Tibet and India's China conflict

Sulmaan Wasif Khan's slim volume of 177 pages is part of the ongoing New Cold War project of the Wilson Centre, drawing upon the wealth of archival material that became available, though briefly, in Russia and the People's Republic of China (PRC) after the end of the Cold War.

- SHYAM SARAN

Dr Khan draws skilfully from this rich documentary resource. In four chapters and a Prologue and Epilogue, the book focuses on China's occupation of Tibet in 1950 and its subsequent attempts at assimilating a vast and unfamiliar territory, peopled by a strange and alien mix of ethnicities.

Through this narrative, it is also a history of Sino-Indian relations during a period when each was grappling with the challenges of national consolidation and territorial definition. The author argues that the PRC initially tried to consolidate its rule over Tibet through "empire-lite "policies, allowing a high degree of autonomy and minimal interference in the day-to-day lives of the Tibetan people. This included the tolerance of cross-border movement of people-the Muslims, traders, nomads and spies of the book's title-in the Himalayan borderlands of Tibet for trade, pilgrimage, grazing of animal herds and for connecting with families and communities that spread across this entire mountainous zone, including in India, Nepal, the then still independent Sikkim and Bhutan. These were people with multiple identities for whom national frontiers and notions of citizenship were alien. As highlighted by the author, this was "not the isolated mountain fastness of popular imagination; it was cosmopolitan, bustling, thriving borderland." The India-China Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between Tibet Region and India, concluded in 1954 was, in some measure, a recognition of these ground realities. However, the Tibet revolt of 1959 put paid to this approach.