The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  While at Wu-tai Shan—the sacred ‘five-peaked mountain’, which is a few days’ trek from Peking—the Dalai Lama sent his emissaries to Peking with invitations to the ambassadors and heads of missions to call on him so that he could advocate to them the cause of Tibet. The Chinese were keeping a close watch on his activities and his interactions with foreigners. Having put the Great Game to an end, the Anglo-Russian convention proved to be the greatest boon for the Chinese. A free hand had been given to it to assert its authority over Tibet. Its suzerainty over Tibet had been reinforced at the cost of Tibet itself, which was being forsaken by Britain and Russia for their other, more important, imperial concerns.

  Faced with this stark reality, it didn’t take the Dalai Lama very long to realize that Tibet was now almost abandoned, friendless, and left to the mercy of China. Yet the wily lama wasn’t entirely powerless. He knew the latent impact of his intrinsic strengths. Endowed with extraordinary mental and physical strength, he was a survivor to the core. He was not the sort to easily give up. He was becoming more worldly wise and began to understand the intricacies of the power games and the craft of international diplomacy.

  At this juncture, two issues need to be discussed. Was the Dalai Lama requested or summoned by the imperial court to visit Peking, and for what purpose? Second, what was the Dalai Lama hoping to gain from the royal audience? It was while the Grand Lama was in Sining that he received the request from the monarch, and later it was while en route to Peking during his sojourn at Wu-tai Shan that he received urgent summons from the court. The Chinese aim with respect to the Dalai Lama’s visit was three-fold: they wanted to demonstrate to the Tibetans and the rest of the world that Tibet was not a vassal state but a part of China; they hoped the Dalai Lama’s obeisance to the throne and his being conferred a new title, albeit with a lower status than had been given to the Great Fifth, meant putting an end to the historical choe-yon relationship between their emperor and the Dalai Lama. The Chinese were now seeking the Dalai Lama’s help to subdue the rebellious Kham region in eastern Tibet where the Chinese army was having a tough time. As far as the Dalai Lama was concerned, he was looking to establish a rapport with the dowager empress and the emperor and somehow to retain his position as the temporal and spiritual head of the Tibetan nation. Unfortunately, as we shall see later, his efforts proved to be fruitless.

  At the end of 1907, the Dalai Lama left Kumbum for Wu-tai Shan, arriving there by the spring of 1908. It is believed that the Wu-tai hills, considered sacred from the times of Daoism (Taoism), were among the first regions where Buddhism gained pre-eminence in China. It has also become famous as the legendary abode of Manjushri (Buddha-to-be). Regardless of his weakened position, the sagacious and clever Dalai Lama put up a brave face and made concerted efforts to reach out to other world powers and garner their support. He had several interactions with representatives of important countries, the most significant among them being with William Rockhill, the US Ambassador to China. Rockhill described the Dalai Lama as a ‘man of undoubted intelligence and ability, of quick understanding and of force of character. He is broad-minded—and of great natural dignity.’ About the Dalai Lama’s temperament he said, ‘He is quick tempered and impulsive, but cheerful and kindly.’ Another notable visitor who called on the Dalai Lama was Baron Gustaf Mannerheim, a colonel in the Russian army who subsequently rose to become president of Finland. In his impressions of the Dalai Lama, he describes him as ‘as a lively man in full possession of his mental and physical faculties’. He goes on to say: ‘He does not look like a man resigned to play the part the Chinese government wishes him to, but rather like one who is only waiting for an opportunity of confusing his adversary.’ He presented the Grand Lama with a revolver and some ammunition and also demonstrated its use to him. In his memoirs, Mannerheim wrote, ‘A revolver might at times be of greater use, even to a holy man like himself, than a prayer mill.’9 Mannerheim also commented on the much-disliked close guard placed by the Chinese around the monastery at Wu-tai Shan to monitor the Grand Lama’s activities.

  The Dalai Lama also met Reginald Johnston, a British Colonial Service officer on a private journey, and a Japanese monk believed to have been ‘Otani Sonyu, a monk associated with Ekai Kawaguchi, the Japanese who had spent several years in Tibet incognito’.10 And just before his departure for Peking the Dalai Lama gave an audience to the French explorer Count Henri d’Ollone, during which he ‘expressed his regrets at the barbarity of the nomads, who refused to obey him, and also his sorrow at learning of the murder of the [French] missionaries’.11 The Dalai Lama was conscious of the fact that Tibet would need the support of the world powers to preserve its nationhood. In view of this, he even tried to smoothen the ruffled feathers (because of past events) of the British, taking pains to explain to visitors like Johnston that his (Dalai Lama’s) subordinates had ‘kept him in the dark as to the true circumstances of State affairs’ and that he would rectify matters on his return to Tibet.

  Eventually, the Dalai Lama left for Peking in September 1908. The Grand Lama, along with his vast retinue and followers, boarded the train from T’a-yan-fu, and on arrival at Peking was received in state with a ceremonial welcome, which has been eloquently described by Alastair Lamb. The Dalai Lama, ‘seated on a sedan chair carried by sixteen men’, moving in a procession led by ‘numerous Chinese officials, a Chinese military guard of honour, hordes of mounted Tibetan monks, trumpeters and other musicians, standard bearers and footmen carrying placards bearing his titles in Chinese and Tibetan, made his ceremonial entry through the Ch’ien Men [Tien Aan Men?] gate into the Chinese capital’.12

  The procession ended at the famous Yellow (Huang Tsu) Temple, which had been constructed to house the Great Fifth Dalai Lama in 1653 by the Manchu emperor Shunzi, who was succeeded by his son, K’ang Hsi. The ‘Thirteenth’ too resided there during his stay in Peking.

  A problem that arose shortly after the Dalai Lama’s arrival in Peking related to the protocol and procedure to be followed for his audiences with the young emperor, Xuantong, and the dowager empress, Cixi. The Dalai Lama refused to ‘kowtow’ to their majesties. He insisted on following the precedence established during the visit of the Great Fifth, the only audience an earlier Dalai Lama had had with a Chinese emperor. Seemingly small, but given immense importance by the Dalai Lama, these high-visibility protocol actions denoted the relative status and significance of the personalities involved. A traditional kowtow involved kneeling three times and touching the forehead to the ground nine times (described as ‘head knockings’).13 However, taking advantage of the changed political situation, the Chinese snubbed the hapless Dalai Lama by insisting that he adopt a modified procedure of salutation which entailed kneeling before their royalty instead of doing the full kowtow. The meetings with the dowager empress and the emperor took place separately on 14 October 1908.

  The Chinese crown diminished the Dalai Lama’s status by giving him a new title of ‘The Sincerely Obedient, Reincarnation-helping, Most Excellent, Self-Existing Buddha of the West’ instead of ‘Most Excellent, Self-Existing Buddha, Universal Ruler of the Buddhist Faith, Holder of the Sceptre, Dalai Lama’ that the Great Fifth was anointed with.

  The Dalai Lama had an audience with the dowager empress, Cixi, on 3 November, her seventy-fifth birthday, and once again raised the issue of his maintaining direct communications with the throne in Peking. It was conveyed to him that the procedure in vogue would continue and that the Grand Lama would be required to go through the Amban at Lhasa. Besides conferring the new title on the Dalai Lama, the empress decreed that the Szechuan treasury would be charged to pay him taels 10,000 every quarter. Unfortunately, a twin tragedy struck the royal court shortly afterwards: the young emperor met with a sudden and mysterious end within a few days of this meeting and the dowager empress too died a day after. Some accounts say the emperor’s untimely death may have been caused by poisoning at the behest of the empress, who did not take kindly to his political views and di
d not want the throne to be occupied by him. The young king, being the de facto ruler, had been confined to the palace by her. Ironically, the Dalai Lama was called upon by the Chinese to perform the last rites for both the deceased. He wrote an impressive eulogy of the late dowager empress and also attended the enthronement of the two-year-old prince, Puyi, the last Ch’ing emperor. The Dalai Lama had meetings, without substantial results, at the Chinese Foreign Office, known as Wai-wu-pu, later renamed Wai Chiao-pu after its reorganization on the lines of Foreign Offices of contemporary Western countries during the Republican regime.14

  However, once the period of state mourning was over and the political games and jockeying for power commenced, the Dalai Lama realized it was pointless for him to stay in Peking any longer, and commenced his return to Lhasa. He left Peking by train on 21 December 1908 for T’a-yan-fu on the way to Kumbum. Visiting various monasteries en route, he arrived there on 26 February 1909. During his stay there the Amban at Sining invested him with the new title of ‘Loyally Submissive Vice-regent’ of an imperial China that had ‘sovereignty’ over Tibet,15 and the Dalai Lama was formally given the royal edict. Thereafter, he left for Lhasa, visiting monasteries in other parts of the region along the way, arriving in the city in late December 1909.

  On his return, the people presented the Grand Lama with a new seal on which was inscribed, ‘By the Prophecy of the Lord Buddha, Gyatso (Dalai) Lama is the holder of the Buddhist faith on the face of the Earth,’ which was ‘a symbol of Tibetan independence’ and ‘a mark of defiance against Chinese interference’.16 It is amazing that this was done in the face of a mounting threat of invasion of Lhasa by the Chinese army under General Chung Ying on the orders of Chao Erh-feng, ‘the butcher’. Thus ended the first exile of the Dalai Lama, which lasted from August 1904 to December 1909, during which he travelled at least 6,000 kilometres, two-thirds of it over permafrost-covered high-altitude terrain, an incredible journey by all accounts. However, neither the Dalai Lama nor the people of Tibet readily accepted Tibet’s subordinate status as determined by the Chinese. Further, by then a more mature and worldly wise Dalai Lama, had no intention to be ‘truly loyal and submissive’!17 Unfortunately, destiny had something else in store for him.

  PART III

  CHINA’S FORWARD POLICY

  Figure 8: Sino-Tibet historical frontiers

  6

  Chinese Subjugation of Tibet

  (1905–1911)

  The reactions of world powers like Russia, France, Germany, Japan, the USA and the tottering Chinese empire to the British invasion of Tibet were very interesting. Article IX of the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904 (see Appendix 2) was worded in such a manner—without, of course, actually saying it—that it appeared as if Tibet had become a protectorate of Great Britain. It even read as if China was a ‘foreign power’ as far as Tibet was concerned. Was Britain a special entity with special powers or a foreign power when it came to Tibet? Following this precedent, could the other powers demand similar rights or privileges elsewhere in Tibet or in mainland China? The Russians in particular demanded to know whether the British had not, in fact, violated Article IX by constructing and maintaining a telegraph line to Gyantse and by demanding an indemnity.1 In this context, Younghusband, in a letter to his wife, had said that the Lhasa convention had been rammed down the throat of the Tibetans. And, importantly, he was convinced that he was able to achieve a settlement that bestowed ‘the minimum of responsibility with the maximum of reparation’2 for the British.

  An era of heightened diplomatic power play and games followed for the next decade or two in the Central Asian and Tibetan regions. The exhausting and unpleasant experience of the Boer Wars (1880–81 and 1899–1902) had left the British with no appetite for more wars, allowing for coercion and diplomacy to take over. The Russians were licking their wounds after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and the Chinese Manchu Empire, debilitated by the successive defeats and humiliation of the Opium Wars, the Sino-Japanese War (of 1894–95) and the Boxer Rebellion (1899), was on its last legs. The United States discovered a huge potential for trade with China and began to look westwards, introducing an ‘open door policy’ to facilitate US trade with China and to prevent other world powers from obtaining special privileges, thus ensuring a level playing field. The French were engaged in consolidating their hold on South-East Asia. Having emerged victorious in its wars with Russia and China, the Japanese were engaged in consolidating their gains. After the departure of Otto von Bismark, imperial Germany’s international image and presence had shrunk considerably under Wilhelm II. Germany during this period was inward-looking and preoccupied with cementing the components of the Second Reich and strengthening its armed forces to make itself one of the most powerful nations on the globe.

  These international developments spawned an era of moves and countermoves by the imperial powers—of carving out new colonies, expanding and safeguarding existing ones, and identifying ‘spheres of interest’ and ‘buffer zones’ with diplomatic finesse, intrigues, espionage, sanctions and veiled threats, particularly in Asia and Africa. These actions eventually led to agreements and conventions between the powers of the day, each trying to obtain the most favourable terms for its own empire or nation.

  Four strategic imperatives drove imperial Britain’s Tibet policy. The first concern was the security of India’s northern border; the second was to keep the Russian bear away, preventing Russian influence and intrigues from permeating through Tibet and destabilizing Britain’s relations with Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and other possessions; the third was the necessity for a benign neighbour like Tibet rather than an overbearing China; and the fourth was Tibet’s geographical location, its proximity and ease of access from India, which made it necessary for Britain to keep that nation in its sphere of control. ‘It would be madness for us to cross the Himalayas and occupy it [Tibet]. But it is important that no one else should seize it; and it should be turned into a sort of buffer between Indian and Russian Empires (emphasis added),’ said Lord Curzon in 1901.3

  Whitehall was prepared to allow Chinese suzerainty over an autonomous Tibet even against the wishes of the Tibetans and even though it knew what little control China actually had over that nation at the turn of the century. The British policy in a very big way helped the Chinese re-establish their hold over Tibet during 1905–11, Britain not realizing that this would be the cause of unending problems for British India in the future. The policymakers in London displayed great naivety in presuming that China would remain a benign or weak power with notional authority over Tibet. The Chinese capability to exploit the vulnerability and the impotence of Britain’s Tibet policy was grossly underestimated by Whitehall. The harsh reality of the menacing presence of the Chinese along the Himalayan frontiers between 1910 and 1912, and also their intrigues with the sub-Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, shook the British hard, forcing them to revise their ill-conceived ‘hands off’ policy on Tibet. The lack of congruence between their viceroy in India and the British government on Britain’s Tibet policy quite often resulted in complications and embarrassments to both.

  Despite the non-interventionist policy of the British, their frontier and trade officials maintained close contacts with both the Tibetans and the Chinese. They also had close relations with the Panchen Lama at Shigatse and worked hard to keep him under their influence. At one stage there was some talk of a separate political entity south of the Tsangpo under the Panchen or the Tashi Lama, independent of Lhasa.

  Interestingly, in 1906 the Panchen Lama was presented with a Peugeot car by Captain O’Connor, the trade agent at Gyantse, on behalf of the British government. This gift was quite a novelty in a country that had no roads to speak of. It was a great feat to have it transported from the Indian border at Jelep La to Shigatse. It was the ingenuity and enterprise of O’Connor that arranged for the car to be disassembled into animal- and man-portable loads and to be taken down about 1,220 metres to the base of Chumbi Valley. It was reassembled
there and taken on automotive power to Shigatse over the next few days. The journey had to be done at ‘yak speed’ as the fuel and lubricants were carried by these beasts!

  Younghusband’s Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904, an underrated but landmark event, lacked two cardinal elements: the stamp of authority of the Dalai Lama and acceptance or ratification by the Chinese imperial government. Although the seal of the Grand Lama had been handed over to the Ti Rimpoche, the head lama of Ganden Monastery, and was stamped on the document, the fact that the treaty was not physically signed by the Dalai Lama or stamped in his presence made its acceptability to the Tibetans somewhat suspect.

  The battered Chinese empire, meanwhile, found itself in a win-win situation following the withdrawal of the Younghusband mission from Tibet. There was a power vacuum created by the sudden departure of the British forces, which was accentuated by the absence of the Dalai Lama. The situation became further complicated by the deposing of the Dalai Lama by a Chinese imperial edict and the reluctance of the Panchen Lama to occupy his seat. The Chinese government took full advantage of this opportunity and moved rapidly to restore their lost position and prestige in Tibet. The British were perplexed to discover that the gains of the Younghusband mission were likely to be frittered away unless the Chinese were made a party to the Treaty of 1904 or by an Adhesion Agreement thereof.

  Thus it was that a leaderless, weak and confused Tibet fell easy prey to its aggressive neighbour. The dying embers of the Manchu power in Tibet were fanned into life by the Sino-British Adhesion Agreement of 1906 and the Anglo-Russian ‘self-denying’ Convention of 1907. The latter, concluded in St Petersburg on 31 August, recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet and the ‘special interest’ of Great Britain, because of India’s geographical proximity, ‘in the maintenance of the status quo in the external relations of Tibet’. And importantly, in the first article itself, it was articulated that both the powers concerned would ‘respect the territorial integrity of Tibet’ and ‘abstain from all interference in its internal administration’ (Appendix 3). The subsequent articles tied British hands even tighter, giving the enfeebled Manchu Empire free rein to reassert its lost authority over Tibet.