Nehru's 97 Major Blunders

by Rajnikant Puranik

“India reiterated that her boundaries with China could not be a matter of negotiation, claiming that they stood defined ‘without the necessity of further or formal delimitation’. China replied that ‘this attitude…of refusing to negotiate and trying to impose a unilaterally claimed alignment on China is in actuality refusal to settle the boundary question’; and she warned that while India maintained that position and kept up her ‘unreasonable tangling’, China would ‘absolutely not retreat an inch’ from her own stand. That China was equably and equitably settling her boundaries with her neighbours tended to throw an adverse light on India’s position. Peking prodded at that sore point: ‘Since the Burmese and Nepalese Governments can settle their boundary questions with China in a friendly way through negotiations and since the Government of Pakistan has also agreed…to negotiate a boundary settlement, why is it that the Indian Government cannot negotiate and settle its boundary question…’”{Max/214}