The trip will take place almost 50 years to the day that the People’s Liberation Army commenced a unilateral withdrawal from territories captured in the Assam Himalayas after inflicting a punishing defeat on Indian positions. Menon and his departing Chinese counterpart, Dai Bingguo, are expected to lay out a joint record of the progress achieved in the 15 rounds of special representative-level talks conducted since 2003.

The origins of the 1962 conflict lie in New Delhi’s decision to encroach militarily in the Tibet–Aksai-Ladakh (western) sector of their disputed boundary. Although the territory in question was subject to overlapping claims, it was deemed strategically salient by the Chinese and, crucially, was within their administrative control. Yet when the war erupted in October that year, a major determinant was India’s attempt to militarily impose its preferred alignment of the boundary line (the McMahon Line) in the Assam Himalayas sector to the east. Alerted to an ideologically and geopolitically expedient casus belli, the Chinese inflicted embarrassingly swift reprisals across the McMahon Line.

Cartographic unilateralism and the extension of administrative prerogatives by themselves did not cause the Sino–Indian border war of 1962. Both parties had officially traded unilateral claims in both sectors, and these rival claims were known to either party. Each country also established administrative control of specific territories according to claim lines deemed to be strategically vital to their interests — in the east by India (the Assam Himalayas sector) and in much of the west by China (the Tibet–Aksai-Ladakh sector). It was New Delhi’s unwillingness to negotiate the disposition of territory that was subject to overlapping claims and, worse, its willingness to compound matters by encroaching militarily into sensitive Chinese-administered territory in the west that ultimately precipitated the descent into war.

It was not until a bilateral agreement was signed in 1993 that the lesson of non-infringement of territory under the administrative control of the other party was formally institutionalised. Arriving at a negotiated settlement over the more difficult question of overlapping territorial claims has been much harder. Two problematic historical factors have conspired against such an agreement.

First, as a general rule, in pre-modern times along the Sino–Indian frontier sovereignty and boundaries were not coterminous; they were sanctioned locally. Mountains, except at their highest reaches, were not a deterrent to movement; Tibetans and ethnically related groups frequently migrated across. As a result, important political, spiritual and fiscal practices bound the Indian side of practically every Himalayan pass to authorities to the north. While China’s modern boundary claims generally shadow these historical practices, and extend beyond, the British–Indian imposition of a linear boundary based on the crest-line of the Himalayas was bound to become a point of discord.

Second, the British were neither willing to countenance any frontier power with equal rights in the Sino–Indian border zone, nor acknowledge that the allegiance of their dependents in this area was shared with another great (Russian) or significant (Chinese) power. Administrative responsibilities were kept to a minimum though in Tibet where Britain’s imperial arm barely reached. A scheme to divide Tibet into inner and outer zones was thus devised, with local authorities in Outer Tibet enjoined to comply with an imposed boundary line of British-Indian convenience. The McMahon Line in the Assam Himalayas was the strategic expression of this frontier. While Beijing’s input or acquiescence to its alignment — while preferable — was not deemed essential, the attempt to unilaterally present it as a fait accompli to the Chinese at a 1914 convention in the Indian city of Shimla turned into an exercise of coercion and fraud.

Britain’s diplomatic recognition of the newly constituted Chinese Republic was made contingent on China’s participation at Shimla. The alignment of the boundary was secretly settled between the British and Tibetan representatives at the conference, even though the former was legally bound by Anglo–Chinese treaties of 1886, 1890 and 1906 to have no direct dealings with the Tibetans. British India’s absorption of Tawang, a Tibetan-administered territory south of the Himalayan crest-line, was also a violation of Britain’s own convention with the Russians seven years earlier, which had forsworn the annexation of Tibetan land. Within days of China’s preliminary signature on a draft map, the Chinese foreign office vehemently repudiated the alignment of the boundary; Whitehall followed shortly thereafter by disavowing the convention’s entire purpose.

Shimla failed to produce anything resembling a conclusive agreement and can hardly serve as the lawful basis for a consensual and durable boundary arrangement. Yet the political and legal justness of the McMahon Line continues to persist as an article of faith within political, strategic and media circles in New Delhi. It was not until a bilateral agreement was signed in 2005 to frame principles-based parameters to guide settlement that a negotiated path to boundary dispute resolution was formally institutionalised.

As efforts by the special representatives to lay out a ‘package-based’ framework to resolve the boundary dispute continue in Beijing, it behooves New Delhi to eschew its attitude of entitlement to the Assam Himalayan lands. While these territories will devolve to India in a final settlement, as foreseen in the 2005 agreement, New Delhi will also have to seek a creative approach that pays due regard to the area’s historical links and religious traditions. A review of the cross-border pilgrimage and trade privileges contained in the epochal Panchsheel Agreement of 1954 would be an excellent place to start.

Sourabh Gupta is Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Washington, DC. He is an EAF Distinguished Fellow for 2012.