TeaThe lake of peacock spots, sparkling with light shining from the five great peaks of Kangchenjunga, was mesmerized by the blue ice sheets of Tso Dom-dongma. Then, a gray shroud began to form. “Look at the sky,” warned the pilgrim’s guide. “They will soon fall into the heavy snow from which no human means can enable us to escape.” “Why go ahead,” he protested? “Death awaits us in this deserted place. One more hour, and we’ll be gone.”
Less than a month later, in December 1878, the great scholar, adventurer and royal spy Sarat Chandra Das crossed the Western Flying Medicine Monastery, Nab Mang-din, through the forbidden border of Tibet.
Bengali scholar dressed in saffron incredible journey— one of the greatest feats in the history of espionage — this week will lay the foundation for the war fought by China and India sixty years ago. The expedition would begin a bloody struggle between the two great empires, the Qing and the British, to draw the borders through the inner Himalayas.
Across the Line of Actual Control, the armies of the People’s Republic of China and independent India are a succession of conflicts created by greed, geopolitics and imperial map-making.
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the mountains before the map
A 16th-century fantasy novel states, “A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has come out of their mouth.” travel westDescribing the visit of the monk Xuanzang to India, to gather the great Buddhists FormulaQianlong, the fifth emperor of the Qing dynasty, later ordered a special edition commissioned to depict the strange world the novel told. The map shows that Hindustan is located somewhere to the south of the Kuen Lun range. Like words, maps take on a life of their own.
There was a line somewhere in the Himalayas — but no one knew where it went.
East India Company officials, pushed by Governor-General Warren Hastings, began to explore trade with Tibet in the 18th century. England was seeing an increase in demand for goods from China, historian Vibha Arora showed, but the state’s restrictive trade practices made it difficult to accomplish. Tibet seemed a possible alternative route. Merchants and monks as well as bandits had long benefited from the large chain of trade linking the plains with Lhasa. East India Company wanted
Although he was not allowed to enter Lhasa, the young military officer George Bogle succeeded establish diplomatic relations Through a mission in 1774. In 1783, another official of the East India Company came, the historian Luciano Petek Records“Gift from Bada Saheb”: “Fine earrings of coral, a clepsydra working with particles of gems” [a mechanical watch]glasses, two pieces of special Russian cloth [and] Silver cups filled with nutmeg and cloves.”
However, little was done to develop these early diplomatic contacts, and imperial Britain had little influence on the lives of the Himalayan people – the Mishmi, Mishing, Pasi, Abor – with loose ties with the rulers of Gangtok and Lhasa. . over the course of fourteen centuries, Written by Tashi TseringLhasa in turn had a complex relationship with the imperial courts in Beijing and Central Asia, ranging from independence to vassal.
From the chronicle kept by the slaves, it is clear that the Chinese head-constable in Shigatse had little real authority. As the local economy was falling apart, officials tried to blur the distinction between silver and bad coinage. Feudal power was ruthlessly exercised: local criminals, taking their eyes off them, chained the streets, begging for food.
In late 1881, the slaves returned to Tibet with royal official Coleman Macaulay. uncovering his role as a spy would have dire consequences, Lawrence Waddell Recorded in 1905. Tibetans who had previously helped Das were sentenced to life imprisonment. His servants, he wrote, were “barbarously mutilated, their arms and legs cut off, and their eyes blown out.”
For this small price, Britain learned what it needed to know: the power of the Qing, and that of his allies in Tibet, was an illusion.
Read also: If India loses hold on Kailash range, PLA will make sure we never get it back
road to war
“There is a huge influx of robbers, squabbles and squabbles,” warned Tibetan religious calendar For the Year of the Wood-Dragon, 1904. The Jokhang Temple in Lhasa saw serious omen, like drops of water falling from the head of a brass dragon, even though it had not rained. An oracle predicted war. Led by the great adventurer Francis Younghusband, Imperial British troops captured the city later that year. Tibetan soldiers armed with magic amulets were killed to avoid bullets.
Following a treaty with the Dalai Lama, Britain won the right to maintain a military presence in Lhasa-controlled territory, as well as a network of rest houses, trading posts and a telegraph. The cannon leveled the fortifications that protected them from free trade.
For the royal administrators in Kolkata (then Calcutta), however, the prize was not worth winning. Tibet’s primitive economy did not justify the costs required to control it. Furthermore, the fear of a geopolitical threat from Russia, after the Tsar’s armies were crushed by Japan, seemed ridiculous. In 1906, Imperial Britain signed a treaty recognizing Beijing’s suzerainty over Tibet.
From the summer of 1910, Chinese power began to reestablish itself. Following threats of rebellion in the Khan region of Tibet, the Qing ordered his troops to capture Lhasa. Soldiers of the Qing army captured the city of Rima, and ordered the villagers to build a broad new road across the plains of Assam—”wide enough for two horsemen,” historians Berenice Guyot – Ricard Notes, Soldiers were seen in the forests of Kongpo, north of the Siang River.
In early 1911, colonial officer Noel Williamson and tea garden doctor John Gregorson were sent to investigate these incursions. They found Chinese flags inside what is now Walong in Arunachal Pradesh, and were determined to advance into the Siang Valley. The Assam authorities demanded retribution, and a succession of punitive campaigns followed. The Qing dynasty itself collapsed in 1911, although it put an end to its ambitions.
However, the big question remained unresolved: where did India end in the Himalayas and where did China begin?
Read also: China has withdrawn the LAC clock in 1959. India is not in a position to take back Aksai Chin
lines in the dark
Even when India became independent in 1947, there was no clear answer to this. first official map Only a wash of color issued by the country shows where Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh are today, with the words “border undefined”. The map mentions that formerly a large part of the border with Tibet was not demarcated. Even though the map claimed sovereignty over areas such as Walong, there were neither colonial administrators nor Tibetan authorities for that matter.
After the conflict in 1911, Lhasa, Beijing and New Delhi negotiated the Simla Agreement, which aimed to break the boundaries between Tibet and New Delhi. Although China dropped out of the discussion, the Dalai Lama agreed to significant concessions – seeing Britain as the guarantor of Tibet’s independence.
In the late summer of 1914, colonial officer Henry McMahon drew a line through the darkness of the inner Himalayas – much of which was unknown to contemporary cartography – running some 1,400 kilometers from Burma to Bhutan. The new frontier was a spec, with neither side exercising actual control. Furthermore, it was simply forgotten after the outbreak of World War II: China was, after all, a war-time ally of Britain and the United States against Japan.
In the late 1950s, however, the PLA entered Lhasa and India’s world changed. The map, issued in 1950, was withdrawn four years later, and replaced with one that claims the status of modern India.
Even before the invasion of Tibet, there were signs that Beijing was not satisfied with the borders as India perceives them. Within weeks of Prime Minister Chou En-lai’s 1954 visit to India – where he did not suggest China dispute India’s understanding of the border – Beijing announced the presence of the Indian Army at the Barahoti Pass in Uttar Pradesh. opposed. From 1955, there were a succession of military incursions, In each case, China insisted that the PLA be on its own territory.
Then, in 1958, Beijing officials China pictorial mapClaimed the whole of the North-East Frontier Agency of India, with the exception of Tirap, as well as parts of Ladakh, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
Chou En-lai responded by reiterating Indian protests that the maps were based on the old Kuomintang cartography – but added that China had not surveyed its borders, nor consulted with other countries on the issue.
Prime Minister Nehru outrightly rejected the Chinese proposals for a joint boundary survey. On 14 December 1958 he wrote, “There can be no question of these large parts of India being anything other than India. I do not know what kind of surveys can affect these well-known and definite boundaries”.
Even today, both countries make the same argument – backing it up with face-to-face armies on the roof of the world.
The author is ThePrint’s National Security Editor. He tweeted @praveenswami. Thoughts are personal.
(edited by Prashant)