Describe the trends and patterns of Sino-Indian relations

Introduction

Half a century ago, Sino-Indian relations moved from friendship to war within only five years. In June 1954, the two countries agreed on panch sheel, the five principles of coexistence. Sixty-two months later, they shot at each other across their unsettled border in the Himalayas. The attempt to sort out their differences during talks between their two prime ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai, failed in April 1960.

The downfall of Sino-Indian friendship was related to events in Tibet. The land between China proper and India was the source of most misunderstandings, and its unsettled borders the root for the wars in 1959 and 1962. But how did this development come about? Countless observers at the time and historians in retrospect have tried to trace the story. Partisans from both sides have attempted to show their own country in the best light.

Responsibility and guilt have been shunted across the Himalayas in both directions. Even if the archival record is incomplete, original documentation from both sides and from other countries helps to shed some new light on the story. The problems that plagued the Sino-Indian relationship accumulated over the period from 1954 to early 1959. The Tibetan Uprising in the late winter and early spring of 1959 exacerbated the situation.

The mutual militarization of India’s border with Chinese Tibet logically followed from these developments but also caused armed conflict between India and China in the late summer of 1959. From the fall of that year to the spring of the next, both sides publicly marked their border and territorial claims in anticipation of negotiations. And finally, by April 1960, Zhou travelled to Delhi hoping to find a settlement in talks with Nehru. The story of the collapse of Sino-Indian friendship unfolded in concentric circles.

At its center stood developments in Tibet which remain the source of political and scholarly disputes to this day. In the second circle ranks the relationship between India and China, which had its roots both in the development of their interactions over time as well as in the domestic sources of each country’s foreign policy. Finally, there is the wider world, not only the Asian-African movement (or the emerging Third World) of which India and China were prominent members, but also the international system dominated by the Cold War, in which the Sino-Indian relationship was embedded.

The documentary basis for an assessment of the story still is rather limited. Archival documents from India, China, the former Soviet Union and former East Germany help to illuminate several of its aspects. The author is particularly grateful to Chen Jian, who graciously provided Chinese archival documents to this project.

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