Sino-Indian War
The Sino-Indian War, also known as the China–India War or the Indo-China War, was an armed conflict between China and India that took place from October to November 1962. It was a military escalation of the Sino-Indian border dispute. Fighting occurred along India's border with China, in India's North-East Frontier Agency east of Bhutan, and in Aksai Chin west of Nepal.
There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962. Amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis, seeing that the U.S. was pre-occupied with dealing with it, China abandoned all attempts towards a peaceful resolution on 20 October 1962, invading disputed territory along the border in Ladakh and across the McMahon Line in the northeastern frontier. Chinese troops pushed Indian forces back in both theatres, capturing all of their claimed territory in the western theatre and the Tawang Tract in the eastern theatre. The conflict ended when China unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 20 November 1962, which can be attributed to the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis and fears of U.S. intervention to support India, and simultaneously announced its withdrawal to its pre-war position, the effective China–India border.
Much of the fighting comprised mountain warfare, entailing large-scale combat at altitudes of over. Notably, the war took place entirely on land, without the use of naval or air assets by either side.
As the Sino-Soviet split deepened, the Soviet Union made a major effort to support India, especially with the sale of advanced MiG fighter aircraft. Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom refused to sell advanced weaponry to India, further compelling it to turn to the Soviets for military aid.
Location
China and India shared a long border, sectioned into three stretches by Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan, which follows the Himalayas between Burma and what was then West Pakistan. A number of disputed regions lie along this border. At its western end is the Aksai Chin region, an area the size of Switzerland, that sits between the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang and Tibet, which China declared as an autonomous region in 1965. The eastern border, between Burma and Bhutan, comprises the present Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, formerly the North-East Frontier Agency. Both of these regions were overrun by China in the 1962 conflict.Most combat took place at high elevations. The Aksai Chin region is a desert of salt flats around above sea level, and Arunachal Pradesh is mountainous with a number of peaks exceeding. The Chinese Army had possession of one of the highest ridges in the region. The high altitude and freezing conditions caused logistical and welfare difficulties. In past similar conflicts, such as the Italian Campaign of World War I, harsh conditions have caused more casualties than have enemy actions. The Sino-Indian War was no different, with many troops on both sides succumbing to the freezing cold temperatures.
Background
The main cause of the war was a dispute over the sovereignty of the widely separated Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh border regions. Aksai Chin, claimed by India to belong to Ladakh and by China to be part of Xinjiang, contains an important road link that connects the Chinese regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. China's construction of this road was one of the triggers of the conflict.Aksai Chin
The western portion of the Sino-Indian boundary originated in 1834, with the conquest of Ladakh by the armies of Raja Gulab Singh under the suzerainty of the Sikh Empire. Following an unsuccessful campaign into Tibet, Gulab Singh and the Tibetans signed a treaty in 1842 agreeing to stick to the "old, established frontiers", which were left unspecified. The British defeat of the Sikhs in 1846 resulted in the transfer of the Jammu and Kashmir region including Ladakh to the British, who then installed Gulab Singh as the Maharaja under their suzerainty. British commissioners contacted Chinese officials to negotiate the border, who did not show any interest. The British boundary commissioners fixed the southern end of the boundary at Pangong Lake, but regarded the area north of it till the Karakoram Pass as terra incognita.The Maharaja of Kashmir and his officials were keenly aware of the trade routes from Ladakh. Starting from Leh, there were two main routes into Central Asia: one passed through the Karakoram Pass to Shahidulla at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains and went on to Yarkand through the Kilian and Sanju passes; the other went east via the Chang Chenmo Valley, passed the Lingzi Tang Plains in the Aksai Chin region, and followed the course of the Karakash River to join the first route at Shahidulla. The Maharaja regarded Shahidulla as his northern outpost, in effect treating the Kunlun mountains as the boundary of his domains. His British suzerains were sceptical of such an extended boundary because Shahidulla was away from the Karakoram Pass and the intervening area was uninhabited. Nevertheless, the Maharaja was allowed to treat Shahidulla as his outpost for more than 20 years.
File:Johnson-journey-ilchi1865-mapa.jpg|thumb|left|W. H. Johnson's route to Khotan and back. Johnson's proposed boundary ran along the "northern branch" of the Kunlun Mountains.
Chinese Turkestan regarded the "northern branch" of the Kunlun range with the Kilian and Sanju passes as its southern boundary. Thus the Maharaja's claim was uncontested. After the 1862 Dungan Revolt, which saw the expulsion of the Chinese from Turkestan, the Maharaja of Kashmir constructed a small fort at Shahidulla in 1864. The fort was most likely supplied from Khotan, whose ruler was now independent and on friendly terms with Kashmir. When the Khotanese ruler was deposed by the Kashgaria strongman Yakub Beg, the Maharaja was forced to abandon his post in 1867. It was then occupied by Yakub Beg's forces until the end of the Dungan Revolt.
In the intervening period, W. H. Johnson of Survey of India was commissioned to survey the Aksai Chin region. While in the course of his work, he was "invited" by the Khotanese ruler to visit his capital. After returning, Johnson noted that Khotan's border was at Brinjga, in the Kunlun mountains, and the entire Karakash Valley was within the territory of Kashmir. The boundary of Kashmir that he drew, stretching from Sanju Pass to the eastern edge of Chang Chenmo Valley along the Kunlun mountains, is referred to as the "Johnson Line".
After the Chinese reconquered Turkestan in 1878, renaming it Xinjiang, they again reverted to their traditional boundary. By now, the Russian Empire was entrenched in Central Asia, and the British were anxious to avoid a common border with the Russians. After creating the Wakhan corridor as the buffer in the northwest of Kashmir, they wanted the Chinese to fill out the "no man's land" between the Karakoram and Kunlun ranges. Under British encouragement, the Chinese occupied the area up to the Yarkand River valley, including Shahidulla, by 1890. They also erected a boundary pillar at the Karakoram pass by about 1892. These efforts appear half-hearted. A map provided by Hung Ta-chen, a senior Chinese official at St. Petersburgh, in 1893 showed the boundary of Xinjiang up to Raskam. In the east, it was similar to the Johnson line, placing Aksai Chin in Kashmir territory.
By 1892, the British settled on the policy that their preferred boundary for Kashmir was the "Indus watershed", i.e., the water-parting from which waters flow into the Indus river system on one side and into the Tarim basin on the other. In the north, this water-parting was along the Karakoram range. In the east, it was more complicated because the Chip Chap River, Galwan River and the Chang Chenmo River flow into the Indus whereas the Karakash River flows into the Tarim basin. A boundary alignment along this water-parting was defined by the Viceroy Lord Elgin and communicated to London. The British government in due course proposed it to China via its envoy Sir Claude MacDonald in 1899. This boundary, which came to be called the Macartney–MacDonald Line, ceded to China the Aksai Chin plains in the northeast, and the Trans-Karakoram Tract in the north. In return, the British wanted China to cede its 'shadowy suzerainty' on Hunza.
Following the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 which resulted in power shifts in China, the fall of Tzarist Russia in 1917 and the end of World War I in 1918, the British officially used the Johnson Line but had lost the urgency to enforce this boundary. They took no steps to establish outposts or assert control on the ground. According to Neville Maxwell, the British had used as many as 11 different boundary lines in the region, as their claims shifted with the political situation. From 1917 to 1933, the "Postal Atlas of China", published by the Government of China in Peking had shown the boundary in Aksai Chin as per the Johnson line, which runs along the Kunlun Mountains. The "Peking University Atlas", published in 1925, also put the Aksai Chin in India.
The use of Johnson line or Macartney-MacDonald line was neglected by the colonial administrators and by 1947, when India gained independence, the British left the government of India with high ambiguity about the settled border to the North. The Indian government choose to lay claim to Aksai Chin after 1947. On 1 July 1954, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru definitively stated the Indian position, claiming that Aksai Chin had been part of the Indian Ladakh region for centuries, and that the border was non-negotiable. According to George N. Patterson, when the Indian government finally produced a report detailing the alleged proof of India's claims to the disputed area, "the quality of the Indian evidence was very poor, including some very dubious sources indeed".
In 1956–57, China constructed a road through Aksai Chin, connecting Xinjiang and Tibet, which ran south of the Johnson Line in many places. Aksai Chin was easily accessible to the Chinese, but access from India, which meant negotiating the Karakoram mountains, was much more difficult. The road came on Chinese maps published in 1958.