A Future China Strategy for India

The second mistake made while choosing to make the McMahon

Line the unilaterally-decided international Indo-Tibet boundary was that India did not take the necessary steps to give it legal validity, which

it could have, since the opportunity existed. India could easily have

declared its recognition of Tibet’s independence at any time in the

period from 15 August 1947, when India became independent, to

March 1950, when the PLA first entered eastern Kham.

It was possible to do so even afterwards, between then and October 1950, but that

required a harder mindset that was not hell-bent upon appeasing China

for the sake of Asian solidarity or Nehru’s own personal image in the

international arena. Had India recognized Tibet’s independence then,

the McMahon Line would automatically have become legally valid,

even without China’s agreeing to it, and questions of whether their

representative Chen I-fan had or did not have the authority to sign

would have become redundant.

India was not a totally naiive ‘babe in the woods’ in the field of geo-

politics and international relations during this period. We have already

seen how it had in 1949-50 actively considered the question of military

intervention in Tibet, and of supplying arms to the Tibetans, as per

their request. It was dealing directly with the Tibetan government as an

independent country.

It had also sent a young officer in 1949 to recce the routes from India into Tibet in case Indian military intervention

was decided on. Nehru was annoyed with the Tibetan government for

not accepting India’s inheritance of British India’s treaty rights in Tibet,

but had India declared its recognition of Tibet’s independence, in all

probability Tibet would have accepted this assertion. The McMahon

Line would also have automatically have acquired legal validity. And the

Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950-51 would also automatically have

become illegal. But this solution would have not made Nehru into a

‘world statesman’ as a ‘good friend of China’

To be continued...