A manual of Indian blunders in India-China relations

My book The End of an Era India Exits Tibet - Part IV has been reviewed by Vijay Kranti in The Organizer.  

The review is entitled: A manual of Indian blunders in India-China relations

This monumental four-volume analytical document deserves to be adopted as a compulsory text book in the training programmes for every MEA entrant and Member Parliament on “How not to conduct External Affairs of India.” This review deals with the fourth volume, The End of an Era—India Exits Tibet: India-Tibet Relations 1947-1962

Here is the link...

A big handicap in the business of book publishing on current affairs in India, especially on major issues related to India’s international relations, is the shortage of books by genuine and passionate researchers. A large section of books available in the market is by former bureaucrats and political leaders who invest most of the space and efforts in justifying and highlighting their personal role and looking good. There are quite a few other serious books which are mere reproduction of PhD or other research works of individual scholars for whom it was a formal exercise in completing a project or an assignment. Very few among such works are the result of a passionate hunger for digging out facts, developments and trends related to events which made history and affected India’s fate in a big way.
Claude Arpi’s set of four books under the series “India Tibet Relations (1947-1962)” belongs to the last category. It is a monumental work as an honest and detailed ‘post mortem’ of developments during 1947-1962 era within the India-China-Tibet triangle. It was that period of history which first marked the Chinese attack on the Eastern part of Tibet, followed by its formal occupation and then India’s final withdrawal and snapping of centuries old relations with Tibet to leave the ground open for China to fortify and perpetuate its colonial rule over Tibet. Interestingly, all this colonial drama happened under the watch of a ‘free’ world which had just emerged out of the Second World War and had started taking pride in witnessing the beginning of the end of colonialism from the face of earth. The focus of our discussion is the fourth and concluding volume of this series which is titled “The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet”.
This book is monumental in more than one ways. As Maj. General BK Sharma the Director of United Service Institution of India (USI), puts it in his foreword....
This historic research project will not only dispel many myths but also unravel the truth about the events that were to shape India-Tibet-China relations during those crucial years.” It is under USI’s ‘Field Marshal KM Cariappa Chair of Excellence’ that Claude Arpi conducted this research. These books offers a deep insight and an honest and dispassionate analysis of the way Indian government ‘mishandled’, the invasion of Tibet by China in October 1950; subsequent complete assimilation of Tibet into PRC; and then issues created by China on Indian borders as a consequence of this sudden overnight metamorphism of many millennias old ‘India-Tibet border’ into an ‘India-China border’. It explores and exposes the unending chain of blunders committed by the then Prime Minister of India Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and his army of diplomats and policy makers in the MEA. It also analyses how these blunders pushed India into miserable and hopeless situation where India finds itself today vis-à-vis China seven decades later.
It explores and exposes the unending chain of blunders committed by the then Prime Minister of India Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and his army of diplomats and policy makers in the MEA. It also analyses how these blunders pushed India into miserable and hopeless situation where India finds itself today vis-à-vis China seven decades later
The forth volume (1958-1962) deals with developments leading to India-China war in 1962. It presents the stark contrast between the approaches of Mao’s China and Nehru’s India in dealing with their respective national interests and ambitions. While China was feverishly busy in establishing a motorable network of roads in Tibet, the ‘Hindi Cheeni Bhai Bhai’ fever of PM Nehru had taken the dimensions of such a cerebral fever that the PM office and the MEA mandarins in New Delhi practically assigned all such warning reports to files without even reading them – leave aside taking any action or counter measures to correct the situation.
Claude Arpi presents many glaring examples of how Nehru mishandled his relations with China. One example is of Aksai Chin of India’s Ladakh which China quietly occupied by just walking in. In early 1958 Nehru’s Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt submitted to him report on China’s 1200 km long road connecting Gartok in Western Tibet with Yeh (Yeheng) in Sinkiang (now ‘Xinjiang’) through India’s Aksai Chin area five months after its ‘official’ opening by China. With this report he advised the PM to send a reconnoitering party ‘in the coming spring’ to verify if the road had ‘really been built’ on Indian territory. In response, an indifferent Nehru rejected even the idea of an air reconnaissance saying: “I do not think it is desirable… In fact I do not see what good this can do us….”. And finally Nehru suggested to his Foreign Secretary: “our maps should be sent to the Chinese….. But I think it would be better to do this rather informally.” It simply shows that Nehru did not have any desire, or guts, to confront China even in a blatant case of usurping Indian territory. The book reveals how New Delhi happily went on exporting tons of rice through Nathu La to feed the Chinese road workers who were busy connecting their army posts on border with Lhasa through a motorable road.
This set of book fortifies popular perception that a sizeable section among Indian bureaucrats, especially those serving MEA, are brilliant in parts but most of them use their brilliance more for ensuring and fortifying their personal comforts and interests rather than for serving the national interests. Prior to signing of the so called “Panchsheel Agreement” with China in 1954, Indian Ambassador KM Panikaar to Peking (know ‘Beijing’) had advised Nehru not to speak of a border which is settled with China because “if it were not settled China would have brought the issue to the negotiating table”. He failed to understand the meaning behind Chinese PM Zhou Enlai’s words, “we are prepared to settle all such problems as are ripe for settlement,” which actually meant that China would prepare for or wait for situations to become favourable enough to raise claims on any Indian areas.
Author Claude Arpi has put in hard work in studying official documents to expose such anomalies in the performance of India’s diplomatic force. He refers to PM Zhou’s letter of January 23, 1959 to Indian PM Nehru in which he had clearly explained why China did not discuss border issues in the 1954 agreement. The letter said, “…The border question was not raised in 1954 when negotiations were being held between the Chinese and Indian sides for the ‘Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet Region of China and India’ (popularised by Pt. Nehru as the ‘Panchsheel Agreement). This was because conditions were not yet ripe for its settlement.”
The book is a monumental work as it is loaded with logical analysis of Indian government’s blatant failure in reading the Chinese mind and its inability to take timely steps to protect Indian interests. One only wonders why India’s foreign policy leaders and their army of MEA bureaucrats could not learn basic lessons even from written documents like Zhou’s above letter which gives a transparent peep into the real Chinese mind and their intentions about borders with India. Had India’s China policy makers ever read Zhou’s letter seriously they would have saved India from the deep pitfall they have landed Indian on the border issues vis-à-vis China. On the one hand such incidents explain why China has never allowed the border issue to be settled with India and how inefficient, incompetent and indifferent Indian policy makers have remained oblivious to it for over six decades after Zhou revealed his government’s policy on border disputes with India. This failure reflects even from a well-known fact while China has been feverishly busy in fortifying their defence infrastructure on the Tibetan side of our borders, India has been postponing providing even a single reasonable road link to our Army personnel along nearly 4000 km long border.
This set of books is result of a long painstaking research by the author. He has given hundreds of real examples of how India’s leaders and bureaucrats mishandled their responsibilities in the most delicate and demanding moments of national history. That is why Claud’s racy and lucid writing style makes reading of this monumental work an exercise in self-inflicted torture for any reader who has some love or sympathy for India.
All this makes this set of books an invaluable document for all those scholars, media persons and students of international affairs who wants to understand the true characteristics and history of India-China relations. It is a must read for India’s policy makers who need to understand the significance of a free Tibet for ensuring India’s territorial integrity and national security from China’s future plans and machinations. Thanks to the author’s in depth research and sharp analysis, this four-volume analytical document deserves to be adopted as a compulsory text book for every MEA entrant and each Member of Indian Parliament on “How not to conduct external affairs of India.”

Unravelling the mysteries of India’s last days in Tibet

My last volume has been reviewed by Ananth Krishnan in The Hindu: "The End of an Era | Unravelling the mysteries of India’s last days in Tibet"

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Reasons for the closure of the Indian Consulate in Lhasa in December 1962 remain unclear.
For a development as significant as the end of India’s presence in Tibet, the events surrounding the closure of India’s Consulate General in Lhasa in December 1962 still remain a small footnote in the history of that period, forgotten in the immediate aftermath of the war earlier that year.

Attempting to lift the veil on what would turn out to be a landmark event in the history of India’s relations with Tibet and China, a new book reveals it was India that took the fateful decision to close the Consulate in Lhasa — a momentous decision that, the book concludes, remains a mystery and still never fully explained, and one that India would come to regret as it made numerous unsuccessful attempts to reopen its presence in Lhasa and return to Tibet following the normalisation of relations with China in 1988.

The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet is the fourth volume of a sweeping work of research by the south India-based scholar Claude Arpi, who has drawn on official documents to write the most detailed history yet of India-Tibet relations from 1947 to 1962.
In the book, Mr. Arpi notes that information about the Lhasa Consulate and this period in history remains scarce. “Unfortunately,” he laments, “the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) still zealously keeps classified all documents related to 1961-62.”
He does, however, piece together the chain of events leading up to the fateful decision, which was, finally, conveyed “in a laconic note” from the MEA to a surprised Chinese Embassy in India, saying it had “decided to discontinue the Indian Consulates in Lhasa and Shanghai from December 15, 1962.”
Mr. Arpi writes that even the Indian Embassy in Beijing appeared to be kept in the dark. The then charge d’affaires P.K. Banerjee, would write in his memoirs that Delhi took the call on Shanghai “because there was hardly any work to carry out.”
That certainly wasn’t the case in Tibet, at a time when, not only was being in Lhasa crucial in the aftermath of the war, but there was also the unsettled matter of 3,900 Indian PoWs in Tibet.
In the memoirs, Mr. Banerjee suggests one reason could have been Delhi being “anxious” to close Chinese consulates in Mumbai and Kolkata because “they were indulging in activities other than consular work”, but that doesn’t explain why Delhi would voluntarily close Lhasa.
What we do know is that in the lead up to the war, Indian officials in Lhasa began to come under increasing harassment from Chinese authorities. On October 9, 11 days before China launched its offensive, the consulate’s telegraphic lines were cut, as were its telephone lines and courier communication. All outsiders were barred from entering the Dekyilinka area where the mission was located, while supplies of essential commodities like milk and eggs were also stopped.
On November 4, 1962, the MEA in a note complained this treatment was “against all established norms” and its staff were subject “to the most willful harassment by local Chinese authorities.”
Yet after the November 20, 1962 ceasefire, this would stop, Mr. Arpi notes, leaving unclear why the closure still went ahead. “These are among the many questions without answers,” he writes.
Mr. Arpi traces the closure to India’s gradual withdrawal from Tibet, where it was also maintaining trade agencies in Yatung, Gyantse and Gartok under the 1954 agreement on trade and intercourse — now famous as the “Panchsheel” agreement — and its decision to not renew the agreement when it expired in April 1962.
Beijing had offered a renewal, but India’s contention was that with every tenet of panchsheel violated by then — the MEA highlighted China’s actions in Aksai Chin starting in 1957-58 — it could not renew. The trade agencies, where Indians were coming under increasing restrictions, were all shut, and by the end of the year, the consulate would follow.
India would later try unsuccessfully on numerous occasions to return to Lhasa. In 2006, Mr. Arpi notes, when both sides agreed to open new consulates, India suggested Lhasa but had to settle for Guangzhou, while China returned to Kolkata. As trade boomed, India had also returned to Shanghai and China reopened Mumbai, but Lhasa still remained off-limits.
In 2015, an agreement was reached for India to open a consulate in Chengdu and for China to open one in Chennai, although that remains stalled. That year, India had again sought Lhasa but was turned down again, unable to return to the city it left under a cloud of mystery.

Claude Arpi's Latest On India-Tibet Is An Important Work Coming At An Important Time

An Indian official on his way Gartok, Western Tibet
(courtesy Ipshita Rawat)

Another book review: this time by Prof Mayank Singh from Benares Hindu University. It is entitled "Claude Arpi's Latest On India-Tibet Is An Important Work Coming At An Important Time."
 

Here is the link...

'The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet' is as extensive a work as any scholar would find on the subject. Arpi’s strength, apart from his vast knowledge, is his love for the subject which makes the book racy, almost fiction-like.

In 1948, John King Fairbank, considered the godfather of American Sinology, noted, that to understand the policies and actions of Chinese leaders, historical perspective is “not a luxury, but a necessity.”
One of the reasons Indian policy makers fail to decipher Chinese actions lies in the comparatively scarce historical work about Chinese strategic thinking and actions, which in turn ensures that India falls for the same traps ad nauseam.
That the Henderson Brookes-Bhagat report on the reasons behind the 1962 debacle still remains officially classified, despite portions of it being available on the internet, epitomizes India’s failure to what Fairbank referred to as getting a “historical perspective.”
Perhaps it is this lack of historical and strategic understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s psyche which has resulted in India having a trade deficit of $48.66 billion in FY 2019-20 with China.
The belief that strong commercial and economic engagements with China would compel them to desist from military coercion in the fear of losing out on the Indian market, should now be buried in the vast cold terrain of Eastern Ladakh where a strong sense of déjà vu of the events preceding the 1962 war prevails.
Claude Arpi’s book, The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet, is an attempt to fill out on this void. This is the fourth volume of Arpi’s work on the relations between India and Tibet (1947-1962). It retraces the steps between 1958-1962 which witnessed the consolidation of China’s military presence in Tibet, the failed Tibetan uprising of 1959, the Dalai Lama’s escape to India and how political, bureaucratic and military leadership in India failed to grasp Chinese intentions in Tibet with serious ramifications for India.
The 1962 military drubbing was the culmination of the failure to understand that allowing PLA to ride roughshod over Tibet would resulted in the conversion of the peaceful India-Tibet border into a hostile India-China border.
As Maj SL Chibber, the Consul General in Lhasa, would point out in his ‘Annual Political Report’ of 1957: India’s relations with the Tibetans were rather cordial which came to a sudden end with the arrival of the Chinese.
Apa Pant, who was the Political Officer in Gangtok made his third visit to Tibet in 1957. His report elaborated how with each visit his first impression was confirmed that Tibet was a “country forcibly, with the might of military strength, ‘occupied’ by the Chinese.”
Pant reported the presence of 15,000 PLA troops in Lhasa itself and noticed the rapid construction of roads in Tibet. During the visit, Pant observed multiple PLA establishments and reported the presence of at least 30,000 troops within “a hundred miles of Lhasa.”
Any strategic observer would have been alarmed at this massive infrastructure and military build-up in the neighbourhood. Yet, New Delhi continued to live in delusion about peaceful Chinese intentions.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s idealism as a tool of statecraft was to soon unravel disastrously before Mao Zedong’s hard core pragmatism combined with Sun Tzu’s ‘deception’ as means of war.
Pant presciently warned that Chinese regime’s failure to assimilate the Tibetans into their way of life and “emotional and spiritual contacts” between them being non-existent, had the danger of China pushing in millions of Hans into Tibet, converting the Tibetans into a minority in their own land.
The warning, unfortunately, has come true.
While Nehru and defence minister VK Krishna Menon obfuscated over reports of PLA build-up in Tibet, China had a specific purpose behind introducing a disproportionate number of troops to combat Tibetan resistance.
Arpi cites from Jiangling Li’s book Suppressing Rebellion in Tibet and the China-India Border War, edited by Matthew Akester, that the PLA directly inducted seven of the twelve military commands for military operations and two for logistical support in Tibet.
The Central Military Commission sent nearly all military branches to fight in Tibet, including the chemical warfare unit. This massive mobilisation of troops to combat an enemy which was disorganised, scattered into groups, and what Li calls “a force with practically no military training,” should have raised eyebrows in New Delhi.
Arpi is convinced that PLA was indeed rehearsing for a “forthcoming conflict with India.” India was however playing the ostrich and refusing to read the writing on the wall.
This strategic blindfolding was however not a fresh development.
The ‘Pannikar doctrine’, as Arpi refers to Ambassador KM Pannikar’s thoughts of not speaking “of a border which is settled, if it were not settled China would have brought the issue to the negotiating table,” despite Premier Chou En-lai’s ominous sounding statement of “we are prepared to settle all such problems as are ripe for settlement,” was a harbinger of a dispute which started with Barahoti in 1954 and continues till date.
Indian shortsightedness in failing to mention specifically the passes mentioned in the 1954 ‘Agreement on Trade and Intercourse with Tibet Region,’ as border passes, led to Chinese repudiation of the principle of watershed as marking of international boundary and the disputes which followed in its trail.
The 1954 agreement proved critical for China as India, for the first time, agreed to Tibet as the ‘Tibet Region of China’ and gave up the right to military escorts in Yatung and Gyantse which it had inherited from the British. India also handed over postal, telegraph and public telephone services operated by them in Tibet to China. In short, India had decided to become blind in China which would prove tragic, as subsequent events showed.
Acharya JB Kriplani would later refer to the 1954 agreement as “born in sin” and rightfully so, as India did not even raise the border issues with the Chinese and abandoned Tibet to its fate.
The building of the road connecting Xinjiang to Lhasa about which Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt said: "little doubt that the newly constructed 1,200 kilometre road passes through Aksai Chin," which was till then Indian territory, without any Indian effort to stop the construction, was a manifestation of India’s apathetic approach towards its national security.
Dutt’s official response expressing regret about China neither taking permission nor informing the Indian government about the road while appearing surreal, represented the spineless Indian response to this perfidy.
Ironically, while China was preparing for war, Nehru was busy promoting PRC’s cause at various international forums.
BN Mullik, Director, Intelligence Bureau (IB), claimed that he had reported the building of Chinese road in the area in November 1952 and that the Indian trade Agent in Gartok had reported about it in 1955 and 1957. Arpi also cites SS Khera, the Cabinet Secretary, accepting that information about Chinese activity in Aksai Chin had “begun to come in by 1952 or earlier.”
The Indian Military Attaché in Beijing, Brig SS Malik, had passed on the information about the road in Aksai Chin to the Military HQ in 1956. The formal road opening on 6 October 1957 was reported by a Chinese newspaper Kuang-ming Jih-pao, but the Indian leadership was busy promoting the utopia called ‘Panchsheel’ rather than realising the importance of loss of a strategically vital territory.
Arpi narrates an interesting incident when in 1955, Sidney Wignall, a British mountaineer was asked by the Army Chief Gen KS Thimayya to get proof of the Aksai Chin road. Like a spy thriller, Wignall was arrested and interrogated by the Chinese and finally released in the hope that he would never make it back to India amidst the heavy blizzards.
Wignall, however, reached India with his report which was trashed by Krishna Menon in Nehru’s presence as “lapping up American CIA agent-provocateur propaganda.”
Lt Col RS Basera’s equally daring mission in 1957 resulted in the Director of Military Intelligence being “more or less rebuked” by Nehru for sending the patrol. Nehru officially acknowledged the construction of the Sinkiang-Tibet highway through Aksai Chin in Parliament only in August 1959. It was this laissez faire which perhaps compelled General Thimayya to tell his officers that “I hope that I am not leaving you as cannon fodder for the Chinese Communists.” The foreboding would come true three years later.
Arpi brings out excruciating details about the failed Tibetan uprising of March 1959 which led to the Dalai Lama’s escape under extremely arduous conditions. By the end of it all, Consul General Chibber concluded; “The Chinese have entrenched themselves so firmly that they will not care about anything, even world opinion, and will go ahead with their policy of annihilating the Tibetan race.” The decisions arrived at the Seventh Tibet Forum in August 2020 under President Xi Jinping shows that ‘Sinicisation’ of Tibet is not far off.
Non-utilisation of the Indian Air Force (IAF) in combat mode during the 1962 conflict remains one of the biggest mysteries of the war. The IB is said to have cautioned the government that the use of offensive air power could result in the PLAAF attacking Indian cities like Calcutta.
Arpi mobilises facts to demolish the myth of superiority of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). India had airfields in the vicinity of the conflict zone which would have allowed them to fly shorter distances and carry higher payloads than PLAAF which had only one airfield in Tibet. And PLAAF had no fuel to fly its aircrafts.
The amount of gasoline reaching Tibet from China was not sufficient enough to maintain both the occupation force and PLAAF.
While in 1960, 2,220 tons of gasoline was imported into Tibet, in 1962, this figure had dropped to 30 tons. Further PLAAF’s planes were engaged on the Korean front and the Soviet Union had stopped supply of spare parts for MIG fighter planes. Squadron 106 of the IAF with Wing Commander Jag Mohan ‘Jaggi’ Nath had been flying extensively over Tibet between 1959-1962 on reconnaissance missions. Wing Commander ‘Jaggi’ Nath was categorical; “If we had sent a few airplanes (into Tibet), we could have wiped the Chinese out. They did not believe me that there was no Chinese air force.”
The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet is as extensive a work as any scholar would find on the subject. Arpi’s strength, apart from his vast knowledge, is his love for the subject which makes the book racy, almost fiction-like, which stands apart from the pedantic style writings generally available on such subjects.
He brings out the Dalai Lama’s escape, the harassment of the Indian Trade Agencies and Indian pilgrims, and a rarely touched subject—the treatment of Indian PoW’s in China in a manner where the reader can almost visualise the incidents.
This is a must read for all those who ponder on the reason behind the recent developments in Eastern Ladakh. As George Orwell said: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Arpi goes a long way in helping understand the past to understand the present and the future.

Putting Tibet Back in Focus

The Indian Prime Minister in Yatung, Tibet (1958)

Another book review of my Volume 4, by Maj Gen M. Vinaya Chandran (Redt). 

It is entitled Putting Tibet Back in Focus

Historian Claude Arpi goes beyond the British and Chinese narratives to examine older ties between India and the region

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Relations that India and China have with Tibet form the foundation of India – China relations. Even though the current narratives of these relations begin by quoting centuries of friendly relations between these ancient civilisations, actually it began from 1950, when Chinese occupation of Tibet began, and India and China came to be neighbours. Official records of interaction between India and China from 1950 to 1962 and India’s Tibet policy during this period have remained concealed from not only the Indian public, but also policy makers, since then.

Claude Arpi has done a yeoman’s work in ferreting out documents and interviewing experts to bring out four volumes on India – Tibet relations from 1947 to 1962, which brings a lot of clarity in understanding India – China relation, which is firmly rooted on their relations with Tibet. The fourth volume of ‘The End of an Era: India Exits Tibet’, brings out how India lost a friendly Tibet and gained a hostile China on her northern borders, during the years 1958 to 1962. Arpi has cited a large number of primary sources to clearly show how the Indian Government did not pay heed to the situation in Tibet, thereby leading to the India – China war of 1962 and closure of the Indian Consulate in Lhasa. Many books have been written on the subject but Arpi brings in greater clarity by analyzing the correspondence and activities of the Indian Consul Generals in Lhasa and how Indian establishment chose to disregard those, thereby getting surprised by the PLA in 1962. Details of the talks between the Indian Charge d’ Affaires in Beijing and a senior Chinese diplomat in 1962 corroborates the fact.
It is widely known that up to the start of 1962 war, BN Mullick assured Nehru that China would never attack India and Menon assured the armed forces that even if there is a war, he will win it diplomatically. Arpi has thrown light on these fallacies using documents, which are currently in public domain. Few surprising facts are as follows:

• There was intense militarization of Tibet from 1957. Indian Consul Generals at Lhasa had provided accurate details of these to Indian government, even to the extent of trenches being dug at Rutok and a big logistic hub being established at Nagchuka.
• PLA Fourth Army commanded by Gen Su Chiang was located at Tsaidam and had sixty-seven Russian instructors attached to them.
• From 1959 onwards, China commenced active survey and reconnaissance of Indian borders.
• On 11 June 1962, a few months before the war, Tibet Military Command set up a special organization named ‘Tibet Military Command Advance Command Post for China – India Border Self-defence Counterattack’. By the end of June 1962 they started collection of intelligence, preparing battle plans and intensive military training.

Border negotiation with China is another area where our policy makers seem to have faltered. A boundary commission comprising Chinese and Tibetan officials, accompanied by PLA were visiting the border areas and collecting evidence from 1957 onwards, to prepare their claims. India apparently did not take it so seriously. While negotiations were on for Bara Hoti, in 1958, the Foreign Secretary said that India should ask China, “first to indicate more precisely where according to them the international border lies. Surely they should be able to do so if their claims are genuine.” Indian bureaucrats did not realise that there is nothing genuine regarding Chinese claims. Even now, Indian media’s insistence on defining the Chinese LAC and reluctance of the bureaucracy to clarify the issue, shows that the situation has not improved.
During the 1962 war, many Indian soldiers were taken prisoner by China. The plight of these prisoners and the steps taken or not taken by Indian government was not made known to the public, rendering their sacrifices to be forgotten. Arpi has worked hard to collect evidence by interviewing people with firsthand knowledge of the events and finding documents to substantiate the same. Our understanding of the 1962 war will be incomplete without knowing the facts, known only to these brave soldiers.
Experts on the India–China boundary question, generally refer to the lines drawn by the British and China. Centuries of trade and religious interactions between India and Tibet have a different story to tell. British made compromises to suit their commercial interests, China drew lines to suit their hegemonic interests and post 1947 Indian government signed treaties to exhibit statesmanship. All of them kept Tibet out of it. Very few scholars like Claude Arpi have delved into the history of India–China boundary, giving importance to the history and views of the people actually living along the boundary.
The book, published by Vij Books India Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in knowing the facts regarding India–China boundary issue.

Jawaharlal Nehru ignored intelligence report of Chinese road in Indian territory in 1957: Book

The Indian Minister on his way to Bhutan via Tibet

My Volume 4 was reviewed by Rajeev Deshpande in The Times of India: Jawaharlal Nehru ignored intelligence report of Chinese road in Indian territory in 1957: Book

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Jawaharlal Nehru ignored intelligence report of Chinese road in Indian territory in 1957: Book
NEW DELHI: In early 1957, an audacious secret mission into Aksai Chin that saw an Indian Army officer and a havildar join a group of yak grazers in disguise actually provided first-hand evidence that China had illegally built a road in territory claimed by India.
Unfortunately, the efforts of Lt Col R S Basera of Kumaon Regiment and Havildar Diwan Singh of the Corps of Engineers went abegging despite the immense risks and hardships they undertook as then defence minister V K Krishna Menon and then PM Jawaharlal Nehru remained sceptical about the road’s exact location. It would be a full two year later before the Indian government admitted in Parliament that the road had indeed been built.
In a soon to be out book, ‘End of an Era, India Exits Tibet’, well-known China expert Claude Arpi has set out in exhaustive detail, based on Nehru Memorial Library papers, de-classified Indian and Chinese documents and personal interviews, how even voluminous reports by its own agencies about the ominous consolidation of China’s occupation of Tibet failed to prod India into action.
The theme of the book is about India losing all its influence in Tibet, helping China press aggressive claims along the border with India. This came at the cost of letting down opinion in Tibet that looked up to “Chogyal Nehru” and felt India could come to their aid in preventing “Sinofication” of their culture and ways.
Arpi’s research however, indicates that India did have options. At the time, the Indian Air Force was clearly superior to China’s military air arm and could have aided in helping Tibetan resistance, which was significant. The diplomacy itself, given India’s strong presence through trading centres, could have been forceful.
Indian reports from Tibet spoke of the speed with which motorable roads were being built but failed to stir New Delhi. The roads enabled Chinese troops to reach India’s borders quickly. The long preparation saw Mao Zedong, annoyed by the asylum to Dalai Lama and Nehru’s attempts to “undermine” China’s leadership in the Third World, to order attacks on Indian positions on October 1962.
Lt Col Basera’s trip actually reached the road and took its measurements. But on return, Menon and Nehru asked the director of military intelligence if the road could be confirmed by a map. The secret patrol had, however, carried no maps for security reasons.
This was not the only evidence of the road. Even earlier, British mountaineer Sidney Wignall went to Tibet with the knowledge of the Indian military. He was captured but released at a high pass and reached India after an incredible journey. His report of the Aksai Chin road was dismissed by Menon in Nehru’s presence as CIA propaganda.

Review: The End of an Era; India Exits Tibet

Prime Minister Nehru meeting the Indian traders
in Yatung, Tibet in September 1958

My last volume, The End of an Era; India Exits Tibet (India-Tibet Relations 1947-1962 - Part 4) has been reviewed by Thubten Samphel in The Hindustan Times

Here is the link...

Claude Arpi’s four volumes on Tibet’s relations with India show how China developed its Tibet playbook that includes encroachment, occupation, and the spinning of a narrative of false claims. The last book in the series focuses on the last five years of India’s diplomatic presence in Tibet
 
 What’s happening with China these days? It is picking fights simultaneously with most of its neighbours. The only time communist China opened two fronts was in 1950 when it invaded and occupied Tibet and fought the US-led UN forces to a standstill at the present demilitarized zone between South and North Korea. Now, China is harassing Japan in the East China Sea, restricting the freedoms of the enraged people of Hong-Kong, and firing missiles across the Taiwan Strait and claiming most of the South China Sea, disputed by many countries in South East Asia.
The latest is China’s encroachment on Indian territory.
On 15 June, PLA troops crossed over the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh and were repulsed by the Indian army. China is doing everything according to its Tibet playbook: in the early 1950s, it occupied the Indian territory of Aksai Chin. Both in Ladakh and in the South China Sea, Beijing hopes to apply its Tibet playbook to establish facts on the ground and on water and later argue that possession is nine-tenth of the law.

How China developed its Tibet playbook that includes encroachment, occupation, and the spinning of a narrative of false claims is examined in rich detail by Claude Arpi in his four volumes on Tibet’s relations with India. Digging deep into the material at the National Archives and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Claude Arpi’s latest offering focuses on his findings on the last five years of India’s diplomatic presence in Tibet.

As he writes in his first volume, the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 presented newly independent India with a policy choice: was new China a friend or foe? In this debate, the friend camp led by India’s first Prime Minister Nehru wanted deeper cooperation with its new neighbour. The foe camp wanted India to treat China, now at its door step, as harbouring malign intent and recommended that the country beef up border security from Ladakh in the west to North-Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA), now Arunachal Pradesh, in the east. In the policy choice India made, the China-as-a-friend camp carried the day. India handed all its extraterritorial rights including the trade agencies in Gyantse, Dromo (Yatung) and Gartok in Tibet to its new rulers,. In 1954, India signed the Panch Sheel agreement with China that formally recognized Tibet as a part of the People’s Republic.
One of the important documents Arpi has dug out and commented on is a report filed by Apa Pant to the Indian foreign ministry of his observations in Tibet. Pant was the Political Officer (PO) based in Gangtok. Since the days of the British Raj, the PO had looked after the affairs of Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. Apa Pant travelled to Tibet from November 1956 to February 1957 and met with the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, members of the Tibetan ruling elite and leaders of the Tibetan resistance. The observations Apa Pant made in his report was, in the words of Claude Arpi, “an eye-opener” for New Delhi.
Pant’s observations about the sentiments of the Tibetan people under their new rulers and his predictions about China’s plans for Tibet in the future are sharp and prophetic. Regarding the true feelings of the Tibetan people under Chinese rule, Apa Pant observed, “Due to fear and the realization of their military, (as well as) the weakness of the Tibetans (they) are keeping quiet but have neither mentally or emotionally submitted themselves to the Chinese rule nor accepted it as the final dispensation.”
About China’s future plans for Tibet, Pant wrote: “Only when roads, aerodromes and perhaps a railway line are completed millions of Chinese will start flooding into Tibet and settling there permanently.” Claude Arpi adds that this “has come true 60 years later.”
Claude Arpi’s fourth and final volume in his examination of Tibet’s relations with India from 1947 to 1962 ends with the closure of the Indian Consular General in Lhasa. New Delhi cited the severe restrictions imposed on the consulate for its closure. In hindsight one wonders whether the closure of the Lhasa consulate was a wise thing to do. If it had remained open, weathering Chinese restrictions and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, New Delhi would have had a keener sense of what was happening behind the Himalayas.
For scholars and researchers interested in this phase of Tibet’s relations with India, Claude Arpi’s books will remain essential reading. These four volumes are a seminal contribution to our understanding of Tibet’s interaction with both India and China and India’s interaction with China on Tibet at a critical period in history.

Thubten Samphel is an independent researcher and a former director of the Tibet Policy Institute.

Foolish trust in Mao and Zhou

A review of the third volume of my quadrilogy on the relations between India and Tibet (1947-62) has appeared in The Statesman.
It is entitled  Foolish trust in Mao and Zhou and written by Ambassador Krishnan Srinivasan, former Foreign Secretary of India.

Here is the link...

The narrative starts with Zhou’s visit to Delhi in 1954 and ends with the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet after the Buddha Jubilee in 1957, a tale of lost opportunities due to Nehru’s false assessments… A review.

The third of four volumes of Claude Arpi’s definitive compilation reveals the extent of India’s loss and Tibet’s loss of autonomy, in India’s foolish trust in the China of Mao and Zhou Enlai. The narrative starts with Zhou’s visit to Delhi in 1954 and ends with the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet after the Buddha Jubilee in 1957, a tale of lost opportunities due to Nehru’s false assessments. China consolidated its hold on Tibet after the India-China Agreement of 1954 and incursions started the first at Barahoti in 1954 itself, then Shipkila in HP in 1956 and Spiti in Punjab. A flurry of diplomatic notes began between India and China that continued until the Chinese invasion.
India was complicit in this, since the Chinese never adduced any evidence for their claims; they just said they did not agree. India claimed the 1954 Agreement could not have been concluded unless both governments had precise knowledge of their common boundary. India thought that by the Agreement identifying six passes in the middle sector for trade and pilgrims, they had delineated the entire mutually accepted border; the reality was quite otherwise, and China as successor authority in Tibet, had claims in all sectors. The Chinese were in no hurry; these were “not ripe for settlement.”
In 1957 China reported the opening of the road across Aksai Chin, about which the Indian people were told in 1959, the same year as the Chinese incursion in Longju in the North-east. But as early as 1955 the Indian army knew the Chinese were building a road from Tibet to Xinjiang across Askai Chin. It is unbelievable that Nehru was not informed.
Following Barahoti, other incursions such as Nilang south of the watershed, took place. Historian RC Majumdar has written: “It is characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period she should regard it as a part of her empire forever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it.” But Indian diplomat TN Kaul, echoing Nehru, tried to see some western hand in sponsoring friction between China and India, which tallied with China’s propaganda in Tibet about Americans and warmongers. India compounded its weakness by a piecemeal approach to the incursions, rather than taking the overall view.
Nehru believed India had only given up in Tibet what we could not hold and what had already gone, against what was secured, a friendly and accepted frontier. Any policy to oppose China in Tibet would raise false hopes among Tibetans and lead to greater trauma for them. He urged dissidents to his policies such various Consuls in Lhasa and Political Officers in Gangtok, to have an objective understanding devoid of emotion. He told officials that the border should be regarded as definite, not open for discussion with anybody. As Arpi remarks sarcastically, “it was part of the colonial heritage India could not get rid of fast enough” - which included the 12 rest houses and escorts for Indian diplomatic couriers and officials. India-Tibet trade dwindled with communications improvements between China and Tibet, and the revolt of ordinary Tibetans distinguished them from aristocrats and clergy who by and large accepted the Chinese invasion.
Chinese maps showing parts of India as Chinese came to Delhi’s notice. In 1954 Nehru instructed Indian maps not to show any undemarcated areas, but a continuous border. Two years later he told the External Affairs Ministry that it was not desirable to raise the Chinese maps in Parliament. Arpi says, “the entire machinery …from South Block to Bomdila was living in an imaginary world as regards Chinese intentions.” During Zhou’s 1954 visit the border was not raised by India nor during Nehru’s China visit. Nehru told Zhou that India was not concerned about old maps because the boundary was quite clear; the discussion instead centred on Nehru conveying Burma’s concern about Chinese maps. During this visit Nehru met the Dali Lama for the first time. It was not a success. The Dalai Lama records: “he just stands in front of me, without speech, without moving, motionless he remained like that…I said through the Chinese interpreter I am very happy to meet you. He did not give a particular response…”
In Tibet there was no national identity or sense of a nation to be defended. The Dalai Lama was deluded into thinking the Chinese would remain in Tibet only as long as Tibetans wanted them. There had been bad government, unjust taxes, nepotism and social snobbery, but most Tibetans hoped these could be remedied without paying a price to the Chinese. As for India, Tibetans could well ask whether they were not friends of India, and perhaps closer friends than the Chinese.
Prior to independence, India’s northwest and north-east borders were hardly known. In Bhutan, the borders were not demarcated. An Indian surveyor followed the watershed principle and determined the Sikkim-Tibet-Bhutan trijunction at Batangla, the bone of contention between China and India in 2017.
The Chinese speeded up infrastructure - roads, schools, hospitals. The first plane landed in 1955 and the first train to Lhasa was in 2006. By 1956 airfields were being constructed, and a plane flew over Lhasa. In 1956 came the Tibet uprising in the east, land reforms were delayed and the two leading lamas were allowed to visit India in 1956- 7. Nehru dismissed the uprising as rumour and disbelieved the Sikkim prince who told Nehru in 1955 that the Dalai Lama was unhappy before and after his trip to China, and the Panchen Lama was unpopular for being a China stooge.
The Panchen Lama curiously seems never to have been contacted by the Consul General in Lhasa. The only picture emerges from his pilgrimage to India in 1956/7. An official recorded that the Panchen Lama was a stooge of the Chinese even in 1923, and had fled from Shigatse to China due to differences with the Dalai Lama, so there were historical precedents. November 1956 was the 2500 anniversary of Buddha’s birth and the two lamas were visiting a foreign country for the first time. Arpi quotes from the reports of Pant with the Dalai Lama, Luthra with the Panchen Lama, and Menon the outgoing Consul General. The Panchen Lama was born and raised in China. Luthra thought he was reconciled to China because they restored him to Tashilunpo monastery in Shigatse. He asserted his right to be equal with the Dalai Lama, though he conceded priority to the Dalai Lama. He felt resigned to the Chinese but thought it was possible to be independent in religion and culture. He thought the rivalry between Lhasa and Shitgatse was against the interests of both, but the Dalai Lama was under malign influences; Lhasa officials thought it below their dignity to approach Shigatse officials and the Dalai Lama’s party would be happy to see the Panchen Lama humiliated. It was easy for the Chinese to sow divisions. Since Nehru gave precedence to the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama never got a chance to clarify he was no stooge. The Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama never discussed anything serious; this being left to their retinues.
According to Menon, Tibetan officials were deeply divided between themselves, and confused the Dalai Lama. Zhou Enlai visited Delhi thrice in quick succession, in 1956/7, to counter any support India might give to the lamas and ensure they returned to Tibet. Nehru was in a needless, nervous and desperate hurry to stabilise Indo-China relations, thinking the Dalai Lama hankered for Tibetan independence and looked to India for guidance. He believed Zhou that only a small minority under foreign influence wanted an independent Tibet free from China. Nehru impatiently told the Dalai Lama, “you must realise that India cannot support you.” The Dalai Lama explained that “every time I thought I had reached an understanding with the Chinese, they broke my trust.” When the Dalai Lama met Zhou the latter was full of “charm, smiles and deceit.” He did not believe Zhou “but it was useless to argue.”
Zhou gave Nehru the impression that China accepted the McMahon Line – “it is unfair to us, still we feel that there is no better way than to recognise this Line… we should try to persuade and convince Tibetans to accept it.” Zhou also said that India and Tibet could have direct religious relations – which never happened, perhaps due to Nehru’s hesitation to do anything behind China’s back.
China claimed Bhutan as a vassal in 1910 and Tibet repeated this in 1948. A consequence of China’s invasion of Tibet and incursions of India was that Sikkim and Bhutan felt their future lay with India than with China despite the pull of religion and culture with Tibet. There are excellent maps though more would be useful since some place names could not be identified, and some photos, though the Index is less than satisfactory. The numerous footnotes are very detailed and enormously informative.

China, Tibet, Great Game

My book Will Tibet Ever Find Her Soul Again? has been reviewed by Thubten Samphel for The
Hindustan Times

Here is the link...

Claude Arpi’s new book is particularly relevant as China rolls out the Belt and Road Initiative

The brilliance of new China’s leaders in pursuing their hard-nosed strategic objectives in Tibet was to weave a plausible narrative of ‘liberation’ around what was an outright invasion of the country. The other twist in the narrative was to force Lhasa to sign the 17-Point Agreement in 1951 in which Tibet promised to “return voluntarily to the lap of the motherland.” Half the world, largely the socialist camp, bought China’s story on Tibet.
The process of dealing with China’s fait accompli on the Roof of the World was particularly painful in the corridors of power in New Delhi. Should close cultural, commercial bonds and an open, unguarded border between India and Tibet blindside New Delhi to the changed new geopolitical reality in which the balance of power between independent India and new China had shifted in Beijing’s favour?
In dealing with the issue of Tibet, the two Asian giants brought two different mindsets. India had hoped, as articulated by Nehru, de-colonizing Asia and Africa would come together as one big family to work for common prosperity and peace. China on the other hand was there for itself, in whatever form that enduring Chinese imperial impulse was dressed up in the reigning ideology of the day.
The clash of views of men on the ground who figured out China’s true intentions in Tibet and beyond and those who took Beijing’s comforting words at their face value are put together in Will Tibet Ever Find Her Soul Again? The value of Claude Arpi’s contribution to scholarship on the subject is that it is based on the Nehru papers housed in the Nehru Memorial Library and Museum and the National Archives of India. “It is the first time such documents have been used (or even seen),” says Arpi.
At the time these events unfolded in Tibet, New Delhi’s man in Lhasa was Sumul Sinha. In his briefing to New Delhi about Chinese intentions, he wrote: “It seems to me that we are not facing fairly and squarely the realities of the situation here, inclined as we are to gloss over Chinese dislike and distrust for insignificant aliens like us, for no better reason than to keep Delhi in good humour and to keep alive the illusions of our policy-makers who still believe that much maligned Chinese are just as good today as they were in the past.”
In his briefing note to Major SM Krishnatry, the Indian Trade Agent in Gyantse, Sinha was brutally honest. He accused the People’s Liberation Army of doing a Robert Clive act on Tibet. “I hardly think that Chinese officials in Tibet can help being adventurous nor do I blame them for dreaming of conquest far beyond the confines of Tibet. They are physically placed at the outskirt of an empire and has happened in so much of history, think and behave like modern Clives and Hastings, always anxious to out-do their own achievements.”
The critique to this assessment came from Nehru himself. In 1953, India’s first prime minister wrote that Sinha “looks with certain nostalgia to the past when the British exercised a good deal of control over Tibet and he would like India to take the place of the British of those days. As a matter of fact, the weakness of our position in Tibet has been that we are successors, to some extent, of an imperial power which has pushed its way into Tibet. When that imperial power has ceased to have any strength to function in the old way, it is patent that we cannot do so, even if we so wished.”
In this Great Game played out between independent India and re-united China, Arpi’s ability to piece together all the confidential memos and exchange of notes in high places serve as a fly on the wall. His contribution on the subject will serve as a guide for new players not to repeat the mistakes of the past. With China rolling out the almost globe-girdling Belt and Road Initiative to improve sea and land connectivity to purportedly facilitate international trade but also to assert its political influence on the countries strung along the new Silk Road, the Great Game is being played with new vigour. Arpi’s contribution constitutes a playbook for the participants in the new Great Game, now re-branded and re-sold as the Belt and Road Initiative.

A Playbook for the New Great Game?

Another review of my Volume 2 entitled A Playbook for the New Great Game? by Thubten Samphel, an independent researcher and former director of the Tibet Policy Institute (TPI), appeared on the Tibet.net  and TPI website .

Here is the link...

The brilliance of new China’s leaders in pursuing their hard-nosed strategic objectives in Tibet was to weave a plausible narrative of ‘liberation’ around what was an outright invasion of the country. The other twist in the narrative was to force Lhasa to sign the 17-Point Agreement in 1951 in which Tibet promised to “return voluntarily to the lap of the motherland.” Half the world, largely the socialist camp, bought China’s story on Tibet.The process of dealing with China’s fait accompli on the Roof of the World was particularly painful in the corridors of power in New Delhi. Should close cultural, commercial bonds and an open, unguarded border between India and Tibet blindside New Delhi to the changed new geopolitical reality in which the balance of power between independent India and new China had shifted in Beijing’s favour?In dealing with the issue of Tibet, the two Asian giants brought two different mindsets. India had hoped, as articulated by Nehru, de-colonizing Asia and Africa would come together as one big family to work for common prosperity and peace. China on the other hand was there for itself, in whatever form that enduring Chinese imperial impulse was dressed up in the reigning ideology of the day.The clash of views of men on the ground who figured out China’s true intentions in Tibet and beyond and those who took Beijing’s comforting words at their face value is weaved together in one fascinating piece of jigsaw puzzle after another in Will Tibet Ever Find Her Soul Again?  The value of Claude Arpi’s contribution to scholarship on the subject is that it is based on documents of the Nehru Papers housed in the Nehru Memorial Library and Museum and the National Archives of India. As Arpi says, “It is the first time such documents have been used (or even seen).”
At the time these events unfolded in Tibet, New Delhi’s man in Lhasa was Sumul Sinha, the pugnacious head of the Indian mission in the Tibetan capital. In his briefing to New Delhi about Chinese intentions, Sinha wrote, “It seems to me that we are not facing fairly and squarely the realities of the situation here, inclined as we are to gloss over Chinese dislike and distrust for insignificant aliens like us, for no better reason than to keep Delhi in good humour and to keep alive the illusions of our policy-makers who still believe that much maligned Chinese are just as good today as they were in the past.”
In his briefing note to Major SM Krishnatry, the Indian Trade Agent in Gyantse, Sinha was brutally honest. He accused the People’s Liberation Army of doing a Robert Clive act on Tibet. “I hardly think that Chinese officials in Tibet can help being adventurous nor do I blame them for dreaming of conquest far beyond the confines of Tibet. They are physically placed at the outskirt of an empire  and has happened in so much of history, think and behave like modern Clives and Hastings, always anxious to out-do their own achievements.”
The critique to this assessment came from Nehru himself. In 1953, India’s first and charismatic prime minister wrote that Sinha “looks with certain nostalgia to the past when the British exercised a good deal of control over Tibet and he would like India to take the place of the British of those days. As a matter of fact, the weakness of our position in Tibet has been that we are successors, to some extent, of an imperial power which has pushed its way into Tibet. When that imperial power has ceased to have any strength to function in the old way, it is patent that we cannot do so, even if we so wished.”
In this Great Game played out between independent India and re-united China, Arpi’s ability to piece together all the confidential memos and exchange of notes in high places serve as a fly on the wall. Arpi’s contribution on the subject will serve as a guide for new players not to repeat the mistakes of the past. With China rolling out the almost globe-girdling Belt and Road Initiative to improve sea and land connectivity to purportedly facilitate international trade but also to assert its political influence on the countries strung along the new Silk Road, the Great Game is being played with new vigour. Arpi’s contribution constitutes a playbook for the participants in the new Great Game, now re-branded and re-sold as the Belt and Road Initiative.

‘Nehru’s India helped China conquer Tibet’

A review of the second volume (Will Tibet ever find her soul again?) of  my quadrilogy on India Tibet Relations (1947-1962) appeared in The Sunday Guardian

The review by Utpal Kumar is titled ‘Nehru’s India helped China conquer Tibet’

Arpi comes up with an explosive revelation: that Nehru’s India supplied rice for the invading PLA troops in Tibet in the early 1950s.

The Chinese invasion of Tibet, which culminated in the 1962 war between India and China, has often been portrayed as the “Great Chinese Betrayal”—“a stab in the back”, as Jawaharlal Nehru would say with much pain and anguish. Claude Arpi, in his 2017 book, Tibet: The Last Months of a Free Nation, proved with fresh shreds of evidence that the notion of “betrayal” was a farce. It was “a stab from the front”, as M.J. Akbar observed in his eloquent biography on Nehru. For, the then Prime Minister and his comrades refused to see the writing on the wall for more than a decade.
In his latest book, Will Tibet Ever Find Her Soul Again?, Arpi comes up with another explosive revelation: that Nehru’s India supplied rice for the invading PLA troops in Tibet when they were busy rampaging and decimating the Tibetan way of life and culture in the early 1950s. “The most grotesque incident of this period was the feeding of the PLA’s troops with rice coming through India,” writes the France-born expert on Tibet and China who is now settled in India. “Without Delhi’s active support, the Chinese troops would not have been able to survive in Tibet.”
Tibet, before the massive Chinese influx of the 1950s, was a self-sufficient society. The locals had, for centuries, practised sustainable development, and starvation was unheard of. But the PLA avalanche triggered a breakdown in the Tibetan economy. Before the arrival of the Chinese Army in the forbidden kingdom, Arpi writes, few Tibetans had ever eaten rice. Roast barley, known as tsampa, had been their staple food for centuries. “The influx of fresh troops brought the first serious problem in the new co-existence between the Chinese occupants and the Lhasa government: the availability of foodstuff,” he writes.
To overcome the food crisis in Tibet, Chairman Mao and his comrades looked towards India. S.M. Krishnatry, the Indian Trade Agent (ITA) in Gyantse, mentioned that the Chinese government had requested the Government of India “for an agreement allowing facilities for the transport of food and other supplies through India”. The Chinese government wanted transit facilities for 10,000 tonnes of food grains through India, as a special case. Delhi first agreed after careful consideration to allow the transit of about 3,000 tonnes of rice to Tibet. “While pointing out the transport problems involved in the proposal, the Government of India expressed their (sic) willingness to consider it together with all outstanding issues regarding their position in Tibet,” wrote Krishnatry. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Tibetan part of the story was soon forgotten.
Blinded by dark ideological lenses or even duped by China’s “bhai-bhai” chimera, India refused to see the true nature of communist China and its devastating presence in Tibet. It didn’t even grasp that China was hitting out at India when it gave a call in the 17-Point Agreement, signed in May 1951, to “drive out imperialist aggressive forces from Tibet”. Who were these imperialist forces? “Very few realised then that it could be against India,” Arpi writes matter-of-factly.
This rice diplomacy continued for well over four years. On 20 October 1954, it was re-emphasised that India would continue to supply rice to the PLA stationed in Tibet. “Rice which China would buy was intended exclusively for Tibet, and only difficulties of transport have necessitated this purchase by China,” reported The Hindu then. Ten months later, the first truck would reach Lhasa from the Chinese side. Rice via India wasn’t required anymore.
One wonders what would have happened had India not sent rice. Would the PLA have consolidated so easily its hold over the Roof of the World? Instead of confronting China over its forceful annexation of Tibet, which replaced a peaceful neighbour for India with an aggressive, imperialist one, the Nehru government felicitated the same by providing food for the invading troops.
Arpi brings out another never-told-before saga of four Indian “prisoners of war” caught during the 1950 invasion, and a couple of them were in the PLA’s confinement for almost two years without the “friendly” Chinese government even caring to inform India. Ironically, these PoWs were not soldiers or even spies; they were “employed by the Tibetan government and worked under Robert Ford, the British radio operator in Chamdo”. Ford recalled how the four young Indians had been trained to man a wireless station. The fact that China kept them in jails without informing India, should have shown the Indian government that China was not a friend. Nonetheless, as Arpi writes, “in this particular case, Indian diplomacy showed firmness and determination, allowing the release of four Indian ‘prisoners of war’.”
There’s another interesting thing that comes out from the book: That Nehru may have been blinded by his deep ideological moorings, but his love for the nation was paramount. It’s evident from the way he handled the case of four Indian “PoWs”. The same, however, can’t be said about his trusted lieutenants.
K.M. Panikkar, India’s ambassador to China from 1950-52, often acted like Mao’s envoy rather than Nehru’s, invariably defending the Chinese acts of omission and commission. Even when the Chinese were caught napping with their wrong, aggressive foot forward, he would defend them. “The Chinese attitude about these issues has all along been that these arise from unequal treaties and are ‘scars left behind’ by the British,” he would say. Even when the PLA was busy disrupting and distorting the Tibetan way of life, Panikkar would send a note back home, saying: “Not much news has been appearing about Tibet of late and it is expected that the work of re-organisation there will naturally take time and will be handled with tact and care by the Chinese authorities.”
Panikkar wasn’t alone, however. The most prominent among others being the then Defence Minister, V.K. Krishna Menon, who, according to his biographer T.J.S. George, was such a votary of self-reliance that he refused to import defence equipment and turned the military factories into production lines for hairclips and pressure-cookers. Akbar takes the story forward when he writes in Nehru: The Making of India, “The Army was convinced that Menon was more concerned about promoting himself than defending his country at home… Even Nehru was perturbed at Menon’s foreign tours. When the Chinese advanced into Ladakh in 1959, the defence minister was in New York and showed no desire to return till Nehru rebuked him.” Shockingly, Menon had allowed a Chinese military mission to tour India’s major defence establishments as late as in 1958.
Will Tibet Ever Find Her Soul Again? is a scholarly work which even a lay reader would find interesting. It’s lucidly written and well argued with a lot of facts sprinkled across the book. The common thread being how India couldn’t see China’s dirty designs even when the latter never tried hiding them, whether it was the closure of the Kashgar consulate and the downgrading of the Lhasa consulate or the Chinese military’s consolidation on the plateau. There’s, however, a sore point for the reader. At Rs 1,550, it’s an expensive book to buy, but then good things don’t necessarily come cheap.

How Tibet lost its independence and India its gentle neighbour

Sumul Sinha (second from left), Head of the Indian Mission in Lhasa

Extracts of my book The Last Months of a Free Nation — India Tibet Relations (1947-1962) appeared in The Asian Age

Here is the link...

It relates to the sequence of events and the role of KM Panikkar, the Indian Ambassador in China, during the weeks after the invasion of Tibet.

Claude Arpi, holding the Field Marshal KM Cariappa Chair of Excellence from the United Service Institution of India (USI), for his research on the Indian Presence in Tibet 1947-1962 (in 4 volumes), has extensively worked in the National Archives of India and well the Nehru Library (on the Nehru Papers) on the history of Tibet, the Indian frontiers and particularly the Indian Frontier Administrative Service.

The Last Months of a Free Nation — India Tibet Relations (1947-1962) is the first volume of the series, using never-accessed-before Indian archival material. Though Tibet’s system of governance had serious lacunas, the Land of Snows was a free and independent nation till October 1950, when Mao decided to “liberate”it. But “liberate” from what, was the question on many diplomats' and politicians' lips in India; they realised that it would soon be a tragedy for India too; Delhi would have to live with a new neighbor, whose ideology was the opposite of Tibet’s Buddhist values; the border would not be safe anymore.

The narrative starts soon after Independence and ends with the signing, under duress, of the 17-Point Agreement in Beijing in May 1951, whose first article says: “The Tibetan people shall unite and drive out imperialist aggressive forces from Tibet; the Tibetan people shall return to the big family of the Motherland-the People’s Republic of China.”  Tibet had lost its Independence …and India, a gentle neighbour.

Reproduced below are extracts from a chapter The View from the South Block.

It relates to the sequence of events and the role of KM Panikkar, the Indian Ambassador in China, during the weeks after the invasion of Tibet.

It is usually assumed that Sardar Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister wrote his “prophetic” letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, detailing the grave implications for India of Tibet’s invasion. In fact, he used a draft sent to him by Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, the Secretary General of the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth.

On November 7, 1950, just a month after the entry of the People’s Liberation Army in Tibet, Patel sent Bajpai’s note to Nehru under his own signature  Bajpai, the top-most Indian diplomat, was deeply upset by the turn of events; he also shared his note with President Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari and others. Nehru ignored Patel’s letter and the views of his colleagues.



Bajpai, deeply upset by the turn of events, had also sent his note to President Rajendra Prasad and C Raja-gopalachari.

Girja Shankar Bajpai’s Note of October 31
Bajpai first noted that on July 15, 1950, the Governor of Assam had informed Delhi that, according to information received by the local Intelligence Bureau, Chinese troops, “in unknown strength, had been moving towards Tibet from three directions, namely the north, north-east and south-east.” The same day, the Indian Embassy in China reported that rumours in Beijing had been widely “prevalent during the last two days that military action against Tibet has already begun.” Though Panikkar was unable to get any confirmation, he virtually justified Beijing’s military action by writing: “in view of frustration in regard to Formosa, Tibetan move was not unlikely.”  A few days later], Bajpai remarked that the Ambassador [Panikkar] had answered [Delhi] that he did not consider the time suitable for making a representation to the Chinese Foreign Office.  Bajpai is more and more frustrated with Panikkar's surrender to Chinese interests and perhaps also by the support that the ambassador gets from the Prime Minister. The Secretary General is clearly in a difficult position. Already on July 20, Panikkar’s attention had been drawn by South Block to the fact that Beijing’s argument that the “Tibetans had been stalling the talks,” was wrong.  Panikkar had been informed by Delhi that the Tibetan Delegation should not be blamed for something they are not responsible for…

Panikkar brings in philosophical issues
India [Panikkar] attempted to change the Communist regime’s decision to “liberate” Tibet, by bringing a philosophical angle to the issue: “In the present dangerous world situation, a military move can only bring a world nearer [to a conflict], and any Government making such a move incurs the risk of accelerating the drift towards that catastrophe.”

Mao was not in the least bothered about such niceties.

Another Aide-Memoire
Delhi again repeats its “philosophical” position: it would be bad for Beijing to invade Tibet: “The Government of India would desire to point out that a military action at the present time against Tibet will give those countries in the world which are unfriendly to China a handle for anti-Chinese propaganda at a crucial and delicate juncture in inter-national affairs.” Delhi is convinced that “the position of China will be weakened” by a (Chinese) military solution.

The Chinese plans are clear
The objective of Mao and the Southwestern Bureau in Chengdu is to occupy Chamdo, it is therefore clear that the PLA is preparing to enter “Tibet proper”. …The objective remains the fall of Chamdo before the winter, ambassador or no ambassador, negotiation or no negotiations.

As Tibet is invaded, Sir Girja’s narrative continues:
On October 17, the Indian Ambassador receives the full details of the Chinese invasion of Tibet. South Block confirms that Tibet has been invaded, it was “brought to our notice at the request of the Tibetan Government in a message sent through our Mission in Lhasa,” says a cable from Delhi. The next day, Panikkar continues to argue against the invasion having happened; he says that out of the incidents to which Lhasa has drawn Delhi’s attention, only one appears to be new.

Bajpai more upset
Sir Girja Bajai is further upset when Panikkar argues: “Further I should like to emphasise that the Chinese firmly hold that Tibet is purely an internal problem and that while they are prepared in deference to our wishes to settle question peacefully they are NOT prepared to postpone matters indefinitely.”
This is written by the Ambassador of India.

[On October 22], Nehru cables the Ambassador in Beijing: “I confess I am completely unable to understand urgency behind Chinese desire to ‘liberate’ when delay CANNOT possibly change situation to her disadvantage.”

Finally on October 24, the Ambassador presents an aide-memoire to the Chinese Foreign Office. Bajpai notes “The contrast between the tone and content of the instructions sent to the Ambassador, and his feeble and apologetic ‘note’ deserves notice.” This raises a question, how could the ambassador present an aide-memoire without its content being vetted by South Block? It is a mystery.

Bajpai could only conclude that “from the foregoing narrative which I have been at some pains to document, that ever since the middle of July, at least, Peking’s objective has been to settle the problem of its relations by force.” From Mao’s cables, [one can see that] the invasion (or “liberation” for the Chinese side) did not at all depend on “negotiations” or “talks” with Tibetans. The army action had been decided since months.

Though Bajpai says that he is not interested to find “scapegoats”, he finally blames his ambassador to China: “The search for scapegoats is neither pleasant nor fruitful, and I have no desire to indulge in any such pastime. …however, I feel it my duty to observe that, in handling the Tibetan issue with the Chinese Government, our Ambassador has allowed himself to be influenced more by the Chinese point of view, by Chinese claims, by Chinese maps and by regard for Chinese susceptibilities than by his instructions or by India’s interests.” This is a strong, though late indictment of Panikkar.

Patel replies to Bajpai
…When on October 31, Sardar Patel wrote back to Bajpai: “The Chinese advance into Tibet upsets all our security calculations. …I entirely agree with you that a reconsideration of our military position and a redisposition of our forces are inescapable.” A few days later, Bajpai would write a note for Patel who sent it to Nehru, who did not even acknowledge it…  Patel passed away five weeks later.

The rest is history.

The Last Days of Tibet

Guard of honour for the Dalai Lama (in the palanquin)
by a detachment of the Maratha Light Infantry (Gyantse, December 1950)

A review of my book Tibet: The Last Months of a Free Nation, India -Tibet Relations 1947-1962, Part 1 appeared in The Hindustan Times.
The review, titled The Last Days of Tibet (Two very different accounts of the end of an era make for fascinating reading), has been written by Thubten Samphel, the Director of the Tibet Policy Institute in Dharamsala.
The reviewer looks also at another book, Tibetan Caravans: Journeys from Leh to Lhasa, Abdul Wahid Radhu, Speaking Tiger publishers.
Incidentally, a few years ago, I wrote a chapter of a book on Abdul Wahid.
It was called The Life and Time of Abdul Wahid Radhu - A case of fusion of cultures
Click here to read...

Here is the link to the review...

Claude Arpi’s book and Abdul Wahid Radhu’s work share a common thread -- both are accounts of the last days of Tibet. While Arpi digs into the archives of the government of India to reconstruct the period, Radhu has witnessed the end of an era.

Arpi’s narrative reveals newly-independent India grappling with a deep diplomatic dilemma. Three years after India gained independence, Tibet lost hers. Indian policy-makers were divided into two camps on how to tackle the situation. The idealists, dominated by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s charismatic first prime minister, felt that accepting the fait accompli of Chinese occupation of Tibet was a small price to pay for a resurgent and united Asia after centuries of Western colonialism. The realists, led by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s deputy prime minister, argued that communist China was not working towards a resurgent, united Asia but towards an Asia dominated by a new China. Beijing’s invasion and occupation of Tibet was the first step towards fulfilling its expansionist goal.
Arpi has comprehensively documented this debate on China’s true intentions. Using the archives at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, he has pieced together India’s contradictory impulses in meeting China’s challenge in Tibet. On the one hand, India had deep sympathy for Tibet based on the ancient bonds of culture and a shared spiritual heritage. On the other, there was the sinking recognition that this sympathy could not be translated into military and political support because the changed geopolitical balance favoured China due to its military presence on the plateau.
Finely researched and passionately told, Claude Arpi’s new offering is the first detailed account of the internal policy debate that raged at the highest level of the new republic on formulating the most effective response to the occupation of Tibet. With the death of Sardar Patel, the idealists won the argument and Tibet’s fate was sealed when India signed the Panchsheel agreement with China, which recognized Tibet as an autonomous part of the People’s Republic.
India’s feeble response to Beijing’s occupation of Tibet was compounded by the mistakes Tibet made. Arpi recounts that instead of seeking cooperation and support from the new Indian republic, the Lhasa government in its first official communication with independent India demanded the return of Tawang. In his interview with Arpi, the Dalai Lama exclaimed in amazement,“What a wonderful government!” at Lhasa’s diplomatic ineptitude and ignorance of obligations imposed by treaties.
The issues that Arpi has explored in his massive book are ones that India will continue to grapple with in the years to come as New Delhi fine-tunes its policy towards China, that reaps the benefits of expanding trade but confronts Beijing’s political and military assertiveness.
If Tibet was isolated diplomatically, its engagement with its neighbours was active, robust and profitable. This was made so by a network of caravan trails that carried goods over vast distances infested by marauding brigands. One of these caravan routes was the one from Leh to Lhasa, a tributary of the ancient Silk Road that connected China with High Asia, Central Asia, and the West. This culture of caravanserai that radiated throughout Asia is wonderfully evoked in Tibetan Caravans, a leisurely travelogue rich in detail and sharp in observation. The travel diary was kept by the late Abdul Wahid Radhu, a cosmopolitan Ladakhi Muslim, a graduate of Aligarh University and who, in the course of his life, travelled to Tibet, China and all over northern India.
Radhu made his first caravan journey to Lhasa in 1942 when World War II engulfed Europe and the civil war in China between the Nationalist Chinese and communists was tilting in favour of Mao’s forces. Those forces would soon be in Tibet, disrupting the Radhu family’s profitable trade and with Abdul Wahid himself being caught up in the last ditch effort to salvage whatever was left of political Tibet.
Radhu begins his diary 76 years ago. “Today, 19 September 1942, the twentieth day of my life as a married man, I left my family, my wife, my aunt and sister. I left for Lhasa to learn the trade of being a merchant, supervised by my Uncle Abdul Aziz, head of the Lopchak caravan.” This was a part of the exchange of trade and courtesies between Leh and Lhasa.
Tibetan Caravans provides for the first time detailed information on the life of the Ladakhi Muslim trading community in Lhasa and the community’s interaction with Tibetans, both high and low, and the writer’s observation of the Tibetan character. Radhu observes, “Tibetans were a well-balanced people with common sense, happy, spontaneous, quick-witted, fun-loving… Certainly, Tibetans also had their faults, the most flagrant being their physical uncleanliness… also superstition, and in the upper classes, a taste for power and intrigue.”
Radhu is a nostalgic witness to the end of two eras: the way of life of the caravaneers and the demise of political Tibet.

Claude Arpi's book exposes India's ties with China and Tibet like never before

My book has been reviewed in Mail Today/DailyO by Utpal Kumar

Titles of the review is Claude Arpi's bookexposes India's ties with China and Tibet like never before

The book brings to fore how Jawaharlal Nehru deliberately kept Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel out of the discussions on Tibet.

Claude Arpi's latest book, Tibet: The Last Months of a Free Nation, is an original, one-of-its-kind account of how India lost the "Roof of the World" not because of the long-held notion of the great Chinese betrayal, but because of the monumental failure of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his ideological allies to see the writing on the wall for more than a decade. It's original because it, unlike other more celebrated books, refuses to look at the events through solely the Western lens. Rather, the author took the pain of going through desi papers to create a narrative that challenges the long-held notions of the event.

The book not just brings out the differences of opinion between Nehru and his deputy PM Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was also the home minister, on how to deal with looming communist shadow over Lhasa. In the last weeks of Patel's life, who passed away on December 15, 1950, Nehru kept him out of the Tibetan issue, citing his deteriorating health.

Nehru's differences with Patel might be a known fact, but the high point of the book is when the author exposes how several senior bureaucrats were not happy with the prime minister's handling of the Tibetan affairs, which led India to lose a peaceful northern border.

Sardar Patel had written a letter to Nehru on November 7, 1950, detailing the implications of Tibet's invasion for India. The author tells us that Patel's "prophetic" letter was actually a draft sent by Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai, eminent civil servant and diplomat. A month after the entry of the Chinese forces in Tibet, Patel sent Bajpai's note under his own signature to Nehru, who chose to ignore it.

Arpi also brings out the frustration of seasoned diplomats such as Bajpai, who had to face the slight of his junior, KM Panikkar, the then Indian ambassador to China. Panikkar ceaselessly defended the Chinese interests to the extent of being detrimental to India's, and being ideologically closer to Nehru he would on several occasions bypass his immediate bosses in the department, including Bajpai. The ambassador not just failed to confirm several intelligence reports suggesting initial Chinese military aggressive moves, but also defended them by writing: "In view of frustration in regard to Formosa, Tibetan move was not unlikely."

No wonder, when things were moving at a rapid pace in communist China, the country was in a denial mode. Nehru, blinded by his ideological obsession and wrong associates like Panikkar and defence minister VK Krishna Menon, even went to the extent of questioning the efficacy of a strong army. This mindset alone explains why, at the time of the Chinese aggression, India's gun factories were believed to be producing coffee.

The book, at another level, is also a reminder of what's wrong with our academia. When Arpi writes, "with this compilation, one can read for the first time, Tibet's tragedy from the Indian viewpoint", it makes one wonder: Why did it take Indian scholars so long to look at such easily available documents in the Nehru Memorial Museum Library and National Archives of India? It definitely wasn't an accidental failure.

Tibet: The Last Months of a Free Nation is a book that should be read by everyone who cares to know where we went wrong in our ties with China and Tibet. But given the stunning silence in the academic circles, it hardly seems to be the case. Maybe it's because we are living in the era of manufactured bestsellers. Manufactured because the bestseller list can now be rigged. One just needs to know the procedure. Remember Lani Sarem, a one-time actress, who hired a company to ensure her 2017 book, Handbook for Mortals, found a place on the New York Times bestseller list? She managed to get one, albeit for a short time. And back home, it's now an old joke in the publishing circle about a noted novelist "managing" a bestseller slot for his first book by buying thousands of its copies.

Arpi's book is definitely not worth a "bestseller" slot, but it rightly deserves an intellectual buzz. Sadly, it's not the case in the country right now.