to sovereign statehood on the basis of being a ‘nation’; a problem that
did not arise before the rise and naturalisation of nation-states. Under
the late Qing, Tibet enjoyed effective autonomy, in conditions of limited
communications links and non-centralised state power, when the rules
of all international intercourse were not quite so nation-state oriented.)
Now, Nehru, unlike the British, found it unnecessary to continue to
control Tibet or to encourage it to assert its independence. He also advised
the British and Americans against bringing up Tibet as an issue at the
UN Security Council, especially at a time when the Korean War was
happening. The Indian position, as expressed to the Americans, was that
‘India was the heir to British policy which had sought [to] achieve a buffer
state in Tibet against Russia and China. [The] G[overnment] O[f] I[ndia]
however was not disposed [to] create or support buffer states...
throughout the centuries[,] Chinese influence and control in Tibet had
fluctuated with the strength of the regime in power. Weak Chinese
governments lost nearly all influence, strong governments regained it...
it was inevitable that the present Chinese government should gain control
over Tibet.’^39
Against this backdrop, India’s early relations with the People’s
Republic of China were nothing if not warm. On December 31, 1953,
India began negotiations in Beijing for what became the 1954 ‘Agreement
on Trade and Intercourse in the Tibet Region of China’ – which is the
term India and China were henceforth to use in all references to Tibet. The
Preamble to this agreement contained the Panch Sheelor Five Principles
of Co-Existence which were to govern Indo-Chinese relations, and which
were to be Nehru’s contribution to the theory of non-alignment and, he
hoped, world peace: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity
and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in each
other’s affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence.^40
(The last phrase foreshadowed a later stage of the Cold War in which the
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev adopted it; the Soviet leadership actually
claimed to have borrowed the phrase from the Panch Sheel.) The euphoria
and hyperbole of the great fraternity of Asian nations was expressed in
the slogan ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ (Indians and Chinese are brothers);
Zhou Enlai visited Delhi in June 1954, and later that year, in October,
Nehru returned the compliment by visiting Beijing, where he met Mao
Zedong and was paraded in triumphal splendour through the city in
Zhou’s company. Indo-Chinese friendship was celebrated as both modern204 CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55