The Sino-Indian Boundary Issue continued...

The Karakoram Range: The Karakoram Pass on the Karakoram Range, and the watershed separating the Indus River and the Tarim Basin form a mutually-agreed boundary between Chinese Sinkiang and the Kashmir state, agreed to by the Chinese in 1892. The disputed area of the border begins to the east of the Karakoram range. Since this part of the Sino-Indian boundary is not under dispute, it does not form part of the ‘Line of Actual Control’ (LAC) between India and China.

10. The Sikkim-Tibet Border: The Sikkim-Tibet border was mutually-agreed upon and delimited by the 1890 convention between British India and China, signed at Kolkata on 17th March

1890, which recognized Sikkim as a British protectorate. However, as we have seen, the Tibetan authorities had never formally accepted this. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the agreement was with a Chinese government, the PRC only acknowledged in 2003 that Sikkim was part of India. The over-whelming majority of Sikkim’s residents, who are Nepali-speaking, had opted for merger with the Indian Union in 1975.

There is therefore technically no dispute between India and China over where the border lies, and thus no LAC. The dispute is that China does not yet formally accept that Sikkim is part of India, even though it has tacitly accepted it, with the agreement reached in June 2003 at Beijing during Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit. Incidentally,

the 1890 Convention had a set of

Regulations appended to them in 1893, signed at Darjeeling on 5th December 1893, by which trade, communications and pasturage were to be regulated thereafter, and by which a trade-mart and a Customs Station were to be established at Yatung, in the Chumbi valley of Tibet. The agreement on resumption of limited trade via Nathula was thus merely the revival of one that has existed from 110 years ago, and

no diplomatic ‘breakthrough’.

To be continued...