The Sino-Indian Boundary Issue continues....

This ‘package proposal’, had it been accepted by India, would have given India three-fourths of the entire disputed territory, and would have given China the part of Aksai Chin they formally wanted.

The next Chinese ‘package deal’ offer was conveyed via Soviet Premier Kruschev and Pandit Sunderlal a little later in 1960: China would retain 12,500 sq miles of territory in its possession in Aksai Chin, and India would get about 37,500 sq miles of the rest of the disputed territory in Ladakh and NEFA. In addition, in lieu of what China retained, India would get an equal area somewhere else, but contiguous to the border, thus in effect accepting a suggestion first put forward by Krishna Menon, of exchanging part of Aksai Chin for the Chumbi Valley opposite Sikkim.

This very reasonable ‘package deal’ proposal too did not find favour with Nehru, in spite of giving India almost everything it could ask for. Part of China’s later insistence on their claims in NEFA can be seen as creating a strong bargaining position for a formal concession from India regarding Aksai Chin. With the thawing of relations after 1976, Deng Xiaoping had made an offer in 1979, suggesting the post-1962 status quo as a basis, subject to mutual adjustments and mutual accommodation.

He followed up this offer in 1981 by saying, ‘Both countries should make concessions; China in the east sector and India in the west sector, on the basis of the actually controlled border line, so as to solve the Sino-Indian border question in a package plan.’ It will require both political will and a generous amount of good-will on both sides to come up with suitable new ‘package deals’. However since the Pokharan-II nuclear tests by India in May 1998, the idea of a package deal, and indeed, any demonstrated desire to settle the boundary issue have almost disappeared.

To be continued...