How Panchsheel agreement was ‘born in sin’ that haunts India even today

Panchsheel is in the news again. On June 28, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave an ‘important’ speech (his speeches are always termed as ‘important’), about the relevance of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, known as Panchsheel in India.

Addressing a conference to mark the Panchsheel’s 70th anniversary in Beijing, the Chinese ‘Core’ leader combined the Five Principles “with his new concept of global security initiative envisaging a shared future for mankind.”

According to PTI, ‘[the principles] gained traction with the Non-Aligned Movement to end the present-day conflicts,” while today China wants “to expand [its] influence in the Global South amid its tussle with the West.”

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The Tibet Agreement

Unfortunately, Xi does not remember the origin of the Panchsheel.

It was the preamble for the ‘Tibet Agreement’ or “Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India” signed on April 29, 1954; at the last minute, Zhou Enlai, then Chinese premier, thought of adding a preamble, perhaps to make India’s surrender of its rights in Tibet more palatable.

PTI is very incorrect when it says: “The five principles formed part of the legacy of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Chinese counterpart Zhou Enlai in their unsuccessful quest to find a solution to the vexed boundary issue.”

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In fact, the Indian side was sure that there was no boundary issue between India and China (which was actually true since it was only an Indo-Tibet border at that time); during the four months of negotiations, which ended with the agreement on April 29, the border was never mentioned.

Prime Minister Nehru was ecstatic; the preamble itself would be the cornerstone of the future friendship between the two Asian giants, he believed.

In my book The Panchsheel Agreement – Born in Sin, I described in detail what became the last nail in the coffin of a free and independent nation, Tibet.

Despite the fact that the Indian Prime Minister announced in Parliament that the agreement was the best thing that he ever did, despite the beautifully worded preamble, the two delegations were miles apart during the four months.

A telling incident shows how little confidence there was between India and China; one should keep in mind that the main objective of the agreement was to regulate trade and pilgrimage between India and Tibet.

In the Hindi version of the agreement, the Indian translators had written “Chhota Mota Vyapar” for ‘petty trade’. ‘Chhota’ means ‘small’ and ‘Mota’, ‘fat’ or ‘big’. The Chinese Hindi expert in Beijing could not reconcile the two contradictory words; he did not realise that it was a widely used idiomatic Hindi phrase for ‘petty’. He thought that there was some trick behind the term, and it took two weeks to convince the Chinese delegation that the term ‘Chhota Mota’ was correct. They accepted it only after having cross-checked with their embassy in Delhi.

Incidentally, the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa was not even informed of the talks, though at the time, Delhi was preaching for the emancipation and freedom of the colonised nations in Asia or Africa.

In early 1954, Nehru’s energies were already turned towards the role he wanted to play in the Indochina conflict; a conference was to start in Geneva to end the French colonisation of this part of the world.

Zhou Enlai’s subtle message at the time of the Tibet Agreement signature disturbed very few in Delhi; he declared that only the matters ‘ripe for settlement had been solved’. Who realised in India that he meant that the boundary was not agreed upon at all (this remains so 70 years later)?

Before the Tibet Conference, some diplomats, such as Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai (then Governor of Bombay), strongly advised that India should force Beijing to recognise the traditional boundary between India and Tibet as the only way to resolve all the outstanding border questions between India and Tibet.

However, the highlight of the agreement were: Tibet becomes a ‘Region of China’ (it was the last nail in Independent Tibet’s coffin); the Five Principles or Panchsheel still ‘celebrated’ 70 years later by China; recognition of the six border passes in the middle Sector (while other important passes were omitted); establishment of consulates in Lhasa and Shanghai for India and in Calcutta and Bombay for China (eight years later, Lhasa would be closed forever); setting up of trade agencies at Yatung, Gyantse and Gartok for India and at New Delhi, Calcutta and Kalimpong for China (the Indian ones were already in existence); establishment of ten trade marts in Tibet for customary petty border trade by Indian traders and finally facilitating entry and ensuring security of Indian and Tibetan pilgrims to each other’s holy shrines in Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Sanchi in India and Kailash, Mansarowar and Lhasa in Tibet (the Kailash would soon be out of reach for Indians).

Another instance showed the lack of trust from the Chinese side; in Article IV, India insisted on the inclusion at the end of paragraph “(7) along the Indus from the Indian border to Shershang, Tashigong – Gartok”.

The Chinese virulently objected to this route being included in the agreement; they quoted an oral understanding that “they would not like in writing, even by implication, to have any reference to Ladakh.” For them, the mountainous region of Ladakh was a disputed area.

The Indian ambassador, N Raghavan took the stand that Ladakh was part of Indian territory, and even though this was not in the draft, the route should be mentioned, as its omission would be invidious. But the Chinese remained adamant.

On the last day of the negotiations (April 24, 1954), a ‘royal’ fight took place between Raghavan and his Chinese counterpart. Raghavan told NR Pillai, the Secretary General of the Ministry of External Affairs, about the previous day’s negotiations: “It was royal fight from beginning to end. Chang [the Chinese negotiator] took [a] very recalcitrant attitude.”

The same day, other ‘anachronisms’ (as Nehru termed them) were removed through an exchange of letters. India gave up her ‘extra territorial’ rights in Tibet, such as the military escorts in Gyantse and Yatung, post offices, telegraph and telephone services, and 12 rest houses.

Speaking about the above, TN Kaul, who had been negotiating for India at the beginning (he had to stop due to an affair with a Chinese girl), wrote in his memoirs: “Raghavan had kept this card up his sleeve and gave it as a ‘concession’ to Chang in his last meeting with him.”

One wonders why Raghavan finally gave away India’s cards. He should have kept them up his sleeve for further discussions, but he probably believed that all the problems had been solved.

During the following years, one would often hear the same refrain: “The Government of India found the old advantages of little use, and in any case, the Chinese exercised full control in Tibet.”

The Panchsheel Today

Seventy years later, Xi Jinping argues that while facing the major issue of “what kind of world to build and how to build this world”, China wants to build “a community with a shared future for mankind”.

Like the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: “Both are rooted in the excellent traditional Chinese culture of being friendly to neighbours, keeping faith and building friendship, and coordinating all nations.”

India, which did not attend the celebrations in Beijing, has learned the hard way in Ladakh since 2020, about the ‘excellent traditional Chinese culture’.

The Case of Barahoti

It took less than two months for India to discover that all problems had not been solved. The first Chinese incursion in the Barahoti area of then-Uttar Pradesh occurred in June 1954. This was the first of a series of incursions numbering in the hundreds that culminated in the treacherous Chinese attack in October 1962.

The most ironic part of the tragedy is that it was the Chinese side that complained about the incursion of some Indian troops in Barahoti, which was well inside India’s territory. On July 17, 1954, the counsellor in the Chinese embassy in Delhi wrote to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs: “This is not in conformity with the principles of non-aggression and friendly co-existence between China and India.”

This was the first of more than one thousand Memoranda, Notes and Letters exchanged by the governments of India and China over the next ten years, published in the White Papers on China.

The Chinese may have signed an agreement renouncing ‘mutual aggression’, but the future would show that the Panchsheel was for Beijing a mere piece of paper. John Lall wrote in his book Panchsheel and After: “Ten days short of three months after the Tibet Agreement was signed, the Chinese sent the first signal that friendly co-existence was over… Significantly, Niti [Barahoti] was one of the six passes specified in the Indo-Chinese Agreement by which traders and pilgrims were permitted to travel.”

Indeed, the Tibet (Panchsheel) Agreement was ‘born in sin’, as Acharya Kripalani once said in Parliament.

The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.