1962: The War That Wasn't

by Shiv Kunal Verma

With the collapse of Chinese authority over Tibet in 1912, the scenario was to undergo a major change. At the time, the thirteenth Dalai Lama was in exile in India and he immediately began to make preparations to return to Lhasa. The last of the Chinese still holding out were granted free passage and allowed to return home via Calcutta. After the Dalai Lama’s return to the Tibetan capital via Yatung in January 1913, he issued what the Tibetans regarded as an unambiguous declaration of independence. To further underline the Dalai Lama’s determination to fully separate from China, the Tibetans signed a treaty with Russian-dominated Mongolia that recognized each other’s independence. The Tibet-Mongol Treaty was one of the contemporary factors that indicated that the changing equation between the Tibetans and the Chinese required new international agreements. This resulted in the Simla Convention of 1914. However, at that stage, in keeping with past British policy, it was felt that for the convention to have any meaning, China had to be a party to it. There were primarily two objectives of the convention: the first was to settle the artificial concept of an ‘Inner’ and ‘Outer’ Tibet. The second, which did not involve China directly, would be the settlement boundary between British India and Tibet.