During his visit to Beijing in June 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee suggested that the border issue with China be put on the fast-track. It was agreed to appoint Special Representatives to find a solution to the dispute which had been extensively discussed by officials of India and China for several months in 1960. Between 1981 and 1988, eight further rounds of talks had been held, first to deal with the ‘basic principles’ and then with the ‘situation on the ground’, but no concrete outcome was reached.
In the 1990s, India and China finally agreed to reduce tension along the Line of Actual Control . The boundary settlement process was then envisaged as a three-step process: First the establishment of guiding principles, then evolving a consensus on a framework for an agreement on the three sectors of the boundary; last, the delineation and demarcation of an agreed border.
The 1993 Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas as well as the 1996 Agreement on Confidence Building Measures focussed on the LAC: How to manage it on a day-to-day basis and how local commanders could take on-the-spot decisions in case of minor incidents.
In 2005, India and China agreed on the political parameters and guiding principles to solve the issue. The Special Representatives were keen to formulate a mechanism to tackle the constant intrusions into neighbouring territory (though in fact it is a one-way game with Chinese troops regularly trespassing into Indian territory).
The 15th round of talks, which was scheduled for November 28-29, 2011, was suddenly cancelled by the Chinese who did not agree to the Dalai Lama’s participation in the Global Buddhist Congregation in Delhi which coincided with the scheduled discussions on the boundary dispute.
Beijing went so far as to ask for the cancellation of the Buddhist conference. That was, of course, not acceptable to the Government of India. After all, Buddha was born in India and Buddhism is an old Indian religious tradition which does not belong to China. In the months preceding the conference, Beijing had announced its intention to invest billions of dollars in the Lumbini and Nalanda projects with the intention of promoting China as the ‘Voice of Buddhism’.
It was finally decided to hold the 15th round of talks on January 16-17 this year. Before his arrival in India, China’s Special Representative Dai Bingguo had affirmed that bilateral relations had entered a ‘golden era’, but Indian intelligence agencies reported a spurt in incursions across the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and even the usually calm central sector in Uttarakhand.
Quoting from a classified document, India Today has reported: “During the month (November 2011), there were 20 incidents of LAC violations by the Chinese. During the current year, 323 transgressions were reported: Western sector 194, middle sector-9 and eastern sector-120. In the corresponding period of 2010 there were 324 intrusions: 224 in the western sector, 111 in the middle and 90 in the eastern sector in Arunachal.”
Though National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon told mediapersons after the two-day talks between Special Representatives that the “meeting was held in a productive, fruitful and friendly manner”, and Mr Dai said that Sino-Indian ties had made “substantial progress” and predicted that the two countries could “work miracles” together, the discussions did not in fact go so smoothly.
During the meeting, Mr Dai apparently told Mr Menon that India had to first discuss the eastern sector of the boundary. He is believed to have asked Mr Menon how much territory India would be willing to part with in the Tawang region. Beijing may insist that Tawang district is part of the People’s Republic of China, but it is clearly an after-thought.
I recently came across a series of rare photos, dating back to 1959, of the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet. The Dalai Lama entered India on March 31, crossing the Indian border at Khenzimane at the bottom of the famous Thagla ridge in the West Kameng Frontier Division of the North-East Frontier Agency (today’s Tawang district).
Jawaharlal Nehru sent PN Menon, a senior officer in the Ministry of External Affairs (and father of the present National Security Adviser) to receive the Tibetan leader. Menon delivered to the Tibetan leader a message from Nehru: “My colleagues and I welcome you and send greetings on your safe arrival in India. We shall be happy to afford the necessary facilities to you, your family and entourage to reside in India. The people of India, who hold you in great veneration, will no doubt accord their traditional respect to your personage. Kind regards to you.” Since then, the Dalai Lama has been an ‘honoured guest’ of India.
In his autobiography, Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama remembered crossing the border on a dzomo (a hybrid of a yak and domestic cattle). “We must have been a pitiful sight to the handful of Indian guards that met us at the border — eighty travellers, physically exhausted and mentally wretched from our ordeal. I was delighted, however, that an official I knew from my visit two years earlier was there to rendezvous with us. He explained that his orders were to escort me to Bomdila, a large town that lay a further week’s travel away, for rest.”
At that time, the Chinese did not say that the Dalai Lama and his entourage were in ‘Southern Tibet’ (the term used today by Beijing to define Tawang). They knew perfectly well that the Tibetan leader had taken refuge in Indian territory. If they had really believed that the area was a part of China, why did the Chinese not follow and arrest the Dalai Lama when he passed by there in 1959? The answer is clear, it was not Chinese territory and Mao knew it. So, why claim the area 53 years later?
Mr Dai’s demand is all the more ironic as it comes at a time when China is using ferocious repressive policies against the Tibetans on the other side of the McMahon Line. Remember that under the 2005 Guidelines it was agreed: “In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.”
Last week, it was reported that China “has effectively sealed off a vast Tibetan area of Sichuan Province, sending in troops and cutting off communications to towns where protesters have been killed by security forces.” Presuming that the new Chinese stand on the border would have had a historical justification (though it does not), would the local Monpa population desire to become Chinese nationals and lose their democratic rights and freedom? The answer is a resounding ‘Never’!
But the Chinese like to blow hot and cold. Mr Dai’s posture was presumably to compensate for the ‘Agreement on the Establishment of a Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs’, signed during the visit. On the ground, the situation will probably not change much as long as the Chinese land-grabbing mindset reminds unchanged.
