Undercurrents of big power politics and their possible fallouts have been a buzzword in Northeast for long. The Myanmar crisis following the February 2021 military coup, and now the regime change in Bangladesh are fresh fuels for this.
While these neighbourhood troubles could have come from internal contradictions, the possibility of shadows of big power interests as a factor should not be dismissed, considering the strategic importance of this geography. Thant Myint-U anticipated this in his 2012 book, Where China Meets India: Burma and New Crossroads of Asia, as also Bertil Lintner in his 2020 book China’s India War: Collision Course on the Roof of the World. Both also inferred that Western powers would certainly have an interest here.
Colonial history of the region should provide reasons for this caution. Not everything in this game is what they appear to be. The case of the India-China 2017 border standoff at Doklam in the Sikkim sector over a road China was building is illustrative.
China claimed the part of Doklam they were building the road belonged to them citing an 1890 boundary treaty with the British determining Sikkim’s territorial extent. The British did sign this treaty, and another in 1893 on trade concessions in Tibet, but interestingly with China not Tibet. Alastair Lamb has some answers in his two volume The McMahon Line, A Study in Relation Between India, China and Tibet 1904-1914.
In 1886, the British planned a trade mission to Lhasa led by civil servant, Colman Macaulay. The Chinese, too weak to oppose the British, tried to dissuade this saying the Tibetans would oppose the plan, indicating their weak hold over Tibet.
The Macaulay mission was ultimately abandoned, however, unaware of this, the Tibetans sent a detachment to the Sikkimese village of Lingtu which they claimed was theirs, to blockade “the main road from Darjeeling to the Tibetan border at the Chumbi Valley, along which Colman Macaulay was expected to travel,” Lamb writes.
Despite appeals by the British, the Chinese did little. Viceroy Dufferin in 1888 hence authorised his troops to clear the blockade. Dufferin also became convinced Tibet affairs is best dealt with Lhasa not Peking. However, the 1890 and 1893 treaties were still signed with Peking not Lhasa.
Britain’s anxiety, Lamb reasons, is that entering into treaties with Tibet, would legitimise the Tibetans to enter into similar treaties with Russia. This anxiety again prompted Britain to force the St. Petersburg Convention 1907 on Russia which was then on the back foot having suffered a naval defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905. To ensure Russia is kept away from Tibet, the treaty made it a condition for Britain and Russia to deal with Tibet only through China’s mediation.
But the British ended up tying themselves up in knots. In Lamb’s words, as in judo, Russia used the weight of its heavier opponent to floor them. Hence, during the Simla Conference of 1913-1914 to define the India-Tibet boundary, China had to be made a party. China walked out of the conference and the rest is history.
Dufferin’s successor Curzon was hawkish and adopted the former’s doctrine of bypassing China in dealing with Tibet. When he became convinced the 13th Dalai Lama was leaning towards Russia, he authorized the Younghusband Mission to invade Tibet and force the Lhasa Convention 1904, virtually making Chumbi valley, which includes Doklam, Indian territory.
John Morley, secretary of state for India and a liberal, had the Lhasa Convention replaced by the Peking Convention 1906, a watered-down version of the former but signed with Peking not Lhasa. For Curzon, controlling Tibet was important for India’s security. He spells this out in his Romanes Lecture 1907, titled Frontier. However, Morley was scornful of the approach. As Lamb notes, Morley wrote in a letter to Minto that “these frontier men”, cannot see the bigger picture where rivals may follow suit in other sensitive regions like Mongolia, Afghanistan and Iran.
If not for this shadow war, it is likely monastic states like Tibet and Sikkim would have remained as Bhutan has, making India’s Siliguri corridor vulnerability very different. Direct interventions by foreign powers now are ruled out, however, damages often come from unintended fallouts of these cold wars.
This article was first published in The Telegraph under a different headline. The original can be read HERE
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
