Hissing Dragon-Squirming Tiger:

Comparisons, Negotiations

and Attitudes continues...

However, the Government of India seemed to have got the Chinese to believing that they were indeed serious, and so, working towards the delineation of the LAC, maps were exchanged in 2002 between the two

countries, once for the ‘central sector’ (the Indo-Tibet border in Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh), and once for the ‘western sector’ (J&K).

The border shown on Indian maps as the Sino-Indian boundary

in the western sector (the Johnson-Ardagh Line) has long been considered preposterous and outrageous by China, which is part of the

dispute proper. It is more likely that, as per old Asian concepts of ‘frontier regions’ rather than European ‘boundary lines’, Aksai Chin itself was a largely uninhabited ‘frontier region’ lying between Sinkiang

and western Tibet.

Certainly it has not been considered part of Tibet by the Tibetans themselves, and the name ‘Aksai Chin’ itself is in Turki,

meaning ‘whitish plain’, though the area may have merely been a fringe

area for the Uighurs of eastern Turkestan. Even though discussion on

the issue requires an agreed LAC as being central to the discussion, the

problem of defining the LAC in the eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh)

appears to have become a road-block by itself, since any defining of the

LAC requires some discussion of the main issue itself, viz., the legal

status of Arunachal Pradesh. The maps for the eastern sector have thus

not been exchanged as yet.

To be continued.......