Recent events related to Chinese revisions of its Kashmir policy, transgressions of the Indian border areas, mutual outcry on the status of Arunachal Pradesh and the reiteration of resolving the boundary dispute during the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to New Delhi in December 2010?all centre around the unresolved issue of the boundary problem between the two countries. As the two nuclear neighbours are rising in comprehensive national strength, despite the current peace and tranquility on the bordering areas, this issue has come to the fore as a stumbling block for cross border trade or even as a potential area of conflict, as both countries continue to raise their respective military strength.
This is a significant issue in the modern era since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia sought to define the sovereign jurisdictions of the modern state in Europe and willy-nilly most states in the international system today have abided by that principle. Both China and India claim to be traditional civilisational states, and yet have spent enormous energies on the boundary issue?including a border clash in 1962 and three decades of border talks.
To discuss this issue, we have scores of Indian and Western scholars who reflected on the historical and legal claims and counter-claims, geo-strategic significance of the frontier areas for national security, ethno-cultural or trade and economic dimensions. Notable among these are Alastair Lamb, Parshotam Mehra, Steve Hoffman, Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, TS Murthy, Karunakar Gupta, John Garver and others.
India-China Boundary Problem, 1846-1947: History and Diplomacy is written by AG Noorani, who had shown abiding interest on the subject. For several reasons, this book is distinct in nature. With the objective of reflecting on the British Indian objectives on the boundary dispute with China and Russia, policy perspectives and considerations on resolving disputes (p.20), Noorani intensively discusses the deliberations among the British Indian officials on the subject. These include the British imperial considerations of security in the far-flung frontier regions, stopping the Russian advances, deliberately encouraging settlement of the Chinese from 1888 in ?no-man?s land? between the Qing, Czarist and British empires (p.146), trade, etc.
Another common theme that Noorani weaves throughout this book is that both British and independent Indian considerations on the border underwent innumerable discussions with two schools emerging on the idea that Indian borders with China in the western sector in Jammu and Kashmir should be fixed with Kunlun or Karakoram mountains, while McMahon Line in the eastern sector predominated. He suggests that despite several reminders from the British Indian side in 1846, 1847,1899, 1905, the Chinese leaders were unable to show clearly where their claim area of the boundary lay. Even today, after, three decades of discussions between Indian and Chinese officials, it is said that the Chinese never have shown their boundary maps. On the other hand, interestingly, Noorani cites evidence to the effect that Xinjiang maps of 1893 exclude Aksai Chin from Chinese control (p.140).
While Noorani (and Neville Maxwell) slam Nehru for the unilateral firming up the traditional customary line across the India-China borders (specifically in the western and middle sectors), it is not clear from their analyses what were the Chinese claims and (military) actions in these regions.
The publication of India-China Boundary Problem, 1846-1947: History and Diplomacy is timely, given the rise in nationalism and aggressive behaviour of China, the Chinese infrastructure projects in northern areas of Kashmir (in hydro-electric, road, and railway construction activities) and tensions between India and China on Arunachal Pradesh (termed since about 2005 in China as ?southern Tibet?).
Despite the above extensive explorations, our understanding on the subject still remains skewed in three respects. One, while the author and others previously had elaborated extensively on the divergent views held by the British or Indian scholars on the subject, the Chinese scholarship still remains unexplored, or worse, one-dimensional in nature.
For instance, while the British Indian archival sources indicate that the frontier regions are ?no man?s land? or that these areas came under the influence of the British or Chinese ?dependencies,? the official rhetoric and scholarship in China unconvincingly suggest that these areas were under the Chinese rule from ?time immemorial.? While in the recent period, Liu Xuecheng, Wang Hongwei, Zhao Weiwen and others explored these subjects, they are still narrow in their perspective with hardly any new light thrown on the subject.
Secondly, despite the best effort by the author to consult documents, most of the ?authentic? archival materials on the subject had been kept away from public scrutiny, both in India, as well as in China.
Thirdly, another major lacuna in our understanding about the boundary and sovereignty issues is that these still remain state and elite centric, while the nature of responses of the local inhabitants are missing. It is not clear from the oeuvre, for instance, what are the perceptions of Ladhakis, Monpas, Mishimis, Lepchas, Bhutias and others who had inhabited these regions for a long time.
?The writer is a professor in Chinese studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University