How Aksai Chin became the bone of contention?
Mohan Guruswamy
1,260 words
Indian and Chinese troops are in yet another face-off in the Aksai Chin region. How this cold and wind-swept desert became a seemingly intractable dispute is tale worth telling. It was the ambitions of two Kashmir Maharaja’s that saddled India with its two biggest security challenges. We know how Hari Singh’s vacillation led to the invasion of his realm by the Pakistani raiders in 1947 and what followed is well known. But not so well known is how the ambition of Maharaja Ranbir Singh led to the cartographic annexation of Aksai Chin into the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.
On March 16, 1846, the British ceded to Gulab Singh, the Sikh state’s feudatory, as reward for his treachery towards his masters in Lahore, the lands they had thus acquired — the territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh “for the sum of `75 lakhs”. He in turn acknowledged the supremacy of the British government. Article 4 of the Treaty of Amritsar stated: ‘The limits of the territories of Maharaja Gulab Singh shall not at any time be changed without concurrence of the British government.’ But this is exactly what the Maharaja did and saddled posterity with the Aksai Chin problem. …show more content…
The area is largely a vast high-altitude desert with a low point on the Karakash River at about 14,000 feet above sea level. In the southwest, mountains up to 22,500 feet extending southeast from the Depsang plains form the de facto border (Line of Actual Control or LAC) between India and China. When Jawaharlal Nehru’s told Parliament that it was ‘a place where not even a blade of grass grows’. The Congress MP, Mahavir Tyagi, riposted that the Prime Minister’s head did not have a single hair but that didn’t make it
Mohan Guruswamy
1,260 words
Indian and Chinese troops are in yet another face-off in the Aksai Chin region. How this cold and wind-swept desert became a seemingly intractable dispute is tale worth telling. It was the ambitions of two Kashmir Maharaja’s that saddled India with its two biggest security challenges. We know how Hari Singh’s vacillation led to the invasion of his realm by the Pakistani raiders in 1947 and what followed is well known. But not so well known is how the ambition of Maharaja Ranbir Singh led to the cartographic annexation of Aksai Chin into the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.
On March 16, 1846, the British ceded to Gulab Singh, the Sikh state’s feudatory, as reward for his treachery towards his masters in Lahore, the lands they had thus acquired — the territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh “for the sum of `75 lakhs”. He in turn acknowledged the supremacy of the British government. Article 4 of the Treaty of Amritsar stated: ‘The limits of the territories of Maharaja Gulab Singh shall not at any time be changed without concurrence of the British government.’ But this is exactly what the Maharaja did and saddled posterity with the Aksai Chin problem. …show more content…
The area is largely a vast high-altitude desert with a low point on the Karakash River at about 14,000 feet above sea level. In the southwest, mountains up to 22,500 feet extending southeast from the Depsang plains form the de facto border (Line of Actual Control or LAC) between India and China. When Jawaharlal Nehru’s told Parliament that it was ‘a place where not even a blade of grass grows’. The Congress MP, Mahavir Tyagi, riposted that the Prime Minister’s head did not have a single hair but that didn’t make it