Unravelling the Frontier with China

Pandit Nain Singh Rawat hailed from the Johar Valley of Kumaon and spent much of his time in the 1870s mapping and documenting Tibet. The work of Nain Singh brought to light many details of a mysterious Tibet including the fact that the Tsangpo river in Tibet and the Brahmaputra in Assam were one and the same.1Dr Uma Bhatt and Dr Shekhar Pathak, On the Back of Asia (Nainital: People’s Association for Himalayan Area Research, 2007). The original in Hindi is titled Asia ki Peeth Par. Also see a review of the book at (accessed 6 November 2014).

HOW COMPLICATED WAS THE ISSUE?

The India–China conflict of 1962 did not owe its origin merely to the jostling for Himalayan space between two emerging Asian powers. Nor was it only a result of the fallout of the ‘Great Game’ – orchestrated by Britain to protect its northern frontiers from perceived Russian ambitions of territorial expansion towards the warmer waters of the Arabian Sea. Control and influence over Tibet – considered by many strategic commentators to be the main bone of contention between India and China – did act as a trigger for the flare-up, particularly after the Dalai Lama sought refuge in India in 1959. However, a closer look at the history of the region encompassing Ladakh and Tibet reveals a complex and myriad interplay of geostrategic events. These mainly comprised attempts by various players over almost two centuries (early-nineteenth to mid-twentieth) to dominate a high-altitude wasteland that provided strategic depth to a declining power like Britain, and offered the same pay-offs to the two emerging Asian powers of the twentieth century, China and India.

Additionally, it also appeared that the 1950s saw a concerted attempt by a resurgent China to identify with the non-Han people of all the contested territories, comprising communities that resided in the regions around the Tibetan Plateau. The Chinese shrewdly offered a racial argument to what was primarily a geopolitical problem. India, on the other hand, had embraced a multicultural and multi-ethnic way of life, aspiring to amalgamate many tribes and communities in Ladakh and the north-eastern parts of the country. It felt that China’s argument of racial affinity was not tenable when it came to coveting Indian territories.

A number of British geographers, explorers, diplomats and soldiers like Forsyth, Agnew, Cunningham, Johnson, Ardgah, McCartney, McDonald and Younghusband have, at various times between 1850 and 1914, offered compelling arguments to support their view of where the boundaries between Kashmir, Tibet and Sinkiang province of China ought to have been.2Major General D.K. Palit (retd), War in the High Himalayas: The Indian Army in Crisis (New Delhi: Lancer, 1991), p. 28–38. Also see Bertil Lintner, Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Volatile Frontier (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 10–12. Despite forays by Indian explorers like Pandit Nain Singh, who first accompanied Forsyth on his expedition to Kashgar and Yarkand in 1873 and then forged out on his own eastwards from Leh to Tawang via Lhasa, the region did not attract the attention of independent India’s military or political leadership.3Extracted from Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. VII (1885): p. 75, available at For his exploration of nearly 2,250 km, which he measured by the length of his fixed strides and recorded secretly on prayer wheels;4Shyam G. Menon, ‘Walking with Nain Singh,’ The Hindu, 2 February 2013, at (accessed 6 November 2014). and contribution to unravelling the mysteries of Kashgar, Yarkand and Tibet, Pandit Nain Singh was awarded the Patron’s Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society. No other Indian would receive this award for over 125 years.5Harish Kapadia, ‘A Trek in Tawang Tract,’ The Himalayan Journal, No. 60 (2004), available at . By the late-nineteenth century, so fascinated were the British with Tibet that they encouraged feisty Indian explorers to venture into Tibet from Sikkim. One such explorer was Sarat Chandra Das, who ran a school in Darjeeling whose covert role was to ‘train interpreters, geographers and explorers who may be useful if at any future time Tibet is opened to the British’.6Michael Ward, ‘Early Exploration of Kanchenjunga and South Tibet,’ The Alpine Journal (2001): p. 191, at [http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/Contents\_2001\_files/AJ%202001%20191- 196%20Ward%20Kangchenjunga.pdf](http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/Contents_2001_files/AJ%202001%20191-196%20Ward%20Kangchenjunga.pdf) (accessed 21 February 2015). Between 1877 and 1882, Das made two trips into southern Tibet through Sikkim and finally reached Lhasa in mid-1882, purportedly to study the Tibetan scriptures. He returned to Darjeeling in December that year and wrote about his journeys in a book titled A Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.7Ibid. Also see (accessed 20 February 2015). The book was published in 1902 from both New York and London and is probably the only detailed account in English of journeys in Tibet written by an Indian explorer. Das was probably among the last of the adventurous Indians to venture into Tibet in the nineteenth century.

After they became nation states, few cartographers or explorers of eminence from India and China ventured into the icy wasteland in the 1950s even after it emerged as a geopolitically combustible region. An exception though was a 400 km exploratory trek through Tibet in 1949 by Major Zorawar Chand Bakshi in the guise of a Tibetan monk. He was awarded the McGregor Memorial Medal for military reconnaissance, the first Indian to be so awarded.8‘Lieutenant General Zorawar Chand Bakshi PVSM, MVC, VrC, VSM, India’s most decorated General,’ from (accessed 24 October 2014). Bakshi would go on to become one of the Indian Army’s most accomplished and decorated commanders in the years ahead.

For want of a better argument, the Indian government accepted the British position as a fait accompli, sticking to it rather adamantly during almost a decade of negotiations with China till it entered the psyche of the Indian people as a matter of national pride. This more than anything else galvanized public opinion within India to contest any use of force by China to redraw these boundaries. China on the other hand relied on scanty historical data for its claim on Aksai Chin taken from two narratives ordered by the Qing dynasty in 1782 and 1820.9For a detailed study of the Aksai Chin region from a historical perspective, see Margaret W. Fisher, Leo E. Rose and Robert A. Huttenback, Himalayan Battleground: Sino-Indian Rivalry in Ladakh (New York: Praeger, 1963), p. 98–128. Except for travellers’ reports provided by Chinese caravans traversing from Turkestan and Sinkiang to Tibet, no cartographic exploration of the region was carried out by the Manchus of the Qing dynasty as their power waned in the region in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Despite the plethora of accurate maps drawn by the British, communist China followed a different approach to accepting colonial boundaries.

Mao’s China expected Nehru to enter negotiations considering India’s own bitter experiences with the British and understand some of its geopolitical aspirations and apprehensions in the region. When India did not respond, China reacted like any powerful authoritarian state with a clear understanding of the benefits of using military force to prove a point and teach a weaker adversary ‘a lesson’, as Mao put it. Was it as simple as that? Obviously not! That is why a detailed historical-geopolitical-military study is an absolute imperative in any serious analysis of the conflict.

CURRENT GEOGRAPHY

For most part, the India–China border of today runs across 4,250 km10Dr P.B. Sinha and Colonel A.A. Athale, S.N. Prasad (chief editor), History of the Conflict with China, 1962 (New Delhi: Ministry of Defence, 1992), p. 2, available at (accessed 10 November 2013). of rugged, inhospitable and sparsely inhabited mountainous terrain, most of it contested; hence it is not an internationally recognized boundary despite being sanctified by custom and tradition and is called the Line of Actual Control or LAC. Experts have divided the contested portions of the border into three regions, most of which are located at altitudes of 10,000 ft or more. The Eastern Sector runs for over 1,200 km along the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, with the main flashpoint being the control of Tawang, a monastery town with deep linkages with the heart of Tibet. Further east, Walong, a prominent trading outpost on a traditional trade route from Tibet and close to the trijunction of India, Burma and Tibet also emerged as a hot spot. China considers the integration of Tawang with the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) as the final closure of a monumental task that Mao embarked on in 1950 when he took control of Tibet.

Running westwards along the LAC for almost 500 km from Arunachal Pradesh is the Bhutan–Tibet border with the trijunction of the Bhutan, Tibet and Arunachal emerging as a contested area along the Thagla ridge and Namka Chu watershed. The western extremities of the Eastern Sector are marked by the Sikkim–Tibet border with topographically hostile terrain that offers little potential for integrating it with TAR due to the absence of sustainable communication links from Tibet. Except for the passes at Nathu La and Chola, and an access through a narrow strip of valley called the Chumbi Valley at the trijunction of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan, there is little potential from the Tibetan side of expanding any sustainable military operations into Indian territory through Sikkim as compared to the possibilities offered in Arunachal Pradesh. The closer ethnic affinity of the people residing in Sikkim with those of neighbouring Nepal meant that compared to Tibet, this region did not offer much strategic potential to China. In fact, the north Sikkim plateau overlooks the Tibetan Plateau from an altitude of over 15,000 feet and offers significant strategic value to the Indian military. Despite the difficulties of sustaining military operations in Sikkim, China would continue to confront India there in the years preceding the merger of Sikkim in the Union of India in 1975. The fierce firefights at Nathu La and an adjoining pass called Chola in 1967 bear testimony to the continued sparring in the area.

The Central Sector runs for around 650 km from Taklakot, close to the India-Nepal-Tibet trijunction, to a few kilometres south of the disputed area of Chumar11Chumar is an area that has seen a face-off between Indian and Chinese troops as recently as in June 2013. China protested against the construction of bunkers and installation of surveillance cameras, an act that greatly irked them. Chinese troops went on to smash those cameras till a flag meeting was held to reduce the tension. For a detailed report on the Chumar incident see, ‘China-India face off at Chumar post on June 17,’ The Times of India, 12 July 2013, available at (accessed 9 September 2013). and Demchok adjoining the Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh (these two posts, which form part of the combustible Western Sector of the border, have seen numerous face-offs in 2013–14). The Central Sector has remained a relatively peaceful border, once again due to the relative insignificance of the area for China and the calming presence of Nepal as a third country in the area. Over the years, Mt Kailas and the holy lake of Mansarovar, considered by all Hindus as the abode of the powerful deity Shiva and his consort Parvati, have emerged as a moneyspinner for the Tibetan Tourism Authority and acts as a spiritually de-escalating influence in the region. Hundreds of relatively prosperous and adventurous Indian pilgrims and trekkers subscribe to the rigorous twenty-one-day trek paying almost $2,000 for a round trip, which also takes them on a three-day parikrama or holy walk around Mt Kailas. Opening up this pilgrimage has also significantly contributed to reducing tension in the sector. Recent times have seen China allowing access to Indian pilgrims through Nathu La in Sikkim, which cuts down the travel time from over two weeks to barely three to four days. However, some potential flashpoints in this sector do remain in the region around the Barahoti Pass.

Running almost 1,600 km, the longest and most tension-prone sector from an Indian standpoint remains the Western Sector comprising almost the entire Ladakh–Tibet boundary including Aksai Chin, and the Shaksgam Valley of Kashmir bordering Xinjiang province. While the entire Aksai Chin region was occupied by China prior to the 1962 conflict, the Shaksgam Valley is the extreme north-eastern region of the disputed Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and borders the Xinjiang province of China, considered by many to be the soft underbelly of China with its ethnic unrest and emergence of Islamic extremism. This region was temporarily ceded to China by Pakistan in 1963, and marked the beginning of a close strategic relationship between the two.12The simplest description of the Sino-Indian border dispute with clear maps is available in Alastair Lamb, The China-India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Territories (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 5–12. However, much in tune with his pro-Pakistan stance, he has underplayed the ceding of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir territory to China by General Ayub Khan in 1963. For a detailed review of this event and other Sino-Pak collusive border transgressions in Kashmir, see Pradeep Katoch, ‘Himalayan Plunder,’ Centre for Land Warfare, Article 2288, 2 January 2013, available at (accessed 9 September 2013). Even though the current LAC in Ladakh largely runs along the last positions which Chinese troops had occupied prior to the 1962 war, there are many areas in the Western Sector that China still contests and covets, mainly due to their proximity or ability to threaten the lines of communication that run between Tibet and Xinjiang. Amongst these small enclaves is the Depsang Plain near the Indian airfield of Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO), the Chang Chenmo area leading to the Kongka La and Lanak La, and Demchok/Chumar at the south-eastern tip of the sector.

A recent development in the region, which adds to China’s apprehensions of expanding Indian influence in the area, is the current state of the military equation between India and Pakistan around the Siachen Glacier, which India dominates. Ladakh continues to simmer as India has still not reconciled to the loss of Aksai Chin, while China continues to feel threatened by India in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. Current Chinese insecurity is a little strange, and reveals a misplaced paranoia about Indian capability and power-projection ambitions despite knowing very well that it would be decades before India overcomes geography in the region and matches China’s ongoing capability build- up in Tibet!

EARLY POSTURING IN LADAKH AND TIBET

A good time to start tracking the history of Ladakh and Tibet from an Indian perspective would be from the period of the Sikh Empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the last Indian satrap to challenge and contest the advancing British Empire in India. After Ranjit Singh died in 1839, his successors, much like those of the Maratha strongman in the eighteenth century, Shivaji, failed to sustain the empire in the face of a coordinated assault by the British. General Zorawar Singh, one of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s ablest generals, was placed under the command of the Dogra governor of Jammu, Gulab Singh, and conducted numerous high-altitude campaigns between 1825 and 1841, bringing the entire region of Baltistan and Ladakh under the Sikh Empire. His unlimited appetite for adventure, conquest and territorial expansion made him look eastwards at Tibet.13For a detailed military review of General Zorawar’s exploits, see Major General G.D. Bakshi (retd), Footprints in the Snow (New Delhi: Lancer, 2008).

Tibet for most of the preceding few centuries had alternated between indirect rule and suzerainty by the Chinese Empires of the Tang and Qing dynasties, temporary conquest by Mongol invaders, and relative autonomy during short intervening periods. A conglomeration of tribes under the spiritual leadership of the Dalai Lama was thinly spread across the vast Tibetan Plateau. Though some like the Khampas of eastern Tibet possessed significant military prowess, Tibet was tempting for invaders from the north and west as a region of conquest. However, most invaders soon realized that Tibet did not have much to offer in terms of riches. When coupled with the inhospitable terrain and climate, it became difficult for outsiders to sustain any kind of formal rule. Amongst all the invaders into Tibet, the Chinese emperors of the Tang and Qing dynasty were most persistent in attempting to subjugate the various Tibetan tribes, but cultural differences between a Confucian China and the animistic and monastic Tibetans acted as a significant barrier.

Like numerous brilliant military campaigners before him, Napoleon being among them, Zorawar underestimated the importance of logistics and reserves as he traversed the vast Tibetan plateau in search of victory. Apart from underestimating the guile of the Tibetan guerrillas after having defeated the main Tibetan army in the spring of 1841 and captured significant territory in south-western Tibet, Zorawar Singh was unable to consolidate his military victory. Defeated by the weather and a Chinese–Tibetan force in December 1841, he was killed in battle along with approximately 5,000 Dogra and Sikh warriors.14 (accessed 7 July 2013). His grave lies under a heap of stones near Taklakot in western Tibet, very close to the India–Nepal–Tibet border outpost of Lipulekh in the Central Sector. The story does not end there. After defeating Zorawar Singh, the Chinese–Tibetan force laid siege to Leh in early 1842, only to be defeated at Chushul by Dogra reinforcements, which had been sent to protect Ladakh and avenge the death of Zorawar Singh. Here, at Chushul, was signed a treaty between the Dogras, Tibetans and Chinese that read:

On this auspicious occasion, the second day of the month Asuj in the year 1899 we – the officers of Lhasa, viz. firstly, Kalon Sukanwala, and secondly, Bakshi Sapju, commander of the forces of the Empire of China, on the one hand, and Dewan Hari Chand and Wazir Ratnu, on behalf of Raja Gulab Singh, on the other – agree together and swear before God that the friendship between Raja Gulab Singh and the Emperor of China and Lama Guru Sahib Lassawala will be kept and observed till eternity; for the traffic in shawl, pasham, and tea. We will observe our pledge to God, Gayatri, and Pasi. Wazir Mian Khusal Chu is witness.15Alfred P. Rubin, ‘The Sino-Indian Border Disputes,’ The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (January 1960): p. 96–125.

Clearly, there was tremendous interest in the region, both geopolitical and economic. Having overcome the last vestiges of Sikh resistance in 1848 after the Second Anglo-Sikh War,16Bipin Chandra, History of Modern India (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2009), p. 83. the British realized the difficulty of directly governing the areas north of the Punjab and cleverly handed over the governance of Jammu and Kashmir to a powerful Dogra clan headed by Gulab Singh,17Ibid. which had earlier owed allegiance to the Sikh Empire and formed a critical element of its military and governing ability. It is this ambitious and adventurous clan, which ruled over the princely state of what is now Jammu and Kashmir for almost a century. Realizing the potential of territorial expansion towards Baltistan in the north and towards Ladakh and Tibet in the north-east with some economic gains, their focus was primarily on controlling the wool trade between Tibet and Turkestan. However, as early as 1846 and before the final defeat of the Sikhs, the British signed the Lahore Treaty with the Sikh ruler, Maharaja Duleep Singh, which gave them virtual control over Ladakh as a protectorate of the East India Company.18Alastair Lamb, The China-India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Territories (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 60. For the full text of a letter from Lord Hardinge, the British viceroy, to the Chinese authorities in Tibet after signing the Lahore Declaration, see Appendix I of the same book, p. 177–79.

Thus, it was not the British, but the Dogras, who first commenced the initial closing-in with the Manchus of the Qing dynasty, the Tibetan lamas and the Russian Empire. What the Dogras did not do, however, was to mark and demarcate geographical boundaries in the region. Instead, they relied on the formidable Himalayas, the Karakorams and the Kunlun mountains to act as natural barriers and frontiers, which they assumed would be respected by all in the years to come. The wily British changed this by attempting to create boundaries that catered to the requirements of the Empire. Opportunistic and clever as they were, the British realized well in time that these areas offered immense potential to provide strategic depth to their Indian Empire against possible expansionist ambitions of both the Russian Empire and possible Chinese resurgence. They proceeded assiduously to build on the initial inroads made by the Dogras, dispatching numerous expeditions in various directions to map the area.

From Leh, they went east into Tibet, north towards the forbidding Karakoram ranges, and beyond to the Kunlun mountains. Towards the west, they explored the trading routes from Baltistan to Yarkand and Turkestan, areas which would later be known as the Sinkiang autonomous region of China. Of particular interest to the British in the western regions of this high altitude was to track the progress of the Russian Empire as it attempted to expand south-eastwards after the Tsar’s armies captured Tashkent and Samarkand in 1865.19Major General D.K. Palit (retd), War in the High Himalayas: The Indian Army in Crisis (New Delhi: Lancer, 1991), p. 23. Also see, Neville Maxwell, India’s China War (London: Cape, 1970), p. 28.

Between 1870 and 1875 a large British expedition led by Douglas Forsyth, the commissioner for Punjab and an expert on Central Asia, ventured beyond the Karakoram range towards the forbidding Kunlun range. He travelled to Yarkand and Kashgar in Turkestan to explore the possibilities of establishing good relations with Yakub Beg, the Muslim ruler who had driven the Chinese out of Turkestan. In this expedition were four Indian surveyors, Nain Singh, Kishen Singh, Kalian Singh and Abdul Salam.20Michael Ward, ‘The Pundits beyond the Pamir: The Forsythe Mission of 1870 and 1873,’ The Alpine Journal (2003): p. 203–04, available at [www.alpinejournal.org](http://www.alpinejournal.org) (accessed 3 October 2013). So deep were these British forays that almost a century later, the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai irritatingly remarked during border talks with his Indian counterpart Nehru:

British imperialism seeking a short-cut for invading the heart of Sinkiang, laid covetous eyes on the relatively flat Aksai Chin in the eighteen sixties and dispatched military intelligence agents to infiltrate into the area for unlawful surveys. In compliance with the will of British imperialism, these agents worked out an assessment of boundary lines for truncating Sinkiang.21Bertil Lintner, Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Volatile Frontier (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 10.

China was no match for the British when it came to meticulous recording of cartographic details of Tibet and Aksai Chin and knew that India possessed these records. They realized that the only way to try and negotiate with India was to push anti-colonial, current national security concerns and geopolitical arguments.

THE CROWN DOMINATES THE FRONTIERS

One of the finest academically researched books on the origins of the boundary crisis, both in Ladakh and the Eastern Sector, has been written by Alistair Lamb, better known in India for his pro-Pakistan narration of the India–Pakistan conflict of 1947–48. In a Chatham House essay written for the Royal Institute for International Affairs in 1964 titled ‘The China-India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Boundaries’ he highlights the difference between frontiers and boundaries as propounded by Sir Henry McMahon at a Royal Societies of Arts function in 1935:

A frontier is a wide tract of border land which, perhaps by virtue of its ruggedness or other difficulty, served as a buffer between two states. A boundary, he continued, was a clearly defined line, expressed either as a verbal description (delimited), or as a series of physical marks on the ground (demarcated).22Alastair Lamb, The China-India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Territories (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 14.

In another superbly researched book by a team of academics from the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, titled Himalayan Battleground: Sino-Indian Rivalry in Ladakh, the rigid Chinese claim over Aksai Chin has been rightly contested by the authors based on historical evidence over four centuries that points at the region being a classic frontier and buffer zone, which was used primarily as a transit corridor between Tibet, Yarkand and the Dogra province of Ladakh.23Margaret W. Fisher, Leo E. Rose and Robert A. Huttenback, Himalayan Battleground: Sino-Indian Rivalry in Ladakh (New York: Praeger, 1963), p. 98–100. They argue that the ambiguity of ownership made it a region coveted by both India and China.

As long as the regions of Ladakh including Aksai Chin and the areas north of Assam, later called NEFA (North-East Frontier Agency) by the British, were treated as frontiers, there were not many problems barring an invasion here and an occupation there. Claims of ownership by the Tibetans, Chinese, Dogras, Ahoms of Assam or the British were part and parcel of the Great Game. This is how the regions existed through much of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. However, the moment the British started attempting to draw boundaries based on the watershed principle, or along the orientation of a mountain chain like the Karakoram and Kunlun mountains in Ladakh, and along the Himalayas in the east, there arose problems galore when it came to ratifying them with all stakeholders. The reason for this was that there were just too many mountain ranges with varying orientations for comfort. Adding to the misery of surveyors was the presence of glaciers, riverine valleys and plains, few of which followed the orientation of the mountain ranges.

An early conservative approach was followed by Moorcroft after his travels in Ladakh when he suggested in 1821 that the Karakoram Pass was ideal as the north-western limits of the British Empire24Alastair Lamb, The China-India Border: The Origins of the Disputed Territories (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 61–62. and beyond that were frontiers (Aksai Chin) that could be claimed by China. The proposition considered the existence of traditional trading routes between Tibet and the provinces of Yarkand and Turkestan, both being areas that had alternated between freedom and dominance by imperial China of the Qing and Manchu dynasties, as well as the Mongols who asserted themselves in Tibet during the eighteenth century. He traced the boundary southwards from the Karakoram Pass somewhat along the LAC as it exists today. However, the more ambitious Johnson and Ardgah looked at the Kunlun range25Ibid., p. 107. as a better boundary between China and British India in terms of being closer to the creeping advance of the Russian Empire towards Kashgar and Yarkand. Such was the heady arrogance and strategic vision of the tough British explorers of the frontier regions.26The region of Aksai Chin then fell within the British Empire if one were to consider this frontier. Approved by Lord Curzon, the aggressive viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, this line joined the Karakoram Pass and the Kunlun ranges before running south and enveloped the entire Aksai Chin region to become the de facto limit of the British Empire.27Ibid.

The Ahoms of Burma had ruled Assam for much of the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries and also exercised nominal control over the areas to the north of the plains of Assam. These areas comprised the frontier and tribal areas immediately to the south of the eastern Himalayan ranges. Some of these like Tawang and Walong lay across high but traversable passes like Bum La and Hathung La along traditional trade routes from Tibet. The Buddhist monastery at Tawang had close spiritual affiliations with the Dalai Lama in Lhasa and was much visited by pilgrims and monks from Tibet. It was only after the Anglo-Burmese War of 1826 that the British took interest in this frontier, which comprised the Kameng, Lohit and Walong provinces after the Ahoms ceded control of the area to them. Worried about the proximity of the Yunan and Sichuan provinces of China to the region and the undue influence of Tibet, the astute British wanted to take control and seal their frontiers in the region, much like they were concurrently attempting in Ladakh.

Two connected events in the second half of the eighteenth century accelerated British interest in the region. The first was the conquest of Tashkent and Samarkand by the Russian Empire, while the second was the declining power of China’s Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty. The latter automatically translated into a declining Manchu influence on China’s peripheral areas of interest – Tibet and Turkestan – and the rise of local warlords like Yakub Beg in Turkestan and others in Tibet owing allegiance to the Dalai Lama. Worried that the advancing Russians would attempt to poach on Turkestan and Tibet, the British realized that it was time to flex their muscles and establish a presence in those regions. This, in short, was what the Great Game was all about.

Without going into too many details about the various expeditions launched by the British in the areas around Ladakh, be it towards the Kunlun ranges to the north-east in what was even then known as Aksai Chin or towards Kashgar and Turkestan, the clear aim was to quickly convert this frontier into a delineated and demarcated boundary between the British Empire and Tibet to the east, and China to the north and north-west. In the east, the British were more aggressive as they realized that the Chinese influence from the Sichuan province was quite marked not only in eastern Tibet, but also in frontier areas north of the Assam valley. The Francis Younghusband expedition of 1903–04 was an aggressive attempt by the British to advance on Lhasa through the tough tribal areas north of the princely frontier state of Sikkim, and secure trade and territorial concessions from both Tibet and China. The expedition was not only a military success but also paved the way for the creation of the McMahon Line, which attempted to draw clear boundaries between British India and Tibet based on watersheds and clearly demarcated mountain ridges of the Himalayan ranges.28Bertil Lintner, Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Volatile Frontier (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 12. The highlight of the mission was a clear statement of intent by the viceroy, Lord Curzon, and his unstinting support for the expedition as he saw it as a timely foray to check any Russian ambitions in Tibet.29Sir Francis Younghusband, India and Tibet (London: John Murray, 1910), p. 96–97. The book is a treasure trove of historical information on Sikkim, Nepal and Tibet of the early twentieth century. It is also a saga of courage as the expedition braved the vagaries of nature to enter Tibet through the Chumbi Valley.

When the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty were overthrown by China’s revolutionary movement led by Sun Yat-sen in 1911, Tibet virtually became an independent state with hardly any remnants of Chinese presence in Lhasa and other areas except for normal trading links across poorly demarcated frontiers. The thirteenth Dalai Lama assumed the exalted mantle of religious leadership and was the power centre till his death in 1933. This period is considered by Tibetans as a ‘golden period’ in their history when they were virtually regarded the world over as an independent nation. Precipitated by some amount of friction between British administrators and Tibetan monks, and increased religious interaction between the Lhasa and Tawang monasteries, it was in 1914 that the British initiated the Simla Conference with Tibet and China to push through their version of the Indo-Tibetan boundaries. While British India and Tibet ratified the agreement, the Chinese representative, Ivan Chen, merely initialled the agreement without ratifying it. This clearly indicated that the wily Chinese were ambiguously and dexterously playing the waiting game from a position of weakness. The main areas of contention as far as the Chinese were concerned revolved around ownership of Tawang in the east, and Aksai Chin in the west, which lay between the Karakoram and the Kunlun ranges.

The British claimed much of Aksai Chin from a position of strength based on exploratory propriety and cartographic initiative. The Chinese, on the other hand, claimed it as an area through which only Tibetans and Chinese passed through on the traditional trade route connecting the provinces of Kashgar and Turkestan with western Tibet. In the east, Tibet maintained that the areas around Tawang were both ethnically and religiously closely linked with Lhasa, and merited inclusion in Tibet. This claim suited China after it had annexed Tibet in 1950. Both these disputes were to be the main triggers of the India–China conflict of 1962.