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Foundation of India–China Relations
The Fractured Himalaya: India • Tibet • China 1949–1962 by Nirupama Rao, New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2021; pp 640, `999.
Nehru, Tibet and China by A S Bhasin, New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2021; pp 368, `399.
Contested Lands: India, China and the Boundary Dispute by Maroof Raza, Westland
Non-fiction, 2021; pp 208, `699.
The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India by Vijay Gokhale, Vintage Books, 2021; pp 200, `699.
Forgotten Kashmir: The Other Side of the Line of Control by Dinkar P Srivastava, HarperCollins, 2021; pp 304, `699.
The Government of India’s (GoI) stated foreign policy is that bilateral relations with China depend on the resolution of the eastern boundary of Ladakh. Around $76 billion of arms purchases by India in 2020–21 and increasing tensions between China and the United States (US) over Taiwan give urgency to both to push the ongoing diplomatic efforts, thus raising the question, why has it remained unresolved over the past 70 years?
The peculiar case of the eastern boundary of Ladakh is a unique problem about partitioning a territory over which no one ever exercised control and became a border dispute because of the way it was framed with unilateral lines drawn on maps, and really a problem left over from colonialism and the Cold War politics. The release of the Himmatsinhji Committee report on Ladakh, of September 1951, could be a significant step in building public opinion, as it is perhaps the only official strategic position paper on the eastern boundary of Ladakh.
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