A Future China Strategy for India continues...

The first and second mistakes made by India in attempting to negotiate

the newly-arisen requirement of a Sino-Indian boundary in Tibet and

Aksai Chin, arose from the decision to make the McMahon Line the

boundary in the east.

The first mistake was not taking into account two other factors, in

addition to the obvious one that it needs both parties to be able to

decide or agree on a common boundary. The first was that Britain itself

had doubts about the legality of this boundary, which had been

negotiated by its Government of India. The reason was that it violated

two of its own recent treaties, the one with China in 1906 and the one

with Russia in 1907, at both of which it had agreed not to have

independent dealings regarding Tibet, except through the Chinese

government. One cannot have one’s cake and eat it too.

The second factor was that had Britain first taken the step of repudiating those

treaties, and then recognized the independence of Tibet when it

declared itself independent in 1912, the McMahon Line would have

had definite validity. It thereafter should not have invited China to the

talks, at least in so far as discussions on the line between Outer Tibet

and British India (the infamous ‘thick red line’) was concerned. As it

was, its validity was dubious. For discussions on the other line, the blue

line between Tibet and China, it could have acted merely as a facilitator

in what should have been bilateral talks between those two countries, or

even an arbiter, as it was later to do at the 1918 talks. But Nehru chose

to ignore this background, which his Foreign Ministry officials surely

would have informed him about. (He was simultaneously both Foreign

Minister and Prime Minister at the time, and generally worked out of

his Foreign Ministry office in South Block)

To be continued..