Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Relations steadily worsened, especially after the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet to
sanctuary in India in 1959.
There were also increased Chinese incursions along the border, which culminated in
its troops walking into what is now the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh (then called
the North-East Frontier Agency) at the strategically sensitive Buddhist monastery town of
Tawang in 1962. Four devastating (for India) weeks later, in what was never formally de-
clared a war, China withdrew from all the land that it had occupied to the current disputed
would have faced little resistance, so ill-prepared were the defences, but it had taught India
a lesson and that was enough. People in Tawang still talk of the sudden invasion, the panic
among Indian forces, the burning of bridges and houses by the retreating army, and the re-
lative good behaviour of the invader.
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The invasion coincided with the Cuban missile crisis. 'Just as Mao Zedong started his in-
vasion of Tibet while the world was preoccupied with the Korean War, so he chose a perfect
time to invade India, as recommended by the ancient strategist Sun Tzu,' wrote Brahma
States and the Soviet Union within a whisker of nuclear war over the stealthy deployment
of Soviet missiles in Cuba. China's unilateral ceasefire coincided with America's formal
termination of its naval blockade of Cuba, marking the end of the missile crisis.'
Zhou Enlai, communist China's first and longest serving premier (1949-1976) who was
admired internationally as a charming and urbane but also tough statesman, said at the time
that his aim was 'to teach India a lesson'. As Brahma Chellaney put it on the 50th an-
niversary of the defeat, 'such have been the long-lasting effects of the humiliation it im-
posed that China to this day is able to keep India in check'.
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China in Charge
From 1962, China has left India metaphorically dangling on the end of a rope. 'It has been
their policy since 1962, to restrain India, partly through support for Pakistan - that policy
began long before China's economic opening up but it has been especially hostile in the last
two years since the US-India nuclear agreement,' Brajesh Mishra, a retired diplomat who
was national security adviser and principal secretary to Prime Minister Atal Behari Bajpay-
d'affairs to open a diplomatic mission in 1969 when China was beginning to relax its in-
ternational isolation. At a diplomatic event in Beijing in May 1970, Mao Zedong unexpec-
tedly turned to Mishra and said, 'How long are we going to go on quarrelling like this. Let
