The Great Game's Lingering Effects On The Northeast

If not for Britain's Great Game anxiety, Tibet and Sikkim might have stayed autonomous, as Bhutan has. This would have meant a very different security environment in the Northeast

- PRADIP PHANJOUBAM

0FTEN, rarely-visited pages of history provide refreshing insights into present problems. This is not surprising, considering many of the postcolonial world's problems are legacies of a past era marked by rivalries marked by silent ploys and counterploys between colonising European powers, carefully harnessed so they did not escalate into open conflicts.

Northeast India is among the regions still facing the consequences of one such rivalry between imperial Britain and tsarist Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries-the Great Game. The dispute over the McMahon Line, the periodic border skirmishes-most notably, the flashpoint at Doklam in the Sikkim sector in June 2017 are some evidences.

The Doklam case in which India prevented China from building a road on the Doklam plateau in Bhutanese territory close to the Indian border-is especially illustrative. It should be recalled that the Chinese claimed that part of Doklam belonged to them, citing a boundary treaty they signed with the British in 1890 determining Sikkim's territorial extent. The British also signed another treaty with the Chinese in 1893 to allow setting up of a British-Indian trade mart at Yatung in the Chumbi valley contiguous to Doklam.

The history of these treaties is intriguing for the fact that they were signed with China, not Tibet. Were the British recognising the suzerainty of China over Tibet? Not quite so. The answer has more to do with the Great Game, as Chinaborn British scholar Alastair Lamb, author of the monumental two-volume work, The McMahon Line: A Study in Relation Between India, China and Tibet, 1904-1914 says in his portrayal of the Lingtu blockade by Tibet.