This will have the following advantages for us;

1. It officially and internationally recognizes our rights to POK, today we seem to be alone in doing so.
2. It allows us direct land access to Afghanistan, and this may even allow for the Oil Pipe line from Iran into India, by-passing Pakistan and also allow access to the mineral resources of Afghanistan.
3. It removes conflict from that portion of J & K as that would not then be in the interest of any of the Countries involved.
4. It opens Land trade route to old ’silk route’ Countries in South-Western China and even to Central Asian Countries bordering China, and provides access to their resources (another Pipe line?) and opportunities for Trade.
5. It offers a face-saving option for China to settle its boundary disputes with India, offering both Countries a lot more than they can get by themselves.

The Seeming Disadvantages:

1. It opens access to a belligerent China in case of open hostilities. This can be countered by building in proper ‘denial of access’ measures into the road within our control in J & K. As regards the rest of the roadway, it may even allow some control thereon, which otherwise is now any way, not in our control at all.
2. Why lease out our Territory? – Because then our ‘de-jure’ claim in an adverse ‘de-facto’ situation, where we have no say on the territory, will be converted into also a ‘de-facto’ right, even if it is only in a limited way. We only gain, even if the lease does not allow us joint ownership of the Infrastructure Company, though it will of course be very much more beneficial if it does.

This would gain greater International recognition of the rights of India over this Territory than anything else done over the past 68 years, and should be a major achievement for the Country, easily ‘on par’ with the ‘Indo-US Nuclear deal’.

Second – The North- Eastern Boundary –

This must be settled by identifying and fixing a boundary that will be stable and conflict free. For this we should first recognize that the border dispute with China along most of the length of the border has claims disputing about 3 to 30 kms width of territory.

“The idea of a demarcated frontier is itself an essentially modern conception, and finds little or no place in the ancient world… demarcation has never taken place in Asian countries except under European pressure” – Lord Curzon .

We should also keep in mind, as

Neville Maxwell writes that –

“In Asia, a sovereignty that shaded off into ‘No Man’s Land’, giving a frontier of separation rather than of contact, was both familiar and more natural”.

Since the McMahon line is marked thickly on an eight miles to an inch scale map, and thus covers about a quarter mile in width, and is also drawn across indeterminate topographical features, it can produce no precise demarcation on the ground. India also followed the policy of general alignment with the McMahon line and its intention as it perceived it, when it actually demarcated it unilaterally, basing it on what it claimed was ‘definitive topography’, on the ground.

Captain Henry McMahon had himself suggested that the boundary should be open to modification “should it be found desirable in the light of more detailed knowledge acquired later”. China, though it never acknowledged our claim to Aksai Chin or the validity of the McMahon line, even as late as April 1960, seemed to be willing to consider its alignment as an accomplished fact and settle the boundary accordingly, as it had done with Burma.

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