Often, rarely-visited pages of history provide refreshing insights into present problems. This is not surprising, considering many of the postcolonial world’s problems are legacies of a past era marked by rivalries marked by silent ploys and counter-ploys between colonising European powers, carefully harnessed so they did not escalate into open conflicts.

Northeast India is among the regions still facing the consequences of one such rivalry between imperial Britain and tsarist Russia in the late 19th  and early 20th centuries—the Great Game. The dispute over the McMahon Line, the periodic border skirmishes—most notably, the flashpoint at Doklam in the Sikkim sector in June 2017—are some evidences.

The Doklam case—in which India prevented China from building a road on the Doklam plateau in Bhutanese territory close to the Indian border—is especially illustrative. It should be recalled that the Chinese claimed that part of Doklam belonged to them, citing a boundary treaty they signed with the British in 1890 determining Sikkim’s territorial extent. The British also signed another treaty with the Chinese in 1893 to allow setting up of a British-Indian trade mart at Yatung in the Chumbi valley contiguous to Doklam.

The history of these treaties is intriguing for the fact that they were signed with China, not Tibet. Were the British recognising the suzerainty of China over Tibet? Not quite so. The answer has more to do with the Great Game, as China-born British scholar Alastair Lamb, author of the monumental two-volume work, The McMahon Line: A Study in Relation Between India, China and Tibet, 1904-1914 says in his portrayal of the Lingtu blockade by Tibet.

For at least a decade at the time, the British had been contemplating a permanent presence in Tibet. Towards this end, in 1886, they planned a trade mission to Lhasa under the command of an adventurous civil servant, Colman Macaulay. This was to be done on the strength of the unequal Chefoo Convention of 1876 forced on the Chinese in what was then called Peking. The convention gave British subjects rights within Chinese territory. The Chinese, still too weak to oppose the British, conveyed their reluctance to the Coleman mission saying the Tibetans would oppose the plan, indicating they were unsure of their control over Tibet.

The Macaulay mission was ultimately suspended for several reasons, but Alastair Lamb suspects it had little to do with the British wanting not to embarrass the Chinese at their inability to control the Tibetans. Instead, he thinks it was after tacitly coercing the Chinese to recognise the British annexation of Burma in 1885, a country the Manchu rulers considered as their tributary.

Not knowing the mission had been called off, the Tibetans sent a detachment to the Sikkimese village of Lingtu, over which they reasserted their ancient claim. Then, “on the main road from Darjeeling to the Tibetan border at the Chumbi Valley, along which Colman Macaulay was expected to travel, the Tibetans set up a military post; and they refused to retreat even after there ceased to be any question of a British mission”, Lamb writes.

Despite appeals by the British to the Chinese to have the blockade lifted, the Chinese could do nothing. At this, Viceroy Dufferin in 1888 authorised the clearing of the blockade by British forces. Dufferin also became convinced Tibetan affairs were best dealt with Lhasa, not Peking. However, the earlier policy outlook was not abandoned immediately, and the 1890 boundary treaty and the 1893 trade treaty were signed with Peking, not Lhasa.

Lamb points out the reason is Britain’s anxiety that entering into international treaties with Tibet would give the Tibetans de jure sovereignty status in the eyes of international law. This may encourage the Tibetans to enter into independent treaties with other European rivals, in particular tsarist Russia. To the British at the time, China was the lesser danger.

The Great Game anxiety made Britain again push for the St Petersburg Convention, 1907, with Russia already on the backfoot after a naval defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905. To ensure Russia is kept at a distance from Tibet, the treaty made it mandatory for both Britain and Russia to deal with Tibet only through China’s mediation. This complicated matters for the British when the Simla Conference of 1913-14 was held to define the India-Tibet (China) boundary, and China had to be made a party to the conference. China walked out midway and the boundary agreement was with Tibet alone, prompting China not to recognise it.

Earlier, Curzon adopted the Dufferin outlook. When he became convinced that the 13th Dalai Lama was leaning towards Russia, he authorised Francis Younghusband’s mission in 1904 to invade Tibet. Though the Dalai Lama escaped to Mongolia, Younghusband forced the Lhasa Convention, 1904, on the Tibetan government. Among the many humiliating concessions, the Tibetans were to pay a war indemnity of Rs 75 lakh, an amount beyond Tibet’s capacity. Until this amount was paid, Chumbi valley was to remain with India.

In the years after Curzon, liberals like John Morley, secretary of state for India in London, made sure the Lhasa Convention was virtually undone and replaced by the Peking Convention, 1906, this time signed not with Lhasa but Peking. Another dichotomy of vision between the British home government and the colonial government also became evident. If men like Curzon believed controlling Tibet was important for India’s security, Morley and others were fearful rivals may want to emulate Britain’s outlook in Tibet in other sensitive regions like Mongolia, Afghanistan and Iran.

If not for Britain’s Great Game anxiety, the counterfactual possibility is that monastic states like Tibet—and possibly Sikkim too—could have remained as Bhutan has. Such a scenario probably would have meant a very different security environment in the entire Northeast region.

The British empire has dissolved, but not the problems created by its anxieties. Chumbi valley, wedged between Sikkim and Bhutan, remains like a dagger pointed at India’s Siliguri corridor that connects the Northeast with the rest of India. But in today’s drastically altered context, perhaps the only way to change for the better is for India and China to find ways to become friends again.

(Views are personal)

(phanjoubam@gmail.com)

Pradip Phanjoubam | Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics