A colonial legacy of Border disputes between India and China

 

When the first Englishman visited Leh, the capital of Ladakh in north-west India, in the early 19th century, he quickly recognized the region’s strategic significance. Not only was it an important conduit for trade with Central Asia, but its position on the frontier of India meant it could be used as “a strong outwork against an enemy from the north.” William Moorcroft, a veterinarian working for the East India Company, signed an agreement with the ruler of Ladakh in which the latter pledged allegiance to Britain in exchange for protection. The agreement, however, was repudiated by Moorcroft’s British masters who were unwilling to alienate the then-powerful Sikh empire that controlled neighboring Kashmir and claimed rights over Ladakh. Thus began more than a century of British ambivalence about Ladakh. It was a period in which imperial Britain wielded enormous power while also suffering from what Moorcroft complained was “misplaced squeamishness and unnecessary timidity” in taking decisive action to settle Ladakh’s status.

British entanglement with Ladakh, from Moorcroft’s visit in 1820 to the British departure from India in 1947, is an essential backdrop for making sense of the current friction along the Sino-Indian frontier. British officials were the first to try to define linear borders for Ladakh, drawing these up at a time when imperial China was in retreat. They failed to do so, leaving a confused legacy that informs much of the dispute over the Sino-Indian frontier to this day. Last year saw the deadliest clashes in more than five decades between Indian and Chinese troops on the periphery of Ladakh. Tensions continue to run high on the Line of Actual Control, the disputed frontier born out of a 1962 border war in which China inflicted a humiliating defeat on India. Since Ladakh lies between the Sino-Indian frontier and the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir, worries are also growing in India that it might eventually face a two-front war against both China and its ally Pakistan.

In the absence of counterfactual history, it is hard to assess for sure the exact extent of the British role in shaping conditions in the present day. It is definitely worth exploring in order to retest assumptions that help drive volatility on the frontier and to look for lessons for any future border settlement. Certainly, history suggests that those British officials who believed that seeking settled, linear borders would bring peace were wrong. If anything, drawing lines on maps has tended to increase, rather than lower, the risk of conflict in the region. Instead, imperial Britain’s accidental ambiguity — one that allowed for cross-border movement of people while eschewing a strong border road network and militarized frontiers — may turn out to have been a more useful model to emulate.

At the same time, too much focus on the role of the British Empire can lead to an overly deterministic view of history that risks casting modern-day India and China as victims of British imperial machinations rather than actors in their own right. It has also skewed the historiography to foreground the Indian side of the border while pushing Chinese actions and decisions into the background. It is, of course, eminently sensible to focus on the most powerful actor in the region and before 1947 that was imperial Britain. However, that is no longer the case. With China now the preeminent power in Asia, it is time to rethink historiographies anchored in the British Empire and consider instead how Beijing is reshaping the political map of the region with geopolitics of its own.

Such a review will not produce policy solutions overnight and nor should it be intended to do so. What it can do is sift through the lessons of history and separate the right ones from the wrong ones. The British legacy of trying, and failing, to draw up linear borders is certainly partly responsible for the frontier conflict. But British officials also got some things right, by accident or design. They allowed traders, nomads and others to move freely between Ladakh and its neighbors. Such free movement may appear utopian in the current circumstances but would be an ideal to aspire to in the very long term. Their willingness to let the harsh terrain do the work of providing defense by, for example, leaving border roads intentionally unimproved, deserves consideration in determining how to achieve defensible frontiers today. Finally, in examining the British imperial legacy, one should be careful of underplaying the view from the Chinese side of the frontier, or ignoring Beijing’s role in setting the stage for the border conflict with its occupation of Tibet and the building of a military road through the Aksai Chin in the 1950s.