On 4 separate occasions, China made an offer to India that would've settled the border disputes: each country keeps the territory they occupy while renouncing their claims to the territory held by the other country. Why did India refuse all four offers? Would they be more receptive today if China were to make the same offer?
India refused the offers because it was too greedy. The geopolitical stance of the Indian people underwent a 180-degree change after the British relinquished their power and Indians took the reins. British historian Arnold Toynbee remarked that when Indians were subjects of the British crown, they were indifferent to British India's frontiers and even viewed the British Empire's coveting of distant lands as immoral. In 1921, India's Congress Party even urged neighboring states to refrain from entering into treaties with the Imperial Power (the British Raj). However, after 1947, Indians suddenly began to regard these distant lands as sacred Indian territory. Even more concerning, India started making territorial claims on areas that were neither claimed, much less controlled by the British Raj. In other words, aspiring to emulate the British Raj, India became expansionist in its own right.
Here is Arnold Toynbee's words:
"It is queer that lines drawn by British officials should have been consecrated as precious national assets of the British Indian Empire's non-British successor states. At the time when those lines were drawn the transaction produced no stir among the . . . Indian . . . subjects, as they then were, of the British crown. If any of them paid any attention to what Durand and McMahon were doing, they will have written it off as just another move in the immoral game of power politics that the British Imperialists were playing at the Indian tax-payers' expense. The present consecration of these British-made lines as heirlooms in the successor states' national heritages is an unexpected and unfortunate turn of History's wheel."
China's position has hardened over the years and the talk of concession is no longer on the table. China has explicitly state that South Tibet/Arunachal Pradesh is part of China's territory.
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Thank you so much, Bill!
On 4 separate occasions, China made an offer to India that would've settled the border disputes: each country keeps the territory they occupy while renouncing their claims to the territory held by the other country. Why did India refuse all four offers? Would they be more receptive today if China were to make the same offer?
India refused the offers because it was too greedy. The geopolitical stance of the Indian people underwent a 180-degree change after the British relinquished their power and Indians took the reins. British historian Arnold Toynbee remarked that when Indians were subjects of the British crown, they were indifferent to British India's frontiers and even viewed the British Empire's coveting of distant lands as immoral. In 1921, India's Congress Party even urged neighboring states to refrain from entering into treaties with the Imperial Power (the British Raj). However, after 1947, Indians suddenly began to regard these distant lands as sacred Indian territory. Even more concerning, India started making territorial claims on areas that were neither claimed, much less controlled by the British Raj. In other words, aspiring to emulate the British Raj, India became expansionist in its own right.
Here is Arnold Toynbee's words:
"It is queer that lines drawn by British officials should have been consecrated as precious national assets of the British Indian Empire's non-British successor states. At the time when those lines were drawn the transaction produced no stir among the . . . Indian . . . subjects, as they then were, of the British crown. If any of them paid any attention to what Durand and McMahon were doing, they will have written it off as just another move in the immoral game of power politics that the British Imperialists were playing at the Indian tax-payers' expense. The present consecration of these British-made lines as heirlooms in the successor states' national heritages is an unexpected and unfortunate turn of History's wheel."
China's position has hardened over the years and the talk of concession is no longer on the table. China has explicitly state that South Tibet/Arunachal Pradesh is part of China's territory.
Here is the timeline of the dispute:
https://ppr06262023.substack.com/p/how-south-tibet-became-arunachal