Nehru and Indira Gandhi with China’s Premier Zhou Enlai Photo: Courtesy Central Tibetan Administration archives
India-China Relations 1947-2000: A
Documentary Study
By Avtar Singh Bhasin (Edited)
Geetika Publishers, New Delhi
5,636 pages
Rs 10,000/-
By Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 30th June 18
Discussions of Sino-Indian relations,
especially of the territorial dispute, usually resemble an echo chamber, with well-worn
arguments repeated in interminable rounds of mutual agreement. The development
of new perspectives runs into the difficulty of accessing primary documents,
particularly for scholars far from Delhi. China documents are particularly
elusive, with the National Archives and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) denying
access to records relating to the Simla Conference of 1913-14 and the key
policy documents that followed. Continuing sensitivity to the 1962 defeat by
China keeps the official correspondence and official history of that war under
wraps and the Henderson Brooks report remains Top Secret. The resulting vacuum
of authentic, primary documents leaves the field open for biased accounts like
Neville Maxwell’s India’s China War,
which passed unchallenged for years.
Some of this void is filled by Avtar Singh
Bhasin’s monumental compilation of documents and papers from the Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library and other official sources, which brings together conveniently
an invaluable primary resource for scholars of Sino-Indian relations.
Be warned: this is not a weekend read.
Bhasin’s five volumes add up to 5,318 pages, providing value for the Rs 15,000/-
you will shell out for them. Each volume weighs around 1.7 kilogrammes, ensuring
that your forearms will present an attractive, toned musculature by the time
you finish reading all five.
Even so, it is worth the effort. For those
immersed in our China-frontier saga – the nuances of the Great Game, the choice
of the Karakoram-versus-Kuen Lun range border, the origins of the McMahon Line,
the lead-up to 1962, and the Tawang question – this is an essential reference
work. Bhasin does not tiptoe around. He begins the book with a succinct,
57-page summary of events from 1947-2000. Then, without further ado, he lays
out 2,523 primary documents, indexed usefully to make navigation easy.
Bhasin is uniquely qualified to assemble
this work, having worked for three decades in the MEA’s Historical Division.
After retiring in 1993, he joined the Indian Council of Historical Research,
and then the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. He has made it his mission to
publish primary documents, having previously done a five-volume study of
India-China-Nepal relations up to 2005, a compilation of India-Bangladesh documents
from 1971-2002 and another of India-Sri Lanka ties up to 2000. He followed
those up with his best-known work, a ten-volume documentation of India-Pakistan
relations up to 2007, ignoring the predictable sceptics who argued this would
provide diplomatic ammunition to Islamabad. Those fears have been allayed.
Simla Conference map of Tibet-India border. Photo: Courtesy Central Tibetan Administration archives
Bhasin’s China compilation starts with the
Simla Conference of 2013-14. That is followed by the correspondence between
London and New Delhi, which highlights Britain’s reluctance to extend control
over Tawang -- today at the centre of the territorial dispute. Next come New
Delhi’s flailing reaction to the communist takeover of China and our naïve misreading
of communist China’s intentions regarding Tibet. The reader gnashes her teeth
at Ambassador KM Panikkar’s starry-eyed assessment of the new, progressive, communist
regime, and New Delhi’s fateful decision to effectively accept as a fait
accompli the subordination of Tibet by China.
One can gawp incredulously at the 14-page
MEA note on the strategy for negotiating the (in)famous Panchsheel Agreement of
1954, in which India, without any substantial quid pro quo, accepted China’s overlord-ship
of Tibet. That strategy note is an object lesson in the lack of a strategy,
with the MEA proposing – and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru endorsing, in a
following note – that our negotiators must NOT raise with China the border question.
Instead of demanding a full, final and favourable border settlement in exchange
for throwing Tibet under the China bus, the MEA’s self-defeating ploy was to pretend
the Sino-Indian border was already settled. It would “not be to our interest to
open this question or give any indication that we are in any doubt about our frontier…
Should, however, the Chinese themselves raise the question of the frontier, we
should make it clear that there is nothing to discuss as the frontier is
clearly defined.” This ostrich-head-in-the-sand strategy prevented New Delhi
from discussing a border settlement with Beijing, making conflict inevitable.
During the negotiation of the Panchsheel
Agreement, Nehru penned a note to the MEA that resonates even today. Rejecting a
proposal to strengthen the border by providing military training to border
inhabitants in large numbers, Nehru presciently wrote: “The defence of our
border depends far more on [road] communications than on men. It would be waste
of men to place them in remote places on the border where they cannot be easily
reached. Therefore, the plan of making roads should be pushed ahead… I think
this is important. Without such roads, no proper defence can be organized.”
More than six decades later, India’s border road building programme remains a
shambles and the army compensates for the absence of roads by keeping thousands
of soldiers in inhospitable, high-altitude border outposts.
Providing a riveting read are the detailed transcripts
of Nehru’s conversations with Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En-lai,
during his ten-day visit to China in October 1954 – at the high water mark of relations
between the two countries. Nehru discusses the world order with Mao and Chou in
mind-boggling detail, with all three agreeing that India and China must play a
leadership role. Interestingly, Bhasin also includes the Chinese transcripts of
the Nehru-Mao conversations, which are verbatim, more detailed and capture the
atmosphere more dramatically than the than the dry Indian accounts. It is a
rare treat to access both sides of a diplomatic negotiation. The Chinese transcripts
also feature the discussion at a banquet hosted by the Indian ambassador to
Beijing, N Raghavan, which is not there in the Indian transcripts. In that, Mao
(falsely) assures Nehru that there are only a small number of Chinese troops in
Tibet – he mentions 10,000 in Tibet and another 10,000 around nearby Chengdu –
which were there only for road construction, after which they would leave. The
transcript mentions: “Nehru does not make any response”. But, damagingly for
India, Raghavan intercedes to say: “What China does in Tibet is China’s own
business. India trusts China.” New Delhi’s lack of a Tibet discussion strategy is
apparent.
From thereon, relations unravel like a
traffic accident in slow motion. A stream of letters and cables reference one
border incident after another, first around the UP-Tibet border at Shipki La
and then Barahoti. A fascinating exchange of signals – one of the highlights of
the series – describes the March 1959 Tibetan uprising in Lhasa, the Dalai Lama’s
escape and the knife-edge tension until his entourage completed its perilous
journey past the vengeful Chinese, crossing into India on March 31.
Nehru with the Dalai Lama after his escape from Lhasa. Photo: Courtesy Central Tibetan Administration archives
Notwithstanding Bhasin’s yeoman efforts, many
documents remain classified and, therefore, unavailable. This is sometimes
jarring. For example, the compilation includes no communications between New
Delhi and the Indian embassy in Beijing in the lead-up to, during, and
immediately after, the 1962 war. Even so, Bhasin’s compilation will find a
place on every China-watcher’s bookshelf. And we can hope that, if and when the
MEA declassifies its musty files, Bhasin will publish a second edition of this
wonderful series.
No comments:
Post a Comment