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

A noteworthy aspect of the McMahon Line is that, having secured an agreement with an independent Tibetan government regarding their mutual boundary, the British more or less forgot about this line. The First World War from 1914 onwards occupied the minds of both the British government in London, and the British Indian government.

The Indian Army was responsible for operations in today’s Iraq, then called Mesopotamia, and Assam and its new buffer zone was forgotten. Even the government of Assam was not aware of its existence. Tibetan administration in the Tawang tract continued. A Capt. Lightfoot of the Indian Army was sent in 1938 to see the conditions in the area, and he reported the presence of the Tibetan administrators and their collection
of taxes.

In 1943 the Tibetan government laid claim to Walong, at the eastern end of NEFA, the opposite end to Kameng. The matter was later settled by discussions between Hopkinson, the Indian Government’s Political Officer in Sikkim and the Tibetan Foreign Office in Lhasa.

Partly as a response, perhaps, British administration was then pushed forward into Kameng in 1944, to the Dirang valley, expelling the Tibetans from this southern part of the area, while the Tibetan administration continued in the northern portion, based on Tawang. The Tibetans protested. The Tibetan Government remained very concerned about the Indo-Tibetan border, even though their priority area was the Sino-Tibetan border.

To be continued....