Page 39 - Seniors Today June2020

the future the Tibetan state will interfere saved. A hastily constructed airfield just
with boundaries of Ladakh come down from
ancient times, and it’s surroundings”. The
Dogras formalized this too with the British
and thus Ladakh came to be as part of the
greater State of Jammu & Kashmir.
Patrols and horseback supplies somewhere in the DBO sector
The period from 1900 to 1950 are said to
be the most peaceful between Kashmir and
Tibet, though each one had their own share
of problems. In 1913, British India, China
and Tibet met at Shimla to discuss and
demarcate the international boundary as per
maps available. Though China participated,
they later backed off saying that the maps
were not correct and could be taken as
final.. The British at that stage upset at this
flip flop attitude of the Chinese decided
to bypass the Chinese totally and discuss
India’s Himalayan border directly with
Tibet. China, later rejected this McMahon
line demarcated and maintained that the
said treaty had no sanctity without China’s
endorsement.
As far as Ladakh was concerned the
main problem happened when the British
left India and the two states of India &
Pakistan were created. Having met with
stiff resistance in the Kashmir valley, the
pro-Pakistani forces pushed through
Gilgit, Baltistan towards Leh. It was the
arrival of Indian forces at the eleventh hour
that the Ladakh, as we know of now, was
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #12 | JUNE 2020
outside of Leh brought in much needed
reinforcements.
The newly built road from Kargil to Leh was just wide enough
for 1 vehicle to pass through
After India’s independence, naively Nehru
started deepening relations with China,
who never looked at the friendship as
India did. The government pursued non-
alignment which China took as being a
sign of weakness and without any backing.
After the invasion of Communist China
into Tibet in 1950, India lost it’s toehold in
Tibet. India which was preoccupied with
it’s own problems did not think too much
into it, and China took advantage of that by
showing some parts of Aksai Chin as part
of their territory. India by then had recalled
their mission in Tibet and thus were literally
left blind to the happenings in that part
of the world. Aksai Chin erroneous maps
did surprise and raise resentment in New
Delhi, but Chou En Lai deceptively kept on
telling that that this was based on old maps
and would be corrected soon. Obviously the
diabolical minds in Peking had other ideas.
India did pursue this in the world fora for a
while, but nothing came out of it. India did
not understand well enough Mao Tse Tung’s
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