A Future China Strategy for India Continues.....

A HYPOTHETICAL BOLD NEGOTIATING POSITION FOR SETTLING

THE SINO-INDIAN BOUNDARY

Purely hypothetically, if India were to now make fresh offers of

negotiation, based not on the history of the unresolved dispute from the

1950’s to the present, but on a fresh approach involving mainly

geography rather than history, and a willingness to negotiate, the Sino-

Indian boundary dispute is not unsolvable. For that matter, even the

former Indian stand on China’s occupation of Tibet is not immutable,

in spite of the fact that many Indian dignitaries have repeated at every

official visit to China that Tibet is part of China. Of course, it would

not be in the least palatable to China were India to state otherwise now.

But the fact of the matter is that the 1954 Panchsheel treaty formally

lapsed after the stipulated eight years in 1962.

Again purely hypothetically, if India were not to accept China’s

sovereignty over Tibet, and thereby make China’s occupation of Tibet

‘illegal’, what harmful repercussions could there be? China’s bringing-up

of India’s occupation of the Kashmir Valley? There is no doubt that it is

presently being held by force. But unlike China’s occupation of Tibet

there has been no large-scale destruction of religious buildings or

institutions, no forced recriminations, no large-scale resettlement of

non-Kashmiris. China’s record of Han resettlement in Tibet, Sinkiang,

Inner Mongolia and Manchuria has no parallel in India. Even those

parts of today’s India which became Indian by virtue of their being a

part of British India, such as Assam, Nagaland, Manipur or Mizoram,

have not experienced any traumas comparable to those dealt by China

to Tibet, nor have these regions had to contend with official

resettlement of ‘Indian’ settlers. The case in the disputed Arunachal

Pradesh is the same. In fact, the opposite is true; Indian citizens are not

allowed to settle in these states even of their own free will, or even that

of the local residents. The demography and local culture in these ‘non mainstream’ areas of India are totally protected both in law and in actual practice.

To be continued...