The Himalayan Border

on the World Today

ONE of the world’s great barriers is the frontier between India and China. The people on either side of it look different. On the Chinese side they have long eyes, high cheekbones, and flat noses — the “Mongoloid” face. On the Indian side they look like Europeans, though darker. They have always had different politics. Today it is the new, tentative, democratic, “neutralist ” India of Pandit Nehru on the one hand, and the expanding force of Red China on the other.

At its east end, the border between these two lies vaguely in Southeast Asia, or the Bay of Bengal, but west of Burma it consists of the Himalayan Slope, a peculiar strip of terrain 1500 miles long. The Slope’s upper, northern edge runs along the Tibetan Plateau, a chilly waste over 10,000 feet high; and its lower edge is on the Indian Plain, hot and barely above sea level.

The Slope is from 100 to 200 miles wide, and very rugged. It is repeatedly cut crosswise by deep gorges running to the Plain from the snowy Himalayan peaks. This means that communications through it longitudinally, from west to east, are bad, and do not favor political unity. Yet the people on the Slope — a few million altogether— are very much of a type. They are Mongoloid in appearance, small, upright of carriage, and blessed with a name for simplicity, honesty, and openness.

During the past century the Slope was arranged politically by British empire-builders so as to make a safe, nontroublesome buffer on India’s Northeast Frontier. China, normally the dominant power in Tibet, was weak then, and the British sought to neutralize Tibet, alienate her from China, and alienate the Slope piecemeal by protectorates, alliances, and annexations. By the time of the First World War, China’s shadow had receded from the Himalayan Slope.

The Chinese acquiesced through weakness, not choice. Both the Manchu Empire, which fell in 1911, and the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek, which left the Mainland in 1949, resented British incursions into the Chinese sphere, but could do little about them. It remained for the Reds to make a comeback. In 1950 they sent an army into Tibet, which no longer had British power behind it. A couple of years later they had brought it under control.

Now China rules Tibet completely so far as the outside world goes. The idea of Tibetan autonomy, nursed along by the British and the Tibetans themselves earlier in this century, is in the discard. The Chinese won’t discuss it and the Tibetans dare not. India now refers to the Plateau as the “Tibet region of China.” She has given up nearly all the rights Britain won there — the right to deal separately with the Lhasa government, to station troops on the Lhasa—India road, and so forth.

Red China lays her plans

Having regained her footing on the Plateau, China looks down the Slope and lays her plans. The Chinese have assured Tibetan leaders, it is reported, that they mean definitely to bring the Himalayan countries back into their sphere. China has different ways for expanding down the Slope, which she can use separately or together. She has the Communist Party, of course — the revolution. Most of the Himalayan countries have old, rickety social systems, “medieval” in Western terms. There is much poverty, and Communist agitators are at work exploiting that fact.

China also has prestige. She is the strongest thing visible from much of the Slope now. One hears the hill people singing Chinese war songs on the Slope, and sees them responding to Chinese culture in other ways. They dislike many things about China, but they respect her.

She can also exploit Asian racial pride. The Himalayan countries drew away from China or Tibet with Britain’s help. China can use this to discredit the whole movement, even if separation from China or Tibet fitted the countries’ aspirations at the time. She has already used it in her dealings with India over Tibet.

Finally, Red China greases her expansion by making deals with the local potentates and then honoring them, however paradoxical that may seem.

She began with her own war lords in West China, in the province bordering on Tibet. They were an ill-famed lot, notorious for grinding the poor and trafficking in opium—anathema to Chinese Marxist ideals. Yet they made their peace as the Red armies drew near more than four years ago, and at last reports were still living in ease and dignity, though they were no longer running things.

Later, when Chinese spearheads entered Tibet, further deals were made with the religious and secular authorities there—though again these leaders ruled with the kind of darkage absolutism that Marxist dogma condemns. Following the deals, the Red troops progressed almost bloodlessly; and members of the old regime have not been displaced and are living well.

This way of progress—by relatively honest marriage with the old order — seems unique in the annals of revolution. But it makes sense. The upper classes in the Himalayan countries are still well entrenched, and are nerved to fight for what they possess. It is hard for China to use naked force on them, because only a trickle of men and supplies can be moved across the Plateau. So negotiation is the indicated method. The old potentates’ heads may roll in the end, but not before everyone has been gathered back into the fold.

The pull of China

Among the chief Himalayan countries are the following: —

Bhutan. A thinly populated country, and a good producer of rice, coming between Tibet and India for more than 200 miles, in the eastern Himalayas. The Chinese long regarded the Bhutanese as their subjects, but in 1910 Sir Charles Bell, the main architect of the Northeast Frontier, got the latter to sign a treaty putting their foreign affairs in Britain’s hands. This treaty has been renewed by India, though she may not hold to it relentlessly in view of its imperialist origin.

Bhutan has close economic ties with Tibet through the rice trade, and close religious ones through the Lamaist church. The ruling class there has arbitrary rights of an antique sort, and there have been disorders of late. It is believed that Chinese agents have been busy, and Himalayan gossip puts Bhutan next on the Chinese timetable.

Sikkim. A small jewel of a country, 70 miles by 40, just west of Bhutan, famous among other things for its snow-capped peaks and profusion of orchids. It once was under Tibet, but was taken forcibly by the British and made a protectorate, and India has inherited it on those terms. Its rulers are Tibetan. It has little stature of its own, and may simply follow its neighbors.

Nepal. The biggest Himalayan state, running 500 miles along the Tibetan border from west to east, where it adjoins Sikkim. The Gurkha mercenaries, famed in the British army, come from Nepal. A century ago Nepal defeated Tibet in war and imposed a treaty calling for tribute and granting extraterritorial rights to Nepalese residing on Tibetan soil. Tibet never liked this treaty. Now, with her new Chinese backing, she has begun to disregard it, and suggestions are heard that it be revised.

While exacting tribute from Tibet, Nepal was herself paying tribute to China until 1908, when she dropped the practice. She was firmly ruled then by the Rana family, who became her hereditary prime ministers in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Ranas maintained a full-rigged Oriental despotism, with British support, but fell in 1950 before a revolution allied with the Indian Congress Party of Gandhi and Nehru.

The Ranas’ fall left Nepal without effective leadership, for they had suppressed young men of initiative. Politics are fluid there now; the main continuity is supplied by Indian advisers. There is a welter of political parties in the capital, and not much administrative conlrol outside it. Communications are wretched in Nepal, as they must move east and west across the gorges. Communists in the outlying districts are in some touch with Chinese Tibet. Meanwhile India has taken a strong hand in Nepal and is trying to stabilize the country by building roads, training administrators, helping the army, and so forth.

Ladakh. A state bordering on Western Tibet, and separated from Nepal by about 200 miles of outright Indian territory. Ladakh is part of Kashmir and is thus involved in the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, a separate matter from the Sino-Indian rivalry farther east. But its people are Tibetan and Buddhist, and it too is a former Chinese tributary. Its economic state is bad because it was an avenue of trade between India and Chinese Central Asia — Tibet and Turkestan — and this trade has mainly been stopped. It is now dominated by Indian troops drawn there by the Kashmir dispute, but basically it too feels the Chinese pull.

So do parts of the Himalayas directly under Indian rule. India’s Darjeeling District, for instance, which adjoins Bhutan and Sikkim, once belonged to those two states. As hillmen, its people distrust the lowland Indians who now rule instead of the British. There is a drive for autonomy, which local Reds are exploiting; and there are unemployment and unrest under the new deal. In general, it can be said that India is hard put to maintain the special British role all through the Himalayas, and the Chinese are only part of the trouble.

India needs time

India has a good army, which can move into the Himalayas much faster than any main Chinese force can. Some of it is there already. Apart from Ladakh, for instance, there is an Indian garrison in Sikkim that rules a closed zone south of the frontier there—and often meets Chinese patrols in the passes, according to report. But there are other demands on the army too. Much of it is tied down by Kashmir, and some of it is needed to back up law and order within India. Riots last winter, for instance, in the great restless port of Calcutta subsided only when troops appeared. Other riots may occur in the future, so the troops must stand by.

British rule in India was created from diverse elements by experts with the advantage of cold detachment. It passed to Indian leaders who lack this advantage, and they are faced by a tendency of their holdings to drift away. The drift cannot be stopped by mere force, an element whose limitations Gandhi dwelt on fully. Viewed from inside India, the Himalayan problem is part of this larger one. So far the leadership has not come up with an impressive solution, but such things take time.

Viewed from outside, the Himalayan problem looks more like a SinoIndian one, and India’s solution again is not impressive so far. The Chinese Reds and the Indian Congress are both revolutionary movements newly come to power. But the Reds have more momentum, for they were already used to power when they got it on a national scale, having run territory of their own, and an army, for two decades before that.

Then too the Chinese have long enjoyed fame as bargainers and intriguers. Those who know them do not expect others to bargain with them on equal terms and come off well. This is especially true if the bargaining is done on Chinese soil. The recent Sino-Indian talks on Tibet were held in Peiping, and the Indians did not bring back much from them. This has drawn criticism from many, including Indians used to British ways. Yet it seems rather early to complain. India’s reaction against the old days is great. She is trying to work out a new style in foreign policy, and that takes time too.

From buffer to base?

The problem is beyond America’s reach. We can’t touch any of the Himalayan countries bordering Tibet without going through India first, and she is resolved that our touch shall be gentle. We have a small economic mission in Nepal; and American tourists, journalists, and scholars are allowed to travel in the Himalayas within limits. But they are watched.

Our policy toward China is frankly hostile, its aim being to check her forcibly where we can. India’s policy is friendly, based on the idea that she can do business with the Chinese. She wants to try this out unhindered. She runs a big risk: that the Himalayas will turn from a buffer into the advance base of an enemy. If China had aggressive designs on India and controlled the Himalayas, she could sit in them impregnably and dominate the Plain from Delhi to Calcutta. She could do it cheaply, too, by using Gurkha manpower, which has played havoc among Indians in the past. This nightmare must have Indian leaders who ponder India’s relations with China. But if they dream it they do not say so.