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November 21 - November 22, 2023
There is little recorded history of how the two major Indo–Pacific civilizations interacted in political and diplomatic terms. This might be explained by the absence of direct contact across a shared boundary because, despite Chinese claims to suzerainty over Tibet since the thirteenth century (Yuan dynasty), Tibet was mostly left to its own devices.
China had a generally unbroken tradition of diplomacy because, unlike India, it was never directly governed by colonial powers and the Chinese Empire continued to have external relations. The leaderships of India and China were, thus, unevenly matched in terms of diplomatic experience when both became masters of their respective countries at the end of the 1940s.
other reasons, too, for India to contemplate early recognition of the new Communist regime in China. The first of these was India’s northern frontier and its relationship to the status of Tibet. President Chiang Kai-shek’s government had, after India’s independence, reiterated that Tibet was a part of China, that the Simla Agreement of 1914 was no longer valid, and that it did not acknowledge the McMahon Line as the boundary.
we believe that we should not rush to be recognized. We must first bring order to the country, strengthen our position and then we can talk to foreign imperialists.’ 20 It was a methodical approach. China gained a small advantage by not putting itself under any pressure of time.
Nehru had always felt that India should recognize Communist China as early as possible as this would give it some leverage in building strong relations with the country.
Had Sen done that, India might have realized that China regarded the act of official recognition as a distinct process from the subsequent act of formal establishment of diplomatic relations. India might then have adopted a very different strategy.
India unilaterally gave up some crucial negotiating cards. First, India severed ties with the Nationalist government in Taiwan. The Prime Minister directed the Foreign Secretary to ‘send for Doctor Lo (the Ambassador of Nationalist China in New Delhi). Tell him of our decision. Tell him also that it is with deep regret that we have to sever our official relations with him.’
India made efforts to reassure the Chinese side that it would not harm them by aligning with the Americans. This meant that India gave up any leverage that was to be gained by allowing the Chinese side to believe that it had the option of leaning to the side of the Americans in case China did not accommodate its interests in the process of diplomatic recognition.
Instead, Zhou Enlai’s oral assurance to Panikkar over a dinner at the end of September 1949 that Indian interests in Tibet would be protected was considered an adequate enough guarantee to secure India’s interests.
reminiscent of an older Chinese imperial tradition of managing relations with tributary states.
was decided that China should not display any anxiety or eagerness to discuss or resolve substantive issues, or else India and Britain might try to leverage diplomatic relations to extract Chinese concessions on issues like Hong Kong or Tibet.
‘for capitalist countries and their former colonies, one must go through the formalities of negotiations to see whether they accept the principle for establishing diplomatic relations. We must not only listen to what they say, but also see their specific actions. For example, if they do not vote for China in the UN but instead support the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek regime, then we should go slow in establishing diplomatic relations with them.’
If the act of jettisoning Chiang and the Nationalists was unsentimental and calculating, early recognition of the successor regime does not appear to have been motivated by anything more than sentiment and the expectations of goodwill. Had India’s position not been driven by emotion and sentiment, the course of the negotiation may have been different with more tangible results. The poverty of tactics was to have irreversible consequences for India.
The Chinese identified clear objectives before the start of the negotiations, publicly spelt them out and built their strategy accordingly. Their leadership maintained close and continuous consultation through the entire process (even when Mao was travelling abroad) and adjusted tactics as required. India neither had concrete objectives nor clear ‘asks’ from the Chinese side. Strategy was defined not in terms of identified outcomes, but in terms of the international calendar. Tactics were decided accordingly. There is no indication that there was serious political level consultation in the
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The liberation of Tibet was eventually entrusted to Deng Xiaoping who headed the south-western Bureau.
In October 1947, the Nationalist government in Nanking informed the Indian Embassy of its wish to modify such agreements as were entered into between Great Britain and Tibet, including the Simla Agreement, 1914, that defined India’s frontier with Tibet. In the same month, the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa had also addressed a letter to India’s Prime Minister seeking the return of ‘all our indisputable Tibetan territories gradually included into India’, which included parts of modern-day Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan.
‘The Government of India are of the opinion that the best hope of an amicable solution of the Tibet problem lies in firmly establishing friendship and understanding between India and China. This will enable us when the time comes, to safeguard our interests in Tibet and to discuss the status of Tibet, free from rancour and from past encumbrances.’
Even if India may not have had the financial means to give the sort of military assistance that might have made a difference, it could have maintained ambiguity on this point. Deception is a legitimate tactic in diplomacy and negotiation. Instead, the Government of India instructed its ambassador in Beijing to explicitly underscore to Zhou Enlai that China need not have apprehensions of danger to Chinese security from the side of Tibet
In this first phase of the negotiation on Tibet, Indian strategy was a defensive one. It did not, however, stop the Chinese invasion. In October 1950, just as Deng Xiaoping had planned at the beginning of the year, the PLA attacked Tibet and began the process of extinguishing Tibet’s independence and autonomy.
During the Sino-Tibetan negotiations, a constant Chinese concern was the possibility of flight by the Dalai Lama to India. The Chinese leadership, therefore, continued to keep India on its side. Despite the mutual bitterness and recrimination over the PLA’s invasion at the end of 1950, Mao Zedong himself was the chief guest at India’s first Republic Day celebration in January 1951.
Thus, by the end of 1951, the Chinese had achieved the second phase of their strategy, namely to secure a legal basis for the People’s Republic of China’s claim over Tibet, and ended the possibility of united Tibetan opposition to Chinese rule.
two factors: first, the need to look at Tibet in the larger context of relations with the People’s Republic of China, which was now firmly entrenched in Beijing; and the recognition that India did not have the capacity or capability to assist Tibet to militarily resist a Chinese takeover.
These two tactical cards available to India were surrendered in the hope that it could convince China about its good intentions and help preserve a measure of Tibetan independence as well as its own interests in Tibet.
India clutched at straws instead. It drew the inference from Clause 3 that Tibet would retain its autonomy, and from Clause 14 that Tibet would continue to have trade relations with neighbouring countries, without paying attention to the qualifying stipulation in both clauses that this would be under the overall direction and control of Beijing.
policy also dictated that Indian representatives should not unilaterally raise such issues with the Chinese side. Thus the possibility of getting some insight into the Chinese thinking on this matter or probing them on matters of India’s concerns was also ruled out.
reported to New Delhi that the Chinese had told the Tibetans that they would shortly take up with India the question of their relations with Tibet, including the Tibetan claims to areas like Ladakh and Tawang.
first, that China not raising doubts about the boundary with India meant that it had acquiesced in the alignment of the frontier; and second, that if India did not raise this issue, the Chinese might not raise it either.
Chinese silence on the issue of India’s northern frontier was tantamount to acceptance, or at least acquiescence, of its current alignment.
Silence is not acceptance
He hoped that India had no intention of claiming ‘special rights’ arising from these unequal treaties and would be prepared to negotiate a new relationship to safeguard legitimate interests of both parties.
First, by accepting the principle that the earlier treaties were unequal, India had acquiesced in undermining the legal basis for all its privileges in Tibet as well as the Simla Agreement of 1914. Second, by converting the Lhasa Mission into a Consulate General and giving a reciprocal facility to China in Bombay, it had changed the status of its relationship with the Tibetan government from a political relationship to a consular one. By inference, this also meant that India had accepted that Tibet was a part of the People’s Republic of China. And third, by agreeing to contact Tibetan
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On 31 July 1952, New Delhi explicitly forbade the Indian Embassy in Beijing to raise the frontier question at
India’s privileges became politically unviable and legally indefensible. India would go into the final negotiations in 1954 with a weak hand, having given up almost all the tactical advantages that it had held before 1950.
By August 1953, the Chinese were probably in a position to expel the Indian military escorts from Gyantse and Yadong since the PLA was already deployed in sizeable numbers in the Chumbi Valley.
The Chinese suggested that if India were to voluntarily withdraw its military escorts from Gyantse and Yadong, it would be viewed as a positive step by India towards settlement of the question of relations between India and China in Tibet. This was the last leverage of any consequence that India had in Tibet. On 29 September 1953, India agreed in principle, ‘as a gesture of goodwill and friendship’ 31 to the withdrawal of all military escorts in Tibet.
They were shown the original text of the agreement, as well as the map on which the McMahon Line was drawn as a thick red line. They learned that there was no mutually agreed accompanying description of the delimited boundary line in the 1914 Agreement, nor a delimitation protocol. The British had not undertaken delimitation and demarcation before they departed from India in 1947.
In one case, in late 1953, when Consul General S. Sinha wrote of the imminent danger to India as a result of ‘Chinese designs on the north-eastern frontier’, he was reprimanded by the Government of India for having fanciful ideas. Nehru recorded the following minute: ‘It appears that Mr Sinha does not appreciate our policy fully. He should be enlightened.’
These were carefully chosen words. In the course of their systematic research, they began to understand the complexity of the boundary issue as well as the Indian thinking. In October 1953, the Chinese central government’s representative in Lhasa, General Zhang Jingwu, opined that India ‘claimed the absence of territorial disputes just to force us into implicitly acknowledging and legitimizing their occupation. We must stay alert in this regard.’
The Chinese chief negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Hanfu, listened and took notes, while the Indian delegation, as Ambassador Raghavan subsequently wrote to Nehru, put ‘all our cards on the table’.
They stood firm on the withdrawal of the military escort; on the ending of special rights to India to have its own post and telegraph facilities and rest houses; on special jurisdiction for Indian trade agents in certain situations; and that Indians could have dealings with the Tibetans only through Chinese Foreign Affairs Bureaus in Gyantse and Yadong, and not directly.
Nehru wrote to Raghavan on 16 April 1954 to urge him to close the deal, saying, ‘If the Indo-Chinese Agreement on Tibet is signed and announced soon it will have salutary effect. If, however, this is postponed indefinitely, this will have contrary effect . . . This will create impression of failure which will not be good.’
Kaul conveniently side-stepped the fact that China, in any case, had annulled all earlier treaties, and that being the case, India was not obliged to comply with any of its provisions.
Dr Gopalachari, who was also a member of the Indian delegation, reportedly wrote a dissenting note cautioning the Government of India against this assumption that China had accepted the frontier as defined by India, 41 but his advice was ignored as it did not fit into the Government’s framework.
overall terms, their strategy resulted, in April 1954, in cancellation of all special privileges and rights that India enjoyed in Tibet, and securing, in a legally binding way, India’s consent to China’s occupation of Tibet by recognizing it as a ‘Region’ of China.
In April 1956, Mao Zedong had told an enlarged meeting of the Politburo that ‘in today’s world if we don’t want to be bullied, we have to have this thing (nuclear bomb)’.
Bhabha correctly assessed that such a test may not pose an immediate military threat to India, but the psychological fallout could be catastrophic for a nation that was still reeling from the aftermath of a border war with China in 1962. Bhabha wrote: ‘I am inclined to the view that the only way this can be done at present is for us to show that, should China explode such a device, we are in a position to do so within a few months thereafter.’
first Chinese nuclear test was conducted at Lop Nor on 16 October 1964.
Premier Zhou said China was ‘compelled’ to conduct in order to protect the Chinese people from the US nuclear threat. Zhou’s letter also contained a proposal to convene an international conference to ‘reach an agreement to the effect the nuclear powers and those countries which may soon become nuclear powers undertake not to use nuclear weapons
When India tested its nuclear device in May 1974, the Chinese statement, issued on 19 May 1974, was, therefore, factual. More intriguingly, there were no public references to India’s test when Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Agha Shahi, came visiting China from 6 to 10 June 1974.
In private, however, the Chinese were dismissive. Japan’s Prince Saiyonji reported Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping as telling him that India’s nuclear test was not likely to help raise India’s prestige in the world. 7 The Chinese were careful not to link India’s nuclear test to the Chinese tests. This was a calculated move. They did not wish to give any opportunity for India to be equated with them.
This also allowed for deniability about China’s involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear programme. When Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao would subsequently raise the supply by China to Pakistan of M-11 nuclear-capable missiles and ring magnets for centrifuges with Chinese leaders, there would be the same studied silence, the same denials.
