Shadow States

Shadow States
Author: Bérénice Guyot-Réchard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107176794

This book explores Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of state-building, showing how they stem from their competition for the Himalayan people's allegiance.

Sino - Indian Clash

Sino - Indian Clash
Author: Cengiz Topel Mermer
Publisher: Scala Yayıncılık
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 625817728X

India, founded as a result of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – established by the leadership of the victor-Mao of Chinese civil war in 1949 – were forced to face the fact that borders between India and PRC in the Himalayas were not demarcated. As India took over the British heritage in the area, border problems that had been pushed into the background due to conjunctural developments resurfaced. Having embraced the idea of ancient China by Mao’s PRC, a hard to overcome psychological barrier was created between two countries, led to a vortex of crises stemming from the border dispute. PRC and India fought in 1962 because of this problem and had a limited armed conflict in 1967. After a small-scale armed conflict in 1975, two nuclear weapons states proceeded to mitigate risks of unintended small- scale armed conflicts or crises turning into a full-scale war. Within this framework, due to protocols signed in accordance with parleys started in the 1980s, neither firearms nor bladed articles were used during the border crises since 1975 to this day and there were no casualties until June 15, 2020, Galwan Valley “unique” clash. Diplomatic negotiations, held after this clash did not provide a road map to end the crisis. Normalization in Galwan Valley could only be achieved through the mid of February 2021 with the help of global developments. Although troops were withdrawn from the disputed parts of Galwan Valley, parties could not come to an agreement on other regions. As the snow melted, the armies of both countries reinforced their borders. After the 2020 clash, in spite of messaging each other through media, proxies, and allies, both countries did not budge from their claims on borders. There are no implications of change on both parties’ classical discourse and strategical objectives. On the contrary, both countries are even more honed against each other. The Himalayas, the hot front of the new cold war is still a conflict zone. The biggest impediment to a new crisis in this region is the coronavirus pandemic. As the regional and global competition of two emerging countries continue, the PRC seems to be getting the upper hand by tackling the coronavirus pandemic and impelling its economy. By acquiring Russian Federation’s support, the PRC has been challenging QUAD alliance on several fronts and India in the Himalayas as well. Nevertheless, the hurricanes of tides that will face the PRC after the pandemic, are still being sown both by the West and QUAD alliance. The border dispute between the PRC and India is the most heated front of the cold war whose groundwork has been laid and probably, in the following period the first spark will be lit in the Himalayas.

India and the China Crisis

India and the China Crisis
Author: Steven A. Hoffmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2024-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520377885

The earliest accounts of the Sino-Indian boundary dispute cast India as the victim of Chinese betrayal and expansionism, but a more favorable image of China vis-a-vis India has appeared since the 1970s. Since then, China has been portrayed as the victim of India's self-righteous intransigence, with the 1962 India-China war occurring because China was provoked into practicing a justifiable form of realpolitik. These two seemingly irreconcilable academic schools of thought still exist. In this case study of India's decision-making between the years of 1959 and 1963, the critical first years of its border conflict with China, Steven A. Hoffmann takes an important step in reconciling the conflicting views of the crisis and of the ascribed reasons for the war that ensued in 1962. Drawing on interviews with Indian officials, military officers, and political leaders and on memoirs and other sources gathered during concentrated research in India, England, and North America between 1983 and 1986, the author provides previously unknown material on the perceptions and realities of Indian decision making. A model for international crisis behavior, as proposed by Michael Brecher, is used to help establish a balanced treatment of information and offer insights into such questions as why India and China both failed to understand one another's frontier psychologies and strategies, and why the Nehru government did not succeed in managing the conflict. This richly detailed and carefully researched approach is invaluable in this time when India and China are once again exploring ways to establish a solid relationship. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

The Deoliwallahs

The Deoliwallahs
Author: Joy Ma
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2020-01-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1529048869

Humanly compelling, beautifully told ... brings to light a forgotten chapter of Indian history, one we need to remember in these troubled times' PRATAP BHANU MEHTA '[Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza] have seamlessly woven together historical facts with personal stories about how the Chinese- Indians lost the country of their birth' YIN MARSH The untold account of the internment of 3,000 Chinese-Indians after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Just after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, about 3,000 Chinese-Indians were sent to languish in a disused World War II POW camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, marking the beginning of a painful five-year-long internment without resolution. At a time of war with China, these ‘Chinese-looking’ people had fallen prey to government suspicion and paranoia which soon seeped into the public consciousness. This is a page of Indian history that comes wrapped in prejudice and fear, and is today largely forgotten. But over five decades on, survivors of the internment are finally starting to tell their stories. As several Indian communities are once again faced with discrimination, The Deoliwallahs records these untold stories through extensive interviews with seven survivors of the Deoli internment. Through these accounts, the book recovers a crucial chapter in our history, also documenting for the first time how the Chinese came to be in India, how they made this country their home and became a significant community, until the war of 1962 brought on a terrible incarceration, displacement and tragedy.

Nehru, Tibet and China

Nehru, Tibet and China
Author: Avtar Singh Bhasin
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780670094134

"On 1 October 1949, the People's Republic of China came into being and changed forever the course of Asian history. Power moved from the hands of the nationalist Kuomintang government to the Communist Party of China headed by Mao Tse Tung. All of a sudden, it was not only an assertive China that India had to deal with but also an increasingly complex situation in Tibet which was reeling under pressure from China. Clearly, newly independent India, with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at its helm, was navigating very choppy waters. Its relations with China progressively deteriorated, eventually leading to the Indo-China war in 1962. Today, more than six decades after the war, we are still plagued by border disputes with China that seem to routinely grab the headlines. It leads one to question what exactly went on during those initial years of the emergence of a new China"--Publisher's summary.

Boundaries and Borderlands

Boundaries and Borderlands
Author: Alka Acharya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2022-07-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000608174

The Simla Convention of 1914, held between Great Britain, China, and Tibet, demarcated the border between India and Tibet and gave birth to the McMahon Line. This volume critically examines the legacy of the 1914 Conference and explores its relevance in scholarly discourse about the status of Tibet and Sino-Indian relations more than a hundred years later. The book discusses the significance of the Simla Conference both in terms of the geo-politics of boundaries as well as the people and the liminal borderlands they occupy, encapsulating the culture and diversity of the trans-Himalayan regions. It explicates how colonial legacies, viz., the 1914 Simla Convention, have become virtual straitjackets, hardening the positions on the boundaries between India and China. It also looks at the debilitating consequences of the nation-state framework on more substantial investigations of the borderlands. Rich in archival material and drawing from the authors’ fieldwork in the Himalayan regions, this book analyses muted voices of the inhabitants of the region to bring into focus the larger question of the political, economic, religious, ecological and social life of the Himalayan peoples, which has enormous implications for both India and China. This volume will be of interest to students of history, international relations, sociology, strategic studies, Asian studies and anthropology.

China’s India War

China’s India War
Author: Bertil Lintner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2018-01-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199091633

The Sino-Indian War of 1962 delivered a crushing defeat to India: not only did the country suffer a loss of lives and a heavy blow to its pride, the world began to see India as the provocateur of the war, with China ‘merely defending’ its territory. This perception that China was largely the innocent victim of Nehru’s hostile policies was put forth by journalist Neville Maxwell in his book India’s China War, which found readers in many opinion makers, including Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. For far too long, Maxwell’s narrative, which sees India as the aggressor and China as the victim, has held court. Nearly 50 years after Maxwell’s book, Bertil Lintner’s China’s India War puts the ‘border dispute’ into its rightful perspective. Lintner argues that China began planning the war as early as 1959 and proposes that it was merely a small move in the larger strategic game that China was playing to become a world player—one that it continues to play even today.