An Expert Explains: Missed chances on India-China border | Explained News,The Indian Express
The boundary dispute that led to the 1962 war with China remains unresolved 60 years on. Nehru made a series of mistakes that governments after him continued to repeat. A historian of India-China relations takes stock.
But relations with China, whether on the borders or in the political sphere, had long been a cause for concern, Nehru’s benign view notwithstanding. As would be seen, there were infirmities in India’s boundary with China, both in the east and the west.
Back in 1950, Nehru had declared in Parliament that in the east, “McMahon Line was our border, map or no map”. In the west, the border in Aksai Chin was marked “undefined” in the Survey of India maps that India inherited on Independence — but Nehru said it was known by custom and usage.
On March 13, 1949, with the civil war in China at its peak, India had rejected a suggestion to demarcate the Aksai Chin border: “In the present disturbed conditions, it is not possible to demarcate undefined frontier between Kashmir and Sinking (Xinjiang).”
Subsequently in 1954, the border along Aksai Chin was defined by Nehru’s fiat, dispensing with the mandatory requirement of consulting the other stakeholder, China. The new, unilaterally defined boundary included Aksai Chin within India; however, no effort was made to occupy it or to even plant the Indian flag there as a mark of sovereignty.
India remained unaware that this area was already in use by China. It came to know that the Chinese had built a 220-km-long road there only after the completion of the project was announced in 1957.
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