Page 37 - Seniors Today June2020

in Nehru’s words”world’s bleakest, a land hinderance from the sleeping Indian side.
where no people live and no blade of grass
grows”. The answer lays in the long term
economic and political interests of both
China and India – albeit with different
perceptions.
A Yarkandi trader in Leh
For China it was strategic and economic
as it was the only viable and safe route to
both Sinkiang (North of Karakorum pass)
and to Tibet (Lhasa). Sinkiang has known
deposits of gold and other precious minerals,
and politically it was the meeting ground
of three powers - Russia, China and India.
The Chinese wanted a buffer between the
Russian and Indian border. One just needs
to look at the map to understand this – to
the North is Mongolia and to the South the
tall Himalayas with Nepal, Bhutan and
Sikkim acting as buffer. It was only on the
East where there was hardly a cushion. Of
course it is also a fact that access to Tibet is
best from South and West of Tibet – they had
to have Aksai Chin and Sinkiang under their
control. Incidentally it was the Southern
route which the Chinese communists took in
1950 to reach Tibet. In 1956-57 the Chinese
built a road through Aksai Chin without any
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #12 | JUNE 2020 The young and the helpless – is this India’s future
One might ask how the road was constructed
through Indian territory without the Indian
government getting to know and the answer
lies in the fact that there was minimal work
required to make the makeshift road (being
a plateau and all it was required was to just
clear a pathway) and that the restrictions
put by the Chinese on the Indian mission in
Lhasa completely stopped the traditional
trade route thus ensuring no traffic along the
route.
The Last king of Ladakh
Brief history of region of Ladakh
One of the first recorded treaties which has
been cited is the Ladakhi–Tibetan Treaty
of 1684 does touch on the areas which fell
in each others’ territory, was conveniently
ignored by the Chinese Communist regime
saying that Tibet was under the suzerainty
of Imperial China who did not recognize any
such third party treaty. It is recorded that the
Ladakhi Kings of the time used to send gifts
to The Dalai Lama as he was the temporal
and religious head of the largely Buddhist
37