“China: Will India repeat the mistakes of 1962?” – Excerpts

I alluded to Claude Arpi’s excellent article in my previous post, “India, China and Arunachal Pradesh...are we missing something?” and promised some excerpts. Here they are:

Excerpts:

“But let us go back two years earlier. In April 1954, India and China had signed the ‘Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India,’ known as the ‘Panchsheel Agreement.’

Less than three months later, the first Chinese intrusions occurred on the Tibet-UP border (in a place called Barahoti). It was the beginning of hundreds of such intrusions.

…Delhi did not know how to react. A few days later, Nehru wrote to the foreign secretary: “I agree with the suggestion made in the office memorandum sent by the Ministry of External Affairs to the effect that it would not be desirable for this question to be raised in the Lok Sabha at the present stage.”

The policy of the Indian government was to keep the matter quiet and eventually mention the matter ‘informally’ to the Chinese government.

…But Nehru did have some doubts. The next day, he wrote again to the foreign secretary: “This is a serious matter and we cannot accept this [Chinese] position. The [BSF] must remain there even at the cost of conflict.  We would not permit them to go any further and if they did not go back, we would have to take further steps in the matter.”

Finally, the MEA informed Beijing that “The government of India are pained and surprised at this conduct of the Chinese commanding officer.”

This note was one of the first of hundreds of notes, memoranda and letters exchanged by the two governments. But this copious correspondence did not stop the Chinese from maintaining their claims. The Chinese probably knew that it would not go further than ‘regret notes’.

The notes/memoranda war continued till the fateful day of October 1962. …This was the background of Zhou’s first visit to India, during which the Indian prime minister had the occasion to have long talks with his Chinese counterpart on diverse topics such the policies of the Roosevelt administration or the happenings in Hungary.

It was Zhou who took the initiative to bring up the situation in Tibet. He gave a long briefing to the Indian PM on the historical status of the Land of Snows, while Nehru kept quiet about the intrusions.

…Nehru never brought up the border question though Zhou made some stray remarks on Tibet and the border

…Tragically Nehru did not take this golden opportunity to forcefully denounce the Chinese intrusions across the Indian border. Instead, he preferred to remain rather vague: “The border is a high mountain border and sparsely populated. Apart from the major question, there are also small questions about two miles here and two miles there. But if we agree on some principle, namely, the principle of previous normal practice or the principle of watershed, we can also settle these other small points.”

Once again these important points were considered ‘small’ or ‘petty’ issues.

A few days later, the Indian Prime Minister wrote to the Foreign Secretary: “Although [Zhou] thought that this line, established by British imperialists, was not fair, nevertheless, because it was an accomplished fact and because of the friendly relations which existed between China and the countries concerned, namely, the Chinese government were of the opinion that they should give recognition to this McMahon Line.”

Will the present Government in Delhi follow the same ostrich policy as Nehru’s and pretend that there is no problem between friends? Or will they have the courage to put all ticklish issues on the table? If they don’t they may have to wait another 50 years to see a true friendship with China.”