Page 245 - Failure to Triumph - Journey of A Student

there is evidence to suggest that Nehru did not trust the Chinese at all. Therefore, in unison with
diplomacy, Nehru sought to initiate a more direct dialogue between the peoples of China and India in
various ways, including culture and literature. Around that time, the famous Indian artist (painter)
Beohar Rammanohar Sinha from Visva-Bharati Santiniketan, who had earlier decorated the pages of

the original Constitution of India, was sent to China in 1957 on a Government of India fellowship to
establish a direct cross-cultural and inter-civilization bridge. Noted Indian scholar Rahul
Sankrityayan and diplomat Natwar Singh were also there, and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan paid a visit
to PRC. Between 1957 and 1959, Beohar Rammanohar Sinha not only disseminated Indian art in PRC
but also mastered Chinese painting as well as lacquer-work. He also spent time with great masters Qi
Baishi, Li Keran, Li Kuchan as well as some moments with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.
Consequently, up until 1959, despite border skirmishes and discrepancies between Indian and

Chinese maps, Chinese leaders amicably had assured India that there was no territorial controversy
on the border though there is some evidence that India avoided bringing up the border issue in high
level meetings.

In 1954, India published new maps that included the Aksai Chin region within the boundaries of
India (maps published at the time of India’s independence did not clearly indicate whether the region
was in India or Tibet). When an Indian reconnaissance party discovered a completed Chinese road
running through the Aksai Chin region of the Ladakh District of Jammu and Kashmir, border clashes

and Indian protests became more frequent and serious. In January 1959, PRC premier Zhou Enlai
wrote to Nehru, rejecting Nehru’s contention that the border was based on treaty and custom and
pointing out that no government in China had accepted as legal the McMahon Line, which in the 1914
Simla Convention defined the eastern section of the border between India and Tibet. The Dalai Lama,
spiritual and temporal head of the Tibetan people, sought sanctuary in Dharmsala, Himachal Pradesh,
in March 1959, and thousands of Tibetan refugees settled in northwestern India, particularly in
Himachal Pradesh. The People’s Republic of China accused India of expansionism and imperialism

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in Tibet and throughout the Himalayan region. China claimed 104,000 km of territory over which
India’s maps showed clear sovereignty, and demanded “rectification" of the entire border.

Zhou proposed that China relinquish its claim to most of India’s northeast in exchange for India’s
abandonment of its claim to Aksai Chin. The Indian government, constrained by domestic public
opinion, rejected the idea of a settlement based on uncompensated loss of territory as being

humiliating and unequal.

1960s

Sino-Indian War

Border disputes resulted in a short border war between the People’s Republic of China and India on
October 20, 1962. The PRC pushed the unprepared and inadequately led Indian forces to within forty-
eight kilometres of the Assam plains in the northeast and occupied strategic points in Ladakh, until the

PRC declared a unilateral cease-fire on 21 November and withdrew twenty kilometers behind its
contended line of control.