The US wanted to assist Tibetan resistance movements through supplies of weapons, but could not do so because Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru refused to permit such items from being transported through India.

It was believed by Nehru that the blank cheque he handed over to Chairman Mao on Tibet in 1950 would be repaid by the latter’s formal acceptance of the McMahon Line as the frontier between India and China.

Amazingly, the entry of the PLA into Aksai Chin was not even mentioned by the Indian side but neither was the implicit offer of Premier Zhou accepted that Aksai Chin would remain with the PRC but the line in the rest of the frontier would become the agreed boundary.

The Korean War offered an opportunity to the US to open a second front in Tibet, but India rejected any such plans, and during the Korean war took a line that favoured the USSR, PRC and North Korea over the US and South Korea.

As the Government of India was making more than its expected share of concessions to Beijing without any sweetener in exchange, it was no surprise that the Chinese Communist Party leadership did not see any reason to make any concessions to India, a stance that has continued.

The manner in which substantive concession upon concession was handed out by Nehru to other countries was continued by his successors, usually for nothing more tangible than a few flattering words.

Z.A. Bhutto won the peace in Shimla soon after the 1971 war while armed with nothing more than generous whiffs of his favourite perfume, Shalimar.

Jawaharlal Nehru believed in championing the PRC’s case on Tibet and in the United Nations and later, taking the side of China in the Korean war and in much else, a stance continued with little change until recently.

An example of the manner in which relations with an important partner may be affected by deals with another is the purchase of S-400 systems by India.

In the 1950s, Nehru saw the PRC as a country that would never go to battle with India, and the USSR as being the guarantor of adherence to such non-violence, rather than as the facilitator of the PLA, which was the actual situation.

In Nehru’s view, a grateful Beijing would agree to the border settlement suggested by the PM and in any event, would not precipitate a war with India. Neither of these forecasts were accurate. As a consequence of the line favoured by Nehru, Indian Army faced the PLA alone in 1962

There is no way to secure the Indo-Pacific except through a partnership between the US and India, that should be made explicit through an Indo-Pacific Charter.

#IndoPacificCharter #FreeandOpenIndoPacific

Should India repeat history and choose to opt out of evolving alliance systems focused on the Sino-Russian alliance, General Secretary Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V Putin will have cause to celebrate.

Full article: https://i.mdnalapat.com/tsg030121