posts were moved forward in the middle sector, however, coming into contact with the Chinese in patches of piedmont pasture on the Indian side of the main passes in the area. These small areas had long been disputed between Tibet and Britain. See Rubin, A. P., “The Sino-Indian Border Disputes,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly, January 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Documents on International Affairs, 1955 (London: Oxford University Press for R.I.I.A., 1958), p. 423.Google Scholar
20 The comparison of public statements and private—indeed secret—government formulations may seem inapposite; but later events showed that both Governments faithfully followed the policies thus stated.Google Scholar
21 See the writer's account of the Nehru-Chou En-lai meeting of 1960 in India's China War.Google Scholar
22 “The McMahon Line … was to some extent provisional and experimental.…” Lamb, Alastair, The McMahon Line: A Study in the Relations between India, China and Tibet, 1904 to 1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 548.Google Scholar
23 Peking's approach to boundary treaties has been consistent. In the instance of the Sino-Soviet boundaries, Peking has accepted that the nineteenth century treaties which established the present alignments are legal, while describing them—accurately—as “unequal.” China's observance of treaty obligations in general has been scrupulous. See China and International Agreements: A Study of Compliance, by Lee, Luke T. (A. W. Sijthoff, Leiden; Rule of Law Press, Durham N.C., 1969).Google Scholar
24 In a note to India of 3 April 1960: WP, IV, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
25 The first full topographical survey of the area appears to have been conducted from the Chinese side in 1940–41—with the assistance of Soviet surveyors. Report, p. C-R 127Google Scholar. In the last decade of the nineteenth century the Swedish traveller, Sven Hedin, wrote: “We were now in a country belonging to the unannexed region, Aksai Chin, in north-west Tibet. Or tell me to what power this land belongs? Does the Maharajah of Kashmir lay claim to it, or the Dalai Lama, or is it a part of Chinese Turkestan? No boundaries are marked on the map, and one looks in vain for boundary stones. The wild asses, the yaks, and the swift-footed antelopes are subject to no master, and the winds of heaven do not trouble themselves about earthly boundary marks.…” Quoted by Gupta, Karunakar, India in World Politics 1956–1960 (Calcutta: Scientific Book Agency, 1969), p. 139 n.Google Scholar
26 Rubin, A. P., American Journal of International Law (New York), Vol. 59, No. 3 (July 1965), p. 589.Google Scholar
27 Prime Minister on Sino-Indian Relations (Government of India, 1961), I, i, p. 134. (Hereafter cited as PMSIR.)Google Scholar
28 PMSIR, I, i, pp. 148–149.Google Scholar
29 Aitchison, Sir Charles, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, Vol. XII, Part 1, p. 5, quoted by Gupta, India in World Politics, p. 126 n.Google Scholar
30 Elgin to Hamilton: No. 170 of 1897, Government of India, Foreign Department, Secret (Frontier). The text is Appendix 6 in Woodman, Dorothy, Himalayan Frontiers (London: Barrie and Rockliffe, 1969).Google Scholar
31 The Indian Government consistently misquoted the 1899 proposal in the argument over the borders, claiming that its terms “signified beyond doubt that the whole of Aksai Chin lay in Indian territory”—practically the reverse of the truth. (Nehru to Chou, 26 September 1959, WP, II, p. 36.)Google Scholar The 1899 proposal was for a boundary that “follows the Lak Tsang range until that meets a spur running south from the Kuen Lun” (text in Lamb, Alastair, The China-India BorderGoogle Scholar, and Woodman, Dorothy, Himalayan Frontiers). In the Indian version the phrase “ a spur running south from …” was dropped, making the proposed alignment one “along the Kuen Lun range.” This might have originated in a slip of transliteration from the original note in the British archives.Google Scholar
32 Gupta, , India in World Politics, p. 160 n.Google Scholar
33 For recent accounts of the history of the boundary in the western sector see Woodman, , Himalayan FrontiersGoogle Scholar, and—synoptically—the writer's India's China War. The definitive account remains, however, Lamb's, AlastairThe China-India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Boundaries (Oxford University Press for Chatham House, 1964), elaborated in an unpublished paper by the same author, The Aksai Chin.Google Scholar
34 Dick Wilson makes a point that is often ignored: “It did not occur to the Indian prime minister that the Chinese could with equal justice have asked him about his maps, which also reproduced the previous imperialist government's claims without prior consultation with the neighbour concerned.” (Asia Awakes, London: Weidenfeld, 1970, p. 83.)Google Scholar
35 WP, I, p. 49.Google Scholar
36 WP, II, p. 30.Google Scholar
37 WP, I, p. 49.Google Scholar
38 WP, I, pp. 49–51.Google Scholar
39 WP, I, pp. 48–51.Google Scholar
40 In a note of 8 November 1958; WP, I, p. 29.Google Scholar
41 Raja Sabha, 20 February 1961Google Scholar; PMSIR, I, i, p. 380. In 1965, when the question of the Indo-Pakistani boundary in the Rann of Kutch came to a head, the Indian Government followed the same policy and denied that the boundary in this sector was in dispute. It was pointed out in a press conference that only five years before India had not only agreed that a dispute did exist, but had undertaken to hold discussions “with a view to arriving at a settlement”. Thereupon the Government produced this formulation; “This is how the ‘dispute’ came into existence. India maintained that there was no dispute over the boundary. Pakistan contended that there was a dispute. The position of the two sides could not be reconciled; hence a ‘dispute’ came into existence.… But the dispute is not about territory or even about boundary. The dispute is that India maintains that the frontier is undisputed and Pakistan maintains the contrary.” (From text of official statement released in New Delhi, 8 May 1965.)Google Scholar
42 WP, I, pp. 52–54.Google Scholar
43 “I agree that the position as it was before the recent disputes arose should be respected by both sides and that neither side should try to take unilateral action in exercise of what it conceives to be its right. Further, if any possession has been secured recently, the position should be rectified.” WP, I, p. 57.Google Scholar
44 WP, II, pp. 27–33.Google Scholar
45 WP, II, pp. 34–46.Google Scholar
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47 Ibid.
48 WP, II, pp. 34–46.Google Scholar
49 The accounts of the detachments involved on each side were contradictory, each saying the other had attacked. Statements made by some of the Indian party when in captivity confirmed the Chinese version; but on repatriation they retracted these statements, saying they had been extorted, and made contrary ones.Google Scholar
50 WP, III, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar
51 WP, III, p. 50.Google Scholar
52 When the summit meeting did take place, in April 1960, the Chinese side gave every indication of having came to Delhi in expectation of reaching a settlement; this seems to substantiate the former inference.Google Scholar
53 WP, III, pp. 47–51.Google Scholar
54 WP, III, pp. 52–57.Google Scholar
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58 Times of India, editorial, 16 February 1960.Google Scholar
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61 PMSIR, I, ii, pp. 115–116. The distinction between “negotiate” in its dictionary meaning of “confer with a view to finding terms of agreement” and in Nehru's sense of “discuss with a view to persuading the other side of the validity of one's own position” has since become a staple of foreign policy articulation well beyond New Delhi. Dr. A. P. Rubin pointed out to the writer that President Johnson used the same distinction between “talks” and “negotiations” when setting up the Paris meetings on Vietnam in 1968.Google Scholar
62 Indian officials quoted in Times of India, 21 April 1960.Google Scholar
63 Ibid.
64 For the origins and implementation of this see the section, “The Forward Policy,” in the writer's India's China War.Google Scholar
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66 WP, VI, pp. 41–43.Google Scholar
67 WP, VI, p. 56.Google Scholar
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69 WP, VII, p. 4.Google Scholar
70 Hindustan Times, 10 August 1962.Google Scholar
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75 PMSIR, I, ii, p. 102.Google Scholar
76 “Why did Nehru publish the White Papers? They were bound to unleash nationalist passion in India, probably to a degree which could deprive him of any leeway for negotiating. Pique? Nationalist passion in himself? or Calculation, for instance to exert pressure on China as well as to anticipate criticisms of his border policy in India? Perhaps all three were part of the motivation.…” Crocker, Walter, Nehru: A Contemporary's Estimate (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 105.Google Scholar
77 PMSIR, I, i, pp. 118–119.Google Scholar
78 The Hindu (Madras), 4 August 1962.
79 PMSIR, I, ii, p. 102.Google Scholar
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82 WP, VII, p. 78.Google Scholar
83 Ibid.
84 WP, VII, pp. 96–98.Google Scholar
85 WP, II, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
86 The Indians maintained that since McMahon had intended to run his line along the highest ridges, the boundary adjacent to the India-Bhutan-China trijunction should lie on the crest of Thag La ridge, rather than several miles to the south, where McMahon had actually drawn it. They attempted to modify the McMahon Line for similar reasons at other points—notably at Longju—and Nehru argued to Chou En-lai that such unilateral boundary adjustments were “in accordance with established international practice” (WP, II, p. 44). The Chinese refused to recognize such interpretations of the McMahon Line (which the British had also made, notably at the trijunction of India, Burma and China); they insisted that, pending settlement, both sides should observe the Line as McMahon had drawn it.Google Scholar
87 WP, VII, p. 101.Google Scholar
88 WP, VII, p. 102.Google Scholar
89 WP, VIII, p. 63.Google Scholar
90 WP, VII, p. 119.Google Scholar
91 The Hindu, 2 October 1962.Google Scholar
92 The Times editorial, 21 November 1962.Google Scholar
93 See Dalvi, Brigadier J. P., Himalayan Blunder: the Curtain-raiser to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 (Bombay: Thacker, 1969) and the writer's account in India's China War.Google Scholar
94 PMSIR, I, ii, p. 144.Google Scholar
95 WP, VIII, pp. 1–4.Google Scholar
96 WP, III, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar
97 WP, VIII, p. 6.Google Scholar
98 Ibid.
99 WP, VIII, p. 10.Google Scholar
100 WP, VIII, p. 12.Google Scholar
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102 The Times, 22 November 1962; and 23 November 1962: “…Indian troops who are still in touch with their headquarters have been ordered not to fire unless the Chinese fire at them. No announcement of such instructions has been made in Delhi, and this is an indication of the great pressures upon Mr. Nehru … from an incensed and humiliated public opinion insistent that there should be no surrender to China's terms.” This was from the writer, then Delhi correspondent of The Times.Google Scholar
103 WP, VIII, pp. 24–26.Google Scholar
104 WP, VIII, pp. 28–31.Google Scholar
105 WP, IX, p. 185.Google Scholar
106 In a letter to Chou En-lai dated 7 March 1963, Mrs. Bandaranaike, referring to the Indian clarifications, said: “This document was prepared by the Government of India … [and it is] expressed in the language of the Indian Government.…” The text of this letter was released in India by M. R. Masani, m.p., in February 1964. Extracts were carried in the major Indian newspapers but it appears that the full text is available only in the Bombay newsletter Opinion, 11 February 1964.Google Scholar
107 WP, IX, p. 106.Google Scholar
108 Ibid.
109 Peking Review, 1 February 1963.Google Scholar
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid.
112 Lok Sabha Debates, third series, Vol. XII, No. 29, col. 5996.Google Scholar
113 The Times, 8 December 1962.Google Scholar
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116 Ibid. col. 5215.
117 WP, IX, pp. 10–13.Google Scholar
118 WP, X, p. 10.Google Scholar
