If Dr. S. Gopal

had indeed found such historic evidence to contradict the boundary line formally proposed by the then Viceroy Lord Elgin to the Chinese on 04 ^th March 1899 (the Mc Cartney – Mc Donald line) which has the best claim to be historically the most acceptable delimitation, having been presented to China and having never been rejected by it; and which left the whole of the Karakash valley incorporating the ancient trade route from Sinkiang to China, while leaving the Lingzi Tang salt plains and the whole of the Chan Chenmo valley, as well as the Chip Chap river to India, then we should, at the earliest, put forward such evidence to confirm our stand.

At this time, on 28 ^th Jan 1960, Burma and China signed their boundary agreement generally along the McMahon alignment, but without specifying it as such and with trivial differences there from.

In April 1960, Premier Chou Enlai of China had made an offer to Pandit Nehru when he said in Delhi – “You keep what you hold, you take anything that is in dispute and occupied by neither, and we keep what we hold”. This offer was repeated for India’s consideration even a couple of times thereafter till up to the end of the tenure of Deng Xiaoping, the ‘paramount leader’ of China.

Unfortunately Pandit Nehru , not understanding the true boundary situation and the value of a properly settled boundary, saw this only as an attempt to denigrate the perceived historical authenticity of the boundaries of the Indian Nation, and though willing to ‘talk’ refused to ‘negotiate’, a distinction China found difficult to comprehend.

China has since induced Pakistan to delimit its boundary with China, though subject to the final settlement of its dispute with India about J&K. Here India’s stand is that such an Agreement is illegal as Pakistan has no boundary with China. China has also thereafter induced Pakistan to gift them 4853 sq. kms of J&K’s territory occupied by Pakistan to enable the construction of the Karkoram highway linking Pakistan to China and also down to the GWADHAR port on the Arabian sea coast, in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan.

As Mr Ram Jethmalani opines – “Receiving Indian Territory – even if disputed – from Pakistan, makes the Chinese receivers of stolen property”.

In 1962, China, claiming it was only reacting to the ‘Forward’ policy aggression by India, attacked Indian Forces and occupied about 93,000 sq. miles of Indian Territory, most of which they unilaterally shortly thereafter vacated, even as they today continue to claim about 99,000 sq. miles of what we see as our territory.

We lost the 1962 war not only because of Pandit Nehru’s failure to recognize the threat posed by China and later his decision to direct the war effort by himself, but mainly because as a non-military person he did not grasp the vulnerability of the Chinese extended line of communication and supply and his refusal to allow the use of the Indian Air Force

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