INDIA-CHINA : TUG OF WAR

India  and China have a long history of mutual consent and  peaceful existence. Their relationship dates back to almost 2,000 years.The religion of Buddhism is said to have entered the Chinese mainland around first century BC from India. There are even references of China in the great sanskrit epic Mahabharata and in the works of Chanakya, the prime minister of the Mauryan Empire. But India never had any modern diplomatic relationship with China till the year 1950. The first prime minister of the free India, Mr Jawaharlal Nehru wanted that both the countries who were among the largest free states in Asia to work  amicably and with a mutual respect for each other. But trouble started brewing in the countries relationship when Mao Zedong, the Commander of the Liberation Army and the Chairman Of the Communist Party proclaimed that Tibet is an integral part of China's territory and stated that Tibet was under China's territorial rule since the Yuan Dynasty(1271-1368). Mao accused India of interfering in China's internal affairs seeing how India was supporting Tibet. India in turn to calm China put out a statement saying that India has no political or territorial ambitions but wanted normal trade to take place as usual. This led to the signing  of an eight year agreement on Tibet based on  our prime minister's Panchsheel policy. The agreement  was not that helpful. Border skirmishes went on till 1960's with China claiming Sikkim and parts of Arunachal Pradesh which were part of Tibet once as China's land. All this led to a devastating war in 1962 which greatly hurt India's image. The relationship went on deteriorating till the 1970's. Incidents like the "Nathu La incident" and the "Chola incident" gave a huge blow to the already deteriorating relationship as these incidents saw considerable loss of army personnels on both sides of the border.
Concrete steps to renew good relations with the Chinese happened during the Morarji Desai's administration during 1979. Since then the story of the relationship between India and China has been of ups and downs. There was even a point when every diplomat in the world said that a there will be a war between China and India. It was in 1987, but now as trade and business is growing between India and China and the bilateral trade projected to hit the $1 trillion by 2050 we could say that our diplomatic ties were never better.

Christopher Thomas