The Panchsheel Agreement

By Claude Arpi

05 Aug , 2015

The “Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India” was signed on 29th April 1954 in Beijing by the Indian Ambassador N. Raghavan and Chang Han-fu, the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister of China. It is remembered as the Panchsheel Agreement.

During a speech on the occasion of the signing, Zhou Enlai reiterated that the questions which were “ripe for settlement have been resolved”.

…allowed this nation (Tibet) to survive with complete internal autonomy. In 1954, the same nation was not even informed about the Agreement.

The subtleties of Zhou disturbed very few in Delhi, though before the Conference some diplomats such as Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, had strongly advised that India should force Beijing to recognize the traditional boundary between India and Tibet as the only way to resolve all the outstanding questions between India, China and Tibet.

The same day, through an exchange of letters, India gave up her ‘extra territorial’ rights in Tibet such the military escorts in Gyantse and Yatung; post offices, telegraph and telephone services and 12 rest houses.

During the following years, the same refrain would often be repeated: “The Government of India found the old advantages of little use and in any case the Chinese exercised full control in Tibet.”

But there is another side to the coin. For many years the so-called ‘colonial’ agreement on Tibet (i.e. the Simla Convention) had provided protection to the Land of Snows against an expansionist Eastern neighbour. It had allowed this nation to survive with complete internal autonomy. In 1954, the same nation was not even informed about the Agreement. Indeed, the Panchsheel Agreement was no less ‘colonial’ in nature than the treaties forced by the British on smaller nations without their knowing it.

The Indian government believed that the risk of world conflict was only due to ‘irritants left by imperialism’ and the Panchsheel Agreement was an effort to find “a peaceful method of solving irritants directly between two great neighbours.”

The Indian leaders believed in ‘wider perspectives’ while China pragmatically looked after its own interests.

Beijing got what it wanted: the omission of Demchok pass in the Treaty, (leaving the door of Aksai Chin open), the removal of the last Indian jawans from Tibet, the surrender of Indian telegraphic lines and guest houses, but first and foremost the Indian stamp of approval on their occupation of Tibet.

The preamble was merely a post-mortem sermon for Tibet as an independent State.

The title of the Agreement itself was a major victory for the Chinese side. From an independent State, Tibet had become ‘Tibet’s Region of China’ in the new Agreement. The Chinese historian Tieh-Tseng Li summed up the situation:

“Indeed, the status of Tibet was clearly defined in the ‘Peking Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet’;1 but the external aspect of the issue remained to be settled. India [gave] a tacit consent to the situation created by this agreement. …India accepted the principle that Tibet constitutes an integral part of China.”2

What were the concessions offered by Chang ‘to his Indian friends’?

The Agreement

The ‘Panchsheel Agreement’ marked the apogee of the Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai policy: Gopal, Nehru’s official biographer, called the ‘Zenith of World Influence’.

The preamble was merely a post-mortem sermon for Tibet as an independent State. During the following months, this innocuous agreement dealing with trade and travel regulations with Tibet became the new mantra of Indian diplomacy. Some politicians believed that the amazing Five Principles would solve all the problems in the relations between developing and non-aligned nations of the world.

The Chinese would later discover the use that they could make of the five Principles which were:

The Government of India through this exchange handed over all advantages accrued from the Simla Convention. India would not ask for nor get anything in return, not even the confirmation of the McMahon line.

Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty

Mutual non-aggression

Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs

Equality and mutual benefit; and

Peaceful co-existence.

It sounded like a modern Asoka Edict.3 How many in India realized the ironical paradox of these precepts which triggered the virtual disappearance of a nation which itself had traditionally practiced these five principles? Tibet, the non-violent nation par excellence had not only preached peaceful co-existence, mutual respect, equanimity, non-interference, but had spread these precepts as far as China, Manchuria, Mongolia and Siberia.

Besides the centuries’ old traditional ties, in the previous fifty years, Tibet had enjoyed official treaty relations with India.

As damaging as the Agreement itself is the exchange of letters between the Indian Ambassador in Beijing and the Chinese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs.

The Government of India through this exchange handed over all advantages accrued from the Simla Convention. India would not ask for nor get anything in return, not even the confirmation of the McMahon line.

The Aftermath

On 2 May 1954, in a Note to the Secretary General of the Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian Prime Minister summarized his thinking:

“The Agreement between India and China on Tibet should be communicated formally to the Commonwealth countries. With that Agreement there should be a note mentioning our old connection with Tibet and the necessity that arose to make fresh adjustments in view of the recent changes in Tibet. Petty difficulties were cropping up in regard to trade, pilgrimage and other matters… This Agreement not only settles these various points in regard to Tibet which have been troubling us during the last two years or so, but also we hope will have a stabilising effect over this region, as well as, we think, to some extent, in Asian affairs.”4

The ‘fresh adjustments’ for the Tibetans meant a complete loss of their independence. On May 15, 1954, Nehru presented the Agreement to the Indian Parliament.

It did not occur to Nehru to ask the most interested party, the Tibetans, who most likely would have preferred to live with a couple of hundred Indian jawans rather than with tens of thousands of soldiers of the ‘Liberation Army’.

After reading the preamble to the Agreement, Nehru commented on its implications for Tibet. India had accepted that this peaceful nation was brutally invaded and deprived of its autonomy.

The fact that China claimed suzerainty over Tibet was not a proof that Tibet was a region of China, just as the fact that China claimed large chunks of Indian territory (through her newly printed maps) was not a proof that these territories rightfully belonged to Beijing. Nehru stated:

“It is true that occasionally when China was weak, this sovereignty was not exercised in any large measure. When China was strong, it was exercised. Always there was a large measure of autonomy of Tibet, so that there was no great change in the theoretical approach to the Tibetan problem from the Chinese side. It has been throughout the last 200 or 300 years the same. The only country that had more intimate relations with Tibet was India, that is to say, British India in those days. Even then, when it was British policy to have some measure of influence over Tibet, even then they never denied the fact of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, although in practice it was hardly exercised and they laid stress on Tibetan autonomy.”5

Once more, he reiterated that the most important feature of the Agreement was not the fate of the Tibetans, but the ‘wider implications’. Unfortunately, for India, the loss of her natural buffer zone with China was indeed to have even ‘wider’ implications. It would take several years for Delhi to discover this.

It did not occur to Nehru to ask the most interested party, the Tibetans, who most likely would have preferred to live with a couple of hundred Indian jawans rather than with tens of thousands of soldiers of the ‘Liberation Army’.

In the same speech Nehru spoke about Agreement Panchsheel: “Live and let live, no one should invade the other, no one should fight the other… this is the basic principle which we have put in our treaty.”

Kripalani went on to mention that the new maps printed in China showed Nepal, Sikkim, etc. as part of China and he concluded: “In International politics when a buffer state is abolished by a powerful nation that nation is considered to have aggressive designs on its neighbours.”

The historian S. Gopal described the Agreement in more realistic terms:

“But this was clutching at straws after the main opportunity had been deliberately discarded. The only real gain India could show was a listing of six border passes in the middle sector, thereby defining, even indirectly, this stretch of the boundary. On the other hand the Chinese had secured all they wanted and given away little.”6

During the debate which followed, most of the members from the Congress and the Communist Party were enthusiastic in their endorsement of the agreement.

Acharya Kripalani strongly attacked the Government policy: “It affects us all and we have to say something about it. We feel that China, after it had gone Communist, committed an act of aggression against Tibet.”

At one time a Communist member cut him to say: “Did you commit aggression in Hyderabad?” But Kripalani continued:

“The plea is that China had the ancient right of suzerainty. That right was out of date, old and antiquated. It was theoretical; it was never exercised, it has lapsed by the flux of time. Tibet is culturally more akin to India than it is to China, at least Communist China which has repudiated its old culture.”

Kripalani went on to mention that the new maps printed in China showed Nepal, Sikkim, etc. as part of China and he concluded: “In International politics when a buffer state is abolished by a powerful nation that nation is considered to have aggressive designs on its neighbours.”

Nehru summed up the debate by saying “in my opinion, we have done no better thing than this since we became independent. I have no doubt about this… I think it is right for our country, for Asia and for the world.”

It took less than two months for India to discover that all problems had not been settled.

At the end of June 1954, in the midst of the Geneva Conference on Indichina, Zhou Enlai paid his first visit to India. During his three-day stay, he had five long meetings with Nehru to review the world situation and his expectations in Geneva. The friendship was at its zenith, but Tibet was not mentioned.

The First Intrusions

It took less than two months for India to discover that all problems had not been settled. The first Chinese incursion in the Barahoti area of Uttar Pradesh occurred in June 1954. This was the first of a series of hundreds of incursions which culminated in the attack of October 1962.

The irony is that it is China which complained about the incursion of some Indian troops… on India’s territory!

The Counselor in the Chinese embassy in Delhi wrote to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs on 17 July 1954: “According to a report received from the Tibet Region of China, over thirty Indian troops armed with rifles crossed the Niti pass on 29 June 1954, and intruded into Wu-Je7 of the Ali Area of the Tibet Region of China. The above happening is not in conformity with the principles of non-aggression and friendly co-existence between China and India.”8

On August 27, the Ministry of External Affairs replied that Barahoti was well inside Indian territory. This exchange is the first of more than one thousand Memoranda, Notes and Letters exchanged by the Governments of India and China over the next ten years, published in the White Papers on China.

John Lall wrote: “Ten days short of three months after the Tibet Agreement was signed the Chinese sent the first signal that friendly co-existence was over… Significantly, Niti was one of the six passes specified in the Indo-Chinese Agreement by which traders and pilgrims were permitted to travel.”9

Seeing that Indian diplomats were ready to bend backward to accommodate any Chinese demands, Mao Zedong and his colleagues would find more and more outstanding issues to raise. But in May—June 1954, they were still awaiting the outcome of the Geneva Conference.

The New Roads

Soon after the PLA entered Lhasa, the Chinese made plans to improve communications and build new roads on a war-footing.10 The only way to consolidate and ‘unify’ the Empire was to construct a large network of roads. The work began immediately after the arrival of the first young Chinese soldiers in Lhasa. Priority was given to motorable roads: the Chamdo-Lhasa,11 the Qinghai-Lhasa12 and the Tibet-Xinjiang Highway (later known as the Aksai Chin) in the western Tibet. The first surveys were done at the end of 1951 and construction began in 1952.

The different incidents which occurred in the early fifties should have awakened the Government of India from its soporific Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai dream-like world. It was not to be so.

As already mentioned, the construction of one of the feeder roads leading to Nathu-la, the border pass between Sikkim and Tibet had some strange consequences. India began feeding the Chinese road workers in Tibet, sending tons of rice through this route.

The official report of the 1962 China War prepared by the Indian Ministry of Defense gives a few examples showing that the construction of the road cutting across Indian soil on the Aksai Chin plateau of Ladakh was known to the Indian ministries of Defense and External Affairs long before it was made public.

To quote the Report: “B.N. Mullik, who was then Director, Intelligence Bureau, has, however, claimed that he had been reporting about the road building activity of the Chinese in the area since as early as November 1952. According to B.N. Mullik the Indian Trade Agent in Gartok also reported about it in July and September 1955, and August 1957.”13

The different incidents which occurred in the early fifties should have awakened the Government of India from its soporific Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai dream-like world. It was not to be so.

Instead of alarming Nehru, these disturbing reports reinforced his determination to bolster the friendship with China. The first of these incidents was the harassment of the Indian Trade Agent posted in Gartok in Western Tibet. Though Nehru wrote to Zhou Enlai about it, no follow up action was taken and no proper analysis of Chinese motivations was made. Nehru brought the matter to Zhou’s notice almost apologetically: “Recently, some incidents have taken place when the local authorities in Tibet stopped our Trade Agent in Western Tibet from proceeding on his official tour to Rudok and his staff to Taklakot, both important trade marts for Indian traders and pilgrims. There has been a forcible seizure of his wireless set which is essential for the performance of his duties. We learnt of this incident with surprise and regret, because it did not seem to us in consonance with the friendly relations between our two countries…”14

India had been trading with Central Asia and more particularly Kashgar and Yarkand for millennia. Just because ‘revolutionary changes’ had occurred in China, the Government of India accepted the closure of its trade with Sinkiang as a fait accompli.

The harassment of the Indian Trade Agent in Western Tibet was without doubt linked to the work which had started on the Tibet-Xinjiang highway. Rudok, located midway between Lhasa and Kashgar is the last small town before entering the Aksai Chin. The presence of an Indian official there was embarrassing for the Chinese as they had started building a road on Indian soil. Did Nehru see the implications of the incident or did he still believe in Chinese goodwill? It is difficult to say.

His letter concludes thus: “I would invite Your Excellency’s Government to confer with our Government at the earliest suitable opportunity, either in Delhi or in Peking, on all such matters affecting relations between our two countries.”

The Official report also mentions S.S. Khera, a Cabinet Secretary in 1962, who later wrote that “information about activities of the Chinese on the Indo-Tibetan border particularly in the Aksai Chin area had begun to come in by 1952 or earlier.”15

The closure of the Consulate in Kashgar

If the Indian government had been ready to read beyond the Chinese rhetoric and Zhou’s assurance of friendship, it would have seen many more ominous signs. One of them was the closure of the Indian Consulate in Kashgar.

Here again, as in several other cases, Nehru justified the Chinese actions without taking any retaliatory measures or even protesting. India’s interests were lost to the ‘revolutionary changes’ happening in China. He declared in the Parliament:

“When revolutionary changes took place there, it is perfectly true that the Chinese Government, when they came to Tibet, told us that they intended that they wanted to treat Sinkiang as a closed area. …Our Consul remained there for some time, till recently… but there is now no work to be done. So we advised him to come away and he did come away.”16

It was indeed a great victory for Beijing while they were building the road in the Aksai Chin. The Indian side seems to have been unaware of the reality on the ground.

India had been trading with Central Asia and more particularly Kashgar and Yarkand for millennia. Just because ‘revolutionary changes’ had occurred in China, the Government of India accepted the closure of its trade with Sinkiang as a fait accompli.

More Reports

During the negotiations for the Panchsheel Agreement, one of the objections by the Chinese was the mention of Demchok as the border pass for traders between Ladakh and Western Tibet. Very cleverly, Chen, the main Chinese negotiator ‘privately’ told T.N. Kaul, his Indian counterpart, that he was objecting because they were not keen to mention the name ‘Kashmir’ as they did not wish to take sides between India and Pakistan. This argument is very strange and though Kaul could see through the game, the Indian side gave in once again. Later Kaul wrote:

“However, their real objection was, I believe, to strengthening [their] claim to Aksai Chin (in the Ladakh province of Kashmir) which they needed for linking Sinkiang with Western Tibet. An agreed formula “the customary route leading to Tashigong along the valley of the Indus river may continue to be traversed in accordance with custom was worked out and Delhi approved it.”17

This formulation would have very serious consequences. Instead of using the opportunity to clarify the already contentious border issue, the Chinese were allowed to walk away with a vague statement which was open to future dispute. It was indeed a great victory for Beijing while they were building the road in the Aksai Chin. The Indian side seems to have been unaware of the reality on the ground.

More authors have mentioned the building of the Aksai Chin road and the fact that it was known during the mid-fifties to the Ministries of Defense and External Affairs. In his book The Saga of Ladakh,18 Maj. Gen Jagjit Singh mentions that in 1956, the Indian Military Attaché in Beijing, Brig Mallik received information that China had started building a highway through Indian territory in the Aksai Chin area. Mallik had reported the matter to Army Headquarters in New Delhi and a similar report was sent by the Indian Embassy to the Foreign Ministry.

The Government of India never acknowledged that it had information about the Aksai Chin road as early as 1954–55. It would be discussed for the first time in the Lok Sabha only in August 1959.

Brig S.S. Mallik, the Indian Military Attaché in Beijing made a first reference to the road-building activities of the Chinese in a routine report to the Government as early as November 1955. Five months later, in a special report to Delhi, the Military Attaché drew pointed attention to the construction of the strategic highway through Indian territory in Aksai Chin. Simultaneously, he also sent a copy of the report to the Army H.Q..

The Official Report of 1962 War states: “The Preliminary survey work on the planned Tibet-Sinkiang road having been completed by the mid-1950’s, China started constructing motorable road in summer 1955. The highway ran over 160 km across the Aksai Chin region of north-east Ladakh. It was completed in the second half of 1957. Arterial roads connecting the highway with Tibet were also laid. On 6 October 1957, the Sinkiang-Tibet road was formally opened with a ceremony in Gartok and twelve trucks on a trial run from Yarkand reached Gartok. In January 1958, the China News Agency reported that the Sinkiang-Tibet highway had been opened two months earlier and the road was being fully utilised.”

The Government of India never acknowledged that it had information about the Aksai Chin road as early as 1954–55. It would be discussed for the first time in the Lok Sabha only in August 1959.

General Thimayya, the Indian army chief who was forced to retire in 1961, one year before the Chinese attacked India, is supposed to have said in his valedictory address to the Indian Army Officer Corps: “I hope that I am not leaving you as cannon fodder for the Chinese communists.”

The Opening of the Road

On October 6, 1957, a Chinese newspaper Kuang-ming Jih-pao reported:

“The Sinkiang–Tibet – the highest highway in the world – has been completed. During the past few days, a number of trucks running on the highway on a trial basis have arrived in Ko-ta-k’e in Tibet from Yehch’eng in Sinkiang. The Sinkiang-Tibet Highway… is 1179 km long, of which 915 km are more than 4,000 meters above sea level; 130 km of it over 5,000 meters above sea level, with the highest point being 5,500 meters.”19

It took another year for the Nehru Government to officially complain to Beijing about the ‘intrusion’.

The loop was closed. The two newly-acquired western provinces of Communist China were linked. It took nearly two more years for the news to become public. In August 1959 Nehru dropped the bombshell in Parliament: what the Chinese called the ‘Tibet-Sinkiang highway’ was built through Indian territory.

One cause for the delay to make the news public was that for a few years, New Delhi dithered about how to react. Already in 1957, when the Indian Ambassador to China and his Military Attaché20 had been invited to a special function to celebrate the opening of the road, they politely refused. They had refused to fall into the Chinese trap and give the stamp of the Indian Embassy to the event.

It took another year for the Nehru Government to officially complain to Beijing about the ‘intrusion’. In an Informal Note given by the Foreign Secretary to the Chinese Ambassador on 18 October 1958, New Delhi finally decided to take some action:

“A motor road has been constructed by the Government of the People’s Republic of China across the eastern part of the Ladakh region of the Jammu Kashmir States, which is part of India. This road seems to form part of the Chinese road known as Yehchang–Gartok or Sikiang–Tibet highway, the completion of which was announced in September, 1957.”21

The Note concluded that it was a matter of ‘surprise and regret’ that the Chinese Government had built a road through “indisputably Indian territory without first obtaining the permission of the Government of India and without even informing the Government of India”.

The ‘petty dispute’ is still not solved today and the issue has become even knottier.

In conclusion, the Note stated: “the Government of India are anxious to settle these petty frontier disputes so that the friendly relations between the two countries may not suffer. The Government of India would therefore be glad for an early reply from the Chinese Government.”

The ‘petty dispute’ is still not solved today and the issue has become even knottier.22

At the end of the letter, another issue was raised: for some time an Indian patrol had been reported missing. Delhi wanted to know if the Chinese had seen “an Indian party consisting of three Military Officers and four soldiers together with one guide, one porter, six pony owners and thirty-four ponies … out on a normal patrol in this area near Shinglung in Indian territory.”

Indeed, they had been seen and captured by the Chinese border guards on Indian soil. Beijing admitted immediately that they were in their custody, but according to the local Chinese commanders the Indian jawans had trespassed on Chinese side of the frontier at the time of their arrest.23

This was the first of a long series of incidents. Hundred of letters and notes would be exchanged on the subject.

The Lapse of the Agreement

The Panchsheel Agreement ceased to exist in June 1962. At the time of the negotiations, India wanted an accord for a much longer period; however this was objected to by Beijing for its own reasons, though both parties thought at that time that it would be merely a formality to extend if necessary.24

Notes

1. Known as the 17-Point Agreement.

2. Tieh-Tseng Li, Tibet Today and Yesterday (New York: Bookman Associates, 1960), p. 210.

3. The Mauryan Emperor Asoka wrote Edicts on rocks and pillars. These texts preached the Buddhist precepts of non-violence, compassion, brotherhood and good governance based on the dharma. Nehru was a great admirer of Asoka.

4. SWJN, Series II, Vol. 25, Note to the Secretary General and Foreign Secretary, 2 May 1954, p. 468.

5. Ibid.

6. Gopal, Sarvepalli, Jawaharlal Nehru: a Biography, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 180.

7. Barahoti (Wu-Je for the Chinese) is about one day’s journey from the Niti Pass.

8. White Paper I, Note given by the counsellor of China in India to the Ministry of External Affairs, 17 July 1954, p. 1.

9. Lall, op. cit., p. 240.

10. One should not forget that in 1950 (when Eastern Tibet was invaded), a caravan from the Chinese border took two months to reach Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

11. The Sikang-Tibet Highway of the Chinese.

12. Or Tsinghai-Tibet Highway.

13. Mullik, op. cit., pp. 196-97.

14. SWJN, op. cit., Vol. 23, Cable to Zhou Enlai, September 1, 1953, p. 485.

15. Khera, S.S. India’s Defense Problem, p. 157.

16. SWJN, op. cit., Vol. 24,. p. 579. Also the reply to a debate in the Council of States, 24 December 1953, Parliamentary Debates (Council of States), Official Report, Vol. V, Nos. 18-25, 16 to 24 December 1953, cols. 3590-3599.

17. Kaul, op. cit., p. 102.

Click to buy

18. Jagjit Singh, Maj. Gen., The Saga of Ladakh, (New Delhi: Vanity Books, 1983), p. 37.

19. Ling Nai-Min, Tibetan Sourcebook (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1964), p. 263.

20. Brigadier S.S. Mallik.

21. White Paper No. 1, op. cit., p. 26.

22. Soon after Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee returned from China in June 2003, a Chinese patrol was caught trespassing on Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh. Similar incidents have been reported on the U.P.-Tibet border a couple of years ago. As long as there is no agreed border these incidents will continue to occur.

23. They would eventually be released a few months later.

24. According to the provisions of Article 6 of the Agreement: “the Agreement shall remain in force for eight years”. Both governments had ratified the Agreement on June 4, 1954, therefore it expired and ceased to be in force on June 3, 1962.

© Copyright 2015 Indian Defence Review