Border dispute over Arunachal Pradesh is 110 years old

Simply put, India goes by the Mcmahon Line drawn in 1914 which indicated Arunachal Pradesh was part of British India while China had walked out of border talks then claiming that it was part of South Tibet. China argued that Tibet was not sovereign and had thus no authority to sign treaties in 1914. India however considers the Mcmohan Line as the legal boundary while China dismisses it as illegal.

The border dispute has never been resolved. India accuses China of illegally occupying 38,000 square kilometres in Aksai Chin. China in turn accuses India of being in illegal occupation of 90,000 square kilometres of Arunachal Pradesh.

The two countries, experts claim, came close to swapping parts of the two territories in 1960 and early 1980s to formalise the status-quo then. Both sides since then have ruled out the solution. Meanwhile, the border dispute between the two countries was exacerbated by Chinese occupation of Indian territory in Galwan Valley in Ladakh in 2020.

The issue became even more complicated as the two countries dug their heels in. In 2017 China issued six ‘official’ names for places in Arunachal Pradesh after the Dalai Lama visited the state. It followed it up in 2022 by announcing a list of 15 names including eight towns, four mountains and two rivers in Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang in the west to Anjaw in the east. All official Chinese maps were mandated by China to use the Chinese names.

India’s home minister Amit Shah in 2019 declared in Parliament India’s resolve to take back Aksai Chin from China. Beijing retaliated by issuing a law that came into effect on 1 January, 2022. The law has 62 articles in seven chapters, covering delineation and border defence to immigration, border management and trade. Article 22 calls for the Chinese military to carry out border drills and to “resolutely prevent, stop and combat” what it calls “invasions, encroachments and provocations”.

The law gave a fresh impetus to Chinese agencies to carry out the construction of infrastructure, including “frontier villages” in border areas. In November 2021, satellite images had already surfaced showing a second Chinese cluster of 60 newly built dwellings on what India sees as its territory in Arunachal Pradesh, around 100 km east of another village built in late 2020.

The territory in question has been under Chinese control since 1959 and previously had Chinese military installations there, but the civilian constructions were seen as further bolstering Chinese claims and essentially a fait accompli with regard to land that is still disputed and under negotiation by the two sides. China’s claim to Tawang is also a sticking point in the dispute.

China traces the Tawang monastery to the Dalai Lama’s seat in Lhasa, which was one of the reasons why it rejected the Mcmahon Line. India on its part has maintained that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of the country and has strong links with the country.

Successive elections in the state have also shown the overwhelming support for Indian democracy among the people in the state.

The periodic flash points are seen largely as posturing by the two countries by the experts. The incident involving Pema Wangjong Thondok, a UK-based Indian national was, experts believe, a deliberate move by China to keep up the pressure on India.

It became even more clear on Tuesday when a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson during an official briefing told the media that the Indian woman was dealt with according to established rules and protocol. She added that China has never recognised Arunachal Pradesh.

India’s foreign ministry till Tuesday had not officially briefed the media or issued a statement. Instead, the media reports quoted ‘MEA sources’ as saying that India had sent a strong ‘demarche’, a diplomatic protest note, to protest the treatment meted out to Pema Wangjom Thondok.

The two sides, a Chinese scholar was quoted as saying in 2018, had a fundamentally different approach to the border disputes. While India believes that relations will not improve until the border dispute is resolved, China believes that once relations improve, border disputes tend to get resolved.