The Demarcation of Indo Tibetan Border ….Afresh
By Colonel Awadhesh Kumar
China claims almost the entire Arunachal Pradesh. They protested when Arunachal was granted statehood and have not recognised it as a part of India till date. It did the same with Sikkim.
Nowadays they throw tantrums whenever any Indian top dignitaries visits these States. China does regularly issue diplomatic complaints when officials from New Delhi travel to Arunachal Pradesh – be they Pranab Mukherjee, Narendra Modi or Dalai Lama.
It unilaterally renamed six places in Arunachal Pradesh in 2017 in an apparent retaliation against the Dalai Lama’s visit to India’s easternmost state, with an irredentist intent of reaffirming Beijing’s “territorial sovereignty” to the region.
Now India must chalk out a plan if China keeps this attitude and its wide territorial claims and refuses to budge from any part of the occupied territories and evince little interest in an early settlement of territorial issues.
Apart from lodging immediate protest by summoning their Ambassador, we need to ensure that President/Vice President/PM must visit these two states once in 4 months. Also His Holiness The Dalai Lama must be invited to these two states once in a quarter as State Guest.
Also some Union Minister must visit these states every month. The Union Government must also redouble its effort on infrastructure development along the border with Tibet (the McMahon Line). Rail, road, airfields and advance landing grounds should be constructed for ending the isolation of the region.
Military infrastructure too should be up graded by creation of Eastern Front comprising existing Eastern Air Command, East Central Command and North Eastern Command (after bifurcating existing Eastern Command) and Eastern Naval Area( West Bengal).
The Indo-Tibetan frontier was mapped and the line drawn by Captain Henry McMahon of the Indian Army, starting in 1893, following which the border was known as the McMahon line, a demarcation of which China had almost always remained disdainful.
Now if China fancies some maps, assigning to itself territories owned by other nations, we reserve our fair share of being disdainful.
Perhaps, a lasting peace calls for a permanent solution. India too should substitute all references to Indo China border by use of Indo Tibetan border …..we have never shared any borders with China till they forcibly captured and occupied Tibet.
Similarly Xinjiang Province should always be shown as a separate entity in all Indian maps and never as part of China. Taiwan of course is a separate country as far as India is concerned. All publications of any type entering India must also show these as ruled by India or no custom clearance should be given.
This is the only way to respond to the news that customs officials in China have destroyed 30,000 world maps printed in the country for not mentioning Arunachal Pradesh and Taiwan as part of its territory, should not surprise anyone.
With no immediate roadmap towards the settlement of Indian Tibetan border dispute in sight, there is reason to expect that China would, off and on up the ante, by laying claim to Arunachal Pradesh now or a fingertip in Sikkim next.
Earlier, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a map depicting Doklam as part of China. The standard Chinese tactic of assigning their own names to places and then claiming historic association with them, is also old hat.
China occupied the Aksai Chin plateau in the 1950s and completed a road through it in 1957 when India was caught napping (in fact India claimed some 180 km of the 1,200 km-long road, when they found out about the road by reading Peking newspapers of this “remarkable” piece of engineering). From 1958, Chinese maps started showing large parts of Bhutanese territory as part of China as well.
Chinese authorities unveiled a ‘new’ map showing the totality of Beijing’s territorial claims in 2014 too, taking into account Taiwan (which Beijing considers a renegade province), the Spratlys and Paracels, the two main archipelagos of the South China Sea, contested by Vietnam, the Philippines and a number of other Southeast Asian nations, and a 10-dash line (as opposed to China’s earlier nine-dash line) encircling most of the South China Sea, not to speak of its old claim over the Arunachal Pradesh.
China started the territorial game way before and it’s time that India wakes up to join the ping pong game with Indian PITTO game moves …..should not the Indo Tibetan border be settled between the Government of India and the Tibetan Government in Exile? !!
