by J J Singh
The British apprehensions at these new developments were aptly described in an article in the Morning Post, London, in its issue of 28 February 1910:
… a great Empire, the future military strength of which no man can foresee, has suddenly appeared on the North-East Frontier of India … The men who advocated the retention of Lhasa have proved not so far wrong … China, in a word, has come to the gates of India, and the fact has to be reckoned with.19
It was also appreciated that in the ‘long run’, north-east India may create the same challenges and pressures on the ‘defensive resources of the Indian Empire’ as caused by the North-West Frontier. This laid bare the gross misjudgement and underestimation of Chinese capabilities by the British policymakers cocooned in Whitehall, who never visualized such a scenario and acquiesced to the Chinese military invasion of central Tibet, including Lhasa. The Chinese had no pretensions of obliging Great Britain by nurturing its policy of ‘an autonomous Tibet under China’s suzerainty’. On the contrary, realizing Britain’s unenviable predicament and its inability to intervene militarily due to its self-denying agreements of 1906 and 1907, the Chinese empire ventured boldly and ruthlessly towards executing their plan to integrate Tibet with the mainland.
The Chinese were determined to stamp out every vestige of British presence and authority from Tibet; in certain quarters of the Chinese establishment there was a kind of paranoia about Tibet being given a protectorate status by the British. As a result, the Chinese adopted an obstructionist approach as far as trade between British India and Tibet was concerned. Blatant infringements of the existing trade treaties were carried out. Taking full advantage of the British predicament and their policy of non-interference, the Chinese began to interpret their ‘suzerainty’ as ‘sovereignty’ over all of Tibet. Reneging from the Adhesion Agreement of 1906, they ‘usurped all functions of government (emphasis added)’. Further, their expansionist designs became increasingly evident when they began to make impudent claims of suzerainty over Bhutan and Nepal too.
Despite the Chinese intransigence and acts of aggression, the British honoured their commitment to vacate Chumbi Valley, moving out their troops on 8 February 1908, consequent to payment of the final instalment of ‘rupees eight lakhs, thirty three thousand, some annas and pies’ (one-third of the reduced indemnity of Rs 25 lakh that had been finally agreed on after the Younghusband expedition of 1904). Thereafter, the only representatives of British India in Tibet were the British trade agents and their Indian infantry escorts, not amounting to more than fifty and twenty-five, respectively, at Gyantse and Yatung.20
The Chinese strategy of intransigence and aggression was zealously implemented by Chao Erh-feng, Amban Lien Yu, administrator Chang, General Chung Ying and other subordinate officials. They would most certainly have taken it to its logical conclusion but for the abrupt intervention of the Revolution of October 1911. Fortunately for the Tibetans, as a result of this the Chinese assimilation of Tibet, which was well on track, came to a grinding halt.
This section can be summed up with the words of the British minister at the legation in Peking, B. Alston, in his memorandum on Tibet:
There can be no doubt however that the year 1910 marked the high-water mark of Chinese influence and prestige in Tibet, and just before the outbreak of the revolution in China, Chao Erh-feng’s diplomatic and military measures had enabled the Chinese to hold Lhassa for nearly 2 years and to establish some form of control in the Tibetan Marches.21
7
Southern Frontiers of Tibet
Having subdued most of the area of the Marches along the western frontier of Szechuan and northern Yunnan by 1910, the dynamic Chao Erh-feng shifted his focus to Giamda and Lhasa on the west, and to Pomed (also known as Pome) and Zayul to the south-west. He, along with General Fu Sung-mu, wanted to put in place the new province of Hsikang without losing any more time. The Chinese army moved into the northern Zayul Valley, Pomed, Takpo and Kongbo and parts of northern Burma during 1910–12. In the Zayul Valley they did not venture beyond Rima, and in the Pomed area their reach was confined to the north of the great bend of the Tsangpo. In the Takpo and Kongbo regions, their presence was restricted to the two sides of the Tsangpo Valley. It is evident that the Chinese forces, even at the zenith of their power, did not endeavour to assert themselves beyond the customary and traditional southern frontier of Tibet.
In interviews he gave to a semi-official newspaper on 4 March and 11 March 1912, the Szechuan Kung-pao, director of a newly created office responsible for administration of the frontier at Chengdu, remarked:
What is … a real cause for anxiety is the country to the extreme south of Chiamdo, Tsa-yu (Za-yul), which is adjacent to the British territory of Assam, and is only a dozen days’ journey from Chiamdo. From Tsa-yu to Chiang-ka (Gartok) again, is not more than a dozen stages. (See Figure 9)
He went on to say:
Should an Anglo-Tibetan question arise, and one (British) Army proceed from Shigatse and another from Tsa-yu, the whole length and breadth of Tibet for hundreds of miles would be cut through. The Frontier Office is much alarmed, and as a first step troops are being sent to occupy Tsa-yu.1
It is also clearly discerned from very many accounts that there was no Chinese presence in the Monyul area. The Tawang area and southern Monyul were under the temporal and monastic writ of the lamas of the Tawang monastery for most of their history. Some Chinese troops reached up to Tsona Dzong, about four days trek from Tawang to the north into Tibet in 1912 (Figure 8), and briefly halted there before withdrawing towards Lhasa. They did not venture southwards towards Tawang. Similarly, there is no evidence of the Chinese having stayed in the Tsari area, although, while advancing into Lhasa and central Tibet during 1910, they had parallely established firm control of the Tsangpo Valley from Tsethang to Pe, just short of the great bend. Simultaneously, having subdued the Takpo and Kongbo areas, the Chinese turned their attention towards Pomed and Zayul.
It was perhaps a major component of Chao Erh-feng’s grand design to incorporate into China proper the regions of Pomed, Zayul and the contiguous Putao-Pienma (northern Irrawaddy Valley) area in northern Burma to make them part of the new province of Sikang (also Hsikang). This was Chao Erh-feng’s dream, yet it remained a fictional project. He arbitrarily drew a line without basing it on any natural feature like a river or mountain range. It was as if the boundary was etched on sand with a sword, incorporating all the areas from Chiangta south-eastwards, cutting across the grain of the country through Pomed, Zayul and northern Burma. Areas of south-east Tibet and the northern Irrawaddy (Nmalkha) Valley of Burma (then claimed by China), where the influence of Lhasa and Rangoon was either non-existent or minimal, were the places the Chinese desired to assimilate.
The strategic gains envisaged by the Chinese through these measures were threefold: first, creation of a Chinese-controlled buffer zone between British India and China; second, denial of an avenue for British advance into China’s soft underbelly; and third, securing of an alternative route to Lhasa from Yunnan province which would be shorter, easier and more secure, a direct route connecting Gongshan in the Salween Valley in north-west Yunnan with Zayul Valley, or an even more southern alignment connecting the north Irrawaddy region with the Lohit Valley in the area between Walong and Rima. This would bypass the troublesome and ‘lawless’ Kham territories and many high-altitude snow-bound passes and deep gorges of the Mekong and Salween en route.
Max Muller, the chargé d’affaires in Peking at the time (in the absence of Sir John Jordan, the minister plenipotentiary at the British legation at Peking), writing in April 1910 to the British foreign secretary spelt out his assessment of the general Chinese ‘forward policy’ being executed in Turkestan, Mongolia, Tibet and the Burmese border ‘as an essentially opportunist one of asserting traditional Chinese rights, however tenuous they might be, when circumstances favoured their assertion’.2 It may be fair to deduce that Whitehall took a rather long time to realize the portentously d
angerous dimension of the Chinese game plan. Moreoever, a major restraining factor behind the disinclination of the British administration to establish their writ beyond the Himalayan watershed was Section 55 of the Government of India Act, 1858, as highlighted in Chapter 4. Jordan was from the British Foreign Service and was a key figure during the Simla conference.
Given these constraints, the Indian government watched passively and remained ‘inward looking’ in the face of the aggressive and ruthless Chinese assertion of their assumed sovereignty over Tibet, and their coercive and subversive strategy to create a ‘sphere of influence’ in the Marches between Tibet and the tribal territory along the northern glacis of the eastern Himalayas. The amazing lack of clarity until 1911 with regard to the geography of the frontier region of the eastern Himalayas, the southern limits of Tibet, and the demography of the tribal belt was a direct fallout of the British policy of non-interference in Tibetan affairs and their reluctance to assume responsibility for the tribal belt up to the natural and traditional boundary along the highest crest line.
Even the Chinese Manchu Empire on its last legs did not fail to take cognizance of British susceptibilities and limitations and to exploit the window of opportunity that presented itself at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. That the Chinese would have succeeded in their endeavours to overcome all resistance within central, eastern and south-eastern Tibet and bring all of Tibet under their firm control, but for the October Revolution, is without doubt.
It would be accurate to record that prior to 1910 and during the latter part of the eighteenth century, there was no Chinese activity in the Pomed or Zayul areas. The Pobas of this area were a practically independent people, and they zealously guarded all entrances to their domain, which was naturally protected in the north and the east by the snow-clad Nyenchen Tanglha and Kangri Karpo mountains (whose peaks are between 5,488 and 6,494 metres in height), the Namcha Barwa range and the Tsangpo gorge in the south. Access from the west was easily blocked by a number of rivers flowing into the Tsangpo forming a series of defiles. Strangers were denied entry. Even the Chinese army which came to survey the land and lay the road and telegraph line were told by the Pobas to return as ‘they [Pobas] were neither subject to China nor to Lhasa’. There was an outbreak of hostilities between the two because the Chinese troops led by Chung Ying tried to force their entry here. In the fierce fighting that ensued, the Chinese suffered severe losses. There were four major engagements that took place during the spring of 1911 around Tongjuk bridge and other areas on the road to Lhasa.3
The Chinese returned with a battalion-sized force under Lo Ch’ing-chi, augmented by troops sent by Chao Erh-feng from the Marches and troops from Zayul Valley. They undertook a massive and ruthless retaliatory campaign that almost wiped off Showa, the capital of Pomed. They destroyed the palace and the gompa, and eliminated the entire Poba leadership by beheading eight ministers, head lamas and four chiefs, laying waste the entire countryside by burning villages, destroying places of worship and killing men, women and children indiscriminately. The Chinese made sure that the king of the Pobas, who had escaped to Pemako, was done to death by the people while they unceremoniously dispatched two of his queens and a small daughter to Lhasa. The Chinese thereby subdued the Pomed and Pemako regions during the summer of 1911. They ‘established garrisons at Yortong on the right bank of the Tsangpo and at Chimdro’, during August 1911. From these bases they sent out smaller teams of soldiers to visit the more remote Tibetan villages in the countryside.4 This Chinese attempt at Sinification of the Pomed region might well have succeeded but for the Revolution of October 1911, whose impact was catastrophic for the Chinese soldiers and for their Tibetan and Poba collaborators. At first, the exhausted, ill-fed and dispirited troops mutinied and, besides fighting amongst each other, killed many of their officers. Thereafter they resorted to arson, plunder and loot while withdrawing. By the end of 1911, most of them had met with a violent fate, and the survivors were compelled to fight their way back to Lhasa. By the end of 1913 there was no trace of the Chinese left in south-eastern Tibet, only bitter memories of their harsh and repressive acts.
In the Zayul Valley, the area up to Kyigang (Chikung) and Rima was under rudimentary administrative control of the Tibetans prior to 1910. A part of Chao Erh-feng’s army came down the Zayul Valley in early 1910. A major part of this force of around 320 soldiers established its headquarters in Chikung and ousted the Tibetan administration there. It then sent a smaller detachment of about twenty to the frontier village of Rima (Figure 9).5 As recorded in various accounts of that period, the Chinese, without much opposition, displaced the Tibetan administration and established their control in the upper Zayul Valley. But for the Revolution in 1911 the Chinese design of imposing their authority over the Meyors and Mishmi tribes inhabiting the Walong area of the Lohit Valley too might have succeeded.
Figure 9: Evolution of the McMahon Line (1913–14)—The Zayul Valley and Walong frontier region
The Chinese presence and activities in this area first came to the notice of Williamson, the daring and adventurous assistant political officer (APO) at Sadiya, in May 1910. Tungno, a tribal chief of the Miju Mishmis from the village of Pangum on the Lohit, about 32 kilometres south of Walong, arrived at Sadiya with the news given by two Tibetans that a large force of Chinese soldiers numbering 1,000 (an exaggerated figure) had recently come to Rima. They demanded taxes from the Tibetan administrator, and on being refused put him in a lock-up. He was ousted subsequently as the Chinese officers took charge of the village. The Tibetans had showed Tungno the orders of the Chinese addressed to all the Mishmi chiefs to ‘cut a track from Tibet to Assam broad enough for two horsemen to ride abreast’.6 Tungno refused to comply with these orders as his area came under the jurisdiction of the APO at Sadiya. The alarm this unsettling news created can be imagined. The peaceful and tranquil atmosphere of the Brahmaputra Valley was afire.
This was followed by another equally disturbing piece of news conveyed in July 1910 by a Miju Mishmi named Halam to Williamson. A group of Chinese comprising some officials and soldiers had recently descended from Rima, and after reconnoitring the area around Walong, planted Chinese flags at Menilkrai, a small habitation about 2 kilometres south of the junction of the rivers Yepauk and Lohit. The reason why the Chinese decided to place the boundary marker at Menilkrai, just a few miles downstream of Walong, was that beyond it the Lohit passes through a narrow defile which could be defended with a small force. From this defensible vantage point the track from Sadiya to Rima along the western (i.e. right) bank of the Lohit could be effectively dominated and entry to it denied.
Walong is where the valley opens up into large, flat, grassy areas, traditionally used by the Meyor herders on behalf of the Mishmi owners. Walong, situated about thirty miles south of Rima on the western bank of the Lohit, was never under Chinese or Tibetan administration. It offered the best location for a frontier military outpost and had been identified as such by British frontier officials and adventurers like Bailey. A few miles to its south, the Yepauk river is no mean barrier, with its vertical cliff-like banks, particularly during the rainy season when it becomes a monstrous obstacle. Hence the Chinese interest in this area and their efforts to extend the Tibetan frontier right up to Menilkrai. Importantly, this alignment would ensure that the tracks that came from north Burma through Diphu L’ka, and the Talok Pass joining the Irrawaddy and the Lohit Valleys, would come under their control. The Chinese obviously did not believe in taking into account the ethnic, customary and traditional aspects of a region while evolving their boundaries. During October 1910, it was learnt that ‘the Chinese had prohibited all trade between the Miju Mishmis and Tibet’. Apparently, it was a coercive strategy to pressure the local tribes to accept Chinese terms.
These Chinese activities were confirmed six months later when the intrepid adventurer Captain F.M. Bailey reached Sadiya from Peking in the summer of 1911. He most unexpectedly announced his arriv
al in Assam after travelling through the Kham region and the Zayul Valley. In an incredibly remarkable journey of about four months, he had covered over 3,200 kilometres, more than half of it through some of the most challenging terrains in the world inhabited by fierce tribes. The northern Zayul Valley and some other stretches he had journeyed through had never been set foot upon by any European before. Bailey completed his daring geostrategic recce-cum-espionage mission—which was acknowledged as of ‘great value to our administration in that part of the Empire’—by deliberately exceeding his brief and the instructions of Sir Jordan. And, true to British tradition, he received both recognition and admonishment in equal measure.7
Trekking for two days after passing through Rima, the last Tibetan administrative centre in the Zayul Valley, Bailey met two Mishmi village chiefs at a small settlement called Tini or Tinai on the east (i.e. left) bank of the Lohit in the Walong area. They had been called to report to the Chinese officials at Chikung. They had refused to comply with an earlier summons, and this time they were threatened with ‘military action’ if they disobeyed and hence were on their way to meet the officials. Bailey advised them against going to Chikung and instead to seek instructions from the political officer at Sadiya; they heeded his advice and returned to their villages. On 20 July 1911, Bailey also met two Tibetans at his camp at Minzong on the banks of the Lohit. They had been directed by the Chinese, under threat of decapitation, to summon and bring all the Mishmi chiefs to Chikung. They were in the process of doing so but had exceeded the time given to them. This meeting, however, never took place as the Chinese forces were moved to the Pomed region in the west as reinforcements to the hard-pressed soldiers in that region, where the Pobas were offering fierce resistance.
