borders were not yet clear and that they had to be determined in discus-
sion with its neighbours. Part of his diplomacy was to assure neighbours
of China’s non-expansionist aims; he was willing to discuss delimited and
demarcated borders without preconditions. (Borders with Nepal and
Burma were settled on this basis in 1960, in the latter case on the basis of
the McMahon Line: also, more controversially, with Pakistan in May 1962- there is actually no Sino-Pakistani border; there is a Chinese border with
Kashmir, but as a result of the Pakistani occupation of western Kashmir,
pragmatism required China to discuss borders with Pakistan. The implicit
recognition of Pakistan’s right to at least that part of Kashmir was not the
intention; both sides regarded the boundary as provisional pending a
settlement of the Kashmir dispute.)
The problem, however, was that there was a strong Indian tendency
to claim that its borders were not negotiable; this left no room for
compromise and turned the entire dispute into quibbling over obsolete
treaties or agreements of doubtful legality. With a history of the
imposition of ‘unequal treaties’ by foreign powers, such preconditions
were not likely to be accepted by China; the Chinese distaste that
independent India should base its claims so strongly on an era of imperial
treaties was strongly expressed. On the Indian side, there seemed to be a
singular lack of appreciation that China could offer negotiations without
preconditions, and remain flexible on the actual boundaries even to the
extent of conceding to India exactly the same territory as delimited by
the McMahon Line; but China could not concede the legality of the Line
itself without implying that Tibet, whose delegates had been the only ones
to accept any version of the Line, had been sovereign in 1914, and
therefore were possibly so now.
In 1954, Indian maps abruptly changed to show concrete and
delimited international boundaries in place of earlier provisional ones
and Aksai Chin was placed firmly within the Indian Union, on the basis
that the Indian side wished to argue that India’s boundaries were already
determined and not open to negotiations. This principle was especially
to be observed, as Nehru’s directive stated, ‘in such places as might be
considered disputed areas’.^13 Clearly, the intention was to present China
with a fait accompli. From 1954 to 1956, China began to build a road across
a corner of Aksai Chin, connecting Xinjiang and Tibet. Since China
argued that the Indian maps did not accord with reality, and the Indian
side did not even discover the Aksai Chin road until 1957 or 1958 (there
240 HIGH NEHRUVIANISM AND ITS DECLINE, c. 1955–63