The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  Kaul said, ‘(Since China was unlikely to wage war with India) there was no reason why we should not play a game of chess and a battle of wits with them, so far as the question of establishing posts was concerned.’14 In a caustic remark in an article he wrote for the Tribune published in March 2013, Inder Malhotra, a reputed journalist, said: ‘If, instead of interfering with the making of policy, he [the director, IB] had done his job of gathering intelligence on China, India would not have been taken by surprise and might even have escaped the humiliation.’ He was equally critical of the other key personalities of the time, including Nehru.

  The subjugation of Tibet was proving to be a bigger challenge than China had earlier imagined. India’s efforts to mediate and render advice to them to resolve the Tibetan problem peacefully were snubbed. The Chinese response to India was curt and unambiguous: ‘Tibet is an integral part of Chinese territory. The problem of Tibet is entirely the domestic problem of China on which no foreign interference will be tolerated.’15 Mao’s advancing armies homed in on Lhasa from all directions in a multi-pronged invasion. To overcome the logistic nightmare of supporting his army in the vast desert expanse of resource-starved Tibet, road communications were vital. Mao’s strategy to liberate Tibet was to ‘advance while building roads’, goes one narrative. An excerpt from an account of the invasion talks about how the Chinese were unmindful ‘of the thousands of workers who died due to the exacting work and living conditions in the oxygen-less high altitude terrain’.

  Fearing the Chinese onslaught, on 17 November 1950, the young Dalai Lama fled to Yatung in the Chumbi Valley, a stone’s throw from the Indian border. Thereafter, on India’s urging he returned to Lhasa. Conscious of the fact that there was ‘lack of American and British support’ too to the Tibetan cause, he sent his delegates to Peking to ‘seek a peaceful settlement with Peking which safeguarded Tibetan autonomy’.16 A seventeen-point Sino-Tibetan Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet was signed between the two sides in Peking on 23 May 1951. Not unexpectedly, China was able to coerce the Tibetans into securing in Article I itself an admission by Tibet that it was a part of China and that ‘the Tibetan people shall return to the big family of the Motherland—the People’s Republic of China’, thus legalizing its subjugation of Tibet. Other articles in the agreement referred to ‘the centralised handling of all external affairs of the area of Tibet’, ‘integration’ of the Tibetan army with the People’s Liberation Army, and establishment of a ‘Military Area HQ’ in Tibet. This signalled the end of Tibet’s de facto independence and China-free existence that it had enjoyed for four decades since 1912. This treaty also allowed China to station its troops in Tibet, bringing both India and China face to face for the first time.

  At this stage, India’s China policy faltered. We failed to see through the Chinese game plan and overall strategy. In an endeavour to create a peaceful neighbourhood and to smooth ruffled feathers, Nehru decided to placate China by unreservedly accepting Tibet as a part of China and by endorsing the Panchsheel agreement on 29 April 1954. This agreement laid down guidelines for peaceful relations between the two countries, the salient ones being:

  Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,

  Mutual non-aggression,

  Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,

  Equality and mutual benefits, and

  Peaceful coexistence.

  Granting accord to these ‘five principles’ enshrined in the agreement, India also gave up its inherited rights in Tibet, which had been gained after painstaking and costly ventures undertaken by the British since the first decade of the twentieth century. These were the Younghusband expedition, the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904, the establishment and functioning of trade agencies in Yatung and Gyantse, military escorts, telegraph lines and rest houses along the road from Sikkim, and the legacy of the Chumbi Valley, which could have been in British India’s possession for seventy-five years from 1915, as originally conceived by Younghusband, and therefore could have been under Indian control up to 1990, theoretically!

  The intangible loss of India’s stature and its perceived role in these developments in the eyes of the Tibetans was not insignificant either. An account paraphrasing a letter written to Zhou Enlai by Nehru, the idealist and moralist, says, ‘(Nehru) insisted that dislike of imperialists’ mores had never been more evident than when he agreed to sign away these extra-territorial privileges from India to China.’17 As borne out by later events, the Panchsheel agreement did not stand the test of time, and the two nations went to war over the boundary issue in 1962.

  It is difficult to comprehend why India did not seek any quid pro quo for this one-sided political and diplomatic largesse. We could have, for example, demanded or insisted on Chinese acceptance of the Indo-Tibetan boundary of 1914, the McMahon Line, or more favourable terms for trade, and other concessions. As a matter of fact, as has already been highlighted earlier, the Chinese had never raised any reservations or objections about the Indo-Tibetan portion of the famous ‘red line’ drawn during the Simla Conference. During Prime Minister Nehru’s visit to China in 1954, he raised the issue of the major cartographic error in Chinese maps ‘showing the whole of N.E.F.A. (North East Frontier Agency) in China’, a matter that had been brought to his notice by Dr S.P. Mookerjee in Parliament. ‘Zhou En-lai replied that they were reproductions of old pre-liberation maps. Nehru gracefully said that he could well understand how the “many and heavy pre-occupations” [sic] of the Chinese Government led to the postponement of more up-to-date cartography.’18 The Chinese continued to show NEFA in the same manner in their maps published in 1956 too. That was the era of bonhomie, albeit short-lived, between India and China, summed up in the slogan ‘Hindi Chini bhai bhai’ (India–China brotherhood). It is a fact that later, in 1963, Nehru admitted in Parliament that it was ‘foolish’ of him to have assumed that ‘there was nothing to discuss’ about the boundary with the Chinese leadership.19

  Between 1954 and 1959, there were a number of Chinese intrusions into Indian territory, despite the apparent state of bonhomie and well-being on both sides. As a matter of fact, during this period the Chinese were discreetly carrying out their first-ever surveys of the border areas with the help of Tibetan villagers inhabiting the northern glacis of the Himalayas to ascertain the southern limits of Tibet. The locals made out maximalist claims that included some pastures south of the Himalayan watershed such as Shipki La.

  Figure 18: Chinese claims on boundary in Ladakh

  In 1955, Chinese troops entered Barahoti and Danzan in erstwhile United Provinces (present Uttar Pradesh); and in 1956, the Shipki La was crossed a number of times. In 1957, they entered Walong in NEFA. Members of an Indian police patrol were arrested in Aksai Chin and kept as prisoners in custody for five weeks. The Chinese had unilaterally altered the traditional boundary in the western sector, as was evident from their 1956 claim line which lay approximately 60-100 kilometres to the west of the Aksai Chin road (Figure 18). Commenting on Nehru’s policy of diplomatic appeasement of China, Jagat Mehta, a former foreign secretary, said:

  There was the beginning of a suspicion that ‘south of the Himalayas’ was not accepted in China as part of India’s outer strategic and cultural frontier. For the sake of promoting a climate of peace, it was considered prudent not to raise these controversial questions [the boundary with China], which could dilute the solidarity of anti-imperialism. India was inclined to be indulgent and suppress the differences. The dominant credo was that non-alignment must assuage fears aroused by containment.20

  Unfortunately, with the passing away of Sardar Patel, who was not only an erudite political personality but also endowed with the strategic wisdom to advise Nehru in balancing national security interests with building an international image for India or buying our peace, there was no one left of that stature in the country. The unresolved Sino-Indian boundary, spanning a distance of 4,057 kilometres of high-altitude
mountainous terrain, has today become the subject of the most complex and intractable border disputes in the world.

  Three months after the signing of the Panchsheel agreement in 1954, Nehru decided that India’s maps should show properly defined frontiers based on the historical, geographical, ethnic and cultural divide between India and China, and also taking into account earlier agreements, tradition and usage. The existing maps, where the boundary was either shown by a colour wash accompanied by the words ‘boundary undefined’ on the outer extremity or, in the case of the McMahon Line, where it was printed ‘boundary undemarcated’, would be withdrawn. A careful examination of the Survey of India maps of that period shows that the words ‘BOUNDARY UNDEFINED’ and the colour wash were not randomly printed, but that the upper line formed by the letters defined approximately the silhouette of our northern boundary. This outline roughly included the Aksai Chin area and was synonymous with our traditional and customary boundary. On Prime Minister Nehru’s directions, our northern boundary was thereafter firmly and unambiguously marked on Survey of India maps.

  By this time Nehru was fully aware of the incorrect depiction of the Sino-Indian frontier on Chinese maps of that period drawn up unilaterally by China. Both nations were thus guilty of unilateral actions that were highly vulnerable to misinterpretation, and potentially conflictual. Unfortunately, neither the elite nor the lay people of either country were informed of the real situation before these unilateral steps were implemented. The seeds of the showdown between the two nations were sown between 1954 and 1956.

  In the case of China, the fault was of greater significance, as it began construction of a motorable road from Sinkiang to western Tibet passing through Indian territory, even though this territory was undefined or undemarcated until 1954. This activity was done with great secrecy and sans media publicity, even in their country. But whatever doubts may have existed before the new maps were issued by the Indian government in 1954, they no longer remained after this action by the Indians. The Chinese had no grounds to blatantly go ahead with the project without a dialogue with India. And it was particularly surprising that this was done when the Chinese were talking of peaceful coexistence and goodwill with India.

  China definitely knew where the alignment of the road infringed the boundary shown on these Indian maps. But the plans for its strategic road from Sinkiang to Lhasa had been consciously decided on, as geography did not permit an eastern alignment over the Kunlun range skirting Aksai Chin, although there is another very difficult track that goes over the Keria Pass at an altitude of about 5,515 metres. On the other hand, although the Indian side was perhaps not totally ignorant of China’s road project, India decided to lodge a formal complaint only in August 1958, drawing attention to the wrongly depicted Sino-Indian boundary published in China Pictorial Magazine, Issue No. 95, of July 1958.21

  Verification that the road ran through Indian territory was also physically carried out by our patrols later, and existence of the road was confirmed. According to Mullik, director of the Intelligence Bureau, his agency had been regularly sending the government confidential reports about China’s construction of the Sinkiang–Tibet road (Figure 18) since November 1952. He said a jeepable road between Sinkiang and Rudok in western Tibet had become operational in 1953. However, he assumed that the alignment of this road was across the Kunlum and not through Aksai Chin, the ancient and traditional caravan route which traversed through Indian territory. This fact could have been verified without much difficulty with the help of smugglers, traders or just one or two aerial photographic sorties by the Canberra aircraft that our air force possessed in 1954–55. Surprisingly, during my research on the subject, I did not come across any comment by well-known strategic experts on Sino-Indian boundary on this course of action, which was eminently ‘doable’, till end-1958.

  It would be fair to assume that the Chinese knew that Nehru and his advisers were likely aware of their construction of the Aksai Chin road but chose not to acknowledge its significance and decided to play it down. The Chinese leadership were smart enough to keep this game going for as long as it suited them! Besides the inputs the IB had been giving to the government about this road, even the military attaché in the Indian embassy at Peking, Brigadier Mallick, had sent a special report on this project to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in 1956. Despite this the Indian government did not take a serious view of the development. It has been remarked that the ambassador was diffident about dispatching his report, lest it should displease Nehru!22

  Once the new Indian maps were published in 1954 by the Survey of India, showing a well-defined boundary based on the advice of China experts in the MEA, the stakeholders of India’s national security ought to leave no stone unturned to ensure that no violation of India’s territory took place unchallenged. The publication of these maps meant that positioning of border control posts at important locations manned by the respective state armed police and IB personnel had become mandatory. But this was not done in an effective manner, and the Chinese exploited this failure to the hilt. Across a frontage of over 4,000 kilometres, only twenty-one IB and/or armed police check-posts were established initially, a highly inadequate number. Later, when the situation worsened in 1959–60, these posts were increased to about sixty.

  Mullik mentions in his book The Chinese Betrayal that information regarding construction of the Aksai Chin road had been regularly reported by the IB to all concerned (the Prime Minister’s Office; the ministries of external affairs, defence and home; as also the army headquarters) since October 1952.23 If this is true, the question of culpability on the part of several key people of the time arises. Worse still, the nation was kept in the dark about all this till 1958. No strategic analysis of these developments appeared to have been made between 1954 and 1958, as there are no records in the public domain of discussions on it at the level of the prime minister, secretary general of the MEA, chief of army staff, home secretary or director of IB, at least until 1958. Even at that stage, the foreign secretary, during a conference in June 1958—which he presided over and which was attended by the chief of General Staff of army HQ and the director of IB—was of the view that there was no point in lodging a protest without conclusive proof that the Chinese had violated Indian territory.

  It is incomprehensible why aerial reconnaissance was still not ordered by the government when Indian Air Force had Canberra aircraft with excellent photo-recce capability. One or two sorties would have been adequate to photograph the alignment of the road passing through the Aksai Chin area. In fact, the IB director, the MEA and army HQ should have demanded aerial photo cover as early as 1954 (when our maps showing a definite boundary were published). That they did not is nothing short of bizarre, particularly when the director of IB had claimed that his sources had been providing inputs on construction of the road from 1952 onwards. But he claimed he was not sure which alignment the road traversed; he presumed it was the Keriya Pass route! In this regard, purely from the historical perspective, the truth must be discerned and recorded, and the lessons from it learnt.

  Moreover, Mullik’s assessment that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops had used a circuitous and much more difficult and hazardous track over the Kunlun and had come across the 5,515-metre (18,090 feet) Keriya Pass during the ‘liberation’ of Tibet in 1950–51 was perhaps faulty, as it contradicted Zhou Enlai’s statement that Chinese troops used the traditional route from Sinkiang during this ‘liberation’ (invasion), though it would be unwise to take the Chinese leader’s statement at face value too. It would have been most likely that a small Chinese infantry force with a complement of horsed cavalry, with logistic support in the form of animal transport comprising yaks and mules, could indeed have followed the centuries-old caravan route from Sinkiang across Aksai Chin, developing the same alignment into a motorable road subsequently. In terrain like in Ladakh or Tibet, where there is no cover, the road would have stood out prominently in aerial photographs, and their interpret
ation would have provided the proof the foreign secretary was seeking.

  Our bright and ingenious intelligence czar should have been able to see through the Chinese game, and it is surprising that he did not present a more accurate assessment to the policymakers at the national level. Failure to get this vital information verified by ground or air surveillance for a period of six whole years, from 1952 to 1958, is inexcusable. Mullik, on whose shoulders rested the responsibility of external intelligence, failed to join the dots and synthesize the many inputs he received on Chinese activities. As a matter of fact, in his book he has admitted he ‘made a serious mistake in not taking up the question of the road [Sinkiang] with the Prime Minister directly … My talk would have induced the Prime Minister to order a high-level study of the implications of this road and this would have resulted in our taking more vigorous preventive measures to stop the further extensive encroachments which occurred in the next few years.’24 To send long-range patrols during the autumn of 1958 to confirm whether the Sinkiang road traversed across Indian territory in the Aksai Chin area was action taken that was absurd and too late. We ought to have taken appropriate steps in 1954–55 itself.

  Significantly, in 1956, China published new maps which not only repeated their previous claims but also included areas west of the Aksai Chin road, which had actually already been occupied by them in Ladakh.25 This should have injected a certain amount of suspicion in the minds of our leadership and policymakers, raising questions about what the Chinese were really intending to do while overtly professing friendship with India. In fact, after the Trade Agreement of 1954 between India and China, India’s border trade in Ladakh declined because of closure of Sinkiang and other restrictive measures taken by the Chinese. In all probability, China wanted to throw a cloak of secrecy over its construction of the Aksai Chin road. It is intriguing how India failed to piece together these indications and to analyse Chinese strategy correctly. In view of India’s unquestionable good intentions demonstrated towards China ever since the birth of People’s Republic of China, nothing should have stopped India from seeking a clarification from that country once reports were received concerning this strategic project that went on from 1952 to 1957. India’s inexplicable and ostrich-like inertia was shameful. All this resulted in India being presented with a ‘fait accompli’ that was impossible to undo, and which became another major cause of its subsequent conflict with China.