By Jyoti Malhotra
With the Dalai Lama still living in India, Beijing thought it important to get Vajpayee to accept that the TAR, which China had created in 1965, was a part of China. In exchange for the diplomatic jugglery, India proposed that two Special Representatives would be directed by the political leaderships to come up with solutions to the border issue
As witnesses to history, few know better than the Tibetans about the propensity of the kalachakra or the wheel of time to repeat itself both as tragedy and farce. But as the elephant and the dragon, India and China, faced off for the third time last week to discuss a border issue that has defied solution for the last 42 years, Lhasa’s inhabitants displayed an unusual reticence to talk about New Delhi’s imagined sphere of influence in this part of the world, that goes much beyond their regular reserve.
After all, it all began in this Tibetan city exactly fifty years ago. On April 29, 1954, India and China signed an agreement on “Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India” that basically relinquished the special privileges New Delhi had inherited as a legacy of the British Raj in Tibet. Eight years later, India and China would fight a border war on two fronts. And while it cemented its claims to Aksai Chin in the west, which it needed to keep control over Tibet, Beijing would unilaterally withdraw in the east to the frontiers established by the McMahon Line.
So as National Security Adviser and Special Representative on the border talks JN Dixit and his counterpart, Chinese vice-minister Dai Bingguo met on July 26-27, they went over all the issues that make up the border problem, including a shared history of mistrust and often, deliberate misunderstanding. Comrade Dai pointed out that China had resolved its other border disputes with all its other neighbours, including the decades-old issue with Russia, in the light of Deng Xiaoping’s maxim of the “peaceful development”. He exhorted Dixit to persuade New Delhi to do the same, “give or take” a few minor adjustments.
This was the third time in the last 44 years that India and China were discussing a “swap deal”, in which Beijing offered to abandon its claim to the “southern slope” in the eastern sector and recognise Indian sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh — about 90,000 square kilometres that China claims, including the sensitive border district of Tawang. In return, highly placed sources said, India would abandon its own “claims” on the Aksai Chin and recognise Chinese sovereignty on the area.
Certainly, as China pulls 25 million people up from beneath the poverty line, as its per capita income crosses $1,000, its bilateral trade with the US touches the $100 billion mark — even if the conservative Foreign Affairs magazine implies in its latest issue that the figures are mythmaking of a high order — it must be time for India to look beyond the sore in the tiny toe and think of new and creative ways to get on with the bilateral relationship.
The delicious irony, of course, is that India’s Congress governments have had the largest experience in dealing with the Chinese. It was Jawaharlal Nehru who, believing that India must support a “brotherly” nation, formally accepted that Tibet was a part of China in 1954. He called it the Panchsheel agreement, but the Chinese would never use the Sanskrit word, preferring instead the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. In return, Nehru thought he got from the Chinese the promise, albeit unwritten, to retain a real autonomy for Tibet, that had forever been a “buffer zone” between New Delhi and Beijing.
But as the bilateral relationship deteriorated and the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa in 1959, Nehru, in deference to public opinion, allowed him to stay on in India. One year later as Zhou en-Lai arrived in Delhi, in the middle of the Great Leap Forward gone disastrously awry, to offer an East-West swap, Nehru argued that there had never been a serious dispute about Arunachal Pradesh, so why should New Delhi make concessions in Aksai Chin, which had anyway always belonged to India.
Proposing a “reciprocal acceptance of present realities in both sectors”, Zhou told journalists in 1960 that “there exists a relatively bigger dispute” on Aksai Chin, implying that China did not contest New Delhi’s position in the east. Both sides would compromise and neither would have to undertake major withdrawals. Zhou said he had asked India to adopt toward the western sector an attitude similar to China’s attitude in the eastern sector.
The second offer was made in 1980 when Deng Xiaoping told an Indian journalist that the border could be part of a package deal. Deng said China would recognise the “illegal” McMahon line in the east if India agreed to status quo in the west. Two days later, Xinhua, the government-owned news agency pointed out that since the development of “friendly relations” was the top priority between China and India, the key boundary question, could be resolved through “mutual understanding and concessions” in the light of Deng’s statement that both sides should “respect the present state of the border”.
Rumour has it that the Chinese proposed a third swap when Rajiv Gandhi went to Beijing in December 1988, but the Indian side rejected the proposal because of the same reasons Nehru had given in 1960. And so when BJP prime minister AB Vajpayee would make his own visit to Beijing in the summer of 2003, to finally concede that the “Tibetan Autonomous Region” was a part of the PRC, analysts argued that New Delhi had signed away the “final Tibet card” with an eye to resolving the border dispute.
With the Dalai Lama still living in India, Beijing thought it important to get Vajpayee to accept that the TAR, which China had created in 1965, was a part of China. In exchange for the diplomatic jugglery, India proposed that two Special Representatives would be directed by the political leaderships to come up with solutions to the border issue. New Delhi is also said to have received the unwritten promise that China would seriously discuss the matter “at the highest level”.
But the analysts also point to a serious disadvantage: just as in 1954, Nehru signed away its special Tibet privileges in exchange for imagined autonomy in that region, in 2003 the TAR “concession” was given before talks on the border issue could even begin. That concession would only be worthwhile, they said, if China now promised to negotiate fairly on the border.
Back in Lhasa, China’s Tibetans know they were dealt out of the Sino-Indian card game a long time ago. But as the final countdown begins, it’s as if the kalachakra, the wheel of time, has come full circle.
Jyoti Malhotra is a Senior Editor at the ‘Indian Express’ newspaper in New Delhi. She wrote this article for Daily Times
