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    History, The Stand-Off, and Policy Worth Rereading

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    Sunny Sahay
    1) In the 1950s, India began implementing a three-pronged foreign policy in response to China's view of Tibet and its surrounding regions as the "five fingers" that should be under Chinese control. 2) The policy included building border infrastructure and governance, signing treaties with neighboring countries to consolidate relations, and ensuring support for the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees fleeing China. 3) Over time, some of these agreements with neighbors like Nepal have become outdated and require renegotiation to maintain strong relationships. India's recent changes to Jammu and Kashmir's status have also impacted its relations with China and neighbors.

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    History, The Stand-Off, and Policy Worth Rereading

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    Sunny Sahay
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    1) In the 1950s, India began implementing a three-pronged foreign policy in response to China's view of Tibet and its surrounding regions as the "five fingers" that should be under Chinese control. 2) The policy included building border infrastructure and governance, signing treaties with neighboring countries to consolidate relations, and ensuring support for the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees fleeing China. 3) Over time, some of these agreements with neighbors like Nepal have become outdated and require renegotiation to maintain strong relationships. India's recent changes to Jammu and Kashmir's status have also impacted its relations with China and neighbors.

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    1) In the 1950s, India began implementing a three-pronged foreign policy in response to China's view of Tibet and its surrounding regions as the "five fingers" that should be under Chinese control. 2) The policy included building border infrastructure and governance, signing treaties with neighboring countries to consolidate relations, and ensuring support for the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees fleeing China. 3) Over time, some of these agreements with neighbors like Nepal have become outdated and require renegotiation to maintain strong relationships. India's recent changes to Jammu and Kashmir's status have also impacted its relations with China and neighbors.

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    16 views1 page

    History, The Stand-Off, and Policy Worth Rereading

    Uploaded by

    Sunny Sahay
    1) In the 1950s, India began implementing a three-pronged foreign policy in response to China's view of Tibet and its surrounding regions as the "five fingers" that should be under Chinese control. 2) The policy included building border infrastructure and governance, signing treaties with neighboring countries to consolidate relations, and ensuring support for the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees fleeing China. 3) Over time, some of these agreements with neighbors like Nepal have become outdated and require renegotiation to maintain strong relationships. India's recent changes to Jammu and Kashmir's status have also impacted its relations with China and neighbors.

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    History, the stand-off, and policy worth

    rereading
    Even as India grapples with its next steps at the LAC, it
    must not lose sight of renewing its compact with the ‘five
    fingers’
    The deadly clashes at Galwan and the ongoing stand-off between India and
    China on the ridges or “fingers” around the Pangong Tso are a metaphor for the
    wider conflict between the two countries over all the areas that Chinese strategy
    refers to as the “five fingers of the Tibetan palm”. According to the construct,
    attributed to Mao and cited in the 1950s by Chinese officials, Xizang (Tibet) was
    China’s right palm, and it was its responsibility to “liberate” the fingers, defined
    as Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA, or
    Arunachal Pradesh). Sixty years ago, India began to set about ensuring that
    quite the reverse ensued, and all five fingers were more closely attached to
    India, not China. As the government of India grapples with its next steps at the
    Line of Actual Control (LAC), it must cast a similarly grand strategy, to renew its
    compact with each of those areas today.

    India’s countermove

    In the 1950s, even after India and China signed the Panchsheel agreement in
    1954 and before the 1962 China-India war, the Nehru government had begun to
    worry about some of China’s proclamations. Especially after the flight of the
    Dalai Lama to India in 1959, China began to demand “self-determination in
    Kashmir”, wrote former Foreign Secretary T.N. Kaul in his memoirs, detailing how
    the Chinese press and radio launched a propaganda war against India, while the
    Chinese government allowed Naga and Mizo dissidents into China for refuge
    and training. More importantly, school textbooks there began to depict the “five
    fingers” as a part of China, wrote Mr. Kaul, who was posted in Peking (Beijing)
    and then as Joint Secretary (East) overseeing the China relationship, in the
    1950s. While Prime Minister Nehru’s military miscalculations and India’s defeat
    in the 1962 war have been studied in great detail, what is perhaps not so well
    understood is the three-pronged foreign policy New Delhi set into motion at the
    time, that provided an effective counter to Mao’s five finger policy over the
    course of the century.

    Managing the borders

    The first was a push for building border infrastructure and governance. In the
    mid-1950s the government piloted a project to build the Indian Frontier
    Administrative Services (IFAS) for overseeing NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) and
    other areas along the India-China frontier. The Foreign secretary was the Chair
    of the IFAS selection board, and many who enlisted in the cadre overlapped
    between the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Administrative Service and the
    Indian Police Service, and rotated between postings in the most remote tribal
    areas and embassies in the region.

    A special desk was created in the Ministry of External Affairs for officers who
    would tour all the regions from NEFA to Ladakh in order to make suggestions for
    the rapid development of these areas. While India’s border infrastructure is only
    now catching up with the infrastructure China built in the course of the next few
    decades, its base was made during the brief period the IFAS existed, before it
    was wound up in 1968. An idea before its time, the IFAS’s role has since been
    transferred to the Indian Army and the Border Roads Organisation, but it is an
    idea worth revisiting, especially as areas along the frontier continue to complain
    of neglect and a lack of focus from the Centre (in 2019, the Chief Ministers of
    Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram called for the resurrection of the IFAS).

    Outreach and treaties

    The second prong were a series of treaties that were signed around that time
    with neighbours such as Nepal and Bhutan, and the consolidation of control,
    militarily and administratively, of other territories that acceded to India, including
    Ladakh as a part of Jammu and Kashmir (1947), and NEFA (1951). In 1950, India
    signed a treaty with Sikkim that made it a “protectorate”, and by 1975 the Indira
    Gandhi Government had annexed Sikkim and made it the 22nd State of India.

    Each of these treaties built unique relationships with New Delhi, tying countries
    such as Nepal and Bhutan in ways that were seen as a “win-win” for both sides
    at the time. However, over time, the treaties have outlived their utility, and the
    benefits of unique ties with Nepal and Bhutan, including open borders and ease
    of movement, jobs and education for their youth as well as India’s influential
    support on the world stage, have waned in public memory.

    One of the reasons that China has been able to make inroads into Nepal and not
    with Bhutan, is that the government renegotiated its 1949 Treaty of Perpetual
    Peace and Friendship between the Government of India and the Government of
    Bhutan of 1949 with the India-Bhutan Friendship Treaty in 2007, dropping an
    article that had committed Bhutan “to beguided” by India on its external affairs
    policy. This has held India and Bhutan ties in good stead thus far, even during
    the Doklam stand-off between India and China in 2017 in the face of severe
    pressure from China.

    However, despite years of requests from Kathmandu, New Delhi has dragged its
    feet on reviewing its 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the
    Government of India and the Government of Nepal, and on accepting a report
    the Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) on Nepal-India relations has produced that
    recommends a new treaty. New treaties may not, in themselves reduce India’s
    security threat from China in its neighbourhood, but they create space for a
    more mutually responsive diplomacy that is necessary to nurture special
    relationships.

    The Tibet issue

    For the third prong, India’s policy towards the “palm” or Tibet, itself should be
    looked at more closely as well. While New Delhi’s decision to shelter the Dalai
    Lama and lakhs of his followers since 1959 is a policy that is lauded, it does not
    change the need for New Delhi to look into the future of its relationship, both
    with the Tibetan refugee community in India, which has lived here in limbo for
    decades, as well as with its future leadership.

    At present, the Dalai Lama has the loyalty of Tibetans worldwide, but in the
    future, the question over who will take up the political leadership of the
    community looms large. The Karmapa Lama, who lived in India after his flight
    from China in 2000, and was groomed as a possible political successor, has now
    taken the citizenship of another country and lives mostly in the United States.
    Meanwhile, China will without doubt try to force its own choice on the
    community as well. Given that it is home to so many Tibetans, India must chart a
    more prominent role in this discourse.

    On J&K

    Finally, it is necessary to introspect on how India’s own reorganisation of Jammu


    and Kashmir in August 2019 has changed the security matrix and threat
    parameters for India, and its neighbours. While Pakistan’s extreme reaction to
    the move was expected, China’s reaction was perhaps not studied enough.

    Beijing issued a statement decrying the impact on Jammu and Kashmir, and
    another one specifically on Ladakh, calling it an attempt to “undermine China’s
    territorial sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law” and warning
    that the move was “unacceptable and will not come into force”.

    Home Minister Amit Shah’s vow in Parliament, in August last year, to take back
    Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Aksai Chin was not taken lightly either, as
    China’s stakes in PoK now go beyond its historical closeness with Pakistan, to its
    investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that runs through it. The
    impact of the new map of Jammu and Kashmir on ties with Nepal as well, is no
    coincidence. There is proof enough that now more than ever, as the government
    readies its hand on dealing with China, it must not lose sight of every finger in
    play.

    suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in

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