Tawang was Sardar Patel’s last gift to the nation. India must strengthen border infra
Tawang, one of the remaining outposts of India at the Arunachal frontier is in information for the beyond few weeks because of the escalating anxiety with the PLA troops. Though the Indian Army has effectively resisted the Chinese try and transgress the LAC, there’s no denying the truth that we want to bolster our border infrastructure to steady ourselves in opposition to any strive through the adversary to alternate the popularity quo.
It bears recollect that in1947, the Dalai Lama’s authorities in Lhasa had familiar impartial India’s felony function and that it changed into the herbal heir of all treaties among Britain and Tibet. During the Second World War, street constructing had all started withinside the Lohit and Subansiri divisions of NEFA (as Arunachal Pradesh changed into then known) as a part of the try and administer the regions proper as much as the claimed border as in keeping with the Simla Convention of 1914.
With regard to Tawang and the complete Kameng Division, the outpost set up at Tawang in 1938 through the British Indian Army were overrun through the Axis troops in 1942. But at once after the Japanese retreat, the Tibetan navy had withdrawn quietly from the territory. So, there has been kingdom of flux. In his magisterial paintings 1962: The War That Wasn’t, army historian Shiv Kunal Verma writes that once the World War, Tibet’s governing council, the Kashag, had formally written to the Indian authorities in October 1944, that it ‘did now no longer want to dispute the validity of the McMahon Line’, however asked postponement of the extension of the British management to Tawang.
Meanwhile, whilst the Nationalists below Chiang Kai-shek misplaced out to the Communists below Mao Zedong, the latter asserted his manipulate over Tibet. From October 1950, Chinese troops superior into jap Tibet, crossing the border at 5 locations to seize the headquarters of the Tibetan navy in Chamdo withinside the Kham province. The PLA’s goal changed into to demoralise the Lhasa authorities and pressurise it to ship negotiators to Beijing to signal phrases for a handover of Tibet.
Establishing management in Tawang
By early 1951, Indian political officials have been reporting improved Chinese pastime in numerous elements of NEFA. Most of the Assam Rifles posts have been at the McMahon Line, with prolonged traces of verbal exchange going for walks thru regions with very little administrative manipulate. Walong and Hayuliang have been set up with a platoon every below the command of an officer, even as test posts have been set up withinside the top reaches of the Siang Valley. However, the governor of Assam, Jairamdas Daulatram, below whose manipulate the Assam Rifles functioned, changed into maximum worried approximately the Tawang salient in which Tibetan dzongpens (nearby officers) and their acolytes have been nonetheless workout manipulate. Major Bob Khathing, the assistant political officer in Pasighat, changed into summoned to Shillong and directed to take a column of Assam Rifles as much as Tawang to set up an management there. He changed into given an escort of 3 platoons from five Assam Rifles, below the command of Captain H. B. Limbu. There have been 600 porters as nicely of their train.
Khathing reached Tawang on 1 February 1951, in which a consultant of the Tsona Dzong Dzongpen acquired him, and agreed that from ‘the 0.33 day of the Iron-Haired Year, corresponding with nine February 1951 the management of Tawang and its monastery will be the duty of the Government of India’, and that the Tsona Dzongpen or every other legitimate of the Tibetan authorities ought to now no longer exercising authority over the villages south of Bum-los angeles that lay at the McMahon Line. The Dzongpen referred the problem to Lhasa. But through this time, the management of Dalai Lama changed into in a degree of terminal decline. Claude Arpi, an expert on Tibet avers that the Bob Khathing column into Tawang changed into Sardar Patel’s remaining present to the country because it changed into he changed into he who had advised the Jairamdas Daulatram to carry Tawang below the tricolour.
Although in a remaining-ditch effort, the Tibetans ordered all village chiefs to bring together at Tawang. By then, Bob Khathing and the Assam Rifles had made a beneficial impact at the Monpas who observed that Indians have been now no longer eager to extract any taxes from them. The Tibetan officers have been escorted to the Indian border put up at Khenzemane. Thus India changed into in de facto ownership of the territories it held de jure seven months earlier than the Chinese pressured the 17-factor settlement with the Dalai Lama on 24 October 1951.
Angry Nehru
By the time Nehru were given wind of the Tawang matter, Khathing changed into in corporation manipulate of the situation, and aleven though some weeks later (April 1951) each the Governor and the Major needed to pay attention a mouthful from Nehru, it changed into nicely-nigh not possible to opposite the fait accompli. But Nehru’s anger did now no longer remaining too long, for Daulatram finished his 5-yr time period because the Governor of Assam until 1956, and Khathing have become the district Justice of the Peace of Mokokchung in Nagaland, in which the 2 Naga conventions have been held in 1956 and 1957, which denounced violence and agreed for an self reliant kingdom in the Union of India. Khathing went directly to grow to be the leader secretary of Nagaland, and later our Ambassador to Burma (as Myanmar changed into then called).
And it changed into to this very monastery in Tawang that the Dalai lama took safe haven after an hard adventure on 31 March 1959. This tale has been captured through Rita Singh in her ee-e book An Officer and His Holiness. Fifty years later, despite sturdy protests through China, the Dalai Lama’s go to to Tawang Monastery on eight November 2009 changed into a huge occasion for the humans of the region, and the abbot of the monastery greeted him with a good deal fanfare and adulation.
It is likewise genuine that withinside the 1962 engagement, the PLA had taken manipulate over Tawang and its well-known monastery, however it changed into now no longer damaged, and the troops withdrew quietly after some weeks. However, all alerts from the floor are that we want to bolster our infrastructure and connectivity with the most lovable and loneliest frontier of the country, for the competition and context are each extraordinarily pertinent to India’s strategic pastimes and territorial integrity on this sector.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Till recently, he changed into the Director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
