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.

Book Release - Will Tibet ever find her soul again?

My book Will Tibet ever find her soul again? - India Tibet Relations 1947-1962 (Part 2) was released at the United Service Institution of India by Ambassador KS Bajpai, former ambassador to Pakistan, China and the US on September 6.
Interesting discussions on the meaning of the title followed the release.
 
Here are a few concluding remarks which form the postcript of this volume

As at the end of Volume I of The Relations between Tibet and India between 1947 and 1962, it is important to draw some lessons from the happenings of the years 1951-54 leading to the signature of the “Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India”. The accord was signed on April 29, 1954 in Beijing by the Indian Ambassador N. Raghavan and Zhang Hanfu, the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister. It is often referred to as the Panchsheel Agreement.

Period 1951-1954
This period was marked by a general deterioration of the situation in Central Tibet and the slow take-over of the institutions by the People’s Liberation Army and the representatives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India. It seemed ineluctable after the signature of the 17-Point Agreement between China and Tibet in May 1951 and Delhi’s surrender of India’s interests in Tibet for the sake of a mythic ‘eternal’ friendship with China.
Soon after the arrival of the Chinese troops in Lhasa, the Head of the Indian Mission realized that Tibet would never been the same. Sumul Sinha’s encounter with General Zhang Jingwu, the Central Committee’s representative, was instructive in this regard.
Also edifying was the case of the Indian PoWs; it would take months of negotiations for Phuntso and his colleagues to be freed. These youngsters from the Himalayan region were accused of trying to obstruct the ‘Liberation of Tibet’; they had been employed by Robert Ford, a British working as a radio operator for the Tibetan Government. Retrospectively, their illegal detention of the young assistants is shocking.
‘Will Tibet ever find her soul again?’ once asked SM Krishnatry in one of his reports from Gyantse, where he served as Indian Trade Agent.
The Tibetans were at a loss, should they collaborate with the Communists or revolt against the Chinese occupation? Interestingly, it was the poorer sections of the society which would start to rebel, while the high clergy and the aristocracy were not unhappy with the Chinese largesse.
In Lhasa, Gyantse or Shigatse, many Tibetans happily collaborated with Chinese; they could not grasp the implications of their ‘liberation’ for the future of the Tibetan nation.
The tide continued to turn against the Tibetans during the following years; the Indian representatives in Tibet could do little to change this course of events; this was the time when Delhi was more and more enamoured with Communist China.
One of the strangest episodes of the period under study is the ‘feeding of the PLA’ by the Indian government, who allowed large quantities of rice to transit via its territory for more than two years.
What lessons could be learnt from the episode?
It is better not to feed the army of a potential enemy, especially when this army is busy constructing road to your borders. The cost of strengthening the PLA’s presence on the plateau would soon be obvious.
While the Chinese were pushing their administration in Western and Southern Tibet, the Indian government was slowly advancing towards the McMahon line; the administration of Tawang was in good hands, thanks to Maj Bob Khathing, though the difficulties were immense.
In the early 1950s, two most tragic events took place: the closure by force of the Indian Consulate General in Kashgar, which was followed by the downgrading of the Lhasa Mission into a Consulate General. This would have long-term implications which can be seen even today, seventy years later. India no longer has a representation in Tibet and Xinjiang, two places which have traded with Northern India for centuries. In the present days, the reopening of any Silk Road has no meaning if these regions are unable to have contacts with India. India may have to take a stand on the issue one day, if it wants in participate of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sponsored by Chinese. Without these traditional outposts, how could India play a meaningful role in the region?
While these momentous events were taking place on India’s borders, the military consolidation on the Tibetan plateau continued at a fast pace.
What is most surprising is the fact that India was very much aware of the details, but the political leadership read China’s intention totally wrong.
The lesson is that an ideological stand can hamper a proper geostrategic vision of a situation, and ultimately have disastrous consequences for the nation. Accurate information was there, it was just that the leadership decided to close their eyes.
While the Indian administration continued to advance in the NEFA, India had also a presence in Western Tibet with Minsar, the Indian Village traditionally part of the J&K State, next to Mount Kailash.
This would soon be forgotten in view of the nascent friendship with the Communist regime, but the legal facts remain the same, even 65 years later, Minsar is part of the Indian territory, even though it is difficult to enforce the possession of the village today (or in the 1950s).
One of the most fascinating and lesser known aspects of the relations between Tibet and India were the age-old contacts with Western Tibet and the role of the Indian Trade Agency in Gartok. The diary of Lakshman Singh Jangpangi, who for years represented the Indian government in these desolate areas, makes fascinating reading. As a result of the rapid decrease of the trade in Western Tibet, the Himalayan regions slowly lost their main sources of revenue, which translates even today in the quick migration out of the border villages.
Over these first years of occupation of the plateau, one can see the situation slowly changing with the Chinese getting bolder and establishing themselves by force, imposing their law on the local Tibetan officials as well as the Indian representatives. The pilgrims to Mt Kailash and the traders from the Himalayan region and Ladakh started to face more and more harassment.
Delhi seemed to close their eyes on the tragedy happening in the high Himalaya, as more important ‘world’ issues had probably to be tackled.
A bunch of notes from the CIA on the infrastructure development in Tibet, as well as the Indian views on the Chinese military deployment, give frightening insight on the Chinese intentions in Tibet and Xinjiang. It was the time when the Aksai Chin road linking the two ‘liberated’ provinces started being built.
In Delhi, very few officers had the courage to call a spade, a spade. Sumul Sinha, who had previously been posted as the Head of the Indian Mission in Lhasa, was one of them. Now serving in the North-East Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, he dare to mention in a note, ‘the Chinese threats on the NEFA’. He would be blasted by a Prime Minister, who still relied on KM Panikkar, now Indian Ambassador in Cairo, to advise him about India’s China policy. Volume I has amply covered this subject.
While the situation in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet continued to deteriorate, the strengthening the Indian borders was imperative. For the purpose, an Indian Frontier Administrative Service was created and several ex-Army officers were recruited. This is one of the positive outcomes of the exacerbated tensions on the borders. These remarkable officers performed miracles on the frontiers.
Finally, at the end of 1953, negotiations started for a new Agreement with Tibet. The consequences of China’s occupation of Tibet, were to be settled in a couple of weeks; it would take four months to arrive at a settlement …but forgetting the border in the process (Zhou Enlai had said on the first day that only issues ‘ripe for settlement’ would be solved, but nobody understood what he meant). Slowly over the weeks and months, India would give away all its rights in Tibet, getting nothing in return.
The main lesson of this volume is perhaps the narrative of the negotiations themselves, which should become a text book: how negotiations should not be conducted with China.
Further, the fact that the Prime Minister wanted ‘quick results’ did not help. The Chinese negotiators extracted concessions one after another; in many cases, it was plain surrender from the Indian diplomats.
At the end of the ‘talks’, Delhi discovered that the main Indian official dealing with the Chinese, a married man, wanted to marry his Chinese girl friend; he would have to be replaced by the Indian ambassador.
It was a tragic moment of the Indian diplomacy, which has never been acknowledged by the Indian side.
The Volume ends by the terrible floods in Gyantse, which washed away the Indian Trade Agency and killed the Trade Agent and the new Officer Commanding the military Escort. It was a sign that the days of the Indian presence in Tibet were counted.
China would never allow the Agency to be rebuilt despite the Agreement.
The main lesson remains the unnecessary surrender of Indian rights in Tibet.

Will Tibet ever find her soul again?

The second volume of  my quadrilogy on India Tibet Relations (1947-1962) was released on Septeber 6 by Amb KS Bajpai at the United Service Institution of India.

The title is Will Tibet ever find her soul again?

Click here to order...

I post here the Introduction

The first volume of the India Tibet Relations (1947-1962) left us soon after the signature of 17-Point Agreement in May 1951. The Tibetan delegates had no alternative but to accept that the “the Tibetan people shall return to the family of the Motherland of the People's Republic of China” and “drive out imperialist aggressive forces from Tibet.” (Article I)
Ngabo Ngawang Jigme and his colleagues further agreed that “The local government of Tibet shall actively assist the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to enter Tibet and consolidate the national defenses.” (Article II)
One can ask: who was this defence consolidation against?
Very few realized then that it could only be against India, as the Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai honeymoon between Delhi and Beijing had just started; over the next months and years, the Indian officials posted on the Roof of the World would discover the true objectives of the Communists. But during the first months, nobody in Delhi or the Embassy in Beijing was ready to listen to them.
This volume shall go in depth into the slow break-down and deterioration of the age-old Indo-Tibet relations, gradually being replaced by a cruder relation with the new occupiers of Tibet.
India’s friendly relationship with its Buddhist neighbour was progressively terminated by the presence of the PLA on the plateau. During the period covered by this volume, very few Tibetans had the courage to fight the ineluctable; most Tibetans, whether from the aristocracy or the clergy, collaborated with the occupying forces. This period however saw the birth of a national conscience and a ‘people’s movement’, which unfortunately never got Delhi’s support.
“Will Tibet ever find her soul again” wrote the Indian Trade Agent (ITA) in Gyantse, at that time.
After looking at the situation in Tibet during the first months after the signature of the 17-Point Agreement, we shall witness the arrival of the Chinese troops in Lhasa, preceded by General Zhang Jingwu, the representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCP).
Most of the documents used in this volume come from the JN Collection (also known as the Nehru Papers), held in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi as well as from the National Archives of India. It is the first time that such documents have been used (or even seen). The arrival of Gen Zhang and his first encounter with Sumul Sinha, the head of the Indian Mission in Lhasa, are described in detail. It makes fascinating reading. The happenings of the coming years could already be perceived in this first ‘polite’ meeting.
Another issue which has never been narrated earlier is the fate of the four Indian prisoners of war during the so-called Liberation War, i.e. the invasion of Tibet in the summer of 1950. After several months of hard negotiations, the young Indian radio operators would finally be freed. The Indian diplomacy did a good job in this case.
During the first year of occupation, a report of the Indian Trade Agent in Gyantse vividly described the changing trends in the power balance on the plateau.
The Indian officials, who for decades dealt directly with the Tibetan authorities, had now to pass through the Chinese PLA officers.
The most grotesque incident of this period was the feeding the PLA’s troops with rice coming through India. Without Delhi’s active support, the Chinese troops would not have been able to survive in Tibet. Cables, telegrams and despatches between Lhasa, Yatung, Gangtok, Delhi and Beijing shall enlighten us on this never-heard-before episode.
It will be necessary to move for a moment to Tawang and look at the situation after the arrival of Maj Bob Khathing, who smoothly managed the takeover of the administration and began to protect the local Monpa population against the rapacious Tibetan tax collectors’ exactions.
We shall also go through the advance of the Indian Administration in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). As a consequence of the report(s) of the North and Northeastern Border Committee, led by Maj Gen Himmatsinghji, the Deputy Defence Minister, Delhi had decided to provide basic amenities and a proper administration to the tribal population living south of the McMahon Line in NEFA’s five Frontier Divisions. The difficulties of the first years are highlighted through various historical documents.
When one looks at the fate of the Tibetan nation, the closure of the Indian Mission in Lhasa and its renaming as Consulate General working under the Indian Embassy in Beijing, it is another tragedy never recorded in India’s history books. Delhi accepted meekly, without even informing the Parliament that India ‘officially’ had a new neighbour.
This was preceded by the de facto closure of the Indian Consulate in Kashgar, in Southern Xinjiang in 1950, which implied that the customary trade between Kashmir and Central Asia, via Ladakh and Xinjiang came to an end. The famous old Silk Road was dead. The closure of the Consulate has also been recorded for the first time.
Another fascinating aspect rarely studied is the trade with the Himalayan States of Tehri-Garwal, Himachal Pradesh as well as Ladakh through the seasonal Indian Trade Agency in Gartok, one of the three agencies functioning under the office of the Political Officer (PO) in Sikkim. The trade with Tibet in the Western Himalaya, is looked at through the eyes of Lakshman Singh Jangpangi, the ITA in Western Tibet. The flourishing business in Yatung located at the gate of Sikkim in the Chumbi Valley, is also documented.
We shall come back for a moment to NEFA to see the quick developments on Tibet’s borders. Incidentally during the period under study, China never claimed Tawang or the entire NEFA as theirs; today, Beijing terms the whole area ‘Southern Tibet’.
As for the first volume, our main difficulty has been that the Ministry of External Affairs has stubbornly (and illegally – the Public Records Rules stipulates that documents should be declassified after 25 years) refused to declassify the historical records held in South Block. As a result, some aspects might be missing in this study. As mentioned in Volume 1, it is certainly not in India’s interests.
Regarding the strategic roads built by the PLA, particularly the one started through the Aksai Chin in Ladakh, we used fascinating recently-released CIA documents to reconstitute the military set up on the plateau before 1954.
An Indian document also gives us an idea of the Chinese troops deployment in the early years of the Chinese occupation.
An interesting element, on which most Indian politicians of the time agreed, was the development of the border areas as a way to counter Chinese advances (and propaganda). It was what the Himmatsinghji Committee had suggested in 1951. The Indian Frontier Administrative Service played a crucial role in this context; the remarkable service, with outstanding officers, more or less at par then with the Indian Administrative Service, greatly helped consolidate the Indian borders in the North-East in the early 1950s.
One of the saddest aspects highlighted in this study is the Prime Minister’s (and some of his ‘advisors’) lack of understanding of the ‘Chinese Threat’ in the early fifties. Sumul Sinha, who served in Lhasa during two years (1950-52), tried to point out this danger when posted in the NEFA division of the Ministry. He was severely reprimanded by the Prime Minister. Thereafter, he was a dejected officer, though some ten years later, his reports appeared to have been prophetic.
After looking at the deteriorating situation in Lhasa before the beginning of the Tibet Talks in Beijing (which started on December 31, 1953), we shall go in great detail into the so-called negotiations during which India lost all the rights and advantages it had in Tibet since the beginning of the 20th century.
Three chapters are consecrated to the Tibet Talks, in which Tibet never participated (was not even informed), ending after four months with the signature of the Panchsheel Agreement.
These chapters go into the ‘framework’ of the Negotiations, the first and second months of the talks and finally the disastrous outcome of the Agreement.
We have tried to go deeper into this event which occurred exactly 50 years after the British military operation in Tibet: the signing of this bi-lateral accord between India and China redefined India’s age-old trade relations with Tibet; the Tibetans themselves were excluded from the negotiations and the benefits of the Agreement.
In many ways it marked the tail end of the events set into motion by the entry of Francis Younghusband in Tibet. While the British expedition indicated recognition of Tibet as a separate entity, the signing of the Agreement put an end to Tibet as an independent nation. The circle was closed, with incalculable consequences for the Himalayan region and India. The other misfortune is that the Agreement would be remembered not for its content, which triggered the slow destruction of a 2,000 year-old ‘way of life’, but for its preamble (the Five Principles) which was supposed to govern the relations between India and China.
Prime Minister Nehru based India’s relation with China, on his Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai policy, but the idealistic Principles would never be followed either in letter or in spirit, by Communist China.
It took a few more years and many persistent Chinese intrusions on Indian soil to sensitize the Indian government and public to the gravity of the situation.
For several years, Nehru naively believed his Chinese counterpart when Zhou Enlai told him that the world would be changed “when Panchsheel would shine over the universe like a sun”.
This volume ends with the devastating floods in Gyantse in July 1954; the building of the Indian Agency would be washed away and several Indian officials, including the ITA and the Officer Commanding-designate (OC) of the military escort, would lose their lives.
A tragic and symbolically ominous end to a depressing period of turbulent changes.