The clear borders of demarcation with China and Pakistan are yet to be ascertained in the light of heightened security challenges in the northern frontier. Maybe, this has kept the scholars from marking the bordering perimeter.
And, the fact of the matter undeniably lies in its complex history which has never ceased to exist in motley collections, and continues to haunt India for who knows how many decades to come.
Raking through the worn-out pages of history, India Today’s OSINT team pulls out via maps and facts the truth behind China’s claim over the disputed land of Aksai Chin.
As had RK Nehru, then Secretary General to the External Affairs Ministry, stated in the Rajya Sabha soon after his talks with the Chinese officials in 1961, that talking to them did not mean that he was offering anything to them or that he was showing any weakness.
In his own words, “We should always look upon this not as a present evil but as a continuing evil, a continuous conflict which might govern generations, because as far as I can see – I want to be quite frank to the House – whatever the results of this immediate issue might be, there are basic issues which will always create tension – by always I mean in the foreseeable future – between India and China, and we have to prepare for it, prepare a great deal for meeting that situation, meanwhile hold that situation and hold it the way we can.”
Prior to opening up the Aksai Chin chapter, it would be wise to proceed with the old ‘adage’ that it was Tibet with which we used to share our original boundaries, and not China to be precise.
And it was only after its annexation by China in 1951, that the whole situation became topsy-turvy. However, one likes to turn only those specific pages of the past which suit their very own theories.
THE THREE ‘FATEFUL’ LINES
The British began the Great Trigonometric Survey of India in 1855, which followed three lines defining the boundaries of Ladakh a few decades after.
The surveyor putting out the first line was WH Johnson, who was encouraged by Maharaja Gulab Singh of Jammu and Kashmir to show the north-eastern border well beyond the Karakoram pass.
As the Maharaja’s troops were stationed at one of his forts at Shahidulla in 1863, the region was also included within India’s border as a result. As soon as the troops vacated the area in 1866, China gained full control of Shahidulla.
As the Russians were trying to extend their grip up till the Tibetan plateau, another line was thought of by the British in 1897 to deter Russia’s reach, popularly called the Johnson-Ardagh line, which was marked along the crest of the Kunlun mountains.
Meanwhile, in 1899, the British consul general in Kashgar (part of Sinkiang), George Macartney proposed another boundary which is known as the Macartney-MacDonald line.
This boundary was based along the Karakoram mountains to prevent Russian advancements towards Tibet, which was one of the nightmares of the British during that era.
Quoting Bertil Lintner from his book ‘China’s India War’, “The Chinese never recognised the Ardagh-Johnson Line, and in 1892, one of their patrols erected some border markers at the Karakoram Pass, where there was ancient caravan route between Xinjiang and Ladakh. Since then, the Chinese have continued to claim that the greater part of Ladakh’s Aksai Chin region should be inside the territory claimed by them.”
“The British did not pay much attention to the Chinese moves in this remote and inhospitable area, and, in order to create yet another buffer zone between the expanding Russian empire and Tibet, a new boundary was drawn in 1893. It became known as the Macartney-MacDonald Line and placed most of Aksai Chin on the Chinese side of the territory.”
By the end of the first world war, the British government had accepted the Johnson-Ardagh line as its official boundary, as per Indian accounts.
At least until 1943, the British had marked the borders near the western sector with a dotted line as their regular talks with Tibet to delimit the boundary all went in vain between the time period of 1921 to 1927.
When China updated its status to People’s Republic of China in 1949, it could have chosen the Macartney-MacDonald line (which lent it more than half of its present claims in Aksai Chin) as was initially being presumed by experts around the globe, but it didn’t acknowledge any of the lines.
This ambiguity further led to the boundary in the Aksai Chin region to be described as ‘undemarcated’, while India maintained the Johnson-Ardagh line as its official boundary since independence.
THE AKSAI CHIN CONUNDRUM
As they say, national maps are purely biased. And this remains conspicuous during the Manchu and Qing dynasty regimes in China. Rewinding the past even more, we get to see the map of Bharatvarsha which comprised the Aksai Chin area.
Since history is a complex subject and its implications are manifold, it would be better to consider the modern period as our primary source for this ‘tussle-filled’ region.
From 1917 to 1933, the ‘Postal Atlas of China’ showed international boundaries almost identical to the Johnson-Ardagh line in all of its publications, with Aksai Chin within British territory.
In 1943, the Chinese intention to grab more land became increasingly ostensible as the Bureau of Survey of the Chinese Ministry of National Defence drew up a map showing west Aksai Chin under the auspices of China.
Following Tibet’s annexation in 1951, China built a gravel route called Sinkiang-Tibet motor road, about 180 km of which passes through Aksai Chin.
In this decade from around 1940-1950, the Chinese discovered this region, surveyed it and constructed a road, all without India’s heed as the area was largely unfrequented.
Several rounds of talks happened between the two nations shortly after the incident gained limelight. ‘The Report of the officials’ was published in 1961, which was never followed up.
China released it the next year in April and taunted the Indian documentation as clearly absurd, however the meticulous nature of the Indian report which was a compilation of all the geographical and historical data garnered praise by many.
On 4 December 1961, then Indian Prime Minister Nehru received a note from Peking (Beijing) suggesting discussions regarding the terms of a new treaty in an attempt to rebuff the originally decided 1954 Panchsheel Agreement, to which India replied blatantly that it will strictly adhere to the Panchsheel while also calling out China’s flagrant violations of the agreement which added fuel to the fire (which China had anyway wished for).
Following Zhou Enlai’s failed economic policy “The Great Leap Forward”, the Chinese populace was outraged. As most of the dictators do, the premier leveraged nationalistic sentiments during the Indo-China war and shifted the entire focus from its ineffective policies to one foreign enemy, that is India.
After the Chinese reached the outskirts of Ladakh during the initial war phase, a twenty kilometre belt was set out from which India had to move beyond, which was in accordance with China’s three-point peace plan.
Towards the western sector, major Indian posts like Daulat Beg Oldi, Chushul, Demchok, Lipki Pass had to be abandoned, while Barahoti (in the middle sector) fell inside the line of control claimed by China.
In December 1962, the Colombo Conference was held which comprised non-aligned countries like Burma, Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Ceylon and the U.A.R. to find some compromise proposals for Delhi and Peking.
The non-aligned group came up with a joint statement and suggested, “Since the conflict occurred in both the Eastern and Western Sectors, the same principle of withdrawal should apply to all sectors. In no case should one side be called upon to withdraw, and the other side allowed to advance. If there should be disengagement, this should be done all along the entire Sino-Indian Boundary and not just in one of the sectors,” to which India agreed but China denied.
Though, none of the countries resumed hostilities even after the negotiations failed.
The outer boundaries of China have never been accurate in any of its maps for nearly a century. Whenever the border disputes surged, the same bias was depicted in the yearly Chinese Postal Atlas.