The Snow Lion and the British Lion continues.....

Another flare-up in the fighting between the Tibetans and the Chinese took place in 1931, this time starting from a dispute between the two monasteries of Derge and Beri in Kham.

Here the Chinese warlord of Sichuan, Liu Wen-hui supported Beri, while the bulk of the Tibetans supported Derge. In Amdo, the Muslim warlord of Xining, Ma Pu-fang began to terrorize the monasteries of the region. A Tibetan force was sent from Kham, but was defeated.

LINE OF CONTENTION

Much later, for modern independent India, it was the red line marking the outer boundary of Outer Tibet with India that mattered most.

McMahon’s fat red line, the desired boundary of British India with Tibet, extended eastwards from Bhutan’s eastern border at the edge of the Tibetan plateau to the proposed border tri-junction between Tibet, British India and Burma (Myanmar). In effect, it provided a buffer zone of thinly-inhabited and densely forest-covered mountainous territory between Assam and its tea-gardens, and the edge of the Tibetan plateau well to its north.

This buffer zone is now what is most of India’s state of Arunachal Pradesh, initially known as NEFA , which is disputed by China, which has taken the position that it should be part of Tibet, and therefore part of China.

There was only one Tibetan-administered part of this vast area, and that lay on its extreme western edge, the Kameng region adjacent to the Bhutan border, inhabited by the Buddhist Monpas. Its cultural heart was the large and famous monastery at Tawang, and this distinct Buddhist-inhabited segment has come to be known as the ‘Tawang tract’.

The Tibetan delegation to the Shimla talks of 1913-14 had agreed to cede the Tawang tract to British India, in exchange for an understanding that the British would help enforce the red McMahon line defining their boundary with China.

To be continued....