INDIA-CHINA Relations 1947-2000 : A Documentary Study by Avtar Singh Bhasin : 5 Volumes Set (Published in Cooperation with Policy Planning Division, Ministry of External Affairs)

Contents: Preface. Introduction. Volume - I : Document 1- 429. Volume - II : Document 430–1011. Volume - III : Document 1012-1598. Volume - IV : Document 1599–1951. Volume - V : Document 1952–2523. The emergence of India as an independent country in 1947 and the establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949 marked the emergence of Asia as the focal point of international politics. Another noteworthy event of the time was the forcible occupation of Tibet by China, ignoring Indian advice to peacefully negotiate the new relationship. China declared Tibet to be its internal affair and that it would not accept any interference in Tibet by any other country or any or any diminution of its sovereignty in Tibet. While accepting in principle the concept of Tibetan Autonomy, China freely trampled upon it. China’s occupation of Tibet made it the contiguous neighbor of India for the first time in history. India had certain traditional and treaty rights in Tibet independent of China. To be in line with the new developments in Tibet, India voluntarily relinguished certain of its rights there which it had inherited on independence and now appeared anachronistic while negotiating the Agreement of 1954. It retained trade and pilgrimage facilities on the basis of reciprocity. As the events unfolded, China’s control in Tibet remained tenuous. It came in conflict with the Dalai Lama and he Tibetan administration generally. It undermined the religious institutions and practices of the Tibetans. All this resulted in the revolt of 1959 in Tibet and the flight of Dalai Lama to India. The events in Tibet had their fall out on India-China relations. China’s territorial claims on India all along the India-China frontier, surreptitiously encroaching and occupying them undermine the trust that India had reposed in the Chinese friendship. The adversarial relations that these developments produced determined the course of events in the following years. More than 2500 documents in the present five-volume study are witness to those unsavoury development.